UP professor warns vs disinformation, exploitation of Israel-Hamas conflict
IN THE WAKE of the Israel-Hamas conflict, a surge in false information circulating on social media platforms has raised concerns, with University of the Philippines (UP) professor Rachel E. Khan warning of the dangers associated with such disinformation campaigns.
Speaking in an interview with One News PH, Ms. Khan emphasized that the disinformation wave emerged concurrently with the commencement of the attacks and has rapidly become a concerning component of modern warfare.
“The disinformation campaign was launched the same time that the attacks were launched. It’s now becoming a standard part of war,” she said.
One of the most troubling aspects of this disinformation trend is the manipulation of old video footage, presenting it as recent incidents. Social media posts are employing archived clips of Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip, deceptively asserting that they depict current events.
“Many of the images (in social media posts) are real, it’s just that it’s not happening now. It’s past. So, they’re real videos of past events which are being labeled as current, and that’s where the disinformation is happening,” explained Ms. Khan.
Ms. Khan added that online disinformation is common in discourse about political issues such as the Ukraine-Russia conflict and the Philippine elections.
“Disinformation is not new. We’ve seen it usually during elections and not just here but in other countries as well. The difference now is that there are a lot less in-house parameters or guards in place,” she said.
Ms. Khan pointed out that misleading posts typically originate on social media platform X, previously known as Twitter, which has reduced its fact-checking efforts.
“Those who actually are employed by X (to do fact-checking) are no longer that active or they’re concentrated on English entries or English news. There’s a lot of Arabic language disinformation that is going undetected,” she said.
The professor also expressed concerns about the credibility of verification marks, commonly known as blue checkmarks on social media platforms.
In the past, these were exclusively reserved for credible media organizations. However, she observed that some social media platforms, including X and YouTube, are now selling verification marks, thereby causing confusion.
“It’s created a lot of confusion and it’s created a lot of misleading sites that we think are verified but actually, they’re paid verification,” Ms. Khan cautioned.
The professor said that some social media accounts take advantage of the conflict to raise their monetization from the platform by posting content that can go viral.
“There are really those who just want to make money out of it (the conflict). Because they know that it is viral so they know that when they share it, they can increase their views,” said Ms. Khan.
Ms. Khan said being vigilant in consuming online information is the simplest way to combat disinformation.
“The simplest thing to do is when you see a video… on your mobile phone is to go to the actual site of the media institution. There are a lot of videos that are labeled BBC but are not actually [from] BBC,” said Ms. Khan.
The Israeli government, on Sunday, declared war against Palestinian militant group Hamas after the group’s unprecedented attacks on Israeli territories.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said that 900 people have been killed and 4,500 people have been injured since the attacks started.
On Wednesday, the Philippine government confirmed that two Filipinos were killed in the war. — Jomel R. Paguian
