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Facebook framed
Portraying the role of social media in activism
Azi Lev-On
School of Communication, Ariel University, Israel
e study explores how Facebook was framed during the “tent protest”– the
largest social protest in Israel’s history. Findings from of a content analysis of
the local Israeli press indicate that Facebook was framed mainly as a political
instrument assisting the protest, especially in the stages of recruitment, organiza-
tion and dissemination of information to protesters. Alongside such positive
framing, also evident, albeit less frequently, was negative framing that portrayed
Facebook activities as incompatible with genuine political action, and portrayed
the “Facebook generation” as lazy and spoiled.
Keywords: social media, social movements, activism, Internet, Facebook
1. Introduction
Many people in Israel use the term the “Protest Summer” to describe the events
of the summer of 2011. e numerous protests, which were orchestrated through
social media (Alper and Zarafati 2012; Pavel 2012), included the “Baby Carriage
Protest” of parents demonstrating against the cost of pre-school education; the
“Cottage Cheese Protest,” of consumers who expressed their anger at the high cost
of dairy products; and especially the “Tent Protest,” that drew hundreds of thou-
sands of Israelis to the street to protest against high housing prices, and the high
cost of living in general. “Tent cities” sprung up throughout the country, and large-
scale protest events took place in the center of the country and in the periphery.
e Tent Protest- the largest protest against high living and housing costs in
Israel’s history, started from an initiative by a group of young Tel Aviv residents
who decided to demonstrate against the high rental prices in the city by erect-
ing tents in Habima Square, near Rothschild Blvd, one of the city’s most popular
streets. An event, which was launched on Facebook as “Emergency situation, pitch
a tent and take a stand,” amassed over 2,000 participants in three days, and by
https://doi.org/./jlp..lev | Published online: October
Journal of Language and Politics : (), 40–60.
– / - – © John Benjamins Publishing Company
Facebook framed
the scheduled date over 7,000 people had conrmed their arrival. On the desig-
nated day, only a handful of activists appeared, but the message spread nationwide
through other activities, on J14, the protest’s ocial Facebook page, on Facebook
pages of the various tent camps, and when the Students’ Association joined the
protest. Dozens of tent camps sprung up in the country’s main metropolitan and
in the peripheral regions. One month aer the protest was launched, 41 towns
and cities boasted tent camps, and a total of 2,350 tents had been set up across the
country (Walla! 2011). On September 3, 2011, the pinnacle event took place, when
400,000 people took to the street to demonstrate: 300,000 attended in the main
rally in Tel Aviv and an additional 100,000 participated in other cities around the
country (Ynet 2011).
Both newspapers and the academic literature attributed a major instrumental
role to the Internet, and specically to Facebook, in organizing the demonstra-
tions, the tent camps and the protest activists, especially in the initial stages
of the protest. Liran-Alper and Zarafati (2012, 37) state that “the largest social
protest movement in the history of the State of Israel began with a Facebook post”,
while Pavel (2012, 28) concurred that the tent protest “was created mainly on the
Internet, with an emphasis on Facebook”.
Facebook appears to have captured a major position in the discourse on the
social and political eects of the Internet. To illustrate, “the protestor” was elected
Times Magazine Person of the Year in 2011, and the feature accompanying the
announcement emphasized the “generic” protestor’s use of online social media to
assist in organizing the protests (Andersen 2011). Nonetheless, little if any atten-
tion has been given in the research literature to the manner in which Facebook
itself was framed in the press in reference to social movements and activism. It is
important to understand the mainstream media representations of social media
platforms due to their potential to shape attitudes towards and uses of these plat-
forms. e present study lls this void by studying the media representations of
Facebook by the local press in Israel during the “tent protest”.
1.1 Framing the Internet in the mainstream media
Studies of the framing and discourses of technology require some period of time
to elapse since the technology comes into use. Until then, the initial discourse on
the technology is ideologically charged and primarily reects the fears and hopes
of individual authors (Ogburn 1922). Fisher and Wright (2001) illustrate how
discourse in the academia and in popular culture about the Internet and its im-
plications are replete with both utopian and dystopian arguments. Utopian views
include a conception of the Internet as a technology potentially capable of solving
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social problems, specically capable of deepening democracy, increasing social
capital in communities, and enhancing civic participation. In contrast, the dysto-
pian views stress the Internet’s potentially diverse eect on society and especially
on its democratic backbone, and its capacity to undermine the centers of power in
government, society and communities (also see Dumitrica and Bakardjieva 2018;
Larsson and Svensson 2014; Van Dijk 2012).
A small number of additional studies have examined Internet framing in
the mainstream media. A study based on content analysis of items concerning
the Internet that appeared in nine major US newspapers between 1988 and 1995
found that in the rst years of this time frame, US media focused on the potential
dangers rather than the Internet’s potential benets. In 1988, the main frames of
the Internet were related to dangers and the ve concepts most frequently men-
tioned in this context were virus, security, crime, attack, and benet. Over time,
Internet-related dangers became more tangible, especially those related to identity
and information the. In 1994, the Internet rst appeared in the context of addic-
tion and users’ social awkwardness (Cornish 2008).
