Project Directors: Dr. Paul Frosh and Dr. Lilach Nir
Research Assistant: Mr. Paz Carmel
Mass media are vital to the inclusion of individuals and groups in public discussion of political issues, as well as to the public visibility of a plurality of voices and opinions. At the same time, ensuring the quality of political discourse in the mass media is essential to a number of democratic values, such as citizen participation, trust in democratic institutions, tolerance, and the granting of legitimacy. IDI researchers are developing research projects designed to assess the quality and character of political discourse in the Israeli media, and to explore how routine media consumption affects civic and political involvement.
1. Media Consumption and Public Engagement. Have the vast technological and regulatory changes in the contemporary media environment directly contributed to a decline in citizens’ public engagement and political activity? IDI has embarked on a wide-ranging, multi-year research project, using qualitative and quantitative audience research methodologies, to investigate overall patterns of media consumption by Israelis and their connection to citizen engagement or disengagement. Key focus areas include: the role of channel multiplication and competition between media; the emergence of new genres of entertainment along with new forms of documentary and news programming; access to media technologies and levels of media literacy. This major undertaking will enable extensive international collaboration with similar projects abroad.
2. Election Coverage. IDI researchers are engaged in a detailed study of the quality of the election coverage in mass media and its connection to the attitudes of citizens regarding the political system. The project includes content analysis of news reports focused on themes of competition between political leaders and parties, the centrality of personalities as opposed to policies, and the representation of the Knesset as a democratic institution. This will be supplemented by interviews with politicians, journalists, and other relevant professionals with a view to outlining potential alternatives to dominant reporting practices.
3. The Internet and Democratic Discourse. Does the Internet increase citizens’ exposure to a variety of different opinions, or does it create a ‘Daily Me’ – the selective exposure of users to opinion and information sources that match their own views. Such selective exposure could pose a danger to democratic debate, fragmenting the public into homogenous spheres of opinion, encouraging political polarization, and widening knowledge gaps. IDI fellows and researchers have begun the process of exploring the political implications of selective exposure in the context of Israeli websites and Internet use. This project will be cross-fertilized with the project on media consumption and public engagement in order to discern how selective Internet exposure might be understood in relation to broader trends in the use of other media.