Another flew over the digital divide: internet usage in the Arab-Palestinian sector in Israel during municipal election campaigns, 2008

Abstract

This article is part of a pioneering study which analyses Internet usage by some 600 candidates for heads of 156 local authorities in Israel in the municipal campaigns of 2008. Despite the importance attributed to the municipal elections in the Arab-Palestinian sector in Israel, the high turnout rate, the competitiveness of the elections and the continuing penetration of the Internet, it was scarcely used by candidates, compared to about 50% usage by candidates who competed in municipalities with Jewish populations. Interviews suggest that beyond access gaps, additional obstacles impede the usage of the Internet as an effective political tool in the Arab-Palestinian sector.

Keywords:

• Internet
• social media
• campaigning
• political communication
• communication
• municipalities
• Israel
• Israeli Arabs

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Chen Sabag, Keren Sereno, Eliya David and Eiman Haddad for their assistance in data collection and manuscript preparation. He also thanks Professor Gustavo Mesch for his helpful comments.

Notes

 1. Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, 5th ed. (New York: Free Press, 2003).

 2. Pippa Norris, Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

 3. See Paul DiMaggio, Eszter Hargittai, Corel Celeste and Steven Shafer, “Digital Inequality: From Unequal Access to Differentiated Use,” in Social Inequality, ed. Kathryn Neckerman (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2004), 355–400; Paul Dimaggio and Eszter Hargittai, “From the Digital Divide to Digital Inequality: Studying Internet Use As Penetration Increases” (working paper #15, Centre for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, 2001).

 4. Dimaggio et al., “Digital Inequality”; Karen Mossberger, Caroline J. Tolbert and Mary Stansbury, Virtual Inequality: Beyond the Digital Divide (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003).

 5. Dimaggio et al., “Digital Inequality.”

 6. Eszter Hargittai and Gina Walejko, “The Participation Divide: Content Creation and Sharing in the Digital Age,” Information, Communication and Society 11, no. 2 (2008): 239–56.

 7. Elad Segev and Niv Ahituv, “Popular Searches in Google and Yahoo!: A ‘Digital Divide’ in Information Uses?,” The Information Society 26, no. 1 (2010): 17–37.

 8. Asmaa Ganayem, Shezaf Rafaeli and Faisal Azaiza, “Digital Divide: Internet Usage in the Arab Sector in Israel,” Megamot 36 (2009): 164–96.

 9. Azi Lev-On and Sabina Lissitsa, “Digital Divide: Access and Usage Gaps, Israel 2008,” in Proceedings of MCIS2010 (5th Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems) (Tel Aviv and Jaffa, 2010). Note that Mesch found, in a national phone-based survey which involved 1410 subjects in 2007, that 52% of the Arab-Palestinian population uses the Internet, compared to 72% in the Jewish sector and the gap between the Arab-Palestinian and Jewish sector decreases with age, i.e. the younger population better bridges the digital divide; see Gustavo Mesch, “The Digital Divide in Israel: Ethnic Differences” (paper presented at the 12th Annual Conference of the Israeli Internet Association, Ramat-Gan, 25–26 Feb, 2008).

10. Efrat Nechushtai, “Do Arabs resist the Internet? It's Uncertain,” Haaretz, February 24, 2009, http://www.haaretz.com/captain/spages/1066537.html (accessed February 13, 2011).

11. See also Gustavo Mesch and Ilan Talmud, “Cultural Difference in Access and Use of Communication Technologies: Jewish and Arab Adolescents in Israel,” Net Magazine (2008), https://www.isoc.org.il/magazine/fr_magazine7_5.html (accessed February 13, 2011).

12. Noa Pereg, “Survey in the Arab Sector: 40% Express Negative Views about Internet Usage,” Globes, February 16, 2002.

13. Mustafa Kabha, “Network Without Boundaries: The Use of the Internet and Online Journalism Among the Arab Population in Israel,” in Jurnalism dot com, ed. Tehilla Shwartz-Altshuler (Jerusalem: Israel Democracy Institute and Burda Center for Innovative Communications, 2007), 177–98.

14. Mesch, “The Digital Divide in Israel.”

15. The two narrowest margins between winner and runner-up in the first round of the elections in Arab-Palestinian authorities were 14 and 18 votes.

16. Sara Ozacky-Lazar, “Elections to the Arab Municipalities, 2003: A Bird-Eye's View,” in The Municipal Elections in the Arab and Druze Sector (2003): Clans, Sectarianism and Political Parties, ed. Elie Rekhess and Sara Ozacky-Lazar (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University and Adenauer Foundation, 2005), 11–17.

