Pop culture. Trends. Dancing. Music. Humor. In the twenty-first century, nothing is more alluring than the have-it-all social media. It’s a powerhouse when it comes to connection, entertainment, and communication. However, the widespread use of social media comes with a sizable downside: it may radically alter public opinion, leading to extreme polarization over political issues—with potential real-world effects. Fueled by the inherent nature of many social media algorithms, the echo chamber effect amplifies hate by isolating users into like-minded groups. Moreover, the freedom of social media with regards to mis- and disinformation lends to a greater likelihood that users believe nonfactual content. Specifically, social media has produced severe discord surrounding the Israel-Hamas conflict, which may have led—and may continue to lead—to grave consequences in the real world.
An increasingly common influence, social media platforms have, since the first notable appearance with SixDegrees in 1997, grown to 4.8 billion users worldwide, or 59.9% of the world’s population. Users collectively spend 11.5 billion hours on social media apps every day. Such apps include Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or even Facebook, with the most popular being algorithm-based. Among their many roles, the algorithms of social media are large actors in helping to maintain user engagement. The algorithms of algorithm-based sites rank and present content and people that a user would be most likely to engage with based on their collected data, which varies website-to-website. The data often used to recommend certain posts includes a user’s geographical location, their gender, their previous content engagement, and their connection to other accounts. When successfully interpreting data and recommending what interests the user most, the algorithm may produce the echo chamber effect. Research published by Bill Kte’pi in 2021 states that this effect occurs when one “hears” one’s opinions and ideas repeated back to them, like an echo. This effect is quite prevalent on social media; this is due to the fact that people may only acknowledge information that reinforces their beliefs, and may reject that which doesn’t. To maintain user engagement for the greatest possible duration, the algorithms take advantage of this selectivity tendency, as a result providing content that encourages political homophily. In this instance, political homophily means that users join and remain in online communities with similar political beliefs. When isolated in like-minded groups like many online, it becomes much more difficult for one to understand opposing arguments. Thus, what is believed to be true greatly varies between such groups. The membership to politically homophilic communities then firmly divides the affected on topical debates—and so, friction arises.
Polarization due to algorithms exacerbates due to the informational role social media plays for many people: in 2025, 53% of Facebook’s users say they regularly get news there, 41% on YouTube, 41% on Instagram, 55% on TikTok, and 57% on X. The “news” on these websites may be opinionated, not fact-based, and thus may not be quality reporting. As a consequence, people who rely on social media for news coverage are far more likely to believe misinformation or disinformation. When pairing this heightened likeliness with the echo chamber effect, the polarization effect intensifies; thus, a greater division among social media users does as well.
An ongoing, mainstream application of social media and its role in polarization is the Israel-Hamas conflict, one of the most polarized discourses today. The Israel-Hamas conflict, the most recent component of the Israel-Palestine conflict, began on October 7th, when Hamas attacked Israel by way of the Gaza Strip, where over 1,200 Israelis and foreigners were killed, and 6,900 were injured. In addition, 251 hostages were taken by Hamas and other groups. A Palestinian Sunni Islamist political and militant organization, many recognize Hamas as a terrorist group, notably including the United States of America and the European Union. In response, Israel initiated a bombing campaign and invasion the same day, and formally declared war on the next. Since this date, the conflict has crossed between hostility and ceasefire on three occasions. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, over 70,000 casualties of both civilians and military members have been recorded to date. With such an intense, attention-grabbing and high-emotion situation like this, individuals from all over have striven to make their statement. Observers have used various methods to engage with the conflict: giving donations, such as donating to humanitarian aid for Gaza; activism, such as protesting on American college campuses; and advocacy, such as writing to government officials. However, one of the most prevalent and simple methods used to participate in this buzzing conversation is, in fact, using social media.
Across the many social networks online, users upload various types of posts. As many large news organizations are barred from entrance into Gaza, social media posts are a vast source of updates—though it’s important to note that these aren’t verified. Both Palestinian and Israeli perspectives post their lives in a war zone, ranging from graphic danger like bombings, to suffering and emotional pleas, to the everyday. Others use the online spotlight for activism and to share political commentary, which often overlaps with hate speech. Fabricated or false content about the topic may include footage from past conflicts or video games claimed to be reporting of the Israel-Hamas conflict, or fake AI-generated posts. One such AI post appeared on X and other social media websites after Israel launched strikes in Iran on June 23, 2025. Supposed security camera footage from Evin Prison in Iran showed an explosion at the entrance, but this video was deemed fabricated by AI due to its inconsistencies. In addition to the posts of individuals, the larger actors, the governments of Israel and Hamas, have put out informational campaigns on social media as well. Of the differing activity surrounding the conflict online, a large amount of it is biased, unverified, and unreliable—but due to the emotional pull of many posts, their unreliability may be cast aside by viewers and taken at face value. This creates a problem: again, when social media is used as a news source, people are far more likely to believe in mis- or disinformation, which may foster increased polarization. Also, the echo chamber effect on social media may fortify the chaos caused by social media “news” by leveraging the various types of posts to produce political homophily.
