Cyberwar in Gaza
Ontem escrevia sobre o projeto do Allvoices com telefones celulares na faixa de Gaza. Agora, vejo em matéria da CNET News que a defesa Israelense está passando informações no Twitter e criou seu próprio ‘YouTube” para difundir os vídeos dos ataques. Celulares, vídeos, micro-blogs, vemos como as Web 2.0 é usada em tempos de crise.
Vídeo de um ataque aéreo em 30 de dezembro 2008
Trechos da matéria:
“The Israel Defense Forces this week extended its airstrikes on Gaza to the Web, posting video footage of its air assault against Hamas militants on YouTube and using Twitter to spread its message. According to various news reports, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) created its own YouTube channel carrying videos that include black-and-white aerial footage of attacks on Hamas weapon sites, and clips of Hamas terrorists loading rockets into trucks. An IDF spokesperson said it is using the platform to ‘help us bring our message to the world,’ by offering ‘exclusive footage showing the IDF’s operation success’ in Gaza.
(…) Spokesperson for the consulate David Saranga, as quoted in a CNN report, said: “We saw that there is a big debate, a very vivid debate about the situation in Gaza, and we wanted to bring our point of view. We wanted to share it with people on Twitter. ‘We wanted to outreach to the young generation, who does not read the conventional media, but is still interested in events in the Middle East, so we thought this is a good way to be an official voice for the questions people are asking,’ Saranga said.(…)”
Por outro lado, a Al Jazeera, cria um site para que cidadãos de Gaza possam reportar os problemas por SMS ou via Twitter. Vejam trechos do post do MobileActive.org:
“Al Jazeera launched a new site today for citizens in Gaza to report incidences of various kinds in Gaza via SMS and Twitter. The deployment is using Ushahidi and Souktel’s SMS gateway, one of the few able to deliver SMS in Gaza. In this latest citizen journalism effort, Al Jazeera is both mapping reports from its own journalists and incidences reported by the public. So far, there are few citizens texting in, however; the majority of the content consists of Al Jazeera news reports for now. Al Jazeera and its new media team are doing a great job, however, in their labs — very impressive innivations coming from the Arab satellite news service and its New Media folks like Ryaad M, for example.
(…) To report an incidence, Palestine on the Jawwal network can send a text message (starting with the word GAZA) to the number: 37191. Anywhere else in the world, users can send a text message (starting with the word GAZA) to the number: +45609910303.
The deployment of Ushahidi by Al Jazeera also includes Microsoft’s Virtual Earth, not Google Earth as in previous deployments of the tool. It is also the first deployment in Arabic. I hope that with Al Jazeera’s broadcasting prowess, it’ll promote texting in of citizen reports, and that despite the lack of electricity currently, enough people in Gaza hear about the local number. So far, I do no see any mention of the map on the Al Jazeera front page (neither the Arabic nor English sites), but trust that they will promote the site to begin augmenting their own news reports with reports from citizens on the ground.”