ToC: Israel Studies Review 31.2 (2016)

Israel Studies Review 31.2 (2016)

Table of Contents

Articles

• The Puzzle of The University on Air: A Story of Media and Academia in Israel, 1977–2013 / Hagai Boas and Ayelet Baram-Tsabari (1–21)
• Menachem Begin’s World Travels in the 1950s: A Road to Political Legitimacy / Ofira Gruweis-Kovalsky (22–40)
• The New Economic Policy of 1962: How Israeli Economists Almost Changed the Israeli Economy / Ronen Mandelkern (41–60)
• War and Memory: The Israeli Communist Commemoration of the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1986 / Amir Locker-Biletzki (61–79)
• Israel Goes to the Polls: The Road to Elections for the Constituent Assembly, 1948–1949 / Meir Chazan (80–100)
• Westernization and Israelization within Israel’s Extreme Orthodox Haredi Society / Menachem Keren-Kratz (101–129)
• Turkish-Israeli Relations during the Cold War: The Myth of a Long ‘Special Relationship’ / Kilic Bugra Kanat (130–149)

Reviews

• Uri Ram, The Return of Martin Buber: National and Social Thought in Israel from Buber to the Neo-Buberians [in Hebrew].
• Christopher L. Schilling, Emotional State Theory: Friendship and Fear in Israeli Foreign Policy.
• Marwan Darweish and Andrew Rigby, Popular Protest in Palestine: The Uncertain Future of Unarmed Resistance.
• Erella Grassiani, Soldiering under Occupation: Processes of Numbing among Israeli Soldiers in the Al-Aqsa Intifada.
• Assaf Meydani, The Anatomy of Human Rights in Israel: Constitutional Rhetoric and State Practice.
• Yael Raviv, Falafel Nation: Cuisine and the Making of National Identity in Israel.

Bulletin: Media coverage of/in Israel

Books

• Margret Müller: The World According To Israeli Newspapers:Representations of International Involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Articles

• Christian Baden and Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt, Convergent News? A Longitudinal Study of Similarity and Dissimilarity in the Domestic and Global Coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Yair Galily, Moran Yarchi, Tal Samuel-Azran, and Rona Cohen, Friend or Foe? Perceptions of Qatar in the Israeli Online General and Sports Press
• Giora Goodman and Sandrine Boudana, The Language of Objectivity: Reuters’ Internal Editorial Discussions on Terminology in the Arab–Israeli Conflict, 1967-1982
• Dávid Kaposi, On the Possibility of Critiquing Israel: The Times’ Engagement with Israel’s Deployment of White Phosphorous during the First Gaza War
• Esther Lopatin, Tal Samuel-Azran, and Yair Galily, A Clash-of-Civilizations Prism in German Media? Documenting a Shift from Political to Religious Framing of the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict
• Noam Tirosh, Alone in Berlin? Israeli Media and the German Resistance to Nazism
• Shixin Ivy Zhang, Covering the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

 

Book Reviews

• Catherine Cassara, on James Rodgers’ Headlines From the Holy Land

 

Theses

• Aida Homayoun Nikou, Depicting the Other: Iranian and American Media Coverage of the 2014 Gaza War (MA, University of Houston)

New Article: Barak-Brandes, Mothers in Contemporary Israeli TV Commercials

Barak-Brandes, Sigal. “‘And she does it all in heels’: Mothers in Contemporary Israeli TV Commercials.” Feminist Media Studies (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2016.1178160

 

Abstract

Although numerous studies have examined the image of women in advertising, the current study is exceptional in looking at the representations of motherhood and mothering practices in contemporary Israeli TV commercials, in an attempt to shed light on the ideological messages they reflect and promote. Sixty-four TV commercials were analyzed using critical discourse analysis. In many ads the mother is depicted as aesthetically pleasing and shapely. This inclusion of the beauty myth in all its cruel demands into the can-do mother myth, could lead Israeli women to a sense of failure as they compare themselves to the glamorous image in the ads and invariably fall short. The hetero-couple-headed nuclear family shown in many ads seems to be a conservative manifestation of the assumption that the “good mother” exists only in the framework of the normative family unit. It seems that in the context of the advertising genre, these are products that lie at the heart of family and couple relationships, and that it is therefore possible to speak of the commodification of the family. The study also found progressive images of the clever, resourceful mother alongside the pathetic, ridiculed one—a new kind of a “bad mother.”