Contrasting ndings emerged from quantitative content analyses of the items
relating to online media that appeared in Germany’s three leading newspapers
between 1995 and 1998: 77% of the statements contained a positive frame of the
Internet. e most frequently appearing frame (28.4%) was related to economic
optimism (the Internet will lead to economic growth, contribute to international
competition, and help create more jobs). e second most frequent frame (25.4%)
was also euphoric in tone: e Internet was presented as a revolutionary tool oer-
ing numerous benets to society, with disregard of its drawbacks. e study found
that arguments that speculated directly on the future repercussions of the Internet
(67%) were mainly positive in tone and were linked to individual liberation and
empowerment (Rössler 2001).
A 2008 study of op-eds, commentaries, and letters to the editor columns
whose heading contained the word “Internet” found that the four most frequently
used metaphors of the Internet were physical space, speed, and especially salva-
tion on one hand, and destruction on the other hand. Numerous metaphors were
related to nature, especially destructive and potentially fatal acts of nature such
as oods and storms. Human traits, emotions, and actions were frequently at-
tributed to the Internet, framing the Internet as the enemy, a tool that leads to
social disintegration and anarchy, and as a tool that embodies malicious intentions
and capabilities- to attack, harm, and threaten. In contrast, other metaphors was
used to describe the Internet as a savior; a revolutionary, empowering instrument
of social salvation and a tool capable of curing social ills; as a protector and shield,
and a tool that enables the realization of new social and political opportunities
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Facebook framed
by giving a voice and power to society’s most oppressed individuals and groups
(Johnston 2009).1
As these studies show, the Internet has garnered ambivalent responses from the
mainstream media. While it is described positively as a savior and benefactor, even
to the point of a harbinger of a utopian future, the Internet is also described as the
enemy of nation and society, with the potential to wreak havoc and destruction.
1.2 Facebook framing during social protests
In the past few years, Facebook has established itself a key arena for public
conversations (Dumitrica and Bakardjieva 2018; Lev-On 2018a; Marichal 2016;
Papacharissi 2015; Rainie et al. 2012) and, furthermore, arguably played a sig-
nicant role in large-scale social protests in many parts of the world, especially
in Arab and certain European countries as well as the US (Bastos, Mercea, and
Charpentier 2015; Hussain and Howard 2013; Lev-On 2018b; Margetts etal. 2015;
Tufekci and Wilson 2012; Wolfsfeld, Segev, and Sheafer 2013).
Yet, few studies have focused on the framing of Facebook during protests in
the mainstream media. Important for the study of Facebook frames in the media
is the notion of Internet centrism, that emerged from a technological determinism
approach. Beliefs in Internet’s centrism may be reected in journalists’ emphasis
on the power of digital tools to inuence the number of participants in a political
protest or the results that the protest achieves. e risk in such a frame is an unre-
alistic assessment of the power of digital tools to generate political change and un-
derestimate other possibly inuential factors (Freelon, Merritt, and Jaymes 2015).
e single study on Facebook frames during social protests points to a view of
Internet centrism, an exclusive focus on the positive aspects of the Internet, and
in line with the aforementioned ndings, a preponderance of metaphors of salva-
tion rather than of metaphors of destruction. e study by Campbell and Hawk
(2012) on the frames of social media in mainstream media analyzed Facebook
use during the protest in Egypt and its framing on al-Jazeera Arabic. In general,
social media was presented in a positive light in the channel’s news coverage, and
the protest uses of the Internet in general, and of Facebook in particular, were not
criticized or presented as problematic. Social media were portrayed as the main
place for orchestrating protests, as an arena for sharing textual and visual materials
1. ese studies of Internet frames were published prior to the events that are in the background
of the paper. Since papers that describe Internet framing from later years are written in reference
to more advanced technological infrastructure and more literature audiences who use them,
I prefer not to survey them here but to settle for papers that were written with comparable
technologies and audiences “in their background”.
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concerning genuine events in Egypt, and as the “viral fuel” that enables the protest
to achieve its goals. In other words, Facebook was portrayed as an integral part of
the protest and its achievements. Social media were also presented as a resource
for disseminating the protest’s messages, as a means of conrming the legitimacy
of the protest, and a means of individual empowerment. A considerable portion
of the explicit mentions of Facebook were related to young Egyptians’ role in the
protest. Facebook was presented as the partner and ally of these young people, and
as a tool that establishes the vision and energies of these young people, who, in
turn, shape the protest on the streets and on the web.
