Современный Израиль

Часть 1 Языки, социальные практики, межкультурные взаимодействия

Figure2demonstratesthatthepopulationshardlymeetonline,i.e., that the typical frequency of Israeli Jews’contact with Arabs is very low. Some three quarters of Jews maintain no online contact with Arabs whatsoever.About a quarter of the sample has low or medium online contact with Arabs, and only a small minority (3 %) reported high or very high frequency of online contact withArabs.

Figure 3 reveals that Israeli Jews perceive a significant social distance from Arabs: some three quarters of those surveyed reported

Medium frequency; 6%

Not at all; 74%

Low frequency; 17%

Figure 2. Frequency of Israeli Jews’online contact with

Figure 3. Self-Perceived social distances of Israeli Jews towardsArabs

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that they feel remote or very remote from Arabs. Only 7 % of the Jewish respondents reported that they feel close toArabs.

Table 1 shows the correlations between the dependent and independent variables.

Estimating the models

The descriptive data do not tell us whether and / or to what extent online contact correlates with social distance. Moreover, we sought to reveal the impact of background variables, political position and participation on the dependent variable and to examine the role ofsocialcontactasamediator(seeFigure1).Thus,inthenextanalysis, we constructed a structural equation model (SEM) using AMOS, creating a full information maximum likelihood procedure to examine these propositions according to our theoretical model (see Figure 1).

To ensure stability of the model developed to test the research hypotheses, we used the PLS bootstrap resampling procedure (see Efron and Tibshirani 1994). By iterating this procedure hundreds or thousands of times, satisfactory information about the distribution of the statistic can be obtained.

Model 1 is a default model which simultaneously estimates:

(1)the path from the frequency of online contacts to social distance;

(2)the direct effects of demographic variables, political position and participation, and social media use variables on social distance fromArabs; (3) the direct effect of political position and participation and social media use variables on online contacts (see figure 4).

In Figure 4, we display the parameter estimates and fit measures forthedefaultmodel.Themodelisagoodfittothedatawiththeratio of X2 to degrees of freedom (CMIN / DF) lower than 3. The RMSEA coefficient was lower than 0.06, providing a high level of confidence in the model fit. In line with hypothesis 1, the findings presented

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in Figure 4 show that the more Jews are in contact with Arabs in the social media, the closer they feel. Our findings show that rightwingrespondentsarelesslikelytoengageinonlinecontactswithArabs and feel more distant from them, compared to those in the political «center». In addition, left-wingers are more likely to interact with Arabs online, compared to political centrists. A significant positive correlation was found between political participation and frequency of online contact, while the path between political participation and social distance was insignificant; in other words, no direct impact of political participation on social distance was found. For this reason we ran a Fully Mediated Model which examined only the indirect impact of political participation on social distance fully mediated by online contact.Accordingly, the Fully Mediated Model estimates:

(1)the path from frequency of online contacts to social distance;

(2)the direct effects of demographic variables, political position and social media use variables on social distance from Arabs; (3) the direct effect of political position and social media use variables

on online contacts; (4) the indirect effects of political position and participation and social media use variables on social distance mediated by frequency of online contacts with Arabs. The statistics oftheFullyMediatedModelwerefoundtoprovideagoodfittothedata. The estimates of the Fully Mediated Model are presented in Table 2.

As can be seen from Table 2, hypothesis 2 was refuted: the correlations between Facebook and Twitter use, and frequency of online contacts and social distance were insignificant. In contrast our findings partially support hypothesis 3: direct and indirect negative effectsforright-wingpoliticalpositiononsocialdistancewerefound. The direct and indirect effects of left-wing political position on social distance were insignificant. Our hypothesis 4 was supported by the

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Figure 4. Default model of relationships between frequency of online contacts and social distances

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findings: the effect of political participation on social distance was fully mediated by frequency of online contacts with Arabs. The impact of socio-demographic variables on social distance was insignificant (excluding the positive impact of age).

6. Discussion and Conclusions

This study analyzes the correlation between the frequency of online contact Israeli Jews maintain withArabs, and the perceived social distance of Israeli Jews towards Arabs. As far as we know, our study is the first to investigate the role of online contacts as a mediator of the impact of other variables on social distance.

The findings indicate a significant self-perceived social distance of Israeli Jews towards Arabs, which can probably be explained by social and cultural differences between the groups; social, economic and political conflicts of interests; and segregation between the groups in many spheres. Younger Israeli Jews perceive an even wider distance fromArabs than do older Israeli Jews. Based on these findings, it seems that without investing proper efforts and resources to manage the conflict – online as well as offline – the cleavage between Israeli Jews andArabs may grow wider in the future.