New Article: Barak-Brandes, Ideologies of Motherhood in Contemporary Israeli TV Commercials

Barak-Brandes, Sigal. “Ideologies of Motherhood in Contemporary Israeli TV Commercials.” Communication, Culture & Critique (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cccr.12143

 

Abstract

This article is the first to scrutinize representations of motherhood and mothering practices in contemporary Israeli TV commercials in an attempt to shed light on the ideological constructs that these representations reflect and promote. I employ critical discourse analysis to identify the major recurring features in commercials that represent mothers and mothering. These features indicate advertising’s ability to mobilize the patriarchal ideology of motherhood while using different thematic motifs, and such a mobilization of ideology occurs in the case of both antiessentialist and essentialist messages on motherhood. These different messages complete and complement each other, while in the end they enable advertising to exploit cultural norms and expectations in the service of the marketing and promotion of commodities.

ToC: Israel Affairs 22.2 (2016)

Israel Affairs, Volume 22, Issue 2, April 2016 is now available online on Taylor & Francis Online. This new issue contains the following articles: Articles Writing Jewish history David Vital Pages: 257-269 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140346 How do states die: lessons for Israel Steven R. David Pages: 270-290 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140358Towards a biblical psychology for modern Israel: 10 guides for healthy living Kalman J. Kaplan Pages: 291-317 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140349 The past as a yardstick: Europeans, Muslim migrants and the onus of European-Jewish histories Amikam Nachmani Pages: 318-354 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140355 The mental cleavage of Israeli politics Eyal Lewin Pages: 355-378 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140352 Framing policy paradigms: population dispersal and the Gaza withdrawal Matt Evans Pages: 379-400 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140353 National party strategies in local elections: a theory and some evidence from the Israeli case David Nachmias, Maoz Rosenthal & Hani Zubida Pages: 401-422 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140356 ‘I have two homelands’: constructing and managing Iranian Jewish and Persian Israeli identities Rusi Jaspal Pages: 423-443 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140348 Avoiding longing: the case of ‘hidden children’ in the Holocaust Galiya Rabinovitch & Efrat Kass Pages: 444-458 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140350 ‘Are you being served?’ The Jewish Agency and the absorption of Ethiopian immigration | Adi Binhas Pages: 459-478 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140345 The danger of Israel according to Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi Shaul Bartal Pages: 479-491 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140343 Leisure in the twenty-first century: the case of Israel Nitza Davidovitch & Dan Soen Pages: 492-511 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140347 Limits to cooperation: why Israel does not want to become a member of the International Energy Agency Elai Rettig Pages: 512-527 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140357 The attitude of the local press to marginal groups: between solidarity and alienation Smadar Ben-Asher & Ella Ben-Atar Pages: 528-548 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140344 The construction of Israeli ‘masculinity’ in the sports arena Moshe Levy, Einat Hollander & Smadar Noy-Canyon Pages: 549-567 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140351 Book Reviews From empathy to denial: Arab responses to the Holocaust Alice A. Butler-Smith Pages: 568-570 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140354 Holocaust images and picturing catastrophe: the cultural politics of seeing Alice A. Butler-Smith Pages: 570-572 | DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2016.1140342s

Report: Mapping ownership in Israeli media

http://www.the7eye.org.il/50534

The Israeli Media Ownership Map is an ongoing project of “The Seventh Eye,” intended to present, interpret, and track the identity of media moguls and business groups who control the media and its organizations in Israel. The chart allows not only to locate the identity of individuals and groups who control the media companies, but also to view their holdings in other areas, and thus obtain a certain idea of the web of interests in which they and their subordinates must act, including the level of centralization in the Israeli market and the cross ownership within it.