1.3 e local press
e decision to focus on the local press is based on the diversity of their readership
and the fact that local newspapers give a voice to geographic areas that are not typi-
cally represented in mainstream media. Local newspapers oer a broad picture of
coverage from all areas of the country, including areas with diverse socio-economic
groups and diverse group compositions (Manosevitch and Lev-On 2014). Local
newspaper are a source of information on local politics and the local economy,
and on local issues related to education, culture, transportation, infrastructure,
and other issues that have a signicant impact on the everyday lives of the local
population but have little if any newsworthiness value for mainstream media.
e local press may play an important role in raising issues on the local agenda
and shaping local public and political debates (Heider et al. 2005; Manosevitch
and Lev-On 2014). It is therefore interesting to explore the representations and
frames of Facebook in local newspapers during national events such as the 2011
social protest.
In the data analysis period of this study, 295 local weekly newspapers were
published in Israel, 134 of which in the Tel Aviv and central area, 78 in Haifa
and the north, 27 in the Jerusalem area, and 56 in the country’s southern region.
Local newspapers are read by a substantial portion of the country’s population.
According to a 2012 survey, 34.4% of the Israeli population regularly read a local
newspaper. Reading local newspapers is widespread in all socio-economic groups
and all regions of the country, especially among older adults: 50.9% of the popula-
tion age 65 and over regularly read a local newspaper, in contrast to a mere 24.7%
of the 18–24 age group (Manosevitch and Lev-On 2014).
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Facebook framed
2. Method
is study analyzes how social media is framed during large-scale public protests,
using the “tent protest” in the summer of 2011 in Israel as a case study. Israel is a ne
environment for studying the use of media, and in particular online social media,
for protest, due to the long (pre-Internet) history of people ‘taking to the streets’,
on ideological, religious, national, ethnic or other grounds (Lehman-Wilzig 1990).
As the paper studies media frame, a thematic textual analysis was the method
found appropriate for this study. e study uses the database of IFAT, a company
specializing in media monitoring and analysis, which has a digital database of all
the media published in Israel, including local newspapers.
As is conventional when searching in any digital repository of newspaper
items, search proceeds according to keywords. e keywords in the present
study were: the housing protest, the tent protest, social protest, public housing,
aordable housing, social justice, the March of the Million, the Demonstration
of the Million, Daphni Lief, Itzik Shmuli, Stav Shar, and Rothchild [Blvd]. e
search was applied to the period from July 14, 2011, the rst day of the protest,
to September 2, 2011, the day of the March of the Million, which marked the
end of the protest.
e sample for this study was constructed in four stages: First, items that were
deemed irrelevant to the tent protest were manually eliminated. Remaining in the
sample were items that focused on the tent protest as well as items in which the
tent protest was a secondary topic or only briey mentioned. is decision was
in line with the motivation to study all the published representations and mean-
ings, in order to enhance the exterior validity of the study. e sample contained
1,005 items.
In the second stage, 134 items that mentioned Facebook were manually
identied. In the third stage, we eliminated all the items in which the mention
of Facebook was unrelated to the tent protest. In 22 items, mentions of Facebook
were judged to be irrelevant to the tent protest, such as in the following example:
“More people joined, including ND who builds Facebook pages for businesses”.
In the fourth and nal stage, duplicate items were eliminated, in the event
that an item was published in several local newspapers. Twenty such items were
identied. e nal sample contained 92 singular and relevant items. Of these, 49
were published in the rst three weeks of the protest (between July 14, 2011 and
the weekend of August 10, 2011), while an additional 43 items were published in
the nal three weeks of the protest, from August 10, 2011 to September 2, 2011.
e nal sample included 16 items published in southern local newspapers, 25
in northern local newspapers, and 51 in local newspapers in the central region
of the country. e sample contained a majority of news articles (68), as well
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Azi Lev-On
as personal columns (15) and “other” items (9) from the gossip, music, satire,
and other sections.
Qualitative content analysis was used to study the items in the nal sample.
Aer initial impressions of the texts were recorded, including specic impressions
related to Facebook’s function as a political tool and its implications, we conducted
an initial analysis of the meanings that emerged from the sample and decided to
focus on ideas that appeared in more than a single occurrence. ese ideas were
recast as themes and sub-themes.
3. Findings
Content analysis was performed of the ninety-two items that explicitly men-
tion Facebook in the context of public activism and social protest. Findings are
presented with respect to the three main themes and sub-themes that reect the
various Facebook frames found in this sample.
3.1 eme 1: Facebook’s aordances as a political tool
is theme presents Facebook’s advantages as a political tool and attests, not only
to the positive attitudes of journalists and interviewees, but also to the positive
practical experience with this platform. Seventy items (76% of the sample) contain
at least one of the following positive sub-themes.
3.1.1 Facebook as a mainstay of the protest
is sub-theme, which appeared with the second highest frequency, was identied
in 34 items. is sub-theme attests to how extensively Facebook has come to be
considered a political tool. In fact, mentions of Facebook as the major tool in the
protest reected that its political function was taken for granted, and Facebook
was frequently mentioned in a single breath with the tents and signs.
(1) Youth Movement members play a considerable role in the protest in
Tiberias. In addition to the partnership in the protest tent, they also
set up a Facebook group and organized a demonstration in the city
center on Tuesday.
