For weeks, the tragic events unfolding in Israel and Gaza have blanketed both social and legacy media. In parallel, the volume of false and unverified information circulating online has ballooned.
Maintaining the integrity of the online information space has always been a challenge in rapidly shifting environments, including most recently Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where social media has become an important front in the war, and propaganda narratives are rife. In these periods of acute crisis, there is a clear supply and demand problem. Demand for information skyrockets, but the supply of credible, fact-based information lags or may be absent altogether. In this void, false, exaggerated, and decontextualized claims can pervade the information space.
Unsurprisingly, the Israel-Gaza crisis has become the next digital battlefield. But recent shifts in the online ecosystem have made an already difficult arena even more challenging. What changes have further stressed the online information space? And is there anything we can do to reverse course?
When a blast rocked the area around Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza on October 17, 2023, likely killing hundreds, reports out of the region failed to accurately convey the uncertainty around the event. The reasons for this failure are certainly wide-ranging. Among them, covering evolving events in Gaza remains extremely difficult, with only a small number of journalists on the ground. For...
A TikToker is calling attention to questionable claims made by an Indiana official, sparking frustration over how political figures portray the state's public health and safety situation. The vide...