A peaceful Net? Intergroup contact and communicative conflict resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict on Facebook

The paper assesses the Internet’s prospects for peace and communicative conflict resolution based on a case study of intergroup communication between Israelis and Palestinians/Arabs on the social networking platform Facebook. The research is informed by a synthesis of literature from the fields of conflict resolution, the contact hypothesis, and online deliberation theory. The study is based on the assumptions of the ‘contact hypothesis’ which maintains that intergroup communication is crucial in order to transform protracted violent conflict. Content analysis of Facebook groups revealed a large but fragmented and polarized landscape with few spaces devoted to intergroup communication between Israelis and Palestinians. Overall, the study shows that virtual spaces bear a potential for increased intergroup communication, yet these potentials are only realized to a very limited degree.

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