Social Media and the Classroom
When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, social media can be a hornet’s nest for the most learned adults amongst us. How then might social media confuse, misdirect, or fully lead astray teens as they are contemplating the conflict? More importantly, how might educators help teens evaluate the messaging that comes their way?
First, let us be clear about the reality: nearly all teenagers have smartphones that they are using to access social media platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. In 2024, the Pew Research Center asked teens, ages 13-17, about their social media usage. 90% of teens say that they engage in social media of some sort (the highest percentage being YouTube) and 73% of teens say that they were on social media, at least, once a day if not several times a day or, even, “almost constantly". (Pew, 2025) Social media does not employ the guard rails that traditional news outlets rely on, such as research, fact checking, and corroboration. Without such guard rails, and considering how much time teenagers spend on social media, we must consider how the sound bite and the echo chamber and misinformation, that are the hallmarks of social media, impact our high school students' understanding and interpretation of world conflicts.
Dr. Sarah Cobb, the Director of the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, has done extensive work regarding how people construct narratives around conflict and how to intervene in conversations around those conflicts. She explains that when people build their conflict narratives, these narratives are measurably less developed than any other story we tell about ourselves and our societies. Conflict narratives are flat and one-dimensional; they externalize responsibility and tend to minimize interdependence suggesting that actions and the characters doing them are one directional (i.e. our actions are inherently for good while their actions are inherently for bad); they are overly focused on one moment in time and don’t take into consideration that over the passage of time a situation might change and evolve; finally, conflict narratives flatten the concept of morality so that there is only one way to be in the right and only way to be in the wrong. (Portilla, 2003)
When we filter human nature’s propensity to flatten the conflict narrative and extract all nuance and dimensionality out of it through social media, which was built for quick and digestible news (Pew, 2024), we have a recipe for widespread polarization. Then, when we add to this the adolescent who is ill equipped to take a step back and consider the credibility of the source before them, we run the risk of propagandizing the conflict as intractable to the next generation. Of course, the propagandizing is served all too well by content creators who prioritize sensational, visceral content over historical context and by algorithms that support the users narrative to the exclusion of all other narratives.
There are a number of ways, however, that educators can cut through the propaganda and, as Cobb describes it, add “water to a dehydrated narrative.” (Portilla, 2003) Educators first need to confront the concepts of misinformation, disinformation, and fake news; they can then guide students through an investigation of their social media feeds. After that, it is important to compare the students’ algorithmic narratives to other narratives. Finally, through circular questions and appreciative inquiry, educators can help students’ add dimensionality to their narratives. Let’s consider how each of these steps could be achieved in the supplementary high school classroom.
Confronting the Terms: Misinformation, Disinformation, and Fake News
Before we can expect our students to be able to critically wade through the sea of “news” on their feeds, we have to establish shared vocabulary. There is a chance that their secular schools have begun this work. Nevertheless, as many supplementary synagogue schools may have students from multiple secular school systems and may have classes comprised of multiple grades, we should not take for granted that all of the students are coming into our spaces with the same knowledge base. Therefore, a course on conflict narratives through the eyes of social media should cover the terms misinformation, disinformation, and fake news relatively early on. As Schmidt and Pinkney explain, “fake news” can be innocuous when it is the joke that we are all in on - such as an article in The Onion or a bit on The Daily Show. (Schmidt & Pinkney 2022) “Fake news” can also be, however, disinformation or misinformation. Disinformation being the deliberate spread of inaccurate information while misinformation is the unintentional sharing of inaccurate information. Both assume that the inaccurate information will be received as true and, therefore, both can be damaging. Finally, the term “fake news” itself can be weaponized to discredit information that may be accurate. Our students should have in mind all of these possibilities before embarking on the next step towards breaking down the propaganda around the conflict.
