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This study examines the relationship between various forms of media use and political participation. The major argument is that in today’s high-choice media environment, individuals and groups with the highest level of political interest are more likely to develop richer political information repertoires that involve exploiting both digital and traditional ways of searching for political information. Individuals and groups with richer political information repertories can be expected to have higher levels of political knowledge, efficacy, and participation. This article argues further that a clear connection exists between peoples’ informational and participatory repertoires and tests these propositions using a large, heterogeneous sample of the Israeli public during the 2013 election campaign. The analysis supports the claims of this study, with a few intriguing exceptions.

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The question of whether social media grant challengers a fair opportunity to compete with incumbents, thus promoting equalization rather than normalization, is a key issue in studies of the web’s contribution to democratic systems. To contribute to the current debate, whose evidence so far strongly supports the normalization hypothesis, we examined the ability of the five leading political candidates in Israel popularity to promote engagement to their messages on social media by measuring Likes and Shares on their Facebook posts during the 2013 election campaign. Surprisingly, we found that first-time candidate, Naftali Bennett, achieved statistically similar engagement levels as achieved by PM Netanyahu, measured by the two Facebook measures mentioned above, and attracted dramatically more Likes than Netanyahu during the campaign. Similarly, first-time contender Yair Lapid’s messages promoted equal levels of engagement as did the messages of opposition leader Shelly Yachimovich. The study indicates the ability of challengers to generate similar engagement levels as incumbents through social media campaigns, an encouraging result that illustrates the democratizing potential of social media.

The use of international broadcasting, a tool of public diplomacy since World War I, can be divided into two chronological periods. The first, which began during World War I and declined in the post–Cold War era, was characterized by international government-sponsored radio broadcasters. The second began with the emergence of privately owned global news networks (e.g., CNN, Sky News, and MSNBC) in the 1980s and 1990s, which were deemed more credible than government-sponsored stations. Based on an 8-year study of Al-Jazeera’s coverage of Saudi affairs throughout the Qatari–Saudi conflict, which revealed a strong correlation between Al-Jazeera Arabic’s tone toward Saudi affairs and the development of the Qatari–Saudi conflict, the article argues that Qatar invented a new model of public diplomacy by operating Al-Jazeera as a hybrid state-sponsored/private network, effectively transforming the network into a highly potent public diplomacy tool. Accordingly, the article discusses the interplay among news networks, ownership, and use of public diplomacy tactics in contemporary international broadcasting.