Israel/Gaza, as seen by four social networks

[avram]

How four social networks inform me about the current Israel/Gaza conflict, in order of where I first started seeing things:

• Facebook: Shares of pro-Israel/anti-Gaza graphics, some of them direct Israeli Defense Force propaganda with the identifying logo at the bottom. All of the sharers are personally known to me, and all are Jewish. Most (maybe all?) of the shares are made without comment, as if the graphic itself says everything the person posting it feels necessary to say.
• Twitter: Tweets from a number of users, all left-leaning, who link or retweet longer, thoughtful articles examining various aspects of the conflict. Many of the articles are meta-commentary about media coverage of the conflict.
• LiveJournal: A single user (osewalrus), well-informed, who personally favors Israel, but offers up commentary and advice that takes the motives and goals of both sides seriously. And one other guy who made a passing reference while talking about something else.
• Google+: Nothing yet. Right now, the only post I see on my G+ stream that mentions Israel does so in the context of criticizing American airport security.

This confirms reinforces for me a number of beliefs I already held about the services (no doubt shaped by my particular use of those networks, and thus possibly not truly representative):

• Facebook is for shallow, unreflective contact. (Also: Most of my relatives and some of my friends are reflexive and thoughtless in their support of Israel.)
• Twitter is mostly tech-savvy and intellectual.
• LiveJournal is pretty much dying off, unless you speak Russian. Also, osewalrus is a pretty smart guy.
• Google+ is great for talking about role-playing games, not for much of anything else.

Comments

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Is it possible that Google+ presents its "favours RPGs" face to you, because that's the community you seem to have settled into there? I don't know if there are or aren't other communities on G+ that thrive -- portions of my circles seem to be engaged in other, non RPG type things: clustered around martial arts, coding, and people who work at Google that I'm acquainted with, and some liberal arts presence making various acadmeic and social comments, but not much at all of the latter.

Anecdotally, G+ seems to me to be the -least- effective tool for a user to find some cluster of people away from the cluster of people/interests they "already know". This could be an affect of the G+s potentially stalled membership growth beyoind its existing population, or it could be that G+ is actually quite resistent to its users exploring beyond their cliques (or, more charitably, it helps shelter users in a higher signal community consistent with their "real interests", and for real interests, read, the interest/affinity patterns Google can detect around your existing Google identity.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

As for the Israel/Gaza issue (I'm not quite comfortable calling it an "issue", but honestly I'm not sure what other word I can use), my experience pretty much tracks yours modulo Facebook not being a factor for me, much. Twitter, leading to some mainstream media, which I have then gotten most of my news awareness of the situation from. That and radio.

[avram]

Is it possible that Google+ presents its "favours RPGs" face to you, because that's the community you seem to have settled into there?

Not only do I think it's possible, I even said as much: "[…] no doubt shaped by my particular use of those networks, and thus possibly not truly representative […]"

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

You are right - somehow I read that, and didn't associate it with G+ in particular.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

Yes, I haven't wanted to take the time to write in detail. I'm one of the folks who posted a pro-Israel piece (the the least baggage-laden post I ran across) and partially disclaimed the last line of it. I've also been arguing with zealots on both sides on their posts and mine, spending even more time than I would have had I written mine and then gone away.

I don't know if the IDF logo actually means it's put out by the IDF or just someone saying they support them. Mine, in any case, was from some political group I'm skeptical of.

[avram]

Oh, right, you shared that piece by Michael Melchior. I'd forgotten about that.

The graphics I saw passed around include this one and this one. Those were both posted on the IDF's Facebook page.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

Also, Facebook is where Mom and your boss occasionally come by for coffee. It's closer to "public space" than anywhere else on the Internet. (Obviously most of the Internet is public to a degree, but I feel Facebook is more so because my whole social network hangs out there.) I try to be polite and only post the least snarky, most factually-grounded political posts I can stand. I don't know if FB politics is crap because it's so widely used, or because only the shameless and loudmouthed feel comfortable putting angry political rants up for the grandmothers to read. (No offense intended, of course, for those friends of mine who DO post angry political rants on FB.)

[avram]

Yeah, Facebook has the highest concentration of people I follow out of some sense of social obligation, rather than interest.