Israel Case Study: Israeli "Social Justice" Protests

This paper focuses on complex interactions involving offline and online activists, new and mainstream media audiences, during the Israeli "Social Justice" peaceful protests ("July 14^th"- October 2011); based, amongst others, on theoretical frameworks as social agency (Bourdieu, 1998), media political economy (Couldry, 2010; Mosco, 2009), new media and social change (Downing, 2001; Castells, 2012).  Following numerous workers' union strikes in 2011, Israeli citizens desperate of welfare state deterioration, began comprehending the harsh neo-liberal economy mechanisms, and became very angry. On June 14^th 2011, Ynet (a popular online news-media) continuously covered  a Facebook call by young orthodox Itzik Alrov, to boycott cottage cheese, a popular basic food, and Facebook quickly gained 100,000 followers (Levin, 2012), who also monitored supermarket prices. A month later, the young film editor, Daphni Leef, opened a Facebook call for her friends to join a tent protest in Tel-Aviv on "14^thJuly", an initiative that  spread throughout Israel with even families and elderly people joining demonstrations, marches and gatherings. Some 800,000 protestors -10% of the Israeli population (nearly 8 million) - comparatively the highest number, even internationally, participated in civilian demonstrations (Shechter, 2012). Public support was 91% (July 2011 Peace Index). Israeli mainstream media - printed, online and electronic - supported the protests, opening live studios on main TV channels (participant observation; Schechter, 2012).

Research questions seek the modes and reciprocal relationships between activists, journalists, new and mainstream media audiences; through a combined methodology: offline and online ethnography and netnography; in-depth interviews with activists and journalists; and quantitative and qualitative text analyses.