Assessing the ‘impact’ of a media event: An Innisian appraisal of Al Jazeera’s Palestine Papers leak

Introduction

Between 23 January 2011 and 26 January 2011, the Al Jazeera (AJ) satellite news network and the Guardian newspaper simultaneously released the ‘Palestine Papers’, nearly 17,000 leaked documents detailing the inner workings of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process from 1999 to 2010. It was immediately feared in some quarters – and hoped in others – that the leak would disrupt the ongoing peace talks and possibly even ignite a third Palestinian intifada (uprising) against the Israeli occupation. Under the circumstances, such an outcome seemed plausible. The papers revealed that the Palestinian Authority had offered concessions to the Israeli government that went well beyond the Palestinian national consensus, yet failed to elicit greater willingness on Israel’s part to allow for the creation of a viable Palestinian state. In addition, the papers were published shortly after the onset of the first Arab Spring uprising in Tunisia and just days before similar demonstrations erupted in Egypt. In both cases, wide-scale protests were triggered by mass and digitally mediated ‘moral shocks’ comparable to the Palestine Papers leak.

It soon became apparent that the AJ leak would not spark a third intifada. Furthermore, it appeared to have few, if any, discernible effects on either the course or substance of the American-sponsored peace talks, or the policy positions of the parties involved. However, this does not mean that the publication of the Palestine Papers did not have important consequences. The main problem in recognizing them stems from habits of mind which lead one to consider such media events primarily in terms of their more immediate impact. In fact, an orientation towards the relatively short-term and quantifiable outcomes of specific media messages has characterized much, if not most, traditional media effects research, itself largely the outgrowth of a preoccupation with a relatively narrow range of concerns within the fields of psychology and political science. For example, countless studies have been devised to investigate such matters as the potential relationships between violent television content and childhood delinquency, or the effects of pornography consumption and male violence against women (Gauntlett, 2005). Likewise, the political science literature abounds with studies of public opinion, particularly as it pertains to the effects of political campaigns on voter attitudes and behaviour (Newton, 2006).

It is not my contention that traditional approaches to the study of media effects or the methods with which they have long been closely associated – that is, controlled experiments and survey research – lack merit or are not appropriate for dealing with many types of problems. However, an accompanying tendency to try and isolate media messages as independent causal variables affecting the behaviour of a specific demographic, public, or set of individuals arguably creates serious impediments for appreciating the fallout of politically charged news events such as those accompanying the death of a beloved public figure, a tragedy like the attacks of 9/11 or, as in the case of the Palestine Papers, the public disclosure of highly sensitive information. Of special concern here, such news stories inevitably receive attention from a diverse range of actors, and their ready incorporation into more than one type of media regime suggests that their effects will be both temporally and spatially diffuse. It is for these reasons that I have chosen to follow the lead of Harold Innis, deploying his notion of ‘bias’ as a heuristic tool to consider the Palestine Papers in terms of their space-binding and time-binding attributes and tendencies as these take shape and attenuate within and across relevant institutional, social, and media environments.

The fate and significance of the Palestine Papers are tied directly to long-running sources of political tension and social struggle which continue to manifest themselves not only in the Middle East, but also among globally dispersed social networks, governments, and organizations with a vested interest in the Israel–Palestine conflict. Most attention will be restricted here to the importance of the leak for three, sometimes overlapping sets of actors, namely the AJ news organization, Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, and global activists concerned with Palestinian rights. I will argue that to more fully appreciate the potential ‘impact’ of the Palestine Papers leak, it is necessary to consider the leaked documents not only as the subject of a news story directed to a mass audience at a given point in time, but also as digital objects actively deployed within the shifting and overlapping networks of communication associated with the agendas of disparate sets of actors. Ultimately, any impacts generated by the leak will depend as much upon the adeptness with which the time- and space-binding properties of relevant media are recognized and exploited by interested parties, as upon the larger political forces and historic contingencies influencing its reception.

Innis’ conception of ‘bias’

As Harold Innis’ (1950, 1951) pioneering work on communication made clear, the functions and qualities most commonly associated with various media are not simply a straightforward reflection of their physical makeup or technological capacities. This is because any such qualities may only manifest themselves relationally. The durability of parchment, the speed of traditional (snail) mail, and the suitability of radio for addressing mass audiences are all examples. Moreover, the biases expressed in the world-views, values, and goals of those who monopolize the dominant means of communication during any given phase of a society’s history condition us to view some traits and uses of specific media as more self-evident than others. When we hear the term ‘billboard’, for example, advertising may be the first thing that springs to mind even though other uses for this medium are conceivable. In other words, Innis recognized that all media, whether modern technologies such as television or natural substances like stone, possess more than one set of attributes which may be called out or ‘evoked’ to serve the varied purposes of those who exploit them (Commor, 2001).