Additional evidence of the perceptions of the tent camp’s Facebook page as an
integral part of the tent camp itself ironically comes from protest objectors. e
following quote indicates that the objectors did not stop at physically damaging
the tent camp: they also targeted the tent camp’s Facebook page:
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Facebook framed
(2) Last weekend, the tent camp was vandalized twice…lightbulbs were
smashed, electric wires were cut, and equipment was stolen. In addition…
the protest’s Facebook page was attacked.
Occasionally it seemed that the Facebook page was more important for the local
protest than the physical tent camp on the ground, as the following item describes.
is journalist also believed that even if the protest is visible on the streets, its
headquarters is in cyberspace, not on the ground:
(3) Even if… the nation has been mobilized, with thousands swarming in the
streets, still the struggle’s headquarters is located somewhere in cyberspace,
a Like away from your own Facebook page.
3.1.2 Facebook as a recruitment tool
is sub-theme appears in 55 items and is the most frequent theme identied
in the present study. ese mentions convey that Facebook is rst and foremost
considered a tool for recruiting people to participate in a broad range of protest
actions, such as attendance at the tent camp, and participation in demonstrations
and other actions that the protestors organized (debates, movie screenings, dis-
cussion circles, etc.). People were recruited in a variety of ways which included
posting a status, posting a personal message on Facebook, initiating a Facebook
event, or establishing a Facebook page or group. ese recruitment eorts contin-
ued throughout all stages of the protest, from the preparations in advance of local
protests, to the conclusion of the national protest.
(4) On Saturday evening, September 3, 2011, at 21:00, a protest rally will be held
at the protest tent site, and will include a march to the city’s neighborhoods.
ere, we all loudly say that Beit-Shemesh belongs to us all. Keep informed
about all protest activities in the city on the Facebook page “Housing Protest
in Beit-Shemesh.”
(5) At the tent camp in Rosh-Pina…. open debates on a variety of topics are
held every evening, as well as lectures and performances. Information [is
available] on the tent camp Facebook page “e Rosh-Pina Tent Protest.”
In one item, one of the initiators of the tent protest described his “unocial” des-
ignated role as Facebook Operations Ocer. e choice of this phrase reects the
signicance that the protest leaders attributed to Facebook as a fundamental arena
of activity, for mobilization and calls to action.
(6) Since I was a brave soldier and fearless hero, I was given the most combative
role of all in the struggle- Facebook Operations Ocer. In this capacity my
role was actually to do the opposite- to grab people and li them out their
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air-conditioned apartments and their computer screens, and bring them- in
the esh- to the city square. My success was not supposed to be measured
by Likes, but by the times people clapped each other on the back [when they
met in the street].
Facebook is described as an important means of social mobilization, due to
its ability to identify and quickly connect like-minded people and allies of the
cause. is feature eectively helps transform scattered individuals with a com-
mon concern into a protest group with a signicant presence. Also noted was the
psychological signicance of this connection between the protestors, as a result of
which people no longer feel alone and understand that there are many others who
share the same problems:
(7) YA came to the tent camp even though he didn’t know any of the students
there. He’s been there for two weeks. ‘I hold two jobs to pay for my
apartment and my tuition,’ he says to explain his motives. ‘It’s hard, my
account in the bank is overdrawn, and I’m sick of it…I accessed Facebook
and found out that I was not the only one, so I came…’
(8) e bitterness and the diculties always existed, but what was new this
year was Facebook. Suddenly everyone discovered that they had similar
problems and they weren’t the only ones living on loans and continuously
overdrawn accounts.
3.1.3 Facebook as a logistical tool for organizing the protest
is sub-theme appears in 24 items, and reects the use of Facebook for logistical
purposes, to support the execution of protest activities, such as compiling lists of
people interested in transportation to participate in demonstrations in other towns.
(9) e bitterness and the diculties always existed, but what was new this
year was Facebook. Suddenly everyone discovered that they had similar
problems and they weren’t the only ones living on loans and continuously
overdrawn accounts.
(10) is Saturday evening several buses will leave Ashdod for Tel Aviv. Sign up
on Facebook or at the tent camp.
An important point that appears in many items is the local-geographic nature
of Facebook use, as many items emphasized that people are protesting “close to
home” thanks to Facebook. In other words, Facebook facilitates the organization
of the protest in people’s “own backyards.” e following pattern can be identi-
ed in many items: (a) e journalist interviews the initiator or initiators of the
local tent camp. (b) e interviewee is asked why he decided to set up a protest
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Facebook framed
tent camp in the city and what were his rst steps. (c) e interviewees said they
understood that it was possible to protest close to home because the protest has
specic relevance to their own city, and Facebook was the logistical tool they used
for this purpose:
(11) I planned to go to a demonstration on Saturday evening in Tel Aviv with my
wife and son. And then, right before I le, I thought, why should I travel
all the way there when we can demonstrate right here? e situation here
is much more dicult… at same day I opened a Facebook group called
“Lod Needs Tents Too.” Twenty-four hours later 1,000 people from Lod
alone had joined the group.
