Move Over, Beyoncé. It’s Bisan’s Internet Now.
Beyoncé’s Internet was about celebrity influence. Bisan’s Internet is about solidarity.
Identifiable by her kind smile and curly hair, Bisan Ouda is a prominent journalist whose work on social media made her popular with young Palestine supporters. Reporting from the frontlines, Bisan’s work took social media by storm and gives netizens a perspective that most mainstream news orgaizations would not provide. In one of her YouTube shorts, she explains that many people in Gaza sleep with their windows open to avoid injuries from broken glass. Not only have Gazans had to do this during the current war between Israel and Hamas, but they have done so since 2008.
As one of the main frontline reporters on the attacks on Gaza, Bisan is mainly active on TikTok where she has over 700k subscribers as of the time of writing. On her TikTok, she posts a range of videos from a celebration of Europe Day to footage of bombing the maternity building in the Nasser Medical Complex, a Palestinian hospital. In addition to reporting on the events in Gaza, Bisan has also appeared on Caravan, a program hosted by Roya News, to talk about Bedouin culture.
Because of her presence on the video sharing site, many TikTok users swapped “Beyonce’s Internet” for “Bisan’s Internet” to honor the young journalist risking her life to share Palestine’s many stories. With around 1 million views, this tag is used to share content about Palestine and show solidarity with the Palestinians who are being killed and displaced en masse. Others use the tag to amplify Bisan’s content by duetting it and share tips on demonstrating safely.
Despite being accused of being on Hamas’s propaganda team, Bisan continues to attract a mainly young and social media-savvy audience. As such, TikTok decided to pass over de-facto ownership of the Internet over to the 26-year-old reporter. Being a notable hub for pro-Palestine content, many creators talk about Palestine on TikTok, even if they are not Palestinian, journalists, or even particularly politically savvy.
From using filters to collect aid money to using symbols to evade algorithm suppression (shadowbanning), TikTok rallied around Bisan Owda and other Palestinians and continues to do so. At first, some people thought TikTok had launched an antisemitic propaganda campaign, but this turned out to not be the case. TikTok users’ support of Palestine is a reflection of shifts in young peoples’ political attitudes, especially those of Americans .
As of now, American sympathy for Palestine is at an all-time high, even though pro-Israel sentiments are still strong across the board. Even across party lines, millennials (born 1980–2000) are notably more sympathetic with Palestine than previous generations and tend to use platforms like TikTok to share their views. Gen Z (born 2001–2006) was not included in this poll due to a lack of data, but, according to the limited data in the survey, they tend to have similar views to their millennial counterparts.
Young American netizens rallied around Bisan Ouda on TikTok due to her efforts to show what many news organizations will not. As an eyewitness to the events going on in the Gaza strip, Bisan’s videos serve as a vital resource for those keeping track of the events in Palestine. Not only that, but her messages of encouragement allow both Palestinians and their supporters from abroad to maintain efforts such as boycotting and bearing witness to the genocide and apartheid in Palestine.
