By Tom Brennan
How to avoid being the guest of honor at a social media dogfight. Picking your social media battles and winning them for Israel.
The number of social media pages seems to increase and decrease almost daily. Facebook’s increasingly commercial grasp has caused many former members to look elsewhere to protect their online identity and last shreds of alleged privacy. Social media is an outlet for rants, complaints, musings, photos of dogs and cats and spammed advertisements and online outrage. Rarely do posters or commentators check their facts before sharing lies and slander as well as photo-shopped pictures and doctored videos that shriek of fraud. Unfortunately many anti-Israel and anti-Christian sites and posters dwell in the dark caverns of deceit and viral sensationalism.
Although I work in social media marketing its shortcomings and bonuses seem to balance each other out. Like any resource it must be used wisely to be effective. Personal rants and issues have no place when defending Israel or opposing ant-Christian or anti-Semitic viewpoints. Often these defamatory statements are placed online to stir up trouble or draw people into issues or public demonstrations that favor the posting. In short, someone is manipulating a system for their own benefit. The internet and social media award high rankings and show favoritism to pages with high numbers. Anyone who studies Facebook readily admit the “books are cooked” and often nonprofits or those with politically incorrect (non mainstream) opinions see fewer reported statistics. Facebook also favors advertisers who pay. As Christians who support The Land and its people we are obliged to adhere to the highest standards. We are accountable for our words and our intentions.
Being accountable also means picking your battles and no being drawn into online discussions that can be turned around and thrown back at us. Most of us who use social media will see pages that catch our attention with any connection to Israel. Before “liking” or joining it’s always a good idea to check the description, site owner, affiliation and other authority data. Liking or joining a useful page gives access to more similar pages and introduces us to sources that can be effective message-bearers. Read posts and comments, see if they are well written, literate and appropriate. It is good to note that many popular pages will have large numbers of comments, here the idea is that your comment, unless making a dramatic difference, will be buried in the mass. Sometimes being among the first will make a difference, but if there are too many comment already, moving on to another page is the best use of time.
Obviously social media has taken over a large portion of the day of a large number of persons. The smart-phone has made this easy and accessible. The accessibility of the technology, the wide distribution and immediacy of social media have all combined to make this a serious factor in everything from reporting the news to causing riots and revolutions. Many authoritarian governments immediately shut down the internet, cell phone and social media pages when any civil disturbances are brewing. Iran, China, Myanmar and other regimes have realized that social media can unite and inform a disenchanted populace of government actions. The “Arab Spring” was tweeted into existence, for better or for worse. Democracies like Israel conduct their functions in public and never restrict the open discussion of events or actions.
The best way to use social media to support Israel and confront anti-Semitic and anti-Christian statements and messages is to select the best forum for visibility, write appropriate and well composed posts and comments and to find a way to influence the influencers. Time is valuable in this battle and selecting your targets where the most good will result is critical in seeing that the truth overwhelms online lies and slander. Do not engage in useless name-calling, do not associate with groups or persons of questionable background just because a statement is positive for the moment. In the battle for Israel we as Christians cannot accept the old dictum “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. We answer to the Highest Authority. Social media is no exception.
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