As the war between Israel and Hamas has intensified in Gaza, disinformation and conspiracy theories about the conflict have been increasingly circulating on social media.
At least that’s what I found in my analysis of some 12,000 comments posted on Telegram channels in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel. Not surprisingly, I also found language about the war was more likely to be threatening or hateful than language used in comments about other topics.
Many comments on Telegram also linked the Israel-Hamas conflict to dangerous, antisemitic conspiracy theories related to the war between Russia and Ukraine, hundreds of kilometres away on another continent.
