Israeli and Palestinian Women For Peace: Using A Social Media Platform To Promote Peace

This study investigates the mechanisms and processes through which a social media platform, founded and operated jointly by women representing the opposing sides in a protracted ethnopolitical conflict - is used to mobilize and promote intergroup dialogue and peace. Intergroup dialogues are prevalently employed in divided societies embedded in ethnopolitical conflict with the goal of reducing animosity and hostility and mobilizing peace. However, only limited research attention has been dedicated to social media platforms as venues for promoting dialogue and peace (Mor, Ron & Maoz, 2016). Our study examines social media as a platform for promoting intergroup dialogues aimed at cooperation and reconciliation in the context of the asymmetrical, protracted ethnopolitical conflict between Israeli-Jews and Palestinians. A qualitative content analysis of posts and comments on the Facebook page of the Jewish-Arab grassroots movement ‘Women Wage Peace’ (WWP) was conducted in order to examine mechanisms through which this social media platform attempts to support the expression of reconciliatory voices, draw Israeli Jews and Palestinians into dialogue and promote intergroup solidarity and peace.