"The Medium is the Murder": Discourse, Power, and the Contested Reality of Violence on Palestinian-Arab Social Media in Israel

Abstract

Nissim Katz*

This article conducts a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of how the crisis of internal violence within Israel’s Palestinian- Arab minority is represented and contested on TikTok and Instagram. Situated within a context of perceived state neglect and rising crime, these platforms have emerged as a primary ‘counter-public’ sphere where the crisis is discursively negotiated. Through a detailed analysis of viral videos, the study identifies three contradictory discursive formations: performances of ‘affective testimony’ framing violence as a political consequence of state abandonment; the aestheticization of a criminal hyper- masculinity constructing a defiant subaltern social order; and the discursive policing of internal patriarchal boundaries. The article contends these platforms are active sites in a Gramscian ‘war of position’. Digital discourses function as a double- edged sword: simultaneously a counter-hegemonic critique of the state and a vehicle for reproducing internal power hierarchies, revealing the complex role of digital media in subaltern communities.

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