The Weaponization of Social Media

I read an interesting article on io9.com about the high tech aspects of the 8 day Israeli-Gaza conflict.

Of course, there are the drones and the Iron Dome antimissile system.  But the real innovation is the militarization of social media.  This is the first war in which Twitter was used.  The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson tweeted, both to the public and to the enemy.  Look at this threatening tweet from the IDF to Hamas:.

This use of Twitter has some worried.  Futurist Jamais Cascio worries that social media is being used as an enabler of political violence. 

"Twitter and similar media had the potential to serve a role similar to the radio stations used to drive the 1990s Rwandan genocide," Cascio recently wrote.

Another term for it would be the "weaponization of social media."  These are interesting times we live in.