TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE: NOTES ON THE ISRAEL ELECTIONS OF 1988

The Israeli elections of 1988 split the Jewish vote evenly betweenthe two major parties (almost 80% of the electorate), thus reinforcingthe pattern established in the mid-70's when the Likud overcamethe entrenched Labour lead of the '50s and '60s. Survey resultsshow that both parties strongly depend on ethnic support: morethan two-thirds of those of European origin vote Labour, andmore than two thirds of those of African/Asian origin vote Likud.That the campaign ignored these pluralistic interests in favorof issues of peace and security helps explain the surprisingshow of strength (15%) by the ethnic-religious parties. Thatthe crass demands of these fundamentalist parties proved unacceptableboth to Likud and Labour helps explain the reconstitution ofa national-unity coalition. During the election, a majorityof the electorate disapproved of the prospect of another Governmentof the two parties, but became reconciled, apparently, followingthe post-election bargaining.     

THE DIMENSIONS OF EXPRESSION INHIBITION: PERCEPTIONS OF OBSTACLES TO FREE SPEECH IN THREE CULTURES

As part of a comparative study of attitudes toward freedom ofexpression, Americans, Israeli Jews, and Israeli Arabs wereasked about the social contexts in which they feel unfree tospeak and about the reasons that inhibit them. Home was theleast inhibiting locus in all three cultures and, for the U.S.respondents, the workplace was most inhibiting. Responding toa battery of 33 reasons for not speaking out, all three culturesgave highest ratings to items related to the fear of hurtingothers. Questions measuring fear of being disapproved or hurtby others—including fear of isolation from the majorityand fear of legal restraint—were ranked lower. An overallindex of inhibition items proved highly reliable cross-culturally.Americans claimed least inhibition and Israeli Arabs most. Malesand those with higher education levels and incomes were alsoless inhibited across the three cultures. Expression inhibitionwas negatively, through weakly, related to support for expressiverights among both Israeli groups and American whites but notAmerican blacks, where the relation was positive. Expressioninhibition was negatively related to political activity amongAmericans and Israeli Jews but not among Arabs.     

Staging peace: Televised ceremonies of reconciliation

The visit of Egypt's President Anwar Sadat to Jerusalem was the model for Dayan and Katz's conceptualization of the genre of media events, as live programs which have the power to transform history. Fifteen years later, a series of televised reconciliation ceremonies, which marked the stages of the peace process between Israel and its Arab neighbors (the Palestinians and the Jordanians), are used to re‐examine the model. We demonstrate (1) how the effectiveness of these ceremonies depends on the type of contract among the three participants—leaders, broadcasters and public—each of whom displays different kinds of reservations, and (2) how the aura of the ceremonies draws on the prior status of the participants (Hussein), but also confers status (Arafat).     

Back to the Street: When Media and Opinion Leave Home

To achieve “deliberative democracy,” Gabriel Tarde's formula not only demands the press hold a nation together, but also offers an agenda of issues that serves as a kind of menu for discussions in cafés and salons, which leads, in turn, to more considered opinions, and thus provides the consensual valuations that inform political, economic and aesthetic actions. The elements of the formula consist of press, conversation, opinion, and action. I argue that the long-run effect of the mainstream media—the newspaper, but even more the radio and television— moved politics off the street and into the home, hence the concern over “the narcotizing dysfunction” of the news media. In the era of the Internet, I argue that media—old or new, mass or social—are far from being the whole of the story. It is some combination of these media, plus word of mouth, plus some rather well-known elements of social-movement theory, plus the social psychology of collective behavior that help to explain. But let us not lose sight of the different functions served by the different media. If the mass media—newspapers, radio, and television—may be said to have moved people “inside,” the social media, so called, serve to mobilize, and may bring them “outside,” again.