(12) On Saturday I wanted to go to Jerusalem to demonstrate. I had to travel to
Modi’in and take a bus from there to Jerusalem, with my three children
in tow, so I said to myself, why should I travel so far? I will demonstrate
near my own home. So I organized a Facebook event, sent out some mails
and text messages, and that’s how everyone learned about [the event]
and showed up.
Facebook is framed not only in spatial terms but also in temporal terms. An
important element that appears in several items is the enormous speed at which
developments occur in the information era. First, Facebook makes it possible to
organize events quickly, and the process that previously required planning well in
advance now is completed “from one day to the next”:
(13) We decided that it doesn’t make any sense for residents of [Ono] Valley to
go to Tel-Aviv to demonstrate, and within less than 24 hours the Women’s
Administration of Ono Valley disseminated the information [on the local
event] on Facebook.
(14) e tent protest has completed its seventh week and it seems as if it has
always been here. Maybe because this is the most powerful and radical
revolution in Israel’s history. And maybe because, in the Facebook and
Twitter era, time grows shorter. e Black Panther Movement needed several
years, including a destructive campaign, to capture its place in public life in
the historical political reversal of 1977, [but] hopefully it will take the J14
Movement less time.
Second, a protest in the information era calls for constant, immediate updates
and the continual dissemination of information and calls to action to activists.
Facebook facilitates the dissemination of information and updates, all the time,
from any place, with unprecedented ease, speed, and simplicity.
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(15) [Organizing protest events] is much easier in the Facebook era. Once you
launch a campaign, 100 people sign up right away. Information ies fast in
the digital era.
3.1.4 Facebook as a means of maintaining contact among protestors
is sub-theme appears in 21 items, representing Facebook as a major channel of
communications that benets all protestors by helping them share information
and messages. In contrast to the recruitment sub-theme in which communication
aims at people who are not currently active participants in the protest events, this
sub-theme refers to Facebook’s instrumental role in helping protestors maintain
contact among themselves and in retaining activists who already participated in
various protest activities.
(16) Facebook, Twitter, and the other social networks, are media for transmitting
messages, and large online ‘lobbying groups’ organized around specic
demands- are the executors. Hence, at the conclusion of the demonstration
phase, collective action will shi to Facebook, Twitter and other social
networks. ey are the critical instruments that citizens will use to
consolidate their collective power vis-a-vis the corrupt state.
3.1.5 Facebook as a discursive sphere
is theme appears in 17 items, and refers to the discursive aspects of the Facebook
platform. ese items indicate that many participants contributed to debates on
many aspects of the protest– from the protest’s goals, through an outline of its
socio-economic platform, to the means used to achieve the goals of the struggle.
(17) We already are equipped with revolutionary consciousness. Whether on
paper, or orally, or on Facebook walls, we have all already developed our
manifest, formulated a list of goals, and stated our ideas on the goals of the
struggle and exactly what should be done to achieve them.
(18) Tens of thousands of good people….all of them writing and corresponding
on Facebook, gaining great satisfaction from the very fact of their
involvement, and their awareness of the power of ordinary citizens, and they
all vie with each other to make suggestions and solve problems.
is social network was identied as an open, democratic platform of discussion,
in which an enormous range of opinions could be voiced, and authentic hopes
could be expressed.
(19) Today, social networks are the ‘Hyde Park’ from which the protest is
growing.
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Facebook framed
In nine items, Facebook was also presented as a collaborative sphere for the dis-
semination of contents and formulation of original alternative initiatives.
(20) ere’s a crazy level of creativity going one, says Barak Segal, one of the
organizers. ‘It’s all made of individual initiatives [for example] people
built a house made of drywall, and this initiative spread on Facebook
and on Twitter.
(21) In anticipation of the March of the Million, Ital Batzir Elsheich, a prominent
resident of Rishon-Letzion, set up a Facebook page and invited parents to
post pictures that their children took, reecting their view of the protest.
3.1.6 Facebook as an inuential factor in the protest’s success
is theme appears in 23 items. is theme illustrates how journalists and editors
linked the success of the protest to Facebook use. ese media professionals al-
located a prominent place to success stories that sprung from the Facebook sphere
or were signicantly assisted by Facebook, and consequently these accounts helped
position Facebook as an eective instrument during social struggles.
(22) A group of teenagers sitting in a café discussing the situation decided to set
up a group on Facebook, and very quickly they attracted 1,400 friends.
However, only rarely was success explicitly attributed to the use of Facebook or the
options that it oered the organizers, such as creating pressure on the politicians
who led the change:
(23) Aer opening the Facebook page and complaining about the terrible
situation, the wheels started to turn in favor of young couples, at least on
the declarative level…e truth is that I was very concerned by the fact that
the mayor never gave us a thought before we complained and opened such a
large [Facebook] group.
3.1.7 Facebook as a source of quotes
is theme appears in nine items, illustrating journalists’ treatment of Facebook
as a source of material. Journalists either directly quoted from Facebook pages (of
individuals, groups, or events) in addition to or in lieu of a direct quote from a
protestor or tent camp leader.
