Reflexive Control in the Israeli Digital Diplomacy of Normalization; Edy Cohen’s Twitter Page, a case study

Abstract

To alter reality and achieve legitimacy while preserving itself as an occupying power, Israel uses Digital Diplomacy (DD) to foster Normalization. This study examines unusual patterns of message tailoring using Propaganda as a Reflexive Control to affect Arabs' perception and manipulate their decision-making algorithms towards Normalization. A quantitative content analysis of Cohen’s Twitter page is conducted to examine how political messages are created, supported, and contested using Reflexive Control (RC) processes and the use of its 4E Funnels to gauge the scope and intensity of Cohen’s page disinformation campaign. Between August 15 and September 15, 2020, a month before the signing of the Abraham Agreement, 2598 Reflexive Control techniques tailored into 883 tweets and retweets, were scraped and analyzed. The results show that Cohen's page uses all RC techniques and the 4E Funnels intensively and simultaneously: “Affecting the Adversary's Decision-Making (70.2%); a tactic flexibility of information weaponization; “”Affecting Perception by Providing False Information” (14.5%); a tactic flexibility; “Affecting the Timing of Decision-Making (10.4%); a tactic flexibility; and power pressure (5.0%), a tactic asymmetry of information weaponization. Using context analysis of the information environment and content analysis, the study found that the scope and intensity of Cohen’s page disinformation campaign is high. The page scored high levels of dissemination and amplification depending on fake followers (31.6%). These findings have implications for the RC’s plausible deniability, a tactical information asymmetry strategy.