Hashtag Wars: Twitter as a Discursive Space in the 'Battle of Narratives' between pro-Israelis and pro-Palestinians

Traditional forms of media have played a significant role in narrating the military conflict between Israel and Palestine (Said; Aouragh 2; Elmasry). Most recently, the Israeli Defense Forces used their official Twitter account to launch the 2012 Operation Pillar of Cloud in Gaza. This thesis investigates the role played by Twitter in the ‘battle of narratives’ taking place between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli communities on 14th June, two days after the #BringBackOurBoys hashtag campaign was launched 2014 and 9th July 2014, a day after Operation Protective Edge commenced in Gaza. The thesis argues that Twitter as a microblogging platform acts as an ambivalent discursive protest space for the battle of narratives between pro-Israelis and pro-Palestinians. Drawing on a range of hashtag case studies, such as #BringBackOurBoys, #GazaUnderAttack and #IsraelUnderFire, the thesis offers a content analysis of 300 tweets in relation to emerging concepts in digital media studies. Pablo Gerbaudo’s articulation of ‘choreography of assembly’, for example, illustrates the role of social media in ‘setting the scene’ for protest while William Gamson and Andre Modigliani’s concept of ‘interpretive packages’ allows for an exploration of symbolic devices on Twitter such as metaphors, exemplars, injustice symbols and visual images. This thesis draws on these concepts to examine how Twitter’s affordances work ambivalently to highlight the victimisation of one side of the conflict while erasing the victimisation of the other.