My dad is injured now. I am crying. Bana.” The seven-year-old girl, Bana Alabed, sent the tweet from eastern Aleppo a few days ago, as Syrian government forces closed in on her neighbourhood.
The first online response to her was not empathy, but total cynicism: “Wow! I’m crying but I can tweet… Propaganda.” As bombs were dropping on Aleppo, a war of words was raging online that made the US “fake news” row look like child’s play. Trapped residents of the city, some of them anti-government activists, posted videos of what they feared would be their last messages to the world before a potential massacre. Naysayers immediately claimed that the videos were a coordinated propaganda campaign mounted by rebels who were Al Qaeda or Isil supporters.
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