Paris attacks: who is winning the social media war?

It’s happened again: another terrorist massacre; another spate of panic across Europe; and of course, another social media firestorm. The coordinated attacks across central Paris last night that murdered 128 people and left over 300 injured, 80 of them critically, has brought terrorism into the heart of Europe once more. Shortly after the attacks French President Francois Hollande went on national television to announce the closing of France’s borders and a national state of emergency for the first time in a decade.

Paris was aflame and so was Twitter. The attack, localised to a small geographical area, became an instant global news event—critically a rolling one. News reports, eyewitness accounts, images from the scene, even the Facebook posts of some of those taken hostage inside the theatre, all poured onto social media platforms. With their unrivalled power to aggregate and disseminate information in real time, they became the primary sources of information as events unfolded throughout a period of several hours. Traditional media couldn’t keep up.

In effect, two events happened last night: the first was a horrific attack on innocent people; the second was its distillation through global social media networks. The latter had several dominant strains, some of which had more to do with us than the attacks themselves.

The most overt trend—initially—was, understandably, the reporting of facts, as people scrambled to understand what was happening. Given the multiple nature of the attacks, information was often confused. But slowly several hashtags, notably #ParisAttacks and #ParisShootings, emerged to curate the agreed upon facts into some semblance of a reasonable though not flawless narrative. As ever, misinformation spread just as quickly as truth. For example, the erroneous claim that the State of Emergency was the first imposed since the Algerian War of Independence that ended in 1962 gained a lot of traction.

Alongside this trend however, sat several others. The first was the inevitable scramble to blame the attacks on Islamist terrorism, even before it became remotely clear who the perpetrators were. Especially once Islamic State supporters on Twitter began to praise the attacks. Once it became clear that the attackers were indeed Islamist terrorists, the conspiracy theorists made their equally inevitable presence known. Twitter user, and co-founder of the Free Gaza Movement, -Mary Hughes-Thompson (@Mariapalestina) tweeted: “I haven't accused Israel of involvement. Still, Bibi is upset about the European settlement boycott. So who knows?” But more interesting, was the immediacy with which users lined up to cast moral judgment—especially on the two primary platforms for sharing information, Facebook and Twitter. This might seem an ineluctable response to such a detestable act—but the tenor of either denunciation or equivocation or indeed outright support was more about individual users parading their own identity than making value judgments on the available evidence.

This worked on two levels. The first was at the level of sentiment. Users posted French flags to show their solidarity with France at a time of national crisis; images of the Empire State building lit up in the colours of the Tricolore were widely shared. The Hashtag #PorteOuverte—which referred to French people offering sanctuary to those on the streets while the killers remained uncaught—also gained great traction. The people that shared these posts were correct to do so, but beneath the laudable shows of solidarity was a message: we are compassionate. Before the social media age such outpourings could not be shared so immediately and widely. In short: the attacks were a chance to publicly emote.

But beneath the sentiment was a more submerged layer in which users, in essence, hijacked the atrocities to buttress their own political causes. So on the one hand, the Wikileaks account tweeted: “At least 39 dead in French terror attacks this evening. France has closed borders. US, UK, France fed ISIS. Not so funny now, is it?” For Wikileaks it was clear: the attacks were the result of only one thing—the folly of Western foreign policy. Meanwhile, Ex-EDL founder, Tommy Robinson tweeted “None of these progressive suicidal liberals holding up refugee welcome banners today? You called us racists for trying to warm [sic] you of this.” For Robinson the attacks spelled out an equally clear message: multiculturalism and open borders were to blame.

What seems lost amongst all this infighting is an essence of the event itself, and what it means. The fact it involves horror and suffering and fear is not adequately absorbed or reflected upon before the online posturing begins. Events like this no longer have value or meaning in themselves, only inasmuch as they can be made the self-serving symbol of a virtue or cause. This trend is particularly dangerous as it elides entirely the tragedy of what actually happened, the people who actually suffered.

Today President Hollande referred to the attacks as an “act of war” by a terrorist menace." His worst fears seemed to be confirmed when IS later released an official statement on Telegram, its favoured social media messaging platform, which claimed responsibility for the act. It was, they said, “the first of the storm.”

Today, as the aftermath of the atrocities continues both the grief and condemnation, as well as the celebration, have continued. It’s not just IS supporters that have used social media to amplify the global impact of the attacks. It’s all of us.