Because Innis has often been regarded as a technological determinist, the above points are worth raising at the outset of any discussion of his ideas. The charge of determinism stems both from the fact that Innis typically referred to the ‘bias’ of various media in terms of their ‘space-binding’ versus ‘time-binding’ capacities, and from a misreading of his work which suggests that Innis viewed the latter as the independent determinants of any given society’s evolution. With respect to the first point, Innis did speak of different media as ‘emphasizing’ either time or space. For example, Innis discussed stone as time-binding since it may readily be used to create buildings or monuments which may endure for millennia. It is also a relatively heavy substance and difficult to move great distances easily, hence less amenable for rapid communication across space. As such, Innis contrasted it with paper, the space-binding qualities of which emanate from its lightness and ease of transport over broad territories within a short-time frame. As previously indicated however, the time- or space-binding properties of media are contingent qualities which are only likely to be experienced, and hence extensively utilized as such, under particular social and historic circumstances.

Innis maintained that empires and institutions that are heavily biased towards the domination of space, as well as those overly preoccupied with enduring through time, exhibit imbalances that may ultimately lead to their collapse. In such cases, an overdependence on certain forms of media may restrict or limit prevailing understandings of reality and/or exacerbate organizational weaknesses in a manner that encourages even greater reliance on the medium or media in question, leading to further imbalance. For example, Innis (1951) maintained that early in the history of ancient Egypt, the success of the monarchy in acquiring control over space ‘necessitated a concern with problems of continuity or time’ (p. 34). Equilibrium was re-established only after greater emphasis was placed on time-binding practices such as the construction of pyramids, mummification, and the inscription of sacred knowledge in durable media like stone and clay. During a later period, however, an over-reliance on time-binding media was associated with a rigidly hierarchical and inward-looking society, unable to deal effectively with external threats (Innis, 1951: 96).

When contemplating such examples, several points should be kept in mind. First, the notion of bias was employed by Innis not only when considering traditional forms of media, but also with reference to the proclivities and dispositions of individuals and to the orientations of institutions such as libraries, universities, interest groups and lobbies, religious organizations, professional associations, and so on. Insofar as media technologies, organizations, and individuals all exhibit bias and/or pursue competing interests, it is the dialectical interplay among them, along with external social and environmental influences, which ultimately directs the course of social change. For Innis, communication lies at the heart of such interaction since it is needed for the coordination of all human activity and the preservation of all knowledge (Blondheim, 2004). Relatedly and significantly in view of present concerns, achieving balance in the pursuit of institutional or organizational goals is only likely when relevant social actors remain attentive to the time- and space-binding potentials of the media they utilize.

The value of Innis’ concerning media, therefore, lies in their holism – media ‘effects’ are always contingent – because the concept of bias provides a flexible heuristic tool for probing the roles played by various communication technologies with respect to changing arrangements of power and dynamics of social struggle (Commor, 2001). At the same time, the notions of time- and space-binding media in no way detract from the importance of human agency when considering the course of social change. With these points in mind, we may better consider the significance which the Palestine Papers may or may not hold in terms of their time- and space-binding potential, and in what contexts. It seems wise to begin by turning attention to the goals and outlook of AJ, the Arab satellite news organization to whom the Palestine Papers were leaked.

The ‘biases’ of AJ

Through its publication of the Palestine Papers, AJ worked to transform a compilation of meeting minutes, emails, and assorted transcripts documenting over 10 years of Israeli–Palestinian negotiations into both a major news story and a readily accessible information resource. To help achieve these goals and ensure even greater exposure, AJ shared the transcripts with The Guardian in advance of publication. However, the focus here will remain on AJ. In addition to its status as the original recipient of the leak, AJ was also uniquely positioned to present the related story to a vast Arab audience in the form of a major scandal. To better appreciate this point, it is worth briefly taking stock of AJ’s dual status as both a regional institution committed to the time-binding project of consolidating an enduring pan-Arab identity, and a competitive media organization engaged in the space-binding pursuit of expanding its global audience base. A few preliminary comments concerning AJ’s rise as a news organization are needed in this regard before turning to the specific case of the Palestine Papers.

