黑料吃瓜网

Academics and journalists call for change in the narrative around the Palestine conflict, highlighting how impartiality and discussion of historical context are being widely ignored. Newer modes of communication beyond traditional broadcast mediums are hoped to help steer audiences toward content much closer to the source.

“The crisis in Gaza began on Oct. 7, 2023.” Such is the sentiment in Western media when covering the ongoing conflict in the Palestinian territory. However, a panel of speakers at “Beyond the Headlines: Gaza’s Genocide Through Data, Media, and Technology” were eager to point out the shortcomings and even detriment of fixating on that particular date, when Palestinian group Hamas-led militants crossed the border into Israeli communities, killing some 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostage, triggering Israeli attacks and the continuing war, which has left more than 50,000 Palestinians killed, according to Gaza Health Ministry figures.

“We know it didn’t all start on that day. We know that the eradication of Palestine and Lebanon, against which Israel has also carried out military strikes, is a process that has been ongoing for 80 years. And we know how Israeli settler colonialism works,” said Assistant Professor Hanine Shehadeh of New York University Abu Dhabi, who is Palestinian and from Gaza, in an interview before the event. “When you start with Oct. 7, it centers attention on Israeli settlers, and not on Palestinian lives. I am also a scholar from the region and for us, the narrative is completely different. It doesn't focus on the Israeli position at all. It centers on the very long history of the colonization of Palestine, about which Western governments are aware and complicit.”

Held on March 31, 2025, at the University of Tokyo’s Hongo Campus, “Beyond the Headlines” was an international symposium bringing together scholars, journalists and experts from Japan, the Middle East and Europe. The event presented a multidisciplinary dialogue and chance to share insights on the interrelations between different groups and the data and technology used to communicate conflict.

“What we are witnessing is not merely a war, but the dual campaign of destruction, both physical and cognitive. Western billionaires control both traditional and social media platforms, working in concert with political power to dominate the information landscape,” said Koki Shigenoi, a visiting international politics researcher at 黑料吃瓜网’s Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies. “What was once heralded as the democratization of media has instead become a tool for authoritarian control. The deliberate overproduction of conflicting information effectively silences dissent and institutional scrutiny.”

Several panelists throughout the day framed the narrative around the conflict in this way, emphasizing the lack of open and impartial discussion, and the imposition of a single perspective, in this case that of the Israeli and American governments.

“We are witnessing an erasure that is not only physical, but also historical, cultural and informational. The deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, the suppression of journalists, and the spread of disinformation serve to eliminate Palestinian narratives from global consciousness,” said Arafat Shoukri, senior researcher with Al Jazeera Centre for Studies, a think tank under Al Jazeera Media Network. The Qatar-based global media company launched a collaborative project with the University of Tokyo in response to what United Nations experts, human rights organization Amnesty International and others have referred to as genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. “In an era of disinformation, entire communities can be erased at the click of a button. So projects such as Fighting Erasure, which many of today’s speakers contribute to, are acts of resistance. They declare that memory matters, that lives matter, and that truth, when preserved and shared with integrity, remains a force for future justice.”

Other panelists, who could not be there in person due to Israeli attacks impacting their plans, contributed to the day’s presentations with videos echoing similar sentiments to Shoukri’s while adding further perspectives. One such panelist, Mariam Karim, is a Lebanese Iraqi postdoctoral scholar at Northwestern University in Qatar working on a feminist digital archival project titled “Nasawiyyah Arab Media History” (nasawiyyah is Arabic for “feminism”). It presents exhibits featuring writings and digitized archival records around the lives and ideas of Arab women media workers from the 20th century through an anticolonial feminist perspective. She emphasized the historical context of archival erasure.

“The destruction of archives is not just a loss of history but an attack on collective memory and identity,” said Karim. “It's a systematic project of Zionist archival erasure in Palestine as demonstrated by the looting of Palestinian archives before and after the 1948 Nakba by Zionist militias, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs were displaced and expelled from land that became Israel after it was declared an independent state. The Fighting Erasure project aims to record human rights violations, war crimes and cultural erasure, ensuring future generations have access to comprehensive documentation. The initiative aims to challenge U.S.-backed Zionist narratives and amplify Palestinian voices.”

