What Does Posting on Social Media Really Achieve in Times Like This?
Week Five: Now, Where Were We?
Read Dearer,
I have been biting my tongue for 11 days. Not on the subject of Palestine.
I always have and always will speak up for Palestine.
Instead, I’ve been refraining from relaying my anger toward my American friends who are keeping silent or proclaiming on the side of one of the world’s biggest military powers – one that is actively engaged in genocide. Not only have some of them been attacking me via DM, but others are posting content that sickens me. One friend (a white woman who incidentally has Black Lives Matter as her bio line on IG) railed against a pro-Palestine demonstration in her neighborhood. Another reposted the now-debunked story about the beheading of babies. Another shared a completely bullshit Amy Schumer post and followed that by stating that support for Palestine was, by nature, anti-Semitic. False equivalency, fake news, and performative outrage are par for the course on social media, but these people are (were?) my friends. The silence impacts me, too. I have friends who are being silenced by their employers. That’s not the silence I’m speaking of. I’m speaking of a conscious choice to “stay out of it” when the moment actually requires action.
My anger just sits in my chest, boiling, threatening to spill over.
I have always wondered what social media would have looked like during Hitler’s rise to power. Now I have my answer. It will look like awful, blood-soaked stories of pain, disenfranchisement, and violence next to blissfully obtuse videos of dogs, weddings, and recipes. It will look like memes abutted to a war-monger’s hate speech. It will look like happy birthday bestie posts sandwiched in between cries of pain as children are pulled from underneath concrete rubble. It will look like some people carrying on with their regularly scheduled content while the world rips itself apart around them.
I don’t want to see your regularly scheduled content. I don’t fucking care. I am seeking content about Palestine. It’s the only thing in the world that actually matters to me right now. I have cried more in the past 11 days than I have in the past 11 years. My body is regularly exploding with grief. EXPLODING. I sit with tears dripping from the tip of my nose while I answer work emails. I’m stirring garlic into peas on the stove while I think about how there are millions of people in Gaza without electricity, WiFi, running water, or food. Who are being hunted. Who are traumatized, injured, desperate. I am folding laundry while the face of a tiny, trembling child with giant eyes appears behind my eyes. The hospital he was in was bombed. He can’t stop shaking. His fear is palpable. I’m so sorry, little one. I’m so sorry. And I can’t look away, and I can’t ignore it, and I simply can’t pretend it isn’t happening. In fact, I refuse to.
[To Tiffany, Jacob, Don, and Becky who reached out, I cannot express my gratitude enough. Day one, real ones.]
A few of my friends, who have been vocal on social rights issues in the past, posted that they were “listening” because I’m sure that idea felt right to them. Listen to what? I counter. The cries of dying families, the roar of exploding missiles? This is not the time to listen or keep silent. This is the time to act. You, in all of your humanity, must speak.
Why? Because sharing on social media actually has an impact! Many people feel (and I get it! I do!) that posting doesn’t move the needle. However, it actually does. It not only unites you to the cause, but it can also affect those in your community. It can spur action. It can cause someone who normally sidelines themselves in a crisis to pick up the phone and call their senator. It can prompt others to educate themselves, become informed, and share that information with their network of friends and family. It has a ripple effect that might not be immediately tangible but that can help turn the tide of an asymmetric war. Every voice matters. This is what the Palestinians are asking of us. To share their stories, to confront our prejudices, to face their pain. To my American friends specifically: Your tax dollars are currently funding a genocide! I am pleading with you to speak the fuck up! If not now, when?
To that end, I am sharing an op-ed I wrote for Savoir Flair that proves that it is vital to broadcast your truth on social media. After you read it, please act. I am counting on you. Palestine is counting on you.
What Does Posting on Social Media Really Achieve in Times Like This?
In the past few years, the global connection offered by the Internet has brought trauma and protest movements to our front door like never before. We’ve seen Occupy Wall Street, the Orange Revolution, the Arab Spring, May Day rallies, the Women’s March, and Black Lives Matter happen in real-time, spurning many to join the cause via their social media platforms or through on-the-street activism. Now, it is Palestine’s turn for justice. But when it comes to social media and hitting “send” on a story or post that supports a movement, you may be left feeling empty and despondent, not sure if what you’re doing really helps in times like these. As we sit watching the horrors unfold from phone and computer screens, a sense of helplessness takes over.
Charred skies, blood in the streets, missiles screaming overhead, entire families, neighborhoods, and homes gone in the blink of an eye. What is happening in Palestine is an outrage. Yet, we’re not here to dispense a history lesson. If 75 years of modern strife and two millennia of ancestral land disputes, colonization, and military occupation haven’t made you curious enough to crack at least one of a thousand history books or access the infinite knowledge provided at your fingertips by the Internet, don’t expect us to summarize it all in a neat little package for you. We will say that new tensions, spurned by old turmoil, had led to a human rights catastrophe, which has united Palestinians and their supporters from every stratum of society for the first time since the uprising in 1987.
