Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk has touted how X—the platform formally known as Twitter—could replace traditional media with near real-time updates as news is breaking. Yet, in the past week, X has instead been largely overtaken by misinformation coming out of the Middle East.
"Terrorist agencies exacerbate these exaggerations to enhance their status and further their goals of stoking fear and recruitment tactics," Pelfrey continued."Hamas is telling stories of killed personnel such that they become martyrs for the cause, enhancing recruitment of future terrorist actors. Hamas and other non-state actors will focus on Palestinian children injured or killed in the bombing and Israel will do the same.
"Hamas is pulling this straight from the ISIS playbook: demonstrate success for recruitment purposes," Albert noted.What is also notable about the ongoing conflict is that it isn't just the parties engaged in the fight that are currently involved that are using social media to spread misinformation/disinformation.
"Some media watchers found out that there's a lot of misinformation coming from India. Particularly from Hindu nationalist organizations and parties, which are essentially using this in order to create a case against the Indian Muslims," said