Digital Media and Conflicts
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Recent papers in Digital Media and Conflicts
Language policy and usage in the post-communist region have continually attracted wide political, media, and expert attention since the disintegration of the USSR in 1991. How are these issues politicized in contemporary Estonia, Latvia,... more
Language policy and usage in the post-communist region have continually attracted wide political, media, and expert attention since the disintegration of the USSR in 1991. How are these issues politicized in contemporary Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine? This study presents a cross-cultural qualitative and quantitative analysis of publications in leading Russian-language blogs and news websites of these three post-Soviet states during the period of 2004–2017. The most notable difference observed between Ukraine and the two Baltic countries is that many Russian-writing users in Ukraine’s internet tend to support the position that the state language, i.e. Ukrainian, is discriminated against and needs special protection by the state, whereas the majority of the Russian-speaking commentators on selected Estonian and Latvian news websites advocate for introducing Russian as a second state language. Despite attempts of Ukraine’s government to Ukrainize public space, the position of Ukrainian is still perceived, even by many Russian-writing commentators and bloggers, as being ‘precarious’ and ‘vulnerable’. This became especially visible in debates after the Revolution of Dignity, when the number of supporters of the introduction of Russian as second state language significantly decreased. In the Russian-language sector of Estonian and Latvian news websites and blogs, in contrast, the majority of online users continually reproduce the image of ‘victims’ of nation-building. They often claim that their political, as well as economic rights, are significantly limited in comparison to ethnic Estonians and Latvians. The results of Maksimovtsova’s research illustrate that, notwithstanding differences between the Estonian as well as Latvian cases, on the one hand, and Ukraine, on the other, there is an ongoing process of convergence of debates in Ukraine to those held in the other two countries analyzed in terms of an increased degree of ‘discursive decommunization’ and ‘derussification’.
Information and Communication Technology as a disruptive technology is transforming the way we live and work. These technologies are introducing new models for learning, doing business, communicating, and even taking actions in conflict.... more
Information and Communication Technology as a disruptive technology is transforming the way we live and work. These technologies are introducing new models for learning, doing business, communicating, and even taking actions in conflict. Actions committed by people are increasingly transferred to the cyberspace. Surely politics and conflicts are not exceptions. Political actions and maneuvering are all about information dissemination, communication and networking which can be enable by various cyber technologies.
The context of this paper is the Palestinian – Israeli conflict and it aims at exploring how this conflict takes place in the cyberspace using a blend of ICT tools.Throughout the paper, the reader will learn how the intricate and elongated conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is being transferred to the cyberspace. Furthermore, you the reader will also discover that there are battles being totally fought in the cyberspace. For instance, there are ongoing battles between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian hackers.
Yet, there are different kinds of battles in the cyberspace that target audiences’ minds and attitudes in order to amass support. In these ferocious confrontations, the platform is the Internet and its diverse applications, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, YouTube, the websites of the major news agencies, and so on. On the one hand, these applications provide Internet users with various kinds of tools to create, control, and manipulate words, images, videos, and maps for satisfying one’s own political or ideological orientations. For instance, the Wikipedia page on Jerusalem, which is a major contested issue between Israelis and Palestinians, is semi-protected for reasons such as vandalism and disruption. This suggests how people with different opinions on the conflict may approach the Internet as battlefields.
On the other hand, Internet users from both sides often adapt the platform and use it as a window for dialogue, reconciliation and peace building. For those people, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and the other cyber environments represent hope for generations at both the Palestinian and Israeli sides to transform conflict and to start talking constructively for a better future for the generations to come. It is therefore our aim to understand how the platform is used for both inciting further conflict and enabling constructive dialogue on peace. We believe that the context of the Israeli and Palestinian conflict is a fertile environment for developing theories on the role of IT in political and ideological conflicts.
The context of this paper is the Palestinian – Israeli conflict and it aims at exploring how this conflict takes place in the cyberspace using a blend of ICT tools.Throughout the paper, the reader will learn how the intricate and elongated conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is being transferred to the cyberspace. Furthermore, you the reader will also discover that there are battles being totally fought in the cyberspace. For instance, there are ongoing battles between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian hackers.
Yet, there are different kinds of battles in the cyberspace that target audiences’ minds and attitudes in order to amass support. In these ferocious confrontations, the platform is the Internet and its diverse applications, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, YouTube, the websites of the major news agencies, and so on. On the one hand, these applications provide Internet users with various kinds of tools to create, control, and manipulate words, images, videos, and maps for satisfying one’s own political or ideological orientations. For instance, the Wikipedia page on Jerusalem, which is a major contested issue between Israelis and Palestinians, is semi-protected for reasons such as vandalism and disruption. This suggests how people with different opinions on the conflict may approach the Internet as battlefields.
On the other hand, Internet users from both sides often adapt the platform and use it as a window for dialogue, reconciliation and peace building. For those people, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and the other cyber environments represent hope for generations at both the Palestinian and Israeli sides to transform conflict and to start talking constructively for a better future for the generations to come. It is therefore our aim to understand how the platform is used for both inciting further conflict and enabling constructive dialogue on peace. We believe that the context of the Israeli and Palestinian conflict is a fertile environment for developing theories on the role of IT in political and ideological conflicts.
- by Khalid Rabayah and +1
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- Digital Media and Conflicts