Click here for a PDF of the map.

מפת הבעלויות בתקשורת הישראלית היא פרויקט מתמשך של “העין השביעית” שמטרתו להציג, לבאר ולעקוב אחר זהותם של בעלי ההון והקבוצות העסקיות השולטות בגופי ואמצעי תקשורת בישראל. התרשים מאפשר למעיינים בו לא רק לאתר את זהותם של האישים והגופים השולטים בחברות המדיה, אלא גם להציג את אחזקותיהם מחוץ לתחום התקשורת – ובכך לקבל גם מושג כלשהו על רשת האינטרסים שמכורחה פועלים הם והכפופים להם, על רמת הריכוזיות במשק הישראלי ועל הבעלויות הצולבות בו.

Conference: Israel and the Media (Brandeis, April 3-4, 2016)

Israel and the Media

A public conference

 

Sunday, April 3 – Monday, April 4, 2016

Brandeis University

Sunday, April 3rd – Olin-Sang Auditorium

Monday, April 4th – Sherman Hall, Hassenfeld Conference Center

Keynote speaker Ethan Bronner, senior editor at Bloomberg News and former Jerusalem bureau chief at The New York Times, will deliver the inaugural Ilan Troen Lecture on Contemporary Israel Affairs.  The program includes a roundtable discussion with leading journalists and panels on “The Changing Landscape of the Media,” “Israeli Media and Portrayal of the Conflict,” and “Coverage of Israel by Jewish Newspapers.”  Click here for Program and registration.

 

Cosponsored by the Israel Institute.

PROGRAM

SUNDAY APRIL 3: Olin-Sang Auditorium, Mandel Quad

3:00 PM Coffee

3:30 PM Welcome
Lisa M. Lynch, Interim President, Brandeis University

3:35 PM Introduction and Inauguration of the Ilan Troen Lecture on Contemporary Israel Affairs
David Ellenson, director of the Schusterman Center and visiting professor in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University

3:40 PM The Ilan Troen Lecture on Contemporary Israel Affairs
Inaugural Speaker: Ethan Bronner, senior editor at Bloomberg News and former Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times

5:00 PM Coffee Break

5:15 PM Roundtable discussion: Israel and the Media
Ethan Bronner, senior editor at Bloomberg News
Jodi Rudoren, deputy international editor, The New York Times
Jeff Jacoby, Op-Ed columnist, The Boston Globe

6:45 PM End of Sunday’s program

MONDAY, APRIL 4, 2016: Sherman Hall, Hassenfeld Conference Center

8:30 AM Breakfast

9:00 AM Changing Landscape of the Media
Joshua Benton, director, Nieman Journalism Lab, Harvard University
Aliza Landes, Captain (Reserve), IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, and a dual MBA/MPA student at Harvard and MIT Universities
Anne Herzberg, legal advisor to the NGO Monitor

10:30 AM Coffee Break

10:45 AM Israeli Media and Portrayal of the Conflict

Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi, founding director, Wasatia Academic Graduate Institute, Jerusalem; Visiting Weston Fellow, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Yoram Peri, Jack Kay Professor of Israel Studies and director of the Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies, University of Maryland
Shlomi Eldar, columnist for Al-Monitor’s “The Pulse of the Middle East” and research fellow at the Taub Center for Israel Studies, New York University

Menahem Milson, professor emeritus of Arabic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and co-founder and academic adviser of MEMRI

12:15 PM Lunch

1:30 PM Coverage of Israel by Jewish Newspapers
Jane Eisner, editor-in-chief of the Forward
Gary Rosenblatt, editor and publisher of The Jewish Week of New York
Rob Eshman, publisher and editor-in-chief, Tribe Media Corporation – producer of The Jewish Journal and Jewish Insider
Liel Leibovitz, senior writer for Tablet Magazine and co-host of the podcast Unorthodox

3:00 PM Conference Conclusion
Rachel Fish, associate director of the Schusterman Center

3:30 PM End of Program

New Article: Hakak, The Israeli Haredi Minority through the Camera’s Lens

Hakak, Yohai. “Filmed ‘Not During the Sabbath’: The Israeli Haredi Minority through the Camera’s Lens.” Visual Ethnography 4.2 (2015).
 
