Tel Aviv Twitters

I found this Counterpunch article by Jonthan Cook last week, but forget to post it.  It's called "Israel's Internet War," and it details the new Israeli "internet warfare team" that was allocated $150,000 in the current government budget.

"Mr Shturman, the deputy director of the ministry’s hasbara department, admitted his team would be working undercover.“Our people will not say: ‘Hello, I am from the hasbara department of the Israeli foreign ministry and I want to tell you the following.’ Nor will they necessarily identify themselves as Israelis,” he said. “They will speak as net-surfers and as citizens, and will write responses that will look personal but will be based on a prepared list of messages that the foreign ministry developed.”

"The new team is expected to increase the ministry’s close coordination with a private advocacy group, giyus.org (Give Israel Your United Support). About 50,000 activists are reported to have downloaded a programme called Megaphone that sends an alert to their computers when an article critical of Israel is published. They are then supposed to bombard the site with comments supporting Israel."

I bring up again my previous post "Twitters impact inside Iran is zero," where i brought up the analysis done by Chartingstocks.net on the original Twitter posts that sparked the media idea of a "twitter revolution" in Iran.  Chartingstocks.net found (through unscientific methods) that the Jerusalem Post was the first media outlet to use twitter posts as legitimate news on the election.