Facebooking Gaza

Cross posted at Scoop44 and Daily Kos.

When looking for up-to-date news during an international war or conflict, one could turn to many different media sources. The traditional mainstream media outlets — The New York Times, The Washington Post and the BBC — all have online sites that provide breaking news updates. If one is unsatisfied with these outlets, one could turn to other media sources; many television networks run on-screen, breaking news updates, and some, such as CNN, publish up-to-date news coverage on their websites.

However, there is another source that people might not think to look at for up-to-date coverage of an international conflict: Facebook. Facebook has shown itself to be a legitimate news source through its coverage of the war in Gaza. However, its reporting is very different from the traditional media’s methods of reporting news updates. Facebook has at least two applications, QassamCount and War on Gaza that provide updates on specific attacks in the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

It is important to note that both applications are biased. QassamCount only reports on the number of rockets fired into Israel from Palestine, giving a disproportionate image of who was committing the violence. War on Gaza, run by the anti-Isreali news station Al Jazeera, only reports on the number of Palestinians killed and ignores the Israeli civilian death toll.

Despite the fact that both applications are biased news sources, they are designed to engage people who might not otherwise pay attention to international conflicts. QassamCount asks users to “donate their status” to report on the conflict, and War on Gaza allows users to post a link to the application on their Facebook page and on Twitter, a social messaging site, at the same time. These innovative methods of news sharing connect with people who might not be watching cable news around the clock, but are checking out the new pictures their friends posted. Who knows? It might be the future of news reporting.