URL: http://www.vejournal.org/index.php/vejournal/article/view/80
 
Abstract

The Haredi (Jewish Ultra Orthodox) minority in Israel has an increased visibility in Israeli media in recent years. Many of its representations are negative and stereotypical. This article is an analysis of a documentary series about this minority group that the author co-directed also in an attempt to challenge these stereotypes. The article analyses the process of production of the series and the many decisions that had to be taken during it. It explores the difficulties in challenging the key stereotypes, especially in the context of Israeli commercial television.

 

 

 

New Article: Elbaz & Bar-Tal, Dissemination of Culture of Conflict in the Israeli Mass Media

Elbaz, Sagi, and Daniel Bar-Tal. “Dissemination of Culture of Conflict in the Israeli Mass Media: The Wars in Lebanon as a Case Study.” Communication Review 19.1 (2016): 1-34.
 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10714421.2016.1128185
 
Abstract

Societies involved in intractable conflicts develop cultures of conflict because of experiences that have lasting effects on every aspect of collective life. One product of these cultures is conflict-supporting narratives that provide illumination, justification, and explanation of the conflict reality. These narratives are selective, biased, and distortive, but play an important role in satisfying the basic sociopsychological needs of the society members involved. In these societies, journalists often serve as agents in the formulation and dissemination of these conflict-supporting narratives. The present study analyzes the presentations of narratives of the culture of conflict among Jewish Israeli journalists during Israeli wars in Lebanon. It elucidates the dominant themes of the narratives by content analysis of the news published in newspapers and broadcast on television. In addition, in order to reveal the practices used by journalists in obtaining, selecting, and publishing the news, in-depth interviews with journalists and politicians have been conducted.

 

 

 

New Article: Simons, Ta’ayush’s Grassroots Activism

Simons, Jon. “Fields and Facebook: Ta’ayush’s Grassroots Activism and Archiving the Peace that Will Have Come in Israel/Palestine.” Media and Communication 4.1 (2016): 27-38.

 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.17645/mac.v4i1.390
 
Abstract

Israeli peace activism has increasingly taken place on new media, as in the case of the grassroots anti-Occupation group, Ta’ayush. What is the significance of Ta’ayush’s work on the ground and online for peace? This article considers the former in the light of social movement scholarship on peacebuilding, and the latter in light of new media scholarship on social movements. Each of those approaches suggest that Ta’ayush has very limited success in achieving its strategic goals or generating outrage about the Occupation in the virtual/public sphere. Yet, Ta’ayush’s apparent “failure” according to standard criteria of success misses the significance of Ta’ayush’s work. Its combination of grassroots activism and online documentation of its work in confronting the Occupation in partnership with Palestinians has assembled an impressive archive. Through the lens of Walter Benjamin’s philosophy of history, Ta’ayush can be seen to enact a “future perfect” peace that will have come.

 

 

 

New Article: Rosman-Stollman & Israeli, Transition of the Israeli Soldier’s Media Image from the Collective to an Individual

Rosman-Stollman, Elisheva, and Zipi Israeli. “‘Our Forces’ Become Alexei, Yuval and Liran: The Transition of the Israeli Soldier’s Media Image from the Collective to an Individual.” Res Militaris 5.2 (2015).

