Dr. Neta Kligler-Vilenchik and Dr. Maya De-Vries of the Hebrew University’s Department of Communication

The Discourse in East Jerusalem Social Media: Participation Avoidance

The focus of the lecture was the use of social networks, especially Facebook and Twitter, in East Jerusalem from 2014 to the present. Dr. Maya de Paris analyzed the discourse that exists on the web, the ways of participation and non-participation.

Through a qualitative analysis of posts and comments on major Facebook pages that operated in East Jerusalem from the summer of 2014 with the outbreak of the first wave of protest and violence in East Jerusalem, as well as in-depth interviews with Palestinian residents using Facebook, the study attempted to answer two central questions:

1. In what way are the social media sites in East Jerusalem an online space for the expression and civilization of narratives, social beliefs, ethos, and national and community identification in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

2. In what way is digital space, particularly social networking sites in East Jerusalem, an arena for democratization and political participation, both locally and globally, by residents who use these sites? The main conclusion regarding the two questions was that since 2014 we have witnessed a decline in the status of the main Facebook pages operating in East Jerusalem, such as the Nablus Gate. This can be attributed to monitoring by the Palestinian state’s security forces, family and personal monitoring (leading to personal censorship), and other platforms such as Whatsapp groups that are not exposed to readers outside the group. These findings were further reinforced by in-depth interviews with Palestinian residents of Jerusalem. The study attempts to conceptualize the participants’ digital and non-digital participation by using the term “participation avoidance”.