Is Americans For Peace Now “Facts on the Ground” For iPhone APPropriate?

Alex Margolin from HonestReporting writes that iPhone Apps Enter Mideast Political Battlefield:

This week, the Americans for Peace Now (APN) launched their “Facts on the Ground” app designed to allow people to track settlement activity through their mobile phones.

The app consists of a map of the West Bank with dots identifying Jewish communities in the region. When a user clicks on a dot, the app shows a wide range of information about the community, including when it was established and how much “private Palestinian land” it takes up.

APN intends to make this app as real-time as possible, with information not only about the settlements themselves, but also on incidents that break out there between Israelis and Arabs.

Margolin raises 2 issues:

1. How democratic can app can be when it's created by a group attempting to influence politics in Israel? The timing of the app’s launch – the same week Israel’s West Bank settlement freeze is due to expire – points to APN's political ambitions. While it may strive to provide “facts on the ground,” APN is limited by its own perspective on the issue, which does not represent the consensus opinion in Israel.

2. How will Peace Now’s opponents respond? Wired magazine noted, in its own coverage of the new application, that Israel has a poor record spreading its message through apps.

Margolin adds that:

social media is not like the mainstream media. It cannot be pressured to provide balanced coverage of an issue.

This is reminiscent of the issues with Google Earth--not in terms of providing aid to terrorists, but rather the 'facts' it claimed to provide on the names and background of cities.

Back in June 2008, Andre Oboler noted:

o Virtual Israel, as represented by Google Earth, is littered with orange dots, many of which claim to represent "Palestinian localities evacuated and destroyed after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war." Thus, Israel is depicted as a state born out of colonial conquest rather than the return of a people from exile. Each dot links to the "Palestine Remembered" site, where further information advancing this narrative can be obtained.

o Many of the claims staked out in Google Earth present misinformation, and sites known to be ruins in 1946 are claimed to be villages destroyed in 1948. Arab villages which still exist today are listed as sites of destruction. The Google Earth initiative is not only creating a virtual Palestine, it is creating a falsification of history.

Later that year, in reaction to criticism, Google made some corrections:

Now Google has rolled out the new "Places" layer, which aggregates information from several sources, including Wikipedia, YouTube, the picture site Panoramio and the original Google Earth Community to present a richer multimedia layer over satellite maps worldwide.

Key to the new layer are special algorithms that corroborate information received through one source with the other sources. According to a company statement, this will make "it easier for users to learn about a given place through photos, videos, and annotations contributed by users around the world."

But it will also allow Google Earth to automatically corroborate any information received from users before displaying it on the default layer. Only information appearing in more than a single source will be displayed in this layer.[emphasis added]

Google, in the interests of accuracy, required corroboration before just allowing information.

To the degree that Google may have been pressured into doing what only makes sense, keep in mind that Google was providing a product and was therefore more sensitive to public perception. The same cannot be said for APN which is clearly out to pursue--and press--an agenda, creating facts in the ether instead of facts on the ground.

The only remaining question is what will now be done to counter the APN propaganda.

Technorati Tag: Americans For Peace Now and APN and iPhone.