Researcher Alaa Abdullah Al Ghorneh, a student in the Master’s program in Contemporary Public Relations, has defended her thesis titled “Media Frameworks for Palestinian Digital Human Rights Organizations in Highlighting Meta’s Policies for Blocking Palestinian Content in (2022-2023).”
This study aimed to clarify the media frameworks used by Palestinian human rights organizations concerned with digital rights, and to know the nature of their messages directed to the public when dealing with the violations committed by the Meta administration against Palestinian digital content. It also aimed to identify the most important mental and emotional appeals that these organizations use when communicating with the public.
The present study adopted the mixed-methods approach, by choosing the descriptive and analytical method, and taking the media framing theory. The researcher analyzed the content of all posts via Meta (Facebook and Instagram) by the Arab Center for Social Media Development “7amleh” and the Sada Social Center. The researcher also conducted in-depth interviews with all employees of the two centers working on the Meta platforms.
The findings of the content analysis concluded that legal and human rights topics were the most frequently used by the two centers and awareness-raising objectives were the highest at the 7amleh center, while news was the highest at Sada Social, and images and text were the most frequently used forms at the two centers. The study also revealed that both centers depended on their employees as a media source. Human rights activists were the most active forces at the 7amleh Center, while digital activists were the most prominent at Sada Social. Both centers relied on rational appeals in their messages, and the “issue-specific” framework of blocking Palestinian digital content was also the most widely used in both centers. The most prominent results of the interviews were the reliance of the 7amleh Center and Sada Social Center on raising awareness among their audiences about digital rights, and the two centers’ attention to international laws in order to highlight the illegality of violations against Palestinian content.
The thesis was supervised by Dr. Nahida Makhamda. The committee of examiners included Dr. Ibrahim Al Akkah and Dr. Omar Abu Arqoub.