Since its inception in Qatar in 1996, AJ has played a leading role in the creation of a pan-Arab public sphere. As Lynch (2006) observes, the latter differs from the original Habermasian conception of a public sphere in that it does not function internally to a single – liberal democratic – state. However, AJ arguably has provided the nucleus for a true public sphere in the sense that ‘self-identified Arabs routinely and frequently invoke it as such, via media that reach the prospective members of the public, about matters collectively defined as a common interest’ (Lynch, 2006: 55). AJ’s unique relationship to the Qatari state enables this reality. While the Qatari government provides AJ with funding, the station operates relatively independently in terms of exercising control over its news content. In this respect, it is more like public media such as the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the former employer of most of AJ’s original staff, than it is to either state-controlled media or to commercial media like National Broadcasting Company NBC or Cable News Network (CNN). At the same time, AJ competes with the latter by providing 24-hour news coverage of world and regional events, but from a distinctively Arab perspective.

While AJ was not the first satellite TV station to appear in the Middle East, it was the first to provide the Arab citizens of authoritarian states with what was most considered ‘real news’ in the form of critical investigative journalism (El-Nawawy and Iskander, 2003). Significantly, AJ engaged vigorously with contentious topics that had formerly been kept off-limits or received only superficial media attention, but which held great concern for the citizens of states across the Arab world. It regularly addressed such sensitive issues as the nature of foreign intervention in the region, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, gender politics, and the contested role of religion in government. In addition, AJ regularly reported on regional violations of human rights and political corruption and drew attention to widespread dissatisfaction with prevailing arrangements of government and associated economic policies. In the process, the station gained the enmity of many Arab governments while simultaneously becoming enormously popular and setting the bar for emerging competitors. By the early 2000s, AJ was watched almost universally across the Arab world (Lynch, 2012).

The atmosphere of media openness that AJ introduced to the region was complemented by the growth of Internet access throughout the Middle East and North Africa and the increasing popularity of social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. As a growing body of research attests, the latter provided the safe communicative space formerly absent in many Arab states needed for citizens to identify common areas of political aspiration and grievance and create the ‘civil society scaffolding’ needed for effective grass-roots political mobilization (Howard and Hussain, 2011). Together, these mass and social media developments came to play a direct role in ‘triggering, amplifying, and coordinating’ the Arab Spring uprisings (Castells, 2012: 26). AJ’s role in this regard remains a source of pride for the network, one which the station’s staff and leadership link directly to their self-described mission of emulating ‘the best media in developed countries: extracting information from the powerful to pass it on to the ultimate source of power – the people’ (Khanfar, 2011: para. 9).

The above quote was taken from an article entitled Al-Jazeera is helping to break the silence, which appeared in The Guardian on 7 February 2011. Wadah Khanfar, who served as AJ’s director general from 2006 to 2011, wrote the piece. In it, he emphasizes the complementary role played by AJ and new media with reference to the Arab Spring:

[ … ] it is the increasingly powerful alliance between free mainstream media and new media – pioneered by al-Jazeera in the Middle East – that is today leading to the exponential spread of information to and from the region. Through intrepid social networking, images of the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings have gone from local villages to our global audience of more than 200 million. We were not only the first, we were everywhere: deploying well ahead of the tipping points that everyone recognized (Khanfar, 2011: para. 6).

Khanfar (2011) concludes by asserting that ‘the fate of the Middle East can no longer be decided behind closed doors’ (para. 11). Significantly, this same article also makes direct reference to the Palestine Papers leak.

Innis assessed the health and long-term viability of human institutions in terms of their capacity to strike an effective balance between an orientation towards time and the effective management of space. As Commor (2001) observes, for Innis, ‘a communication medium may facilitate the capacity to control space as a necessary prerequisite to increasing control over time’, while under other circumstances, ‘similar attempts to increase control over space could lead to a decline in the capacity to control time’ (p. 276). AJ has so far proven adept at utilizing satellite and digital technologies to support its time-binding and space-binding interests in a mutually reinforcing manner. Just as the creation of a pan-Arab public sphere meant overcoming the communicative barriers which formerly separated the citizens of disparate Arab states, the station’s broader appeal as an alternative news source stems directly from its association with the very collective identity it helped consolidate and make more durable. Viewed in this way, AJ’s continued success hinges upon its ability to address a vast and widely dispersed Arab audience in terms of what El-Nawawy and Iskandar (2003) describe as the Arab peoples’ ‘sense of joint destiny’ (p. 20).

