Following the events of the Arab Spring, Edward Snowden’s revelations of state-sponsored monitoring of the internet, the proliferation of violent social media circulated by ISIS, concerns about growing military conflict, and the worldwide growth of social media usage, the potential of a book which analyzes the relationship between social media and militarism is considerable. This book—focused on the growth of militaristic social media in Israel and the associated support for military violence—potentially offers insights for a wide readership.
Digital Militarism’s central argument is that social media has been important in militarizing Israeli society: “As Israeli digital militarism has become normalized, enfolded into everyday Israeli networking practices and structures of online feeling, Israeli social media users are willingly aligning themselves with Israeli military violence” (p. 86). The book seeks to explore and explain how and why this change has occurred, with ‘digital militarism’ not only increasing support for military action but also deflecting attention from the violence within Palestine.
Following a conceptual overview and a brief historical exposition for context, the substantive analysis centers on three chapters and an afterword that utilize specific high profile examples to illustrate key changes in the relationship between the state, military, and Israeli citizenry. The book convincingly tracks the military’s increasingly sophisticated social media activity and, perhaps more importantly, the rise of Israeli citizens as active producers and promoters of pro-military social media.
Digital Militarism tracks and analyzes the evolution of militaristic social media over time. Chapter 2 explores the military’s initial focus on using social media for military propaganda and hacking rival’s web content; Chapter 3 focuses on the management of social media scandals caused by serving military personnel; Chapter 4 examines the systematic undermining from 2006 onwards of the validity of images which had begun to proliferate of “dead Palestinians;” and Chapter 5 considers the present day’s normalization of digital militarism as evidenced through the “selfie militarism,” which combines trends towards the ubiquitous circulation of images of soldiers posing with weapons in a “domestic setting” and of “scantily clad” female soldiers posing for the camera. Finally the book’s afterword covers the contemporary era from 2014, in which the public has demonstrated vigorous support for Israeli military action through posting “revenge selfies” on social media that explicitly call for attacks by the Israeli military on Palestinians. Rather than standing at “something of a distance from soldier violence,” Kuntsman and Stein argue that this move shows the public “as aggressive agents in their own right by collectively demanding violent retribution” (p. 95).
The book thus convincingly explores the role of militaristic social media in Israel, with social media used as a source of pro-military images and citizens mobilized to challenge images and messages which question the legitimacy of Israeli military action (pp. 53–4). Present throughout is the notion of the “public secret”—namely a secret that is known to the public but which the public chooses to keep from itself through various cultural strategies and mechanisms (p. 15). This important insight exposes a crucial paradox—namely, how can something that is so visibly everywhere (violent images within social media) appear to be hidden?
Furthermore, the book offers insights for scholars beyond its immediate focus, such as those with an interest in framing and discourse analysis (how social media texts and images interrelate and are articulated) and visual politics (with extensive social media examples and exploration of the effects of these). The authors convincingly demonstrate that evolving digital militarism in Israel has produced a growth of both “digital suspicion” and “patriotic suspicion” (Chapter 4), with the former mobilizing citizens to be suspicious of the validity of images (e.g. seeing images of dead Palestinians as fake or doctored) and the latter equating skepticism towards such images as a patriotic act “now deemed a requisite mode of reading” (p. 67).
Such insights have clear implications beyond the Israeli case. Globally, social media usage is widespread with many users actively circulating images within and between societies. There is also growing evidence of a proliferation of militaristic imagery in the West. Is social media usage leading to a more reactionary, conservative, and pro-military citizenry? Is there a general growth of skepticism towards the validity of knowledge/images fuelled by social media discourse?
However, while the book should be praised for its accessibility, desire to connect with non-academic readers, and use of highly instructive case studies, this comes at some cost. The Israel-Palestine conflict is presented in polar terms and the book has elements that border on the polemical with expressions such as “repressive state violence” (p. xi), “Jewish Israeli racism” (p. xiii), and “Zionist modernizing narrative” (p. 9), a stance that is particularly pronounced in the introduction. This is unfortunate as it could unnecessarily polarize reaction to the book. The book’s arguments are arguably more important to a pro-Israeli audience than to one that is instinctively critical, but such phrasing is likely to alienate the former.
Striving for accessibility has also resulted in a relative absence of robust academic sources with much of the analysis drawing on blog posts and images and the case studies developed from such sources. This is perhaps understandable—these are accounts of social media after all—but it does mean that the academic veracity of some of the findings feels unnecessarily thin.
Digital Militarism offers potential insights to scholars of militarism and militarization, social media and politics, visual politics and gender. Yet in all cases the potential contribution is under-developed due to a limited engagement with key literatures. The book shows that militaristic social media is becoming normalized, and that the public is increasingly using social media to share militaristic imagery and to voice support for a militaristic Israeli state. Yet questions remain unanswered—how if at all is social media contributing to such social and political change? Is it a vehicle of militaristic sentiment (militarism) or contributing to a process of political change (militarization)? Are such changes due to the intrinsic qualities of social media or to outside events? Are all Israelis equally acquiescent in these changes? What role does resistance play here? Is state propaganda as effective on social media as on other platforms? What is required here is a clearer differentiation between social media as an agent of politics and as a platform for politics.
More systematic engagement with work on visual politics would also be valuable, providing a scaffold for consideration of the politics of images, their power, and questions of image manipulation. It would also provide a framework for discussion of the interrelationship between images and the accompanying text that would enhance the analysis of both “selfie militarism” (Chapter 5) and “revenge selfies” (Chapter 6).
Finally, many of the cases expose important gendered dimensions, with sexualized imagery integral to discussion of “selfie militarism” (Chapter 5) and the Facebook scandal (Chapter 3) being contingent on the perpetrator being a woman. Consideration of such cases through a framework drawn from the literature on gender and politics would significantly enhance the analysis.
Despite these caveats, this book is highly recommended. The growth of militaristic imagery is certainly not isolated to Israel, nor is the growth of internet-based activism or the ubiquitous presence of social media in many people’s lives. Digital Militarism encourages us to reflect more systematically on the consequences of such changes—which are, one suspects, considerable.