 
URL: http://resmilitaris.net/ressources/10223/04/res_militaris_article_rosman-stollman___israeli_our_forces_become_alexei__yuval_and_liran.pdf [PDF]
 
Extract

This article will look at the complex idea of identity and examine the transition from collective to individual representation through the media image of soldiers in Israel. Soldiers, and the Israel Defence Force (IDF) in general, enjoy a uniquely central position in Israeli society, as will be described at length below. Civil-military scholars in Israel agree that soldiers are a source of public pride and national ethos. Few images in Israel attract as much public attention as soldiers do. For this reason, examining the identity of soldiers is telling of social trends in Israeli society at large and can serve as a litmus test for more general changes in Israeli identity.

 

 

 

New Article: Lewis et al, Medical Cannabis. A Framing Analysis of Israeli Newspaper Coverage

Lewis, Nehama, Doron Broitman, and Sharon R. Sznitman. “Medical Cannabis. A Framing Analysis of Israeli Newspaper Coverage.” Science Communication (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1075547015608507

 

Abstract

Medical cannabis is a topic of increasing debate. To investigate this issue, we conducted a content analysis of Israeli news coverage of medical cannabis from 2007 to 2013. A deductive framing analysis examined three elite issue frames—medical, policy, and law enforcement. Additionally, inductive analysis revealed a a fourth, nonelite patients’ frame. Each frame was associated with a distinct pattern of textual elements, including portrayal of patients, references to cannabis, opinion about medical cannabis, and salience of scientific research. The most common and most stable frame was the policy frame. Implications for framing theory are discussed.

 

 

New Article: Bishara, Geopolitics of Press Freedoms in the Israeli-Palestinian Context

Bishara, Amahl. “The Geopolitics of Press Freedoms in the Israeli-Palestinian Context.” In The Media and Political Contestation in the Contemporary Arab World: A Decade of Change (ed. Lena Jayyusi and Anne Sofie Roald; Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016): 161-86.

 

 

Extract

Surely, a desire to restrict coverage was part of the Israeli authorities’ intentions in limiting journalists’ access to Gaza. However, it is also possible that Israel restricted foreign journalists’ presence not only in order to constrain coverage, but also in order to make it easier for the Israeli military to carry out operations without killing non-Palestinian civilians and thereby provoking international outcry.

 

 

 

New Article: Kohn, Refugee Camp Narratives

Kohn, Ayelet. “Refugee Camp Narratives: The Role of ‘Eye-Witness Testimony’ in Journalists’ Travel Accounts.” Current Sociology 64.1 (2016): 83-100.

ְְ 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0011392115587748

 

Extract

This article examines three narrative formats which Israeli journalists use to describe their tours in Palestinian refugee camps. The article aims to suggest possibilities for reporting patterns, carefully framing a sense of urgency, which attempt to form a right measure of proximity and distance from the sufferers which might motivate audiences into action. The discussion focuses on three narratives, one literary and the other an article which was published in a popular Israeli journal, both unique in their deliberate emphasis on writing style and their reflection of the ongoing tension between the reporters’ professional, creative and national identities. The third format is a testimony, given by the narrator in Ari Folman’s animated film Waltz with Bashir (2008). The film ends with a few minutes of documented events, filmed at Sabra and Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon in 1982. While all three narratives use direct showing, personal testimonies and a variety of written, illustrated and photographed portraits, the written narratives focus on the reporters’ central role and on the Israeli readers, while Waltz with Bashir challenges the possible feeling of guilt on the Israeli side and invokes the viewer’s human empathy through a direct encounter with personal comments and shocking images.

