A Journalists’ Protest? Personal Identification and Journalistic Activism in the Israel Social Justice Protest Movement

Abstract

The Social Justice Protest movement in 2011 was the largest social movement in Israel’s history. The movement received media coverage for almost two months and in all news outlets, despite the protest’s broad demands and its overall radical indictment against the economic system and the status quo. This study explores the causes for this extraordinary media coverage. We find that movement characteristics of the leadership’s professional background, the media strategies they employed, and the effects of mainstream channels on media tactics were important. We also find that journalists’ personal identification with the movement is a key factor leading to the wide and favorable media coverage. Personal identification led many journalists to report favorably on the movement and write supportive opinion columns, to ignore stories that could damage it, to participate and volunteer in movement activities, and to offer their professional skills to help the movement leadership. We propose a tentative model consisting of factors and mechanisms that may explain when personal identification and journalistic activism are more likely to occur.