Although some of the efforts have been stymied by algorithms and “glitches,” you have likely seen the #GazaUnderAttack and #FreePalestine hashtags flooding your social media. You may have seen footage of widespread protests in support of the Palestinian movement taking the streets of Amman, London, New York, and Kuwait. You may have also noticed a backlash against those who stay silent or who make ill-informed attempts to enter the online debate. These consequences may have left you hesitant to participate and unsure whether or not you should contribute in the first place.
We’re here to help.
First things first, check your privilege. If you’re not in the region or you have the luxury of living in safety and peace here, your first step is to look inward and recognize that you are living a privileged existence. You might rationalize that it’s okay to be ignorant about what’s happening between Israel and Palestine because it doesn’t affect you or your loved ones or because you treat the conflict in the Middle East like a foregone conclusion.
Media has worked to pacify us to the notion of human suffering in the region. But in a globalized world, these issues need the help of everyone for amplification and awareness. Though they might not have an immediate or tangible impact on your life, they affect the global community. All social change starts from within. Those sayings you’ve heard a thousand times: “Be the change you want to see in the world,” “Think global, act local,” and “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” might fail to resonate anymore, but they are still valid for reminding us of the need for humans to find it in themselves to participate in activities that benefit their communities.
Next, once you are ready to participate, you must also be willing to risk a backlash. I’ve personally lost dozens of followers when I started posting about Palestine, but I knew the choice I was making when I started, and I accept the consequences of my actions. There are many who will label you a “keyboard warrior,” a “slacktivist,” or an “armchair activist,” denoting that actions taken on social media don’t affect real change.
They are wrong.
A study by the Public Library of Science (PLOS One) finds “that these peripheral players actually play a critical role in extending the reach of social movements — even doubling them.” Professors Sandra González-Bailón of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and Pablo Barberá from New York University conducted the aforementioned study by analyzing tens of millions of tweets related to protests in Turkey (2013 Gezi Park) and the United for Global Change movement (led by Indignados and Occupy). In the study, they found that social media awareness campaigns significantly impact change. González-Bailón lent perspective, saying, “Of course, social media doesn’t push you to risk your life and take to the streets, but it helps the actions of those who take the risk to gain international visibility.”
In an interview with Portland Monthly, Associate Professor of Sociology at Oregon State University Kelsy Kretschmer stated, “The power of images communicates needs in a new way… social media matters a lot for that, the same way national news broadcasts mattered a lot in the 1960s. That changes how many people are willing to participate.” There is strength in numbers, and the more people that join together to protest the violent actions Israel is conducting against Palestine and the more pressure that is applied by the global community, the higher the chance becomes that real change can occur.
Let’s say you’ve made it this far into the article and are armed with the knowledge that your participation on social media can impact the movement. It’s time for action, but what should you post? What is vitally important about this mission – should you choose to accept it – is that the Palestinian people are not asking for donations and financial aid, they are asking for the amplification of their voices and stories.
One of the first steps you can take is to learn the appropriate terminology to use when you signal boost online. For instance, what started with Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel on October 7 has led to Israel’s vocal attempts to wipe Palestine off the map. It’s not a war, as in there are two equal sides, but asymmetric warfare with one super military power carrying out violence with zero regard for human casualties. Furthermore, Palestinians do not use the term “evicted” from their homes, but rather that they were forcefully dispossessed of their homes by order of the Israel Supreme Court. This is a violation of International Humanitarian Law, which sets out that occupying settlers cannot impose their own set of laws in occupied territory. Palestinian protesters have also rejected the use of the words conflict, clashes, both sides, two-sided, complicated, and complex to describe the events, as they would suggest that the innocent victims of the air strikes and military brutality were complicit by participating in them willingly.
Second, find stories, videos, and posts by Palestinians and repost them. There are many other methods for helping, like donating to reputable charities (preferably those run by Palestinians who distribute funds and resources directly to the people), but at this time the borders are completely closed and aid is unable to reach those in need. One effective method is to sign petitions that request that your government representative take action to stop the human rights violations happening in Palestine.
Third, when you take these steps, you may risk being shadow-banned by your social media platform. Shadow banning is when the platform will block or partially block a user’s content from being seen by their followers. Shadow banning has been enacted against certain hashtags like #FreePalestine and #GazaUnderAttack. However, there are ways around this. A common way to disrupt shadow banning is to post unrelated content, like selfies or pictures of your pet. Some users suggest not using the term algorithm or a variation of the word (example: algo break) when you do this, as Instagram, in particular, is crawling for those terms and including them in the shadow ban. Other suggestions were provided by Sanad Zaqtan (@szaqtan on Instagram), giving words alternate spellings like “P&lestine” or “G@z@”. You can also personally request that your friends interact with your stories to increase the likelihood that they will be seen on the home page. One of the best methods is to share news from multiple (legitimate) sources so that you diversify the types of content being shared.
And finally, in the words of Savoir Flair’s Editor-in-Chief Haleh Nia, “Stay strong. Use your voice.”