 

 

 

New Article: Tenenboim-Weinblatt et al, Conflict Narratives in the Israeli News Media

Tenenboim-Weinblatt, Keren, Thomas Hanitzsch, and Rotem Nagar. “Beyond Peace Journalism. Reclassifying Conflict Narratives in the Israeli News Media.” Journal of Peace Research (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022343315609091

 

Abstract

This article presents a general framework for deconstructing and classifying conflict news narratives. This framework, based on a nuanced and contextual approach to analyzing media representations of conflict actors and events, addresses some of the weaknesses of existing classification schemes, focusing in particular on the dualistic approach of the peace journalism model. Using quantitative content analysis, the proposed framework is then applied to the journalistic coverage in the Israeli media of three Middle-Eastern conflicts: the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the conflict surrounding Iran’s nuclear program, and the Syrian civil war. The coverage is examined in three leading news outlets – Haaretz, Israel Hayom, and Ynet – over a six-month period. Based on hierarchical cluster analysis, the article identifies four characteristic types of narratives in the examined coverage. These include two journalistic narratives of violence: one inward-looking, ethnocentric narrative, and one outward-looking narrative focusing on outgroup actors and victims; and two political-diplomatic narratives: one interactional, and one outward-looking. In addition to highlighting different constellations of points of view and conflict measures in news stories, the identified clusters also challenge several assumptions underlying existing models, such as the postulated alignment between elite/official actors and violence frames.

 

 

 

New Book: Lebel & Lewin, eds. The 1973 Yom Kippur War and the Reshaping of Israeli Civil–Military Relations

Lebel, Udi, and Eyal Lewin, eds. The 1973 Yom Kippur War and the Reshaping of Israeli Civil–Military Relations. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2015.

The 1973 Yom Kippur War did not only have external implications on Israel, but also some dramatic internal implications, particularly with regards to the civil-military relations as well as the fields of psychology and political sociology. To this day, the consequences of this war are still prevalent in Israel, in terms of drafting security policies and the military doctrine.
After the war, new identities were formed in the Israeli civil society, which began to function as active agents in shaping security policy. These players are not a unique Israeli case, yet their actions in Israel serve as a case study that illuminates their significant impact in other countries as well. This is due to the fact that the “Israeli Laboratory” is a liberal democratic society living with an ongoing conflict; it has a mandatory army that is sensitive to fluctuations in public opinion, culture and the media; and issues of national security and military conduct are always a top public concern.
Consequently, this book examines the rise of five identities and agents that were formed after the 1973 War and highlights the effects they had on the formation of Israeli defense policy from then on. The book also clarifies the importance of exposure to these agents’ activities, referring to the psycho-political social factors that may actually dictate a state’s international policies. It therefore forms a study that connects sociology, political psychology, international relations, the field of culture studies and studies of strategy planning. Thus, the book is of interest to both the domestic-Israeli field of research and to the global scholarly discourse, particularly to academic disciplines engaged in civil-military relations (political sociology, political science).

 

UDI LEBEL is associate professor and chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Ariel University.

EYAL LEWIN is assistant professor at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science at Ariel University.

 

Table of Contents

• Introduction
  Udi Lebel and Eyal Lewin
• The Combatants’ Protest after the Yom Kippur War and the Transformation of the Protest Culture in Israel
  Eithan Orkibi
• The Significance of the Yom Kippur War as a Turning Point in the Religious-Zionist Society
  Nissim Leon
• From Domination to Competition: The Yom Kippur War (1973) and the Formation of a New Grief Community
  Udi Lebel
• Not Just Intermediaries: The Mediatization of Security Affairs in Israel since 1973
  Rafi Mann
• The 1973 War and the Formation of Israeli POW Policy: A Watershed Line?
  Alexander Bligh
• The 1973 War as a Stimulator in the Reshaping of Israeli National Ethos
  Eyal Lewin
• Index
• About the Authors

 

New Article: First & Adoni, The Development of the Communication Discipline: Israel as a Case Study

First, Anat, and Hanna Adoni. “An Interactive Model for Analyzing the Development of the Communication Discipline: Israel as a Case Study.” Journalism and Mass Communication 5.7 (2015): 324-40.

