Israeli journalistic websites have initiated a feature that became fairly universal: a section at the end of each article that allows readers to respond to the article and to each other. This feature is captured by the metacommunicative term 'tokbek', derived from the English phrase 'talk-back'. Although originally viewed as having the potential to promote civil participation, the tokbek soon became associated with pejorative cultural meanings that indicated its failure to do so. Drawing on the Ethnography of Communication, we provide an interpretative framework for an analysis of this failure. The main function of tokbek is the construction of the commenters' political identities, mainly as leftists and rightists. This oppositional construction takes the antagonistic form of a 'bashing ritual' that communicates radical pessimism about the possibility of political debate. Because sharing a virtual space does not necessarily facilitate deliberation, democratic culture should be explicitly addressed when discussing technological advancements.

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This chapter explores the Hebrew anaxnu (‘we’) in Israeli political radio phone-in programs. Using the ‘we,’ participants create or refer to seven social groups: the conversation ‘we’; the program ‘we’; the delimited social ‘we’; the opposing general ‘we’, the open general ‘we’; the humanity ‘we’; and the vocal ‘we’. The functions of ‘we’ differ by participant: hosts use the conversation ‘we’ to manage interactions whereas callers use the general ‘we’ to create a public sphere. Using an extended excerpt, we illustrate a variant of the “fluidity of ‘we’” and its significance to the participants’ identity-displays. The first person plural therefore creates social groups in media interactions, both on the micro and macro societal levels.

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