Systematic Monitoring as a Dissident Activist Strategy: Palestine Media Watch and U.S. News Media, 2000-2004

Abstract

When news organizations began covering the Intifada in 2000, activists formed a media‐monitoring group called Palestine Media Watch to lobby journalists to interpret the Israeli‐Palestinian conflict within an international law framework. Activists minimized their dissidence in relation to journalism, systematically monitoring coverage over a period of several months, and meeting face‐to‐face with newsworkers. Drawing upon archives and interviews, I demonstrate that dissident media‐monitoring groups play a small, but meaningful role in the newsmaking process. Dissidents can produce changes because they can formulate criticisms that newsworkers define as “journalistically useful.” I define these criticisms to show how the definition facilitates and limits what can be accomplished via systematic monitoring, and suggest alternative dissident media strategies.

Witnessing the 2014 Gaza War in Tumblr

“…The bloggers were able to use these stories and images because mobile communication technologies allowed people in Gaza living through the war to document their experiences and then disseminate them. Andén-Papadopoulos (2014: 758) argues that camera phones in particular ‘…have provided citizens with a new form of capital in producing testimony that has the potential to challenge and provide a counter-gaze to that of entrenched powers.’ Historically, mainstream news stories have framed Israelis as the primary victims of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict (Handley, 2011; Ozohu-Suleiman, 2014; Richardson and Barkho, 2009), this is a framing the Tumblr bloggers sought to challenge through their witnessing of Gazan suffering. Bloggers consciously brought stories about Gaza’s children into conversation with mainstream media narratives and official framings of the conflict, challenging the idea that Gazans were aggressors or somehow deserving of the suffering they were experiencing.…”

Media strategies in lobbying process. A literature review on publications in 2000-2018.

“…This category includes various methods, overall 27 mentions, of how lobbyists and interest groups portray their reality to journalists or personally intend to influence the journalistic decisionmaking. Findings in this category were divided into four subcategories: slants (14), personal (6), content manipulation (4) and pitching (3).…”

“…These methods are targeted at the professionalism of individual journalists. By personally contacting and arguing with journalists and appealing to their professionalism lobbyists might demand better journalism practices and coverage or accuse media of "shabby journalism" (Handley, 2011).…”

Three discursive dilemmas for Israeli religious settlers

“…In other words, they are unconcerned with the general international community or the public at large and seek a form of self-justification based on internal community authority standards. Handley (2011) explains how traditional social movements are more successful when they use pragmatic arguments for an intended audience. Thus, the appeal to the biblical right to the land or Jewish ethnoreligious roots creates arguments that resonate and converge with the interests of the target settler community.…”