 

URL: http://www.davidpublisher.org/index.php/Home/Article/index?id=15850.html

 

Abstract

Our paper presents an interactive four-dimensional model for studying the long- and short-term development of the communication discipline with Israel serving as a case study: institutional-contextual, institutional-in-field, intellectual-contextual, and intellectual-in-field. Our empirical analysis utilized personal interviews, archive documents, and statistical data. Four main processes were discerned: transition from integration to alienation between institutions of higher learning and the larger political and ideological context; a shift from Hebrew University Institute of Communication’s institutional monopoly to a multiplicity of increasingly competitive communication schools/departments; transition from intellectual hegemony to limited intellectual diversity; and gradually improving status for the communication field among social science disciplines. Our case-study analysis validated the interactive relationship among the model’s conceptual dimensions, calling for future cross-national comparisons.

 

 

New Article: Berenson, Social Justice Protest’s Narrative in Israeli News

Berenson, Alonit. “‘Painting with Words’: ‘Social Justice’ Protest’s Narrative in the Israeli’s News”. Journalism and Mass Communication 5.8 (2015): 373-87.

 

URL: dx.doi.org/10.1177/0044118X15606157/ [PDF]

 
Abstract

This article analyzes the role of the media during the 2011 social protests in Israel, in order to examine why the “Social Justice” protest proved more effective than any other social protest organized previously in Israel. Scholars have shown that media framing has a powerful effect on citizen perception and policy debates. The social protests focused on the political-social-economic policy based on a neo-liberal ideology. They signified the beginnings of resistance to the system and became the focus of public and media identification via reports published by leading Israeli newspapers: Yedioth Ahronoth and Israel Hayom. Using content analysis, the author explore how the media plays an important role to shape the public perception of how to think and act about the protest. Due to the results, we evident the expand media capacity and influence, and that these effects are mediated in presenting positive and supportive coverage, including connotations and metaphors expressed by means of familiar slogans and events in the collective memory of Israeli society. Additionally, the expression “social justice” that became the protest’s slogan, offered a broad common basis with which each citizen could identify, including journalists.

 

 

 

New Article: Yemini and Gordon, Media Representations of National and International Standardized Testing

Yemini, Miri, and Noa Gordon. “Media Representations of National and International Standardized Testing in the Israeli Education System.” Discourse (early view; online first).

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2015.1105786

Abstract

This study applies discourse analysis to Israeli media coverage of national and international standardized examinations within Israel’s public education system. Through systematic analysis of the topic in the two main Israeli financial publications between the years 2000 and 2013, we explore the nature and narrative of the media and compare the coverage of national and international standardized testing. We find that most of the media attention was devoted to international examinations, while national examinations were covered in a more limited yet critical way, perceived as unnecessary and even dubious. International examinations, in contrast, were described as axiomatic components of the education system. Articles on both national and international standardized testing criticize the education system, blaming teachers, the Ministry of Education, budget constraints, and marginalized populations for Israeli students’ inadequate results. We frame our analysis by alignment of the articles along global–local and also neoliberal–humanistic axes. We structure our assessment within the global–local nexus and discuss the broader implications of the role of the testing in framing the local educational public discourse.

 

 

New Article: Dori-Hacohen and Livnat, The Use of Irony in Israeli Political Radio Phone-In Programs

Dori-Hacohen, Gonen, and Zohar Livnat. “Negotiating Norms of Discussion in the Public Arena: The Use of Irony in Israeli Political Radio Phone-In Programs.” Journal of Communication (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12186

 

Abstract

Phone-in radio programs are part of the public sphere and thus require open access, rationality, and practicality. Simultaneously, they are a media product, which requires entertaining content. We demonstrate these demands through the analysis of interactional irony in Israeli political radio phone-ins. From an emic perspective, callers see irony as detrimental to the discussions, yet hosts and regular callers use it to make entertaining interactions. Irony is a critical tool that points to violations of norms: the norm of a clear 2-sided interaction; norms akin to the Habermasian public sphere; and at the content level, irony is used to reject racist positions. Being indirect, irony can be used to create an entertaining yet critical discussion in the public sphere.