The Palestine Papers leak as a breaking news story

Many, if not most, media ‘scandals’ are heavily space-biased events. The primary goal of those who leak or uncover potentially shocking information, as well as of the media organizations which disseminate it as news, is typically to attract as much attention from as wide an audience as possible within the shortest possible time frame. This is most apparent with respect to stories carried in the tabloid media and/or those dealing with the sexual foibles or personal misconduct of politicians and celebrities. In such cases, the key motivation is to boost ratings and increase profits over the short term. That audiences remember these scandals is of secondary import. In fact, in many cases, it is more desirable from the perspective of those leaking information that the related story be forgotten once it has served its intended purpose. Relevant examples include smear campaigns involving unsubstantiated rumours about political targets during run-ups to elections, or disinformation fed to media outlets to help justify military aggression as witnessed prior to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

AJ’s handling of the Palestine Papers leak bears only a partial resemblance to the types of situations referred to above. Certainly, the station hoped that the story would capture the attention of a vast global audience, reinforcing its reputation as a headline-making news organization in the process. However, what is most striking about AJ’s coverage of the leak is the clear linkage between the nature of the station’s reporting on the topic and its sense of historic mission as a news organization deeply implicated in the political transformations sweeping the Arab world. The release of the Pentagon Papers, which led to the Watergate scandal of 1972, provides a useful if imperfect analogy. The former case involved top-secret military files concerning US activities in Vietnam. As with the Palestine Papers, the information was leaked to a major news organization – in this case The New York Times – by an institutional insider. And in both instances, the whistle-blowers and news outlets in question deemed the leaked information to be of great concern for their respective publics.

In the case of the Pentagon Papers, the resulting scandal could fairly be described as ‘monumental’ – that is, enduring and time-binding – in the sense that its legacy has become firmly established in American national consciousness. AJ’s journalists treated the Palestine Papers leak as if it held similar time-binding potential vis-à-vis the trans-national Arab public. The sense of gravity with which the story was broken is noted by Aref Hijjawi, a Palestinian media scholar who served as programme director for the AJ Arabic channel at the time of the leak. He remarks, somewhat disapprovingly, that in the days between the Tunisian and Egyptian revolts, the network ‘embarked on a strange campaign’ (Hijjawi, 2011: 68):

For four consecutive days, Al-Jazeera allotted many hours to a multitude of programs and interviews surrounding the issue. The campaign adopted a strident tone, and an oddly theatrical staging which lessened its impact [ … ].

[ … ] The Palestine Papers revealed little of note and resulted in an opposite effect to the one expected: The Palestinian Authority ended up receiving support from people who would not have defended it otherwise (Hijjawi, 2011: 69).

Hijjawi believes AJ was able to redeem itself as an even-handed and legitimate Arab news organization through its willingness to allow Palestinian Authority representatives such as chief negotiator Saeb Erekat to respond at length to criticism on its programmes. Moreover, the station soon felt compelled to direct most of its attention elsewhere. Hijjawi (2011) notes that on 25 January 2011 AJ quickly relegated the Palestine Papers to a special section of its online website and got ready to cover the Egyptian uprising which had broken out that day.

Despite AJ’s ongoing and close coverage of ensuing events in Egypt, the leak did remain a key focus for the station. Furthermore, it was consistently portrayed as an historic turning point, potentially sounding the death knell of the American-sponsored peace talks that began at Oslo in 1993. It is significant in this regard that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza may readily be understood not only as an injustice towards the Palestinians, but also as a microcosm of the relationship between the larger Arab world and the foreign powers which have attempted to dominate it for the past century. This point is underscored in the article, Al-Jazeera is helping to break the silence, where the broad themes of a regional political awakening and a new age of information transparency are tied directly to both the historic importance of Palestine and to the specific case of the leaked documents. The piece opens with the following statement:

It is almost a century since the state borders that today divide the Middle East were drawn up. The shape of the region was negotiated behind closed doors and imposed by colonial powers without consulting its people. The impact of those deals still haunts the region and, many would argue, plays a central role in its instability (Khanfar, 2011: para. 1).

When referring directly to the leak, Khanfar (2011) notes the angry reaction of the Palestinian Authority, likening it to other cases where Arab governments have accused AJ of destabilizing the region and betraying Arab national interests, but who actually ‘hope to keep their people in the dark about the reality of their own lives’(para. 9). The Palestinian Authority’s response was surely anticipated. Ziyad Clot, who passed the documents to AJ, had acted as a legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiators for most of 2008. In a contribution to AJ entitled Palestine Papers: Why I blew the whistle, Clot (2011) states that he resigned after concluding that the peace process was ‘a deceptive farce, whereby biased terms were unilaterally imposed by Israel and systematically endorsed by the US and EU capitals’ ( para. 5). Clot (2011) contends that a key assumption of the negotiations, namely that ‘the Palestinians could effectively negotiate their rights and achieve self-determination while enduring the hardship of the Israeli occupation’, was deeply flawed (para. 1).