17. In the special elections for prime minister held in February 2001, shortly after the October 2000 clashes between Arab-Palestinian demonstrators and the police which cost the lives of 13 Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, turnout rates among the Arab-Palestinian sector dropped to an unprecedented low of 18%.

18. Karin Tamar Schafferman, “Participation, Abstention and Boycott: Trends in Arab Voter Turnout in Israeli Elections,” Parliament 61 (2009), http://www.idi.org.il/sites/english/ResearchAndPrograms/elections09/Pages/ArabVoterTurnout.aspx (accessed February 13, 2011). See also Ozacky-Lazar, “Elections to the Arab Municipalities”; Yaacov M. Landau, The Arab Minority in Israel, 1967–1991: Political Dimensions (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1993); Mohannad Mustafa, “Municipal Elections Among the Arab-Palestinian Minority in Israel: The Rise of Clan Power and Decline of the Parties,” in Rekhess and Ozacky-Lazar, eds., The Municipal Elections, 18–24.

19. Schafferman, “Participation, Abstention and Boycott.”

20. Mustafa, “Municipal Elections.”

21. Ozacky-Lazar, “Elections to the Arab Municipalities”; Landau, The Arab Minority in Israel; Mustafa, “Municipal Elections”; Majid al-Haj, Social Change and Family Processes (Boulder, CO and London: Westview Press, 1987).

22. Ben-Bassat and Dahan, “Social Identity,” 7–8.

23. Mustafa, “Municipal Elections,” 20.

24. Ozacky-Lazar, “Elections to the Arab Municipalities,” 16–17.

25. Mustafa, “Municipal Elections.”

26. Ben-Bassat and Dahan, “Social Identity.”

27. Note that of the remaining candidates, three Arab candidates competed in three municipalities with an Arab minority population: Haifa, Acre, and Tel Aviv–Jaffa. The candidate in Tel Aviv–Jaffa had a website.

28. Municipal elections were held in Kfar Kama, with a Circassian population. Since the population is non-Jewish with socio-economic characteristics that resemble those of Arab-Palestinian municipalities, all nine contestants in the village (2139 eligible votes) were included in the study population.

29. Mesch, “The Digital Divide in Israel.”

30. Kabha, “Network Without Boundaries.”

31. Mustafa, “Municipal Elections.”

32. Sam Lehman-Wilzig, “Worth an Agora? 2003 E-lection Party Sites and Public Discourse,” Israel Affairs 10, no. 4 (2004): 242–62.

33. Lev-On, “Online Political Campaigns: Israel 2009.”

34. Nir Atmor and Asaaf Sinai, “Party Websites in the 2009 Elections: A Comparative View,” in Connected: Politics, Technology and Society in Israel, Cohen, Erez, and Azi Lev-On (eds.) 2011. Connected: Politics, Technology and Society in Israel. Tel-Aviv: The Israeli Political Science Association Press.; Pew Internet and American Life Project, “The Internet's Role in Campaign 2008,” 2009, http://www.pewInternet.org/Reports/2009/6–The-Internets-Role-in-Campaign-2008.aspx?r = 1 (accessed February 13, 2011).

35. Stephen Brooks and Josh Peterson, “All Politics is Local: Campaign Communication in Urban Elections” (paper presented at the meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Apr 3–6 2008); Joe Gaziano and Laurette Liesen, “Use of Campaign Websites By Candidates Running for State and Local Office” (paper presented at the meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Apr 2–5 2009).

36. Paul S. Herrnson, Atiya Kai Stokes-Brown and Matthew Hindman, “Campaign Politics and the Digital Divide: Constituency Characteristics, Strategic Considerations, and Candidate Internet Use in State Legislative Elections,” Political Research Quarterly 60, no. 1 (2007): 31–42.

37. Ozacky-Lazar, “Elections to the Arab Municipalities”; Ben-Bassat and Dahan, “Social Identity”; al-Haj, Social Change and Family Processes.

38. Dimaggio et al., “Digital Inequality.”

39. Lev-On, “Online Political Campaigns.”

40. Mustafa, “Municipal Elections.”

41. Markus Prior, Post-Broadcast Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Thomas E. Ruggiero, “Uses and Gratifications Theory in the 21st Century,” Mass Communication and Society 3, no. 1 (2000): 3–37.

42. Rachel Gibson and Stephen Ward, “Parties in the Digital Age: A Review Article,” Representation 45, no. 1 (2009): 87–100.