Megaphone desktop tool
Encyclopedia
World Union of Jewish Students
The World Union of Jewish Students is the international, pluralistic, non-partisan umbrella organisation of 48 national independent Jewish Student Unions from all over the world, founded in 1924, with Albert Einstein as its first President...
, World Jewish Congress
World Jewish Congress
The World Jewish Congress was founded in Geneva, Switzerland, in August 1936 as an international federation of Jewish communities and organizations...
, The Jewish Agency for Israel, World Zionist Organization
World Zionist Organization
The World Zionist Organization , or WZO, was founded as the Zionist Organization , or ZO, in 1897 at the First Zionist Congress, held from August 29 to August 31 in Basel, Switzerland...
, StandWithUs
StandWithUs
StandWithUs is a non-profit pro-Israel education and advocacy organization based in Los Angeles. As of 2009, it has branches in Los Angeles, New York, Denver, Michigan, Chicago, Seattle, Orange County, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, the UK, Australia, and Israel....
, Hasbara fellowships
Hasbara Fellowships
Hasbara Fellowships is an organization that brings students to Israel and trains them to be effective pro-Israel activists on college campuses. Based in New York, it was started in 2001 by Aish HaTorah in conjunction with the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs...
, HonestReporting
HonestReporting
HonestReporting is a non-governmental organization that monitors the media for what it perceives as bias against Israel. The organization has affiliates in the United States, UK, Canada, Italy, and Brazil...
, and other pro-Israel public relations
Public relations
Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
organizations. The tool was released in July during the 2006 Lebanon War. By June 2011, the tool became no longer available through the GIYUS website. An RSS newsfeed is available.
The software
The Megaphone Desktop Tool acted as a wrapper around an RSSRSS
-Mathematics:* Root-sum-square, the square root of the sum of the squares of the elements of a data set* Residual sum of squares in statistics-Technology:* RSS , "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary", a family of web feed formats...
feed from the GIYUS website. Originally, it gave the user the option of going to a particular site with a poll, and if the user chooses to go to the site, the software then casts a vote automatically, when this is technically feasible, but that feature had been discontinued.
Giyus tries to save you the time and effort of locating the voting form inside the website, a seemingly simple task that may prove quite confusing at certain sites. Whenever we technically can we direct you straight to the voting action. If you have arrived at the poll results, it means that you were directed straight to the voting action and have already successfully voted. If for some reason you don't care to vote, you can always use the "No Thanks" link in the article alert popup.
In later versions, the voting concept was removed entirely and the tool directed users to anti-Israel websites, giving users and option click a button labeled "act now!" which would direct the user to a poll or email address.
The software license provides for remote updates: "You understand and agree that Giyus.Org may provide updates, patches and/or new versions of the Software from time to time, including automatic updates that will be installed on your computer, with notice to You, as needed to continue to use the Services, and You hereby authorize such installations."
Press coverage
According the Jerusalem Post, Amir Gissin, head of the Public Affairs Department of the Foreign Ministry of Israel, has expressed support for the tool's use. "The Foreign Ministry itself is now pushing the idea, urging supporters of Israel everywhere to become cyberspace soldiers in the new battleground for Israel's image." it reports.Computing website The Register
The Register
The Register is a British technology news and opinion website. It was founded by John Lettice, Mike Magee and Ross Alderson in 1994 as a newsletter called "Chip Connection", initially as an email service...
has described use of the software as "highly organised mass manipulation of technologies which are supposed to be democratising" and claimed Megaphone is "effectively a high-tech exercise in ballot-stuffing" The Register also reported that the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
History magazine website "noticed an upsurge in voting on whether holocaust denial should be a criminal offence in Britain. But the closing date had already passed and the result had already been published, so the votes were invalid anyway." Stewart Purvis
Stewart Purvis
- TV Journalism :An ITN trainee who rose through the ranks Purvis was the second editor of ITN's Channel 4 News from 1983 and is generally credited with creating the programme in its current ethos....
, former editor-in-chief of ITN, has noted that an independent panel reviewing the BBC's Israeli-Palestinian coverage received a large number of letters from North America which accused the BBC of being anti-Israeli. He states there was evidence of "pressure group involvement".
Commercialization
Following the success of the Megaphone tool, the developers formed the company CollactiveCollactive
Collactive Inc. is an Israel based privately held start-up company. Collactive offers a system designed to influence ratings on sites which allow users to rate articles or other items....
. In 2007, Collactive released their "Web Assistant", a general-purpose commercial version of the Megaphone tool.
Reception
The tool has received a wide range of reactions, from praise to criticism. Amir Gissin, head of the Public Affairs Department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, praised the tool, noting its efficacy during the Adnan Hajj photographs controversyAdnan Hajj photographs controversy
The Adnan Hajj photographs controversy involves digitally manipulated photographs taken by Adnan Hajj, a Lebanese freelance photographer based in the Middle East, who had worked for Reuters over a period of more than ten years...
in obtaining an admission from the Reuters
Reuters
Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
news agency that a photograph by Adnan Hajj had been improperly edited with photo editing software. The tool has similarly been praised by a number of pro-Israel organizations for helping to fight what they perceive to be anti-Israel media bias. At the same time, it has been criticized by Independent Television News
Independent Television News
ITN is a news and content provider with headquarters in the United Kingdom. It is made up of four key businesses: ITN News, ITN Source, ITN Productions and ITN Consulting. The ITN logotype can be displayed in any of 4 different colours, each of which represents a business unit. This is the...
, and others for stuffing the ballot of online polls, generating excessive comments and 'spam' on internet message boards, and stifling online discussion.
Present
As of June 2011, the Megaphone Desktop Tool became unavailable for download from the creators website. Currently, alerts are displayed only through the GIYUS website RSS feed.See also
- Internet activismInternet activismInternet activism is the use of electronic communication technologies such as e-mail, the World Wide Web, and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster communications by citizen movements and the delivery of local information to a large audience...
- HasbaraHasbaraPublic diplomacy in Israel refers to public relations efforts to disseminate information about Israel. The term is used by the Israeli government and its supporters to describe efforts to explain government policies and promote Israel in the face of what they consider negative press about Israel...
- Media coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict
- Arab-Israeli conflict
- Watchdog journalismWatchdog journalismWatchdog journalism aims to hold accountable public personalities and institutions, whose functions impact social and political life. The term "lapdog journalism", for journalism biased in favour of personalities and institutions, is sometimes used as a conceptual opposite to watchdog...
- Media biasMedia biasMedia bias refers to the bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media in the selection of events and stories that are reported and how they are covered. The term "media bias" implies a pervasive or widespread bias contravening the standards of journalism, rather than the...
- HonestReportingHonestReportingHonestReporting is a non-governmental organization that monitors the media for what it perceives as bias against Israel. The organization has affiliates in the United States, UK, Canada, Italy, and Brazil...
- Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in AmericaCommittee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in AmericaThe Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America is an American non-profit pro-Israel media watchdog group. The group says it was founded in 1982 "to respond to the Washington Post's coverage of Israel's Lebanon incursion", and to respond to what it considers the media's "general...