The main line of criticism throughout the station’s reporting on the Palestine Papers is that the Palestinian Authority had performed poorly as an advocate of collective Palestinian rights and statehood and had done so either as the result of corruption, incompetence, weakness or some combination of these. Commentary to this effect dominates a series of articles dealing specifically with the leak, conveniently organized and archived for the reader. The first, Introducing the Palestine Papers, stresses the nature and importance of what the documents reveal. The topics it lists include the Palestinian Authority’s willingness to concede illegal settlements in East Jerusalem, compromises it was willing to make on the right of return for Palestinian refugees, details of its security cooperation with Israel, and its willingness to collude with the United States and Israel in a bid to postpone referral of a major report into potential Israeli war crimes in Gaza to the United Nations (UN) Security Council (Carlstrom, 2011). This narrative guidance to the reader is crucial, given the sheer volume of the documents in question. Numbering close to 17,000, they are not easily digested and are unlikely to be consulted directly by most visitors to the AJ website.

A related theme throughout much of the relevant commentary is that the Palestinian Authority is out of step with the changes sweeping the region. For example, in an article entitled Two-state solution: A post-mortem, author Sandy Tolan (2011) comments on the Palestinian Authority’s policy of banning demonstrations of solidarity with the Tunisian and Egyptian protestors:

You could not find a more apt symbol of a corroded and irrelevant Palestinian regime, shockingly out of touch with its people and the jubilation of Tahrir Square, and structurally unable to seize the moment. Now, with the PA’s negotiations team in disarray, it is hard to imagine Palestinians in the West Bank again putting their trust in the ‘authority’, or in the wreckage of an Oslo process tied to a Middle Eastern order that no longer exists. (para. 20)

Tolan’s comments draw attention to several important concerns, including the immediate short-term reactions of Palestinians living in the occupied territories to the leak, and the degree to which Palestinians identify with the Arab youth uprisings in Egypt and elsewhere. With respect to both issues, it should be emphasized that while publication of the Palestine Papers did not result in a full-scale Palestinian uprising, this does not mean that there was no Palestinian reaction at all.

Hijjawi’s contention, cited earlier, that the Palestinian Papers revealed ‘little of note’, alludes to an important reality. Those living under Israeli military occupation are well aware of the inherently weak position of the Palestinian Authority negotiators, a fact that might help to explain a degree of forbearance in the face of their leadership’s failure to substantially advance the cause of statehood in the years following the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords. Likewise, Palestinians recognize that Israel is America’s most favoured client-state and that the Palestinian Authority lacks any real leverage in the talks. This reality was underscored in February 2011, when the United States vetoed yet another UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s occupation practices. In fact, this action may be understood as one direct outcome of the leak. To save face in the wake of the Palestine Papers scandal, the Palestinian Authority felt compelled to push for a new resolution condemning Israel’s settlement building and demanding a freeze on further construction.

The above points notwithstanding, there is little evidence to support Hijjawi’s additional suggestion that AJ’s reporting resulted in greater sympathy for the Palestinian Authority. In fact, a poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (2011) in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during 17 March 2011–19 March 2011 found that the Palestinian Authority was negatively affected by the leak. This poll revealed a marked drop in support for the governing organization, along with a decrease in the level of satisfaction with the performance of President Mahmoud Abbas. Accusations from the Palestinian Authority leadership that AJ was conspiring against it were rejected by a large majority of Palestinians who believed that the station’s main interest lay in seeking the truth. Half of the public concluded that ‘the PA’s negotiating position was not committed to the vital goals and interests of the Palestinian people’ (Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 2011: 1). The same report notes that AJ represents the most watched TV news station in the territories, where it is also considered the most credible.

The poll cited above also found that 92 per cent of Palestinians sympathized with the demonstrators in Arab countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen (Shikaki and Ladadweh, 2011: 2). In this light, it bears mentioning that not only the Palestinian Authority leadership in the West Bank, but also Hamas in Gaza, were made uneasy by the Arab Spring uprisings. While one-third of West Bank respondents were found to favour ‘regime change’, the same held for two-thirds of Gaza residents (Shikaki and Ladadweh, 2011: 2). Moreover, Palestinians have long felt frustrated by the split in their leadership which they see as contributing to the weak position of the Palestinian Authority negotiators as well as to the vulnerable position of Palestinians more generally. It is significant, therefore, that in the weeks and months immediately following the leak, demonstrations broke out in the West Bank and Gaza to demand unity between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. As Beinin (2011) asserts, the largest of these demonstrations, which was organized by what came to be known as the 15 March Youth Movement, likely represented ‘the most direct Palestinian expression of the ‘Arab awakening’ of 2010–2011’ (para. 1).

