How a Small Team From Poland Created a Social Media Account That Outperformed CNN, the BBC, and the New York Times on the Israel-Hamas War — Combined

An upstart Eastern European news agency has quickly built one of the most influential social media channels on the internet, particularly following the outbreak of war in Ukraine and, more recently, in Gaza.Its numbers are remarkable. Offering a video-driven, pro-Israel news feed, the little-known, Warsaw-based X channel drew three times as many viewers in the days after the October 7 Hamas massacre as the feeds of four mainstream news organizations — CNN, BBC, Reuters, and the New York Times. Never mind that Hamas-Israel tweets from these “highly subscribed” news sources received more than 100 million views over some 300 tweets, an October study from the University of Washington found. By contrast, the report says, “topic-relevant tweets from the ‘new elites’ accounts within the study period accumulated 1.6 billion views across 1,834 tweets.” The study — “The ‘new elites’ of X: Identifying the most influential accounts engaged in Hamas/Israel discourse” — is published by the university’s Center for an Informed Public. “The ‘new elites’ outperform traditional news sources in both total views and views per tweet,” the researchers conclude, referring to seven startup news channels on X. Topping the list is Visegrád 24. Partly boosted by endorsements by Elon Musk, the channels took off after Mr. Musk took ownership in October 2022 of what was then called Twitter. The winning formula is based on punchy headlines over edgy videos, often showing graphic violence.Visegrád 24’s founder, Stefan Tompson, in an interview with the Sun, attributes much of his channel’s explosive growth to its clear pro-Israel, anti-Hamas stance. This hit a nerve, he says, with post-October 7 viewers fed up with on-one-hand, on-the-other-hand journalism. “There are so many news outlets that are openly antisemitic, that have a pro-Palestinian bias,” Mr. Tompson, a Catholic Polish South African, tells the Sun.“I have a pro-Israeli bias,” Mr. Tompson says. “I don’t want Visegrád to be an impartial news source. I don’t think there is such a thing as impartial. Hamas is absolutely in the wrong, as is Russia’s Putin.” This unapologetic slant is emerging as a hit. In the three months since October 7, Visegrád 24 had 3.1 billion impressions or views. For all of 2024, his goal is 7.2 billion impressions.In contrast, between October 7 and October 10, a period studied by the University of Washington researchers, the X accounts of the Times, Reuters, CNN, CNN Breaking, BBC, and BBC Breaking posted 298 tweets on Hamas-Israel, garnering 112 million views. During the same three days, Visegrád 24 posted 399 tweets and won three times as many views — 372 million.With 902,300 followers on X, Visegrád 24 has moved into TikTok (186,000 followers), Facebook (25,000 followers), Instagram (25,000 followers) and YouTube (21,400 followers). Mr. Tompson vows: “I will have 1 million followers on YouTube.” For now, the channel is supported almost as a hobby by Mr. Tompson and his conservative comrades at his Warsaw public relations agency. The X channel has a “buymeacoffee” function to receive donations.Critics allege that Visegrád 24 took money from Poland’s Law and Justice Party, the conservative party that ruled Poland until losing elections last October. Mr. Thompson rejects these charges, saying Visegrád 24 has never taken any Polish government money since launching four years ago.Critics also zero in on two erroneous posts — out of a total of 37,000. In one post, the channel reported that Leonardo DiCaprio had donated $10 million to Ukraine. In another, the channel said Pornhub, the Cyprus-based pornography site, had blocked access in Russia. Both posts were false.“Though wrong, those stories are harmless in comparison to the fake news that outlets such as the BBC, the NYT, and other established mainstream media platforms and companies have run in the past few months and years,” Mr. Tompson says of “fake news” charges leveled against his channel. “Legacy outlets ran Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health disinformation about fake Israeli war crimes as front page stories and led to an increased level of antisemitism across the world,” he adds. “Fake news like that has serious ramifications.”The price of success is fielding brickbats. Mr. Tompson calls them “articles filled by misinformation and riddled with mistakes run by obscure outlets, either hit pieces published by the far left, or written by disgruntled Central and Eastern European journalists jealous of the reach and impact Visegrád 24 has.” Mr. Tompson adds that some of the criticism is from “antisemitic and pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas publications funded by Arab money and donors that despise our staunchly pro-Israeli stance.”The channel seems to meet a hunger for in-your-face conservative views of the world. Founded in Poland in 2020, Visegrád 24 took its name from a Hungarian village synonymous with Central European solidarity. The Visegrád Group coordinates cooperation among Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic.The channel was one of the first to object to Third World immigration into Central Europe, starting with Russia’s attempt to send Afghans, Syrians, Iraqis, and Somalis through Belarus into Poland. While Poland’s liberal press ran stories featuring the human dramas of these economic refugees, Visegrád 24 posted video clips of border chaos. Mr. Tompson credits his campaign with preparing Finns to move decisively two months ago against a copycat move by Russia. Within days of an influx of economic asylum seekers, Finland closed all its land borders with Russia.Many of the Polish border videos were emailed to Visegrád 24 by Polish border guards. “About 60 percent of our stories are coming from inbounds,” Mr. Tompson said, referring to contributions by viewers. He uses only 5 percent of the material that comes in, either because it is not interesting or because it cannot be verified. The University of Washington researchers criticized Visegrád 24 and the other hot new channels for not providing viewers with information about the origins of videos or links to original sources. To minimize people moving away from X, Mr. Musk has set an algorithm of X to discourage the posting of links. Visegrád 24 partially gets around this by posting links in its replies.“With seven accounts racking up a cumulative 1.6 billion tweet views over three days of posts, our analysis points to a new crisis twitter that is faster, more disorienting, and potentially more shaped by Musk himself,” the University of Washington researchers write in their critique. “They post frequently, and many often share “breaking” news that is unsourced or unlinked.With a multinational, multilingual audience, Visegrád 24 from the start has stressed direct English, simplified for non-native speakers. From a Central European base, Visegrád 24’s audience now spans that globe — 30 percent Americans, 30 percent Western Europeans, 15 percent from the four Visegrád countries, 15 percent from the Middle East, and 10 percent from the rest of the world.For the last two years, the channel has drawn worldwide viewers to a Central European story of global interest — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Our bias was obviously pro-Ukraine,” Mr. Tompson says, adding that coverage drew exclusive videos from viewers inside Ukraine. “We have a loyalty to Ukraine, even though interest has gone down.”For the future, Mr. Tompson is confident that he can ride his pro-Israel, pro-Western platform to bigger and bigger audiences. “We are seeing the radical left element marching in the streets with jihadist flags,” he fumes. “Three-hundred-thousand people in the U.K. marched on November 11. On Remembrance Day, 300,000 people who hate everything about modern England marching with Palestinian flags.”

How a Small Team From Poland Created a Social Media Account That Outperformed CNN, the BBC, and the New York Times on the Israel-Hamas War — Combined

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