The Geopolitics of Press Freedoms in the Israeli-Palestinian Context

Abstract

Over the last two decades, theorists and activists alike have greeted with optimism new technologies as used in journalism, like satellite television and blogs. In the Arab world, especially, these technologies have carried great expectations of allowing media-makers to circumvent repressive governments. In response to this optimistic perspective, others have noted that despite the potential offered by these new technologies, they are still shaped by political and economic structures. These scholars have shown that rather than undermining repressive states, new technologies have often been at least partially co-opted by these states (e.g., Karam 2007; Sakr 2007; Kuntsman and Stein 2011). For example, before the Arab revolts of 2011, Naomi Sakr argued that new media did not, in themselves, change the alignments of power in the Middle East; instead, “it is change caused by divisions and realignments among ruling elites that surfaces via the Arab media landscape, rather than media content that triggers political change” (Sakr 2007: 6). Indeed, even though in some contexts new media have led to an increasingly lively public sphere, “media are not primarily social actors and . . . they are no substitute for a vibrant political opposition” (Hafez 2008: 336). Even during and after the revolts of 2011, while media have certainly been tools in mobilization, prescribing a causal role to media would oversimplify the narrative.