Taken together, the available evidence suggests that the main effect of the news leak on the Palestinian street was to exacerbate an existing trend: increasing frustration with the US-sponsored peace process. Moreover, and as discussed in the next section, Palestinians and their supporters around the world are increasingly pursuing alternative strategies to end the occupation. However, it should also be recognized that while the Palestine Papers scandal had an immediate and measurable impact on Palestinian attitudes, and while it will almost certainly remain a key point of reference for AJ’s journalists – and hence within the Arab public sphere – for many years to come, as a news story it was never likely to have had either a marked short-term effect or to play an enduring time-binding role vis-à-vis Western, and particularly American, public opinion. Rather, and as will be argued in the next section, the greatest import the leaked documents are likely to hold outside the Arab world lies less in their capacity to serve as a memorable news event and more in terms of their enduring utility as a resource for activists concerned with Palestinian human and national rights.

The Palestine Papers as digital artefact

As emphasized early in this article, the time-binding versus space-binding attributes of any given medium, institution or substance should not be understood as unchanging properties inherent to ‘things in themselves’, but rather as qualities which take shape relationally within specific contexts of action. This point holds relevance not only when considering the Palestine Papers as a news story in the conventional sense, but also with respect to their status as ‘digital objects’. As Poster (2001) has emphasized, digital media partake of a radically different material regime than older media, and digital objects differ in key respects from other cultural artefacts. These differences have a direct bearing on their utility for communicating either down through time or across space. Paradoxically, and unlike the case of print or broadcast media, ‘the temporal instantaneity of digital texts undermines their spatial stability’. Hypertexts such as the Palestine Papers documents may be ‘everywhere at once’, yet subsist in space ‘only at the whim of the reader’. Similarly, they ‘have more permanence than paper in the sense that they may be distributed or copied without alternation’, but at the same time ‘have no permanence whatsoever’ (Poster, 2001: 92–93).

These unusual qualities of hypertext imply a further, related difference between digital and traditional mass – that is, print and broadcast – media. This concerns the radically indeterminate character of digital objects and the ease with which they may be appropriated to suit the creative intent or social/political agendas of disparate individuals and groups (Poster, 2001). Hypertexts are far more amenable than other texts or cultural objects to modification and resignification, and/or to redistribution along countless communication pathways. As emphasized by Castells (2012), ‘digital communication is multimodal and allows constant reference to a global hypertext of information whose components can be remixed by the communicative actor according to specific projects of communication’ (p. 7). These points underscore the need to consider the Palestine Papers not only as a breaking news story, but also as digital artefacts capable of existing within multiple communicative networks simultaneously.

It is worth recalling that in addition to constituting a news network, AJ is itself coextensive with other networks of actors utilizing the Internet. For example, and as previously indicated, the station took a leading role in terms of providing news coverage of the early Arab Spring. Furthermore, it was more than simply a passive observer. This was particularly true in the case of Egypt, when the station relied heavily not only on information and imagery supplied by its own staff of reporters, but also on newsfeeds streamed in real time by activists on the ground (Castells, 2012: 60). Egyptians and other Arabs in turn looked to AJ to gain a larger perspective on events unfolding in Tahrir Square and elsewhere. In the process, the station’s broadcasts instilled a growing sense that serious political change was possible, thereby encouraging greater citizen involvement in the protests (Castells, 2012: 60). AJ’s reputation as an authentic voice of ordinary Arabs was enhanced as a result. For these reasons, it would not be an exaggeration to say that during much of the early Arab Spring, AJ represented an important node in the activist networks of the uprisings.

AJ’s publication of the Palestine Papers necessarily links the network to yet another set of global actors, namely those concerned with Palestinian national aspirations. Inspired by WikiLeaks, AJ now exploits the highly interconnected and space-binding attributes of the global media environment through use of its own ‘transparency unit’ specifically dedicated to receiving leaked information from anonymous sources. It should be emphasized in this regard that information disclosures of the size and scale of the Palestine Papers leak were impossible before the advent of digital technology. This reality in turn holds implications for citizen-based activism, a fact recognized by the news station. The previously cited webpage, Introducing the Palestine Papers, states that the archived documents ‘will prove to be of inestimable value to journalists, scholars, historians, policymakers and the general public’ (Carlstrom, 2011: 5). Logic suggests that for the foreseeable future, those most likely to make frequent reference to these documents, along with any accompanying news coverage deemed useful, are activists concerned with ending Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.

