False reasoning and argumentation in the Twitter discourse of the Prime Minister of Israel

Abstract

Abstract This paper explores the Twitter discourse of the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, regarding security issues and the threat of ‘Islamist terrorism’ as manifested in the latest election campaign (March 2015) and his tweets and statements on Operation Protective Edge (July – August 2014). By focusing on national security and the underlying threat of terrorism against Israel and the West on Twitter, I argue that Netanyahu disseminates his political agenda further and attempts to communicate political decisions on the Gaza conflict in a digital environment. By synthesizing Aristotle’s dialectic and rhetoric and the Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) to Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), and drawing on the concepts of topos and fallacy, I attempt to understand and explain how the Gaza conflict is communicated on social media by the Israeli Prime Minister. My aim is also to shed light on the validity of social media in political discourse and to examine whether and how social media can play a role in the propagation of political discourse in times of crisis through an argumentative discourse analysis of the tweets posted by the Prime Minister of Israel.