Terror and propaganda go hand in hand. It happened during the invasion of Ukraine and is happening in the Middle East. Every time you see a video of Hamas kidnappings or an Israeli army bombing on your cell phone, don’t buy it as news material. It’s propaganda. Pure and hard. The battlefield is also the screen. The aim of propagandists is to legitimize their story and, in the case of terrorists, to create panic. The more people who see the pictures, the better. That is why all organizations that use violence have propaganda devices. In Spain we suffered with ETA. Audiovisual media are increasingly of higher quality. Sometimes it feels like a video game or a movie. I wish it was. The images go viral. The violent win and we don’t realize it.
Israel has joined this propaganda battle. The main channel chosen is Netanyahu’s X account, where air force bombings against Gaza are broadcast. Iron hand in search of recovering credit. Nothing new under the sky cover either. Before wars were explained by correspondents. Now they are broadcast live, and governments and terrorist organizations do it.
The novelty is called social networks. You no longer need to go to the cinema to see Leni Riefenstahl’s productions justifying the Third Reich. The novelty is X, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook; and propaganda can be comfortably consumed from the sofa. Yesterday, the former Twitter announced that it would restrict some images to censor inappropriate content. In two days it distributed 50 million publications about the conflict.
Dealing with this kind of events is not easy. In fact, even the greatest communication experts make mistakes. In this country, without going any further, ETA had a powerful public speaker for years. And for free
How can propaganda be combated? There are those who are betting on an informative blackout. The historical communicator McLuhan, for example, said that without communication there would be no terrorism. “If there is no information, terrorist acts will cease to fulfill one of their objectives, to sow terror”, added Pompeu Fabra University professor Miquel Rodrigo.
This theory has been complicated by the lack of control of social networks. Self-censorship, therefore, does not seem to be the solution. The key lies in two aspects: neutrality and, above all, respecting the victims, something valid for all kinds of violence. It is a matter of reporting rigorously.
