Terrorism and the Rise of Right-Wing Content in Israeli Books

In the past few years the Western world has witnessed a rise in the popularity of right-wing political discourse promoting nationalistic and exclusionary world views. While in many countries such rhetoric has surfaced in mainstream politics only recently, in Israel, right-wing ideology has been popu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInternational organization Vol. 73; no. 1; pp. 203 - 224
Main Author Mitts, Tamar
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.01.2019
Subjects
Automatic text analysis
Citizens
Datasets
Digitization
Hebrew language
Ideology
Media violence
Nationalism
Peace negotiations
Perpetuation
Political attitudes
Political discourse
Politics
Popularity
Prominence
Public opinion
Research Notes
Rhetoric
Right wing politics
Terrorism
Violence
Israel
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Summary:In the past few years the Western world has witnessed a rise in the popularity of right-wing political discourse promoting nationalistic and exclusionary world views. While in many countries such rhetoric has surfaced in mainstream politics only recently, in Israel, right-wing ideology has been popular for almost two decades. Explanations for this phenomenon focus on Israeli citizens’ attitudinal change in the face of exposure to terrorism but largely do not account for why such ideas remain popular over the long term, even after violence subsides. In this study I examine whether the long-lasting prominence of right-wing nationalistic politics in Israel is linked to the perpetuation of right-wing ideology in popular media. Analyzing the content of more than 70,000 published books, I find that content related to the political right has increased in Israeli books after periods of terrorism, a change that has become more pronounced over the years.
ISSN:0020-8183
1531-5088
DOI:10.1017/S0020818318000383