Investigating Students’ Social Media Feeds
We begin with a relatively non-controversial conflict; perhaps around a celebrity couple breaking up or a feud between celebrities or should pineapple be on pizza. Every student uses the same inquiry on the social media feed they most often use for information on the conflict at hand. It is particularly interesting to see when multiple students choose the same platform yet get very different results from the same question. The class then unpacks together what they find. Were they all fed the same narrative regarding the conflict? If so, what does that tell us? If not, what could that mean? How did the information differ on different platforms? Did the delivery system make a difference (video, pictorial, text)? Did the length of the information make a difference? Who thinks they were able to glean the most nuanced narrative? Who had the flattest narrative?
Before applying this same technique to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the educator should take a moment to ask a few questions to make sure students have an opportunity to unpack messaging they have seen in the past that may have unnerved them: what have you seen in your feeds about Israel and Palestine in the past? How did that make you feel? If students are all on an even keel, the teacher can continue easily. If not, a digression may be needed.
When the group is ready, the students, guided by the educator, should craft 2-3 search terms regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that they can put into their feed. The search terms should be by consensus as everyone should use the same search term and in the same order. Before embarking on the search, the students should be reminded of the questions that they will consider together:
Were they all fed the same narrative regarding the conflict?
If so, what does that tell us?
If not, what could that mean?
How did the information differ on different platforms?
Did the delivery system make a difference (video, pictorial, text)?
Did the length of the information make a difference?
Who thinks they were able to glean the most nuanced narrative?
Who had the flattest narrative?
The educator should also encourage the students to make predictions as to what they will see in their feed. This is a good opportunity to prepare the teens for posts/videos/pictures that could prove to have an emotional toll on them.
Once they put the first search term in, the educator can begin the conversation - first with the original questions and then adding explicit questions about the content. Are you seeing mostly data or ethical arguments or historical claims or economic information or emotional themes or depictions of violence? In other words, is the content meant to be more visceral or more empirical? (Evans, 2016) The conversation should now return to the concepts of fake news, disinformation, and misinformation. Did the teens notice anything that they would define as fake news in any of its forms? If so, would you have noticed them before this course? The final piece of the day is a question for them to go home to think about: if you were going to create content about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, how would it be similar to what you saw today and how would it be different?
This exercise offers students an opportunity to practice having a more critical eye when looking at their social media feed. Plus, throughout this activity they are piecing together a conflict narrative around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that the class will have an opportunity to hydrate in the next step.
Compare Competing Narratives
Comparing competing narratives sometimes means broadening our algorithms. This is not a time to require students to diversify their social media feeds. Merely to consider what a more diverse feed could tell them. Students may not want to throw the balance of their algorithm off by introducing a more diverse cache of content. It may make some students anxious. Rather, the students will extrapolate how their social media narrative might be affected by considering competing narratives through three exercises.
The first exercise the educator should offer the class is a very low stakes play with the algorithms. What happens when one introduces a very different musical genre into one’s spotify playlist? On the one hand, that person is now being encouraged to listen to very unfamiliar music. On the other hand, they may hear something amazing that they had never heard before. [Perhaps a couple of students are willing to try it out and see what happens. If not, it is ok for this to be theoretical.] How can we introduce a more diverse perspective into our other social media feeds?
The second exercise leaves the social media feeds behind for some classic news media. Within the recent past, the educator should take screen shots from a dozen or so different news outlets of their coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. News outlets should include Israeli sources, Arab sources, British sources, and American sources. Students should be given print outs of all of the screen shots and instructed to organize them from most pro-Israel to most pro-Palestinian. How did they make their decisions as to the slant of each outlet? Since all of the screenshots are from the same day, what is the narrative we, as a class, might create about the day these were all posted? Does our narrative skew more in one direction? What can we learn 
Before the third exercise, it is worthwhile to have a conversation with the students about why competing narratives matter. Using images such as the one to the right, students might begin to understand that it is possible to have very different valid understandings of the same exact situation. This then opens up the possibility that people could have very different valid narratives around the conflict. There are students who may not be able to accept this possibility at this point in their development. Nevertheless, hearing it from a trusted adult could plant a seed for understanding later.
