With a focus on providing emergency support to journalists, human rights defenders, and civil society organizations, Meedan and its partner organizations in North Africa and Western Asia quickly mobilized to respond to community needs during the Israel-Gaza war, supporting relief efforts and amplifying voices through tech-facilitated interventions.
From the earliest moments, our crisis-response efforts centered on a three-pronged strategy:
- Archive online content related to the war.
- Verify potential human rights violations through open-source intelligence (OSINT) techniques.
- Amplify our findings in collaboration with local independent media organizations.
Meedan, WITNESS, SMEX, and 7amleh — The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media — formed a coalition to collaborate on producing open-access resources for fact-checkers, OSINT investigators, journalists, and human rights defenders documenting the ongoing war. These resources covered topics such as mental health for open-source researchers, digital safety for human rights activists, ethical reporting, and the representation of children in war reporting.
The crisis then entered a prolonged phase, with communication blackouts gripping Gaza. Cellphones, landlines, and Wi-Fi went offline as the fuel supplies required to operate data centers and switches ran low. Our goals evolved, and we sought to ensure continuous connectivity and to improve access to critical information. Meedan supplied individuals and organizations operating in Gaza and the West Bank with eSIMs, virtual private networks, and other technological resources.
Ongoing archiving requires continuous connectivity
Since online content can be taken down or censored at any time, the acute phase of this project required an early focus on archival work to ensure sensitive material remained accessible to human rights activists, journalists, and researchers in the future.
We are currently working with newsrooms that address mis- and disinformation in the aftermath of various crises — including natural disasters and disease outbreaks — to ensure the content they document and respond to is archived effectively.
This archiving process goes hand in hand with our efforts to ensure continuous internet connectivity for individuals and communities as they document events unfolding on the ground in real time. The ability to collect examples of harmful content relies on connectivity infrastructure.
Building skills before crises take place
Following requests from our local media and fact-checking partners in the region, we organized an in-depth, virtual skill-building session to train fact-checkers on advanced OSINT skills. We covered topics like how to verify photos, footage, and claims circulating online. We also launched training sessions to address the impact of vicarious trauma for journalists, fact-checkers, and other stakeholders who may encounter difficult content.
As we continue our response efforts, we are committed to skills development and capacity building for our partner organizations. Our goal is to develop faster and more impactful information-response efforts during the early stages of future crises.
