Hamas uses social media to incite fear, researchers find

Social media was a key tool of Hamas militants as they waged their brutal attack on Israel over the weekend, according to an online misinformation expert: the group leaned on platforms with loose rules against terrorism propaganda and misinformation to sow fear and misinformation.

“A big part of the strategy of inciting terror is not just the attack … but also depends on their ability to incite fear in especially online spaces,” said Graham Brookie, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which has been tracking the attack’s online presence as it evolves.

A POLITICO review over the weekend found considerable violent content on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, in violation of the company’s own rules. Other, less regulated platforms were spreading images and disinformation as well.

More “truly horrifying” images and video could surface in the coming days, added Brookie, as Hamas has reportedly captured dozens of Israelis, including women, children and the elderly. “That's something that any number of governments and national security teams are working on in this very moment around the world,” Brookie said in an interview on POLITICO Tech.

Researchers observed a flood of propaganda and misinformation in the hours and days following the surprise assault, which saw Hamas use bulldozers, paragliders and explosives to breach a security barrier along the Gaza border and infiltrate Israel. The death toll in Israel and Gaza now exceeds 1,000, including several American citizens.

Immediately after the attack began, Hamas pumped “glossy” images and video depicting fighters crossing into Israel onto the messaging app Telegram, which allows individual users to broadcast content with little to no restrictions. “The media wing of Hamas was well prepared for this military attack,” said Brookie, who was an adviser on the National Security Council under President Obama.

Critics have also focused on X, which has come under intense criticism since its purchase by Elon Musk last year for loosening policies against misinformation and hate speech, and terminating staff tasked with monitoring and removing illicit content. On Tuesday, European Commissioner Thierry Breton sent Musk an “urgent letter” accusing X of distributing illegal content and disinformation in violation of EU law.

X did not respond to a request for comment.

In addition to actual footage and pictures from the weekend’s attacks, images and video from past conflicts, video games or other events have also circulated widely and been falsely portrayed as captured during the ongoing conflict, he said.

In propagating them, Hamas and its supporters are taking advantage of the huge mismatch between the ease of flooding platforms with content and the challenge of taking it down, as well as the desire among some platforms not to police content at all.

Combating such content requires “people sitting at a computer screen and looking at this and making judgments,” Brookie said in an interview. “It used to be that there were dozens of people that do that at Twitter, and now there's only a handful.”

Israelis and Palestinians have clashed violently for decades, including wars that left scores of people dead and injured. Brookie said “what's different this time is the muscle memory that these groups have in generating content that reaches a lot of people.”

“A group like Hamas has, unfortunately, a lot of experience in creating this content. And they know that it needs to be an important part of their strategy to produce, essentially, terror propaganda,” he continued.

Annie Rees contributed to this report. 

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