There’s a very good ana­lysis of Israel’s use of social media in its Gaza media oper­a­tion here. The main point, that never ceases to be lost in prac­tice, is that if you use a social media plat­form as a com­mu­nic­a­tions tool (or a weapon), it should be appro­pri­ate to the task.

Israel’s use of Twit­ter to hold a press con­fer­ence is a case in point:

Just because a gov­ern­ment has access to the ham­mer of Twit­ter and You­Tube, doesn’t mean that every situ­ation that arises should be viewed as a nail. If you’re going to tweet, you have to make sure to do it right.

Hold­ing a press con­fer­ence via Twit­ter is inap­pro­pri­ate because first, it uses what is nor­mally a highly inter­act­ive, con­ver­sa­tional, and eth­er­eal medium as a mes­sage vehicle within a con­trolled time frame, and second, it elim­in­ates all pos­sib­il­ity of nuance in a highly com­plex situ­ation. It would have been far more effect­ive to use Twit­ter for brief updates about the crisis, and responses to short requests for clarifications.

The Israeli Con­su­late could have then con­duc­ted their press con­fer­ence via You­Tube to address the pub­lic in a more per­sonal man­ner, both by mak­ing a formal state­ment and respond­ing to quer­ies sub­mit­ted via Twit­ter or You­Tube. In this way they could have taken advant­ages of the strengths of the dif­fer­ent plat­forms, respec­ted the media cul­ture of their inten­ded pub­lics, and also max­im­ize the impact of their mes­sage without appear­ing con­des­cend­ing or out of place.

++FURTHER READING++
War 2.0: The 24/7 Eng­lish news chan­nel front
War 2.0: ‘Neut­ral’ observ­ers, Blogs and SMS alerts
War 2.0: Israel’s post-journalism cam­paign in Gaza
War 2.0: Cit­izens, Sol­diers and Spokesmen