For the third exercise, the educator should bring in parallel narratives on a major moment in Israeli-Palestinian history - such as from Side by Side: Parallel Histories of Israel-Palestine by Adwan, Bar-On, and Naveh. (2012) Being able to see the narratives side by side will, undoubtedly, bring up a lot of questions and perhaps a fair amount of concerns for the students. This is an opportunity for the educator to validate the students’ narratives as well as open up for them the reality that different people carry different narratives - just like the 6 and the 9. It is very important that the educator take time during this exercise to lead a discussion on how we share competing narratives. In Side by Side, for example, there is a tremendous amount of respect and care given to both sides. In our social media feeds, this isn’t always the case. Again, we bring the conversation back to fake news, disinformation, and misinformation as well as the cruelty that is sometimes a part of social media.
Adding Dimensionality to Our Narratives
After step two, students were encouraged to go home and think about their narrative around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Before this final step, the educator should reach out to the students to find out if any of them are comfortable sharing their narrative with the class so that the educator can plan the timing of this step accordingly. If no students are ready to share, the class will spend the entire time in part one; if one or more students are willing to share, part one can be cut off to make time for part two.
Part one consists of clips from the documentary, “Colliding Dreams” by Dorman and Rudavsky (2016), about the trials and tribulations of modern Zionism. The clips that the students will watch cover: multiple theories of Zionism, what is an Intifada, and the settlements from many different perspectives - both Arab and Jewish. After viewing each clip and debriefing it a little bit, the educator should begin teasing out the circular questions that Cobb recommends for adding dimensionality to flat conflict narratives. She recommends asking questions that help the narrator connect their base conflict story to other times, such as: “Is this worse or better than the kinds of struggles that you've had at other times?” or questions that allow the narrator to imagine other people - associated with the conflict - feeling as conflicted and vulnerable as they feel, such as: “Of all the people involved in this conflict, who do you think is the most anxious about its outcome?” Cobb suggests that these types of questions allow the narrator to see multiple perspectives of their narrative without destabilizing or invalidating their narrative. (Portilla, 2003) Colliding Dreams is an ideal documentary for asking these types of circular questions. For example, asking the students who in the film might feel vulnerable or anxious. Whatever the first response is, the educator can follow up with asking about someone who clearly comes from a different perspective.
There is more than enough in the movie to create a multidimensional narrative around Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If, however, there were a couple of students who were open to sharing their own narrative, there is a very particular style that they will use. The narrator should be instructed to introduce their narrative thusly: “In my system, Israel/Zionism means…”. They are then encouraged to repeat that language whenever they would say “I think” or “I feel”, etc. They are given as much time as they need to share their narrative. When they are done, the rest of the students are encouraged to ask all of the questions they have; but they have to begin with, “in your system…”. Ideally, after completing the first three and a half steps, the students are sharing thoughts about Israel and Zionism that include some conflict. This won’t be true of every narrator but, ideally, more than one student volunteers to share their concept of Israel and so the class gets to hear from multiple narrators right there.
Conclusion
These steps are meant for a Jewish community encouraging a healthy, balanced relationship to Israel and to Zionism. High schoolers today are spending so much time on social media and it has the potential to derail this healthy relationship if we don’t outfit our teens with the tools they need to evaluate the messaging they find on their feed. These steps will not make their feeds better or kinder or nicer to Israel. Rather, these steps are meant to round out the teenager’s narrative and build their confidence so that when they do see more difficult content in their feeds, they are able to confront it with care and consideration.
Bibliography
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Adwan, S., Bar-On, D., & Naveh, E. (2012). Side by side: Parallel histories of Israel-Palestine. New Press.
C. H. Clark & C. van Kessel (2022). “Developing Students’ Moral and Ethical Thinking Through Scenarios Reasoning.” Social Education, 86(4).
Dorman, J., & Rudavsky, O. (Directors). (2016). Colliding Dreams [Film]. //www.chaiflicks.com/colliding-dreams
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Pew Research Center. (2024, February 7). Many Americans find value in getting news on social media, but concerns about inaccuracy have risen. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/07/many-americans-find-value-in-getting-news-on-social-media-but-concerns-about-inaccuracy-have-risen/
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J. Schmidt & N. Pinkney (2022). Civil Discourse: Classroom Conversations for Stronger Communities. Corwin Press.
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