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Since the attack by the militant Islamist Hamas, the war in the Middle East has also become omnipresent on social networks. Initial analyzes show that the pro-Palestinian side clearly has the upper hand there.
The war in the Middle East has also been a topic on social media for weeks. There are countless posts, videos and information boards, especially on TikTok, the short message service X and Instagram. Stories about the suffering of the Palestinians, about radical Jewish settlers or the right-wing religious Israeli government receive a lot of approval in the form of likes.
In contrast, posts depicting the terror of the militant Islamist Hamas, the suffering of the relatives of Israeli hostages or those murdered on October 7th have a difficult time. These go significantly less viral, meaning they are liked less and seen less often. The platforms primarily push content into users’ timelines that is rated positively by many and viewed for a long time.
The algorithm does not know any journalistic gatekeeping and does not pay attention to balance, says Benjamin Gust, professor at the Central Hesse University of Technology. Rather, the calculation formula is interested in bare numbers.
Per-Palestinian Hashtags dominate
Gust has chosen tagesschau.de viewed the platforms TikTok and Instagram. There are 5.6 million posts on Instagram about the hashtag “FreePalestine,” says Gust. On the other hand, there are only 132,000 posts for the hashtag “IsraelUnderAttack” and 22,300 posts for the hashtag “FreeIsrael”.
The difference with TikTok is just as serious. Posts and videos with the hashtag “FreePalestine” have been seen 23.1 billion times. If you include hashtags with misspellings like “FreePalestin” or with a flag emoji, you would get around 29 billion views with pro-Palestinian content. Pro-Israel content would have “around 211 million views using the same calculation method including variants,” said Gust.
If you look at the interactions as a yardstick for the analysis, there are a few more unusual features, says Kim Robin Stoller from the International Institute for Education, Social and Anti-Semitism Research in Berlin (IIBSA). Hashtags like “FreePalestine” receive more than 160 million interactions on Instagram pages internationally. In German-speaking countries, however, there are currently only more than 200,000.
“In the German context, the highly interactive contributions include not only Islamists but also critics of the slogan, such as the CDU party,” says Stoller. “Internationally, however, it can be assumed that these are primarily supporters of Hamas or anti-Israel positions.”
Age of the user is a factor
In Gust’s opinion, the clear difference may be due, among other things, to the ratio of the number of Muslims and Jews. According to estimates, there are around 15 million Jews and more than two billion Muslims worldwide. It is logical that more is done on one topic than on the other, says Gust.
However, religious affiliation is not the only factor: According to studies, geographical or political proximity to the Middle East conflict in particular plays a role in the approval of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic attitudes. After Information from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) For example, Christians in predominantly Muslim Lebanon are more likely to be anti-Semitic than Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
According to experts, the age of the user is also an important factor. TikTok in particular is very popular among young people. A report from Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism According to this, a fifth of 18-24 year olds use TikTok as a news source. One Quinnipiac University survey Younger people in the USA support pro-Palestinian positions significantly more often than older people. For example, only 32 percent of 18-24 year olds support Israel’s military response to the Hamas attack – while 58 percent of 50-64 year olds support it.
Algorithm rewards lots of interactions
Due to the significantly higher posting and interaction rates, the algorithm of the social networks would favor pro-Palestinian content, says Gust. Because the algorithm constantly monitors user behavior and counts the likes. If users spend significantly longer on pro-Palestinian posts and receive more likes, the algorithm assumes that all users of the platform should be very interested in the post.
As a result, social media posts that spread the Palestinian narrative appear much more often in users’ timelines, says Gust. This applies both worldwide and throughout Germany. The consequence: Regardless of the truth, the validity of the arguments and journalistic quality criteria such as balance, the interpretative sovereignty lies with the pro-Palestinian narrative.
Pro-Palestinian accounts were already on social networks during the last major military conflict between Israel and Hamas in 2021 for a concerted action used to spread one’s own narrative as widely as possible, as the “Video Activism” project analyzed. TikTok was the focus of activists in particular.
In one Investigation by the journal Arab Media & Society The X account of the militant Islamist Hamas states that the terrorist organization has been able to present its narrative much better by expanding its communication network. The author of the investigation writes that X gave Hamas space “to reach audiences around the world, thereby strengthening its arguments and constructions of events in Palestine.”
Less range for balance?
All of this, in turn, can influence users who produce content about the war in the Middle East. Because the currency on the Internet is likes, reposts and followers. The more approval a post receives, the more users will see it and possibly decide to follow the author.
Editorial teams or influencers who strive for balance may therefore have more difficulty gaining reach than those who repeatedly distribute posts that deal in particular with the fate of the Palestinians.
What consequences does this have for users?
If a user searches for posts with the hashtag “FreePalestine” or watches a video for a particularly long time that, for example, depicts the suffering of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the algorithm repeatedly feeds the user’s timeline with similar posts.
Posts that discuss the fate of the kidnapped hostages, for example, hardly appear anymore or not at all. The user finds himself in the so-called echo chamber and has an increasingly one-sided view of what is actually a highly complicated complex of topics, says Gust.
Criticism from politics
Politicians have sometimes harshly criticized the platform operators due to the many false reports on social networks since the attack by the militant Islamist Hamas. For example, the EU Commission had announced proceedings against Facebook parent company Meta, the text messaging service X and TikTok for the spread of false information.
According to TikTok, the platform then deleted several hundred thousand videos related to the war in the Middle East. The company also shared in a statement that the platform is not pro-Palestinian biased. “Our recommendation algorithm does not take sides and has strict measures in place to prevent manipulation,” it said in a statement. TikTok also pointed out that significantly more posts were created with the hashtag “FreePalestine” than with “StandWithIsrael” on Instagram and Facebook.