(24) e organizers’ Facebook pages stated: ‘It’s time to get o your easy chair
and leave your home for our future and the future of our children…Housing
prices in Nahariya and its vicinity has increased by 20% in the past year.
Anyone who wants to buy an apartment is faced with numerous budget
problems, and people who decide to rent nd themselves facing a limited
supply of apartments whose prices are sky high.
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(25) e Eilat group’s Facebook page includes a call to all residents of Eilat to join
the struggle and take action to change the current situation.
3.2 eme 2: Facebook’s drawbacks as a political tool
Alongside the elaborately described aordances of Facebook for protests, the
analysis also uncovered a second, less prevalent theme that focuses on the less
glamorous aspects of Facebook. is theme is reected in comments on the short-
comings of Facebook as an element in the protestors’ toolbox, and even criticism
of the entire generation of Facebook users. Such criticisms appeared mainly in
personal columns.
In 11 items, Facebook is presented as an illegitimate public sphere for “genu-
ine” social protest. In these items, Facebook is portrayed as a sphere of action for
lazy, spoiled individuals who seek convenient, simple activism and involvement
in the protest from the comfort of their armchair. ese authors focus on the
convenience that Facebook oers in contrast to traditional protest tools.
(26) While Egyptians already have Tahrir Square and Syrians have Hamma,
we only have Likes for cottage cheese and public singing on Rothchild
Boulevard.
(27) A protest is not a campre evening in Tel-Aviv with a couple of guitars and
some Likes on Facebook.
Nonetheless, a signicant number of the occurrences of this theme were related
to statements that proved these disapproving authors wrong. Despite the authors’
beliefs that Facebook is incompatible with “real” activism, the events proved
that Facebook use drew hundreds of thousands of people out of their homes
to the streets.
(28) [We thought that] the most people would do would be to click Like on
Facebook; But here, as we see, we were really wrong…e core of the
demonstrators is exactly the people who were considered symbols of [social]
indierence and escapism: the people of the Yuppie dream…those people
got up o their TV loungers and computer screens to lead an unprecedented
social struggle: a struggle for social justice.
(29) A year ago people said that Facebook would destroy interpersonal
relationships, but look how those statements were simply proven false.
Suddenly people are once again meeting in the city square, and a lot
is due to social networks. is happened in the Arab world, and it’s
also happened here.
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Facebook framed
(30) You look at the tent camp in Nordau neighborhood and your heart bursts
with pride. ose shining eyes, the militant debates, the revolutionary
passion- I thought things like that don’t happen in the Facebook era
anymore. But they are there, in a poverty-stricken neighborhood at the
southern end of Netanya, and they don’t plan on giving up.
Still, statements by several protest leaders and supporters, argue that although
Facebook was a superior mobilization tool, success on Facebook was merely sec-
ondary to success on the ground. ese statements reect the belief that the true
measure of the protest’s success is not the number of Likes it attracts, but the num-
ber of people who actively participate in the various protest actions in the streets.
(31) We can already declare success. It’s not clear how and whether the tent
camp will be dismantled, but this is surely a success: e typical Israeli le
Facebook and moved to the streets, and the Prime Minister is sweating.
e above examples illustrate the widespread view that contrasted Facebook and
the streets. Computers and Facebook were described as a sterile, air-conditioned
space detached from the political conditions that can be studied in, and changed
through the “hot, sweaty” city square. Stemming from this view is also the belief
that Facebook remains an inadequate measure of the protest’s success. An example
of one protestor’s own eorts to challenge this dichotomy appeared in a local
newspaper, in the form of a large image that accompanied an item and was also
mentioned in the article:
(32) Others carried signs: ‘Real people, not just Facebook Likes’.
is sign warrants further attention as it counters the dichotomy between the eld,
where, on this view, the protest is taking place, and the Facebook-space where the
only thing people do is click a Like button. e sign, which was photographed at a
street demonstration, eectively linked these two spheres of action and underlines
how action in one leads to action in the other. Furthermore, the sign is an attempt
to challenge the belief that the Facebook sphere is populated by Likes rather than
by real people, or the idea that Likes are the ultimate action on Facebook. e
sign writers chose to convey that the protest is real and genuine and should not be
discredited merely because it originated on Facebook.
A small number of items noted three additional drawbacks that could be at-
tributed to Facebook:
1. e ip side of Facebook-era speed is that protests are organized in a hap-
hazard, amateurish manner of planning that frequently took place at the last
minute:
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Azi Lev-On
(33) e protest march last Sunday began aer some delay, and it was already 2
PM by the time the activists managed to obtain police approval, which was
the result of the late organization…I guess that’s what happens in the era of
Facebook protests- everything happens at the last minute.
(34) Last ursday…about 200 people marched in the city’s Heichal Hatarbut
square, in an improvised baby-carriage protest march that was organized on
Facebook in a matter of minutes.