The ease with which digital texts such as the Palestine Papers may be incorporated within the Web networks of relevant activists may be highlighted with a simple illustration. AJ’s cache of articles about the leak includes contributions by the Palestinian American activist, Ali Abunimah. They are followed by brief comments about the author that note that he is a ‘co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, an award winning online publication about Palestine and the Palestine conflict’ (see Abunimah, 2011a, Al-Jazeera). Electronicintifada.net includes extensive references to the Palestine Papers. At the time of writing, these included a tweet referred to on the website which reads ‘I was impressed that the BBC interviewer brought up the #PalestinePapers’. Within the tweet a link is provided to a YouTube video in which Abunimah (2013) is interviewed on BBC News (28 July 2013) about John Kerry’s attempts to revive the peace process. When the interviewer refers to the Palestine Papers, Abunimah takes this as a cue to reinforce his argument that ‘we’ve seen this same charade time and time again’. Next to the video, YouTube lists other clips dealing with various aspects of Middle East politics and/or the Palestine Papers, many of which might interest the visitor.

While the example provided above may seem unremarkable, it draws attention to the ways in which the time- and space-binding functions of digital objects may shift in conjunction with the activities and goals of individuals and organizations operating online. For example, the YouTube video referred to above originally took the form of a news segment within a longer television broadcast. As such, it represented a space-biased communicative act aimed at engaging a mass audience at a specific point in time. It was intended primarily for viewing by a national public and/or by members of a broader global audience who look to the BBC, justifiably or otherwise, as a trusted brand likely to provide ‘objective’ reporting on important events. However, as an element deliberately incorporated within the Web network of a committed Palestinian activist, the same text will appeal mainly to those sharing the same outlook as the host of Electronic Intifada. No longer broadcast to a mass public, it will serve a new space-binding role by facilitating communication among, and informing the activist strategies of, widely dispersed networks of individuals and organizations committed to the Palestinian cause.

As enduring points of reference within online activist networks, the Palestine Papers and related commentary may also function in a complementary time-binding capacity. As McCracken (2017) observes, archival material may readily be utilized as evidence in activist campaigns, bearing witness to the achievements and travails of those directly involved. This may be seen on the website of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), where the memory of Rachel Corrie, an American peace activist who was repeatedly run over by an Israeli army bulldozer in 2003 while attempting to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian home, is kept alive along with those of others slain or injured while engaging in non-violent protest. Recoding key events in which activists themselves did not play a role may prove equally valuable. For example, the website of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) provides a fact sheet dealing with the Palestine Papers leak, placing it within a timeline listing related developments pertaining to the Israel–Palestine negotiations.

If the Palestine Papers are to have any appreciable impact on Western public opinion, it is unlikely to be the result of any lasting impression left from the circulation of the Palestine Papers as a breaking news story. Rather, any such time-binding effects are likely to be indirect and channelled largely through the medium of social movement activity. This possibility is hinted at on the blog, Mondoweiss. This website, which was initiated by American journalist Philip Weiss in 2006, advocates the non-violent strategy now widely known as BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) to end the Israeli occupation. In one notable contribution to the site, activist Tom Suarez (2014) addresses the challenge presented to the movement by a non-sympathetic media establishment:

Whatever its imperfectness, BDS is the most powerful tool available for forcing the Palestine issue, so systematically sidelined and distorted by the mass media, to the fore. This is because the very utterance of BDS in relation to Israel begs the question, ‘Why?’ It forces the media to respond where it could otherwise ignore, and it elicits a desire to know why in the mind of the ordinary fair-minded citizen whose understanding has been controlled by that media (para. 24).

The BDS movement is the outgrowth of a 2005 call by leaders of Palestinian civil society for global grass-roots action aimed at increasing pressure on Israel to end the occupation. It has grown rapidly to include numerous activist organizations, churches, unions, academic associations, human rights groups, and so on. The justification for BDS is premised largely on the reality that since those states that possess the clout to compel Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territory have so far proven unable or unwilling to use it, the impetus must come from members of global civil society. Since the unwilling states in question include, first and foremost, the United States, but also various European Union (EU) countries with close trade and cultural ties to Israel, those advocating BDS have been particularly active and visible in the West. Perhaps unsurprisingly, references to the Palestine Papers are now commonplace on the websites of groups and organizations associated with the movement.

