Comments on: Framing The Debate About #Gaza on Twitter

By: tonyknuckles

tonyknuckles — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 05:38:14 +0000

Not really getting the whole hashtag debate over at the twitter. #TCOT seems to rock on for me. And by the way let Isreal defend itself with all the tools it has in its arsenal IMVHO.

By: Gideon Lichfield

Gideon Lichfield — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:04:46 +0000

It's not surprising. There's fighting going on in #gaza right now. There have been rockets falling on #sderot for eight years. There's been #israel-#palestinian fighting for decades, #israel-#hamas fighting for years, etc. Using #gaza isn't deliberate framing, just the most obvious time-sensitive tag. More people will search for #gaza than for #askisrael or anything else. Plus it's short. And anyway, if you're doing a search by a particular hashtag, then you've already set your own frame. Clearly it doesn't suit some people's political agendas, but the hashtag framing effect is minor compared with the frames that are set by the media or people's own existing prejudices.

By: Matthew Bennett

Matthew Bennett — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 01:38:42 +0000

Hi Luke, I thought it was curious that #gaza was used, appeared and remained on Twitter trends (instead of #israel) and an Israeli related hash tag – #askisrael – only appeared after the Israelis started their publicity stunt.

As far as I know, no-one forces people to use hash tags, so the fact that (hundreds? thousands?) of Twitter users chose #gaza says something.

By: Luke Spear

Luke Spear — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 01:02:07 +0000

Thanks for the post, Matt, good food for thought.

I think the hash tag is less important than being aware of who is issuing the tweets themselves.

To my mind it's ultimately more important to bear in mind the political objectives of the writer and so keep a balanced view of the various subjects being discussed. The hash tag being a representation of these political standpoints, as you so rightly point out, it helps us to remain more objective when weighing up the different sides of the story if the tag itself explicitly states the viewpoint of the tweet source.