Negotiated and mediated meanings: Ethnicity and politics in Israeli newspapers

In this article the author explores the ways in which the media articulate discursive structure and lived experience through an analysis of the covera ge of the 1999 Israeli national elections in one Israeli newspaper Recent c hanges in Israeli electoral law unleashed new social forces that granted ma jor political influence to ethnic parties. The renewed salience of (Jewish) ethnicity clashes, however, with dominant discourses of national identity, according to which a unitary Israeli identity subsumes particularistic Jew ish ethnicities, while silencing Palestinian identity. Such changes imply a n important role for the Israeli media, which has traditionally marked iden tity difference through distinct regimes for the expression and control of affect. The author examines constructions of affect, and their inscription onto particular social identities, in Yediot Ahronot, Israel's widest-circu lation daily.