Tag Archives: Media

09Jun/09

The Other Gaza War: Hamas Media Strategy during Operation Cast Lead and Beyond

Chiche, Fabrice & Boms,Nir  (2009) “The Other Gaza War: Hamas Media Strategy during Operation Cast Lead and Beyond” in  Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, Vol. 3. No. 2.

A simple search in Google for the word “Gaza” will yield over 67 million results, while a search for its neighboring Israeli city of Sderot-located just a few miles away from Gaza City and a target of the last few rounds of confrontation between Israel and Hamas-will yield a little over a million (a ratio of 60:1). A more interesting comparison demonstrates that a search for “Hamas,” a local terrorist group, receives twice the number of “hits” (27 million) as a search for the international terrorist network “al-Qa’ida.” These results can be explained by a number of factors, including the high level of interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the way different terms are coded on the internet. But the rather impressive Hamas media presence that was apparent during the recent campaign in Gaza can also be attributed to the calculated and successful media strategy implemented by Hamas and some of its supporters. The notion of a “media war” is nothing new when it comes to terrorist groups. Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qa’ida’s second-in-command, declared in 2005 that: “We are in a battle, and more than half of it is taking place in the battlefield of the media. We are in a media battle for the hearts and minds of our umma Continue reading

11Jun/08

En Surveillant le Chien de Garde

Monday 29 October [13:23:00 GMT] 

S’agit-il d’un sale petit secret, dont FR2 et son reporter, Charles Enderlin, entendent empêcher la révélation au tribunal ?

Par Nir Boms et Elliot Chodoff © Metula News Agency

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes ? “Qui surveille le gardien ?” demanda le poète romain Juvénal, paraphrasant une problématique centrale évoquée par Platon dans La République.

La recherche de la “Justice” est un art difficile, dans un monde complexe, qui nous demande d’émettre des jugements à l’emporte-pièce sur des sujets critiques, tels que le réchauffement climatique, la politique internationale, la paix et la guerre. Continue reading

01Jun/08

Watching the Watchdog

The media’s role is to be the watchdog of democracy. But what happens when the watchdog falls into an unexpected trap? What happens when it is betrayed from within and maliciously manipulated in order to create a skewed picture of reality?

by Nir Boms and Elliot Chodoff (10/25/2007) – published in OMedia.com

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?“Who watches the watchmen?” asked the Roman poet Juvenal, paraphrasing a central problem discussed by Plato in The Republic.

The pursuit of “Justice” is a tricky business in a complicated world demanding that we make judgments about critical issues beyond our immediate perception like global warming, foreign policy, peace and war.

Fortunately -at least in the democratic world – we have a tool meant to facilitate these difficult judgments: the media, a free and open marketplace of ideas; a platform for information and views helping formulate wise and fair judgments. Continue reading