Social media has gained momentum as a new venue for resistance and engagement efforts, yet scholars are only beginning to investigate how well existing theories of civil society engagement, resistance and social movements apply to these platforms. Initial work by Lovejoy and Saxton applying communication theory to the digital sector suggests that digital platforms such as Twitter are being used by NGOs to engage through information dissemination, community and consensus building, and to mobilize others for action. In order to build on and refine this framework, we take their three communication functions and apply them to two resistance movements. Advocates for nonviolent resistance against the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, along with those seeking to hold Israel accountable for its bombardment of Gaza in the summer of 2014 have taken to Twitter to promote their respective causes. By conducting a content analysis of tweets collected during the early months of 2015 using the hashtag indicators #ICC4Israel and #BDS, we apply Lovejoy and Saxton’s framework to two different examples of digital engagement in political conflict. In our analysis we explore who is tweeting about these two topics, which modes of engagement they utilize, and which account characteristics and tweeting behavior (i.e. user influence, frequency of tweeting, geolocation, links, and hashtags utilized) are correlated with the various forms of engagement used. This paper addresses these questions by examining a sample of 2000 tweets with hashtags #ICC4Israel and #BDS collected via the Twitter streaming application interface (API) and a custom tweet collection program. We compare and contrast between the patterns generated by the two hashtags, examining the salience of messages through frequency analysis of retweeting and favoriting to determine which modes of engagement solicit the greatest response, and explore whether a form of collective identity is generated virtually in a manner analogous to that of traditional social movement identity formation. We then propose an additional category to Lovejoy and Saxton’s framework- political pressure- to the existing information, community, and action categories in order to allow for a more nuanced understanding of engagement aimed at institutional or policy change versus efforts rooted in civil society leverage.