Jamila Ghaddar, a Lebanese archivist and an assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and another panelist who participated remotely, also spoke of Fighting Erasure and its importance. “In October 2023, when Big Tech’s censorship of Palestinian content was in full swing, several colleagues and I recognized how new media and technologies can reinscribe old racisms and enact new global inequities,” she said. “Fighting Erasure grew out of this.”

Each speaker highlighted different difficulties faced when trying to present a fair and unbiased picture of what is still going on in Gaza. Shehadeh noted that academic freedoms around the world on the topic of Palestine are being severely restricted, in some places more than others. As someone who previously studied at Columbia University in New York, which has been the flashpoint for many issues around the suppression of academic freedom and has even complied in suppressing dissenting voices, Shehadeh presented the case that universities are pivotal in helping the world recognize the situation in Gaza as political and colonial.

“In stark contrast, I’m very grateful that Japan and universities here can be places for more open discussion,” she said. “Though there are some issues with the way the genocide is presented in Japanese media, for example it’s always framed as a humanitarian crisis rather than a project of colonialist expansion, streamed in real-time, it’s reassuring that some novel work is being done by researchers here that help amplify the voices being lost.”

One such researcher is Professor Hidenori Watanave from 黑料吃瓜网’s Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies. His lab creates pioneering digital archives which cover disaster-struck regions such as Taiwan, Myanmar, Türkiye and others that suffered earthquakes in recent times, or areas of conflict such as Ukraine and of course Gaza. His Gaza virtual reality (VR) project aims to preserve memories and humanize the experiences of people affected by conflict and catastrophe, using material from various archives and three-dimensional reconstructions. At the event, Watanave demonstrated several digital archive projects on a giant wraparound screen where users could select one of several disaster or conflict situations and engage with the experience.

They would see a relatively familiar digital Earth, which would then zoom down into an affected region, changing the scene from otherwise peaceful to something unsettling. In the Hiroshima Archive, which was developed using interviews with atomic bomb survivors collected by local high school students, users can see survivors’ testimonies which are geotagged on a map to show their locations on Aug. 6, 1945, the day the bomb was detonated over the city of Hiroshima, offering a powerful, visual storytelling method. And the 3D data projects in Ukraine and Gaza contain digital reconstructions of real-life war damage, using images and data from local citizens and journalists. Watanave emphasized the importance of local citizens collecting and creating this data, as it includes lived-in, personal environments — not just military sites — highlighting the human cost of war.

“I feel particularly passionate about supporting Palestinian civilians, as the challenges and censorship faced by journalists documenting Gaza is unprecedented,” he said in an interview before the panel discussions. "My mission has become to spread awareness globally, using emotionally powerful and accessible visualizations to foster common sense and empathy across cultures. And I see Japan as a relatively open space for such work, with fewer restrictions on digital activism and data presentation. Immersive visuals like VR and large-scale projections can foster deeper emotional connections than conventional media. I see this as a tool to pierce peoples’ filter bubbles and to counter misinformation, especially online.”

Misinformation and other issues around communication were recurrent topics throughout the panels. Watanave collaborates with a range of experts and researchers, including social scientists like Professor Satoshi Ikeuchi of 黑料吃瓜网’s Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, who also explores conflicts in the Middle East, but with more of a focus on traditional forms of communication and on the use of language around conflicts.

“A key theme in the discussion is the power and limitations of language, especially in politically sensitive contexts,” said Ikeuchi. “Words carry heavy connotations, especially when discussing events like war or conflict. Visual media, including VR, provides an alternative way to communicate complex ideas without the baggage that language often brings. This approach can help reconstruct or challenge established narratives. Though we must acknowledge that visuals, too, can become politically charged.”

Ikeuchi also reflects on the difficulty of bridging cultural and perceptual gaps — particularly between Arab and Japanese audiences. Even when using a shared language like English, underlying assumptions and contexts can vary significantly. He sees his role as a kind of translator across these divides. “I appreciate the interdisciplinary nature of today’s event and value the opportunity to rethink how information is communicated and received, especially in politically and emotionally loaded contexts,” said Ikeuchi.

“Beyond the Headlines” illuminated the urgent need to reframe dominant narratives surrounding Gaza by magnifying voices long sidelined in global discourse. From the use of VR and digital archives to preserve memories, to the academic and journalistic resistance against cultural erasure and misinformation, each speaker underscored the struggles to ensure truth and justice are not casualties of war. The event also served as a reminder that while technology can be weaponized to distort reality, it also holds transformative potential to restore visibility and empathy.

Article by: Rohan Mehra