Hamas Targets Youth Through Social Media

He sits behind his office desk, opens his laptop, logs on to the Internet and immediately opens up various Facebook pages to read about the controversy swirling around the Palestinian singer Mohammed Assef, a contestant on "Arab Idol." He contemplates writing something on the matter [which would no doubt] be inundated with comments from his friends on his personal page. He reads posts and waits to see what a few write and comment.

Taher al-Nunu, the spokesman for the Hamas government in Gaza, is one of the officials (from the Hamas movement and the government) who uses Facebook to communicate with a wider public, especially the youth, that has come to rely on it more heavily than on traditional media outlets.

Nunu tells Al-Monitor that he has become convinced of the influence of social media outlets after the Arab revolutions. At the beginning of the Arab Spring, he thought of them as no more than another means of entertainment. However, he insisted on interacting [with the medium], plunging into the experience to put across his message and his opinions. According to him, it might not please many political rivals if [Nunu] is critical of them; similarly, he has sometimes irritated some of the Islamists "when I supported a position that they considered out of line with the program which the government in Gaza must adopt.”

In his words: “I believe that social media is extremely important today. Its importance lies in the fact that you can hear the pulse of the opinions of others — you can see their reactions immediately, without waiting for research, studies or opinion polls the way you have to with other forms of media. Very often I [use social media] to try and get a sense of how events are unfolding, and how people are thinking both here in Gaza and in the outside world.”