Tracking and mitigating disinformation relating to the Israel/Gaza crisis and its associated harms
- Priority Area Multidisciplinary Investigations on Disinformation in Europe
- Year 2024
- Country Germany, United Kingdom
Following the 7 October attacks committed by Hamas on Israel, and the resulting conflict, harmful activity online and offline has surged. This online hate is frequently driven by conspiracy theories and disinformation, and amplified by a range of actors globally, including established terrorist and violent extremist networks as well as hostile state actors. These harmful narratives can be inadvertently amplified by protest movements – both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli – creating hostile environments online which exacerbate polarisation and fuel backlash against vulnerable minority communities. Crucially, it also matches surges in crime and polarisation offline, with a range of European countries seeing surges in antisemitic and anti-Muslim incidents. Deepening understanding of disinformation narratives, the networks spreading it, and the tactics and platforms used, is essential for mitigating harm. This project aims to increase understanding of how different actors exploit the ongoing Israel/Gaza conflict and to characterise the harms of this disinformation, to produce evidence to help mitigate these harms. It will leverage ISD’s and CASM’s combined research and technical expertise in tracking disinformation, hate speech and extremism online.
It will do so by
- tracking English, German, French, Arabic and Hebrew language online ecosystems across mainstream and fringe social media platforms amplifying disinformation in the UK, Germany and France;
- tracking the narratives, tactics, and protocols used to spread this disinformation;
- evidencing how this activity impacts conflict dynamics, diplomatic efforts, and vulnerable communities in these countries, and identifying the potential impact of counter-disinformation efforts by social media platforms.
Through these goals, we aim to better educate the public around the nature and impacts of disinformation, and make recommendations to policy makers on how to counter its spread.