conflict & communication online, Vol. 13, No. 2, 2014
www.cco.regener-online.de
ISSN 1618-0747

Tomer Mozes-Sadeh & Eli Avraham
The use of offensive public relations during a conflict: Hamas's efforts to damage Israel's image during the 2010 flotilla

Crisis communication models contain strategies to rehabilitate an organization's image, but do not deal with strategies used to damage the image of another player or competitor. Using qualitative content analysis of 178 items published by Palestinian Information Center (PIC, the Hamas's leading website), the purpose of this manuscript is to examine Hamas's efforts to run offensive PR and to harm Israel's image restoration efforts at the time of the flotilla crisis in May 2010. We discover that Hamas deployed a strategy that consisted of five elements: evidence of existence of the crisis event, damages, victims, performance history and undermining the competitor's response.

The authors:
Tomer Mozes-Sadeh (MA, University of Haifa, 2012) is a communication researcher and practitioner. His main field of research is of the modern communication tools that terror organizations use, mainly the Internet. He has co-authored an article on the e-marketing strategy of Hamas.
Address: Department of Communication, University of Haifa, Haifa 31905, Israel
eMail: tomer.mozes@gmail.com

Eli Avraham (Ph.D., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1998) is a media professor in the Department of Communication, and also the head of the Comper Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism and Racism, University of Haifa, Israel. He is the author and co-author of a geat number of articles, books and monographs, among them: Campaigns for Promoting and Marketing Cities in Israel (2003); Behind Media Marginality: Coverage of Social Groups and Places in the Israeli Press (2003, Lexington Books); Media Strategies for Marketing Places in Crisis: Improving the Image of Cities, Countries and Tourist Destinations (2008, Elsevier/Butterworth-Heinemann); America in JeruSALEm: Globalization, National Identity, and Israeli Advertising (Lexington Books, 2009).
Address: Department of Communication, University of Haifa, Haifa 31905, Israel
eMail: eavraham@com.haifa.ac.il