2. e enormous openness of Facebook facilitates greater decentralization and
multiplicity of voices, which could undermine the protest eorts and cause
splintering of its forces:
(35) e numerous complaints, suggestions, and advisors, websites, and
Facebook pages, and the dozens of uncoordinated appeals ‘to boycott’
this or another corporation, or ‘to protest’ on this or another date, create
considerable confusion. Whom should we listen to? ousands of dierent
voices urge a million citizens to take action in a hundred dierent directions.
is chaos might dissipate the collective energies and pulverize the joint
forces into grains of sand instead of consolidating them into a solid rock.
3. e digital divide appeared in a small number of items. e rst example
below mentions that even in 2011, entire sections of the Israeli population
choose to avoid Facebook and the Internet in general. e example below
demonstrates the logistical need to publish calls to action on other media, in
view of the absence of some population groups from Facebook.
(36) Some of them don’t maintain a Facebook [page] so not everyone knew about
the meeting place, which was the municipality square. e husband of the
person who organized the march assumed the task of directing the potential
demonstrators. Equipped with a pot lid and a spoon, he tried to direct more
and more people to the [protest site].
3.3 eme 3: Facebook as a political tool in the Arab Spring (a global
perspective)
Seven items discussed Facebook’s role in the Arab Spring, either as a supercial
brief mention or as part of a more extensive discussion. ese items suggested sev-
eral contexts that warrant further attention. Facebook was described as a Western
tool that was adopted by Arab societies, and as an antithesis to violent protests (the
keyboard versus the gun):
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Facebook framed
(37) e Israeli and global backdrop and climate that preceded the protest
were the success of the masses in toppling tyrannical regimes…using
Western Facebook that had penetrated to the Arab nation…. Suddenly the
masses discovered that it was more eective to click on a keyboard than
squeeze a trigger.
Facebook was presented as a political tool whose eectiveness was proven in the
Arab world. e items reecting this theme conveyed the belief that Facebook
facilitates the protest in Israel just as it helped the protests in the Arab world
achieve political outcomes. is theme is related to a heightened sense of political
self-ecacy, which explains why most mentions of Facebook’s role in the Arab
world were juxtaposed with protestors’ statements of their belief in their cause
and in themselves.
(38) One insight about the changing nature struggles is the key role of Internet
technologies, headed by social networks- Facebook, Twitter, etc…. Based
on what is happening in the Arab countries, and certainly based on the
social protest in Israel, we see the central role that technology plays in
contemporary events, and how success is impossible without it.
(39) e tent protest did not stop on Rothschild Blvd in Tel Aviv. e young
people of the Arab city of Baqa al-Gharbiyye set up Shabab Baqa, an
organization of the city’s young people… Inspired by the demonstrations in
Tahrir Square in Egypt, a group of young people sitting in a café discussing
the situation decided to set up a group on Facebook, and very quickly they
attracted 1,400 friends… ese young people are also being called ‘the
Facebook clan’. What works for Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, also works for the
young people of Baqa al-Gharbiyye.
e above example illustrates the connection drawn between the location most
identied with the tent protest in Israel (Tel-Aviv), and Tahrir Square, the location
most identied with the Egyptian revolution. Both sites became symbols of the
protests orchestrated through Facebook, and their mention is accompanied by
messages that express hope and empower the protestors’ to usher in change in
additional locations.
4. Discussion and conclusions
Since the early days of the Internet’s functioning as a commercial, mass medium,
there is evidence of contradictory frames of the Internet in mainstream media.
On the one hand, the Internet has been portrayed in a positive, and even utopian,
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Azi Lev-On
light. On the other hand, the Internet has been presented as the enemy of the
people and society, expected to cause damage and destruction to its users. ese
frames appeared across various media organizations, timeframes, and countries
(Cornish 2008; Fisher and Wright 2001; Johnston 2009; Rössler 2001).
e debate about the eects of the Internet on individuals and society persist
in debates on social media. Facebook, the leading social media platform, also has
been the target of conicting frames in mainstream media, although its frames
are more strongly inclined to be positive, especially when the context of coverage
is a popular protest. e Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street movements, as well
as other Facebook protests in 2011, created a turning point in public awareness
of Facebook’s potential as a powerful discursive and organizational sphere. As
the ndings of the present study show, Facebook played an integral role in the
2011 tent protest in Israel- as it did in the Arab Spring protests- and was even
portrayed as the initiator of these social movements. In these accounts, the logisti-
cal and communicative functions of social networks were repeatedly emphasized
(Campbell and Hawk 2012).
e present study analyzes the frames attributed to Facebook in the context
of the tent protest of summer 2011 in the local Israeli press. A content analysis of
this type may reveal the layers of meaning that potentially shape and aect, and be
aected by, public attitudes toward and uses of Facebook. In line with previously
studies that explored representations of the Internet and Facebook on mainstream
media, the present study also found evidence of both positive frames and (a sig-
nicantly smaller proportion of) negative frames.