Another significant finding is that most internet users sampled report that they do not interact withArabs at all through online social media. Only a quarter of the Jewish population seems to maintain some level of online contact withArabs (in line with similar findings found amongArab youth by Ganaem,Asaad and Tibi, [2011]).

Our main finding is a positive correlation between frequency of online contacts and closeness to Arabs. It is quite likely that the perceived social distance of Israeli Jews towards Arabs was reduced

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as a result of online contact because online contacts (for example on social networks or web-based forums) are frequently based oncommoninterests.Insuchscenarios,atleastsomeoftheconditions set by Allport (1954) may exist, such as equal status of participants, common goals, intimate contact, absence of anxiety and more. Potentially,meetinginsuchonlinecommunitiesofinterestminimizes the perceived social distance more than does offline contact between Jews and Arabs, in which conversation partners often cannot be selected and the overall situation is less conducive to reducing social distanceintermsofAllport’s(1954)conditions.Hence,itislikelythat online contact can be more effective for improving mutual relations between Jews and Arabs than offline contact (see Walther 2009). This hypothesis however, requires further empirical support.

However our findings indicate different patterns for different groups:right-wingJewswerelesslikelytointeractonlinewithArabs. Moreover such interaction leads to negative consequences: the more right-wings Jews interacted online with Arabs, the more distant they felt toward this out-group. We can assume that these interactions may include propaganda clashes, hate speech and verbal abuse (see Karatzogianni 2008). A deeper understanding of the processes that occur during interaction between right-wings Jews and Arabs is crucial for preventing an escalation of the conflict and may be an important subject for future research.

Our findings show that the correlation between political participation and social distance fromArabs is fully mediated by frequency of online contacts. This finding is important in light of the fact that politically active people may serve as opinion leaders and influence others. PositiveinteractionbetweenpoliticallyactiveJewsandArabsinsocial media may create broader waves among the population at large.

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The findings seem significant in light of the fact that the cleavage between Israeli Arabs and Jews is perceived as the deepest division in Israeli society (Hermann et al. 2012, Kimmerling 2001, Peres and Ben-Rafael 2006). At present, the social media seem far from fulfilling their potential for reducing the cleavage between Israeli Jews andArabs. Findings suggest that to the extent that social media generate more opportunities for mutual exposure between Jews and Arabs, the result will be a reduction in perceived social distances. Since Israeli Jews of all ages use social media frequently and extensively, this channel can open opportunities especially for the younger generations for mutual acquaintances and interactions with Arabs and contribute to reducing the perceived social distance. The small percentage of online interaction between Israeli Jews and Arabs today, however, suggests that introducing people from both sides of this cleavage through social media, although easier than introducing them offline, may still require facilitation and the assistance of other agents or organizations.

Study limitations and recommendations for further research

The current study is cross-sectional and cannot serve to prove causality and to refute participant choice (more tolerant Jews seek more contactwithArabs,whileprejudicedpeopleavoidthiscontact).Inorder toinvestigatecausalrelationshipsbetweenonlinecontactandintergroup relationships the research literature recommends a full cross-lagged panel approach which allows a direct comparison of contact effects on prejudice and prejudice effects on contact in the same analysis. This requires a longitudinal research design (Dhont et al. 2012). We recommend using this design when conducting future research.

It should be noted the current research examined only contact between Jews andArabs in Hebrew, a fact that served as a source for

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filtering about the Arabs who were in touch with Jews. Only those whohaveproficiencyinHebrewandconnectedtoJewishmediawere the possible partners for conversation. It is reasonable to assume that this is a very selective group that both proficient in Hebrew at a high level and have a willingness to communicate with Jews.

In addition, our study generally investigated the frequency of FacebookandTwitteruseanddidnotfocusonfrequencyofinteraction withArabs using each of these social networking sites. Future research can further distinguish between various social media platforms and assess the impact of cross-cleavage contact in each of them on perceived social distance between members of the different groups.

To conclude, we offer some more suggestions for future research. The subjects in the current study comprised only one side of the cleavage (Israeli Jews). Future studies should examine whether Israeli Arabs demonstrate similar patterns of correlations between online contact and self-perceived social distance. Also,futurestudiescaninvestigateothercleavagesinIsraelisociety, for example the religious cleavage (between ultra-Orthodox, religious, traditional and secular Jews) and analyze the correlations between self-perceived social distance and online contacts in reference to these cleavages.

References

Allport, Gordon W., 1954. «7he Nature of Prejudice.» New York: Addison.

Amichai-Hamburger, Yair, Katelyn Y.A. McKenna, and SamuelAzran Tal., 2008. «E-empowerment: Empowerment by the Internet.»

Computers in Human Behavior 24 (5):1776–1789.

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