In an interview with The Christian Science Monitor, Abunimah (2011b) makes the following comments about the Palestine Papers, which suggest their potential worth to activists:

Some might say that the revelations about the peace process are hardly surprising. After all, its credibility was already threadbare. I disagree. What kept it on life support until now was the opacity and mystique that came from Mitchell’s tight-lipped shuttle diplomacy, from the hopes that Mr. Obama was somehow really different, and that at the end of all this the United States would show its hand and pressure Israel to do the things it doesn’t want to do but that are needed for peace.

The Palestine Papers show us once and for all that this is all a bluff [ … ]. (para. 12, 13)

Abunimah’s comments, along with those of Suarez cited above, deserve careful consideration. On the one hand, the Palestine Papers clearly hold importance for those promoting BDS since they bolster the position that non-violent activism provides the best path forward in the face of demonstrably ineffective peace talks. At the same time, they provide an indirect but important reminder that those well-versed in the history of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict are not the only ones who ‘learned nothing new’ from the leak. The corporate news apparatus of Israel’s main benefactor continues to ensure that the same holds true for most of the American public.

When covering foreign conflicts, particularly those in which the polity has a clear stake, the output of US news organizations serves largely to normalize American exceptionalism in world affairs (Mirrlees, 2016; Said, 1997). Relatedly, the US media environment is conspicuously space-biased in character, dominated as it is by sound bites, the reporting of selected violent incidents in real time, celebrity and political scandals, the latest ‘presidential tweets’, and so on. As such, it does little to facilitate a nuanced, historically grounded understanding of world events, particularly when the latter might cast doubt on America’s claim to being the world’s leading defender of human rights and political freedom. However, it is also a truism of international relations that nation-states have no permanent friends or enemies, but only permanent interests. This point holds considerable relevance when reflecting on the fact that the situation in Israel–Palestine remains inherently unstable.

As historian Ian Lustick (2013) observed in a contribution The New York Times,

those who assume that Israel will always exist as a Zionist project should consider how quickly the Soviet, Pahlavi Iranian, apartheid South African, Baathist Iraqi and Yugoslavian states unravelled, and how little warning even sharp-eyed observers had that such transformations were imminent.

Moreover, established wisdom in US political and academic circles concerning the future of Israel–Palestine does appear to be shifting, even if only gradually and largely imperceptible. It is notable that while President Donald Trump has chosen to defy the international consensus by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, other prominent figures, including former US presidents Jimmy Carter and Barak Obama, have declared the status quo in Palestine to be unsustainable. When courting public opinion and attempting to give alternative models of Israeli–Palestinian coexistence for greater common-sense appeal, activists such as those involved in the BDS movement must remain alert to any related changes in mainstream discourse, no matter how subtle.

Perhaps more than any other piece of evidence, the Palestine Papers underscore the futility of pursuing business as usual with respect to achieving peace in Israel–Palestine. As the possibility of a viable two-state solution continues to recede, the salience of these documents for establishing the historic record surrounding US-sponsored peace talks will only increase, particularly for those committed to alternative visions of Israeli–Palestinian society. As Lustick (2013) remarks, ‘one mixed state emerging from prolonged and violent struggles over democratic rights is no longer inconceivable’. The time may come, perhaps sooner than many expect, when the United States will find itself compelled to reconsider its own position on the matter. If, or more likely when, it does, AJ’s coverage of the Palestine Papers leak will almost certainly appear far less quixotic and more prescient than it did to those initially sceptical of the news station’s devotion to the story. Through its extensive attention to the leak and the archiving of its contents, AJ has arguably helped consolidate its own long-term relevance to the Arab street and global south.

Closing remarks

Deploying Harold Innis’ (1950, 1951) conception of bias allowed for an appreciation of at least some of the ways that the time- and space-binding properties accruing to various media forms may both influence and reflect the projects and communication strategies pursued by diverse actors. More specifically, it underscored the fact that the most important impacts of a major news story may not be immediately measurable or readily detectable, particularly when relying upon traditional approaches to media effects. In the case of the Palestine Papers, the significance of this news leak arguably derived less from its potential to provoke dramatic short-term responses from a given public or set of political players, and more in terms of its capacity to exacerbate existing political tensions, its ongoing utility for activists, and its related capacity to serve as an enduring point of reference within larger national and global struggles for justice. Utilizing a conceptual framework sufficiently flexible and amenable for probing such possibilities remains critical. Fortunately, Innis left behind a set of heuristic tools uniquely well-suited for such a task.