In line with an analysis of Facebook frames in the coverage of the Arab Spring
events (Campbell and Hawk 2012), Facebook was framed as a major, integral
part of the protest itself in the Israeli case. Journalists stressed the multiple
functions that Facebook eectively lled throughout the various stages of the
protest, from planning to execution. Facebook was framed, rst and foremost, as
a mobilization tool. is theme, that gained the greatest prominence in the pres-
ent sample, emphasizes the critical role that Facebook plays in motivating sup-
porters to engage in political action. Moreover, ndings indicate that Facebook
was framed as an eective logistical tool (registering for transportation, nalizing
details of events, etc.), which made it possible to quickly organize protest action
in multiple geographic locations in a manner that would have been previously
dicult. Facebook was also described as a tool for maintaining contact among
protestors (dissemination of information on future events, decisions, introducing
new participants, etc.) and as a discursive space where many people voiced their
opinions, exchanged ideas on the desired course of action, and shared texts and
images about their experiences. As a result, Facebook was framed as a positive
factor of inuence in the protest. From a professional journalistic viewpoint,
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Facebook framed
journalists came to view Facebook as a reliable source, and frequently quoted
directly from Facebook.
e items in the current sample illustrate the important role that protest
organizers attributed to Facebook. Facebook pages were viewed as the direct con-
tinuation of the physical protest in the streets. Local newspapers focused on cases
whose success could be attributed to Facebook, and on a few occasions explicitly
attributed an event’s success to Facebook.
Nonetheless, alongside the positive frames that dominated the local press
coverage of the protest, negative frames that presented Facebook unfavorably were
also evident, albeit in a much smaller number in the dataset. e main negative
frames portrayed Facebook as an unsuitable sphere for conducting social protest.
ese authors considered Facebook the preferred arena of action of lazy and
spoiled individuals. e sarcastic and disparaging tone of these few authors was
accompanied by a dichotomous view of Facebook and the street: e city square
was described as the legitimate public arena for addressing public issues and
expressing critical political opinion, while Facebook was described as an arena
detached from such realities. Facebook was framed as a sterile arena in which
activists sit in their air-conditioned homes in front of their computer screens.
is line of criticism also targeted the “Facebook Generation”, whose members
were framed as a group of lazy, cynical, isolated and pleasure-seeking individuals.
Clicking Like on Facebook was belittled as being far from “real” activism, such
as participating in demonstrations, sleeping in tent camps, and participating in
discussion circles.
Moreover, several authors framed Facebook as an inferior protest tool,
compared to traditional protest tools. is view was frequently supported by the
argument, expressed repeatedly by the protest leaders themselves, that the true
measure of the protest’s success is the number of participants in the events in
the eld and not the number of Likes. At the same time, however, Facebook was
frequently framed as an essential and eective tool of recruitment. In other words,
both the protest leaders and several journalists presented Facebook as the means
to another goal, not as an end unto itself.
e protest persisted for almost an entire summer, and the number of par-
ticipants grew steadily week by week. In response, the journalists who viewed
Facebook and the Facebook Generation critically began to restrain their criticism.
In view of the evidence, these journalists admitted that the Facebook Generation
did indeed get up o their seats and move to the streets, demanding social justice.
e urgent political issues pierced the Facebook sphere, which could no longer be
considered sterile or detached from political reality.
Alongside the themes that focused on Facebook’s advantages and drawbacks,
a third, less prevalent, theme was also identied. Facebook was occasionally
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Azi Lev-On
mentioned in a global context, linking the protest in Israel to the Arab Spring that
had started only several months earlier. In an eort to extol the Israeli protest or
emphasize its potential, journalists compared the local actions to the protests in
Egypt and Tunisia. Facebook was framed as an eective political tool that support-
ed the protests of the Arab world and assisted in achieving proven political results.
e present study is limited in its scope as it included only the items concern-
ing the tent protest that contained a direct reference to Facebook. Future studies on
Facebook frames in mainstream media may extend the sampling frame to include
national newspapers as well as broadcast and online media, in order to study how
additional media organizations address Facebook’s role in protests. Although the
sample used in the present study is not broad (92 items), the qualitative content
analysis revealed subtle nuances and deep layers of meaning that potentially shape
public attitudes and uses. e themes identied in the present study should also
be validated by a quantitative content analysis that covers a larger quantity of texts,
and by extending the analysis to other case studies outside the context of Israel
and/or social protests.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Keren Sereno for her assistance in collecting and analyzing the data and
preparing the manuscript.
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Address for correspondence
Azi Lev-On
School of Communication
Ariel University
Ariel
Israel
azilevon@gmail.com
Biographical notes
Prof. Azi Lev-On is a faculty member in the School of Communication in Ariel University. His
research focuses on the social and political uses and perceived eects of social media, including
public participation and deliberation online, online communities, collective action and cam-
paigns, and behaviors in computer-mediated environments, employing a variety of methods
such as content and surveys, interviews and laboratory experiments.
Publication history
Date received: 30 June 2017
Date accepted: 9 August 2018
Published online: 10 October 2018
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