In order to measure the potential for political homophily surrounding the Israel-Hamas conflict online, one must find the conceptual trends across the various types of posts mentioned previously. To do this, hashtags can help. Hashtags, a tool content creators use to categorize posts with key words or phrases, can tell of the popularity of a topic by its abundance. As hashtags may connect people to form communities about a certain topic, a hashtag in large numbers may mean that many people resonate with its message and find themselves in a group with like-minded individuals. Hashtags trending on or after October 7th, 2023 included #H*tlerWasRight, which was used in more than 46,000 instances, and #D*athToMuslims, which appeared thousands of times, both on the platform X. Other hashtags that surged in number after both attacks include #ZionistsAreN*zis, #D*athtoJews, #LevelGaza, and #K*llMuslims. Overall, antisemitism on X had increased by 919% from the week before October 7th to the week after. In addition, Islamophobia had grown on X by 422% across October 7th and 8th; the week of October 7th through 13th, it had risen by 250%. With such high amounts of hatred that propagated and continue to propagate throughout social media, there clearly exists an abundance of opportunities for users to create and join extreme, isolated hate groups—or in other words, politically homophilic groups. One can conclude that the greater the availability to belong to such groups likely resulted and will result in the increasing difficulty for users to understand opposing arguments. As this process repeats itself, it will certainly and drastically polarize public opinion about this topic—even more so than today. As a reminder, this spike in hatred wasn’t random: the echo chambers produced by the algorithms of many social media sites took a small amount of hatred and inflated it to create a much larger problem.
When such fierce hatred proliferates online, it may find a way to the offline world. Online and offline antisemitism and Islamophobia may have a cause-and-effect relationship, specifically via the copious amounts of dehumanizing language posted on social media. Upon seeing it, users may be signaled that physical acts of hate and torture are more acceptable. Thus, since October 7, 2023, a rise in both antisemitism and Islamophobia has been noted by means of monitoring hate crimes. Such hate crimes that occurred after Hamas’s initial invasion on October 7th include one in Burlington, Vermont on November 25, 2023, when three college students of Palestinian heritage were shot, resulting in one’s paralyzation. Another occurred on October 18, 2023, when two men attempted to light a synagogue on fire in Berlin with Molotov cocktails. This was similar to May 1, 2024, where a teenager with the same weapon ignited part of the historic Nożyk Synagogue in Poland. Most recently, on December 14, 2025, a terrorist attack on Bondi Beach targeted Jews celebrating the commencement of Hanukkah, leaving at least 15 dead and at least 36 injured. One hate crime particularly illustrative of the media’s impact took place in the Chicago area on October 14, 2023, leaving six year-old Palestinian-American Wadea Al-Fayoume dead and his mother injured. The perpetrator was their landlord, Joseph Czuba, who regularly listened to conservative news commentary, with the most recent program he listened to covering the war in Gaza. He subsequently believed that the mother of the boy, Palestinian-American Hanan Shaheen “was going to call Palestinian friends to come and harm” him and his wife; this notion led him to commit the murder. Czuba’s violent reaction, led by beliefs suggested by radio, may mirror what occurs in other instances when one views hateful content on social media. Looking through the lens of the Israel-Hamas conflict, it is apparent that vicious hatred metastasizes in the media—potentially social media—which may be entangled with the rising danger in the real world.
As social media flourishes in the modern world, its effect grows. Its tendency to produce the echo chamber effect fortifies and spreads radical opinions, linking it to the further polarization of public opinion on topical issues. Using the Israel-Hamas conflict to apply this concept, it is clear that hostility multiplies online merely by leveraging the framework of online platforms, and that the age of social media “news” worsens this; this hate may escape the online realm, bleeding out into tangible lives. The necessity to understand this phenomenon comes with the power which is held at mere fingertips: every like, comment, and post may have ruinous effects if given no thought. Despite the high potential for danger if acting recklessly, appropriate conduct is within reach: whether fact-checking social media content, attempting to decipher the intent of posts, acknowledging opinions opposite to one’s own, or simply taking a moment to consider the repercussions of one’s own posting—all can encourage a healthier culture of intelligence and exchange which society so desperately needs.
