Media Coverage of COVID-19 Mobile Phone Surveillance as a Non-Commemorative Site of Nazi Germany and Holocaust Remembrance

ABSTRACT

As part of its efforts to battle the spread of COVID-19, the Israel Security Agency (ISA, or the Shin Bet) has been authorized under Israeli Defense Emergency Regulations to track citizens' mobile phone geolocations. This case became a fertile ground for multiple stakeholders negotiating the image and role of digital technologies within socio-political exigencies. One important arena in which these discussions took place was Israeli news outlets. A thematic analysis of 155 news items from Ynet, Ha'aretz, Walla, and Mako revealed competing frames that legitimized or criticized ISA mobile phone surveillance. One of these frames employed the memory of the Holocaust as an interpretive locus for unpacking surveillance practices and their outcomes. In this article, we show how invoking the collective memory of the Holocaust became a journalistic tool for unpacking current events (and specifically those related to digital media), enhancing their value, and stressing their weight where a national persona is imagined in times of a global crisis.

keywords

COVID-19, mobile phone, surveillance, location tracking, Israel, non-commemorative collective memory, Holocaust remembrance

As part of its efforts to battle the spread of COVID-19, the Israel Security Agency (ISA, or the Shin Bet) has been authorized under Israeli Defense Emergency Regulations to track citizens' mobile phone geolocations. Through this act of surveillance, Israel became the only country worldwide to use its security branches to resolve a civic, medical crisis. This case became a fertile ground for multiple stakeholders negotiating the image and role of new media technologies [End Page 285] within socio-political exigencies. One important arena in which these discussions took place was the Israeli media.1

A thematic analysis of 155 journalistic items from Israeli mainstream newspapers,2 Ynet, Ha'aretz, Walla, and Mako revealed competing frames that legitimized or criticized ISA mobile phone surveillance. One of these frames employed the memory of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany as an interpretive locus for unpacking surveillance practices and their outcomes. As such, remembering the past became a practice found at the margins of reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic as it unfolded. We conceptualize this particular journalistic coverage of surveillance as a non-commemorative collective memory, where non-intentional commemorative practices led to the re-reading and negotiation of the past through current events and lenses.3

In what follows, we show how evoking the collective memory of the Holocaust became a journalistic tool for evaluating current events (and specifically those related to new communication technologies), enhancing their value, and stressing their weight where a national image is imagined in times of a global crisis. Specifically, we address the memory of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany as a means for criticizing state surveillance. At face value, the critical stance toward Israel's surveillance was communicated to the audience through an emotive rhetoric that used its disastrous past.

On Commemorative and Non-commemorative Collective Memory

Collective memory is defined as a social performance of evoking the past, which in turn plays a central role in creating the self-image of communities.4 In this context, remembering the past can be performed through intentional practices (for example, by means of remembrance days and commemoration monuments) or through unintentional practices, also conceptualized as non-commemorative collective memory.5 "The past endures in the present not only through self-consciously framed acts of commemoration," Michael Schudson tells us, "but through psychological, social, linguistic, and political processes that keep the past alive without necessarily intending to do so."6 The Watergate scandal became an example of such a non-commemorative form, commemorating the past without the intention of commemoration. Adding the suffix "-gate" when discussing scandals (Lewinskygate, Gamergate, and Deflategate, [End Page 286] for example)7 both positions the Watergate case as a lens through which other events are understood and evokes the memory of the scandal over and over again—reliving it and rewriting the event and its memory without the intention of commemorating it.

As such, non-commemorative collective memory is a process of remembrance without self-consciousness, or incorporation of the past into the present in ways that do not aim at commemoration that bears important social and political meanings. These non-commemorative forms render the past a fluid, constructed, and interpretive framework rather than a sealed, fixed moment in time.8 Even without the intentionality of commemorating, the use of past events as a lens through which the present is read renders the process of commemoration an ongoing endeavor.

While media coverage of the Holocaust as an intentional practice can be easily located and addressed (for example, on Israeli and international Holocaust remembrance days and other dates central to the commemoration calendar, in Holocaust museums, etc.), it is the non-intentional practice of remembering the Holocaust that can teach us about the ways societies imagine their present.9 In this review, we wish to present findings about the use of non-commemorative collective memory of the Holocaust in the context of new media and communication technology coverage. Specifically, we focus on the ways media items utilized the memory of the Holocaust to explain and contextualize ISA mobile phone surveillance. For that, a short review on mobile phone surveillance and journalistic framing is needed.

Mobile Phone Surveillance and Journalistic Framing

Recently, mobile phones have become an important tool in mediating health crises enabling adherence to health protocols, real-time consulting and support via calls and text messages, and emergency reporting.10 These, albeit aiding in important tasks, can also be understood as part of a growing trend of media technology surveillance as a whole, and in times of health crisis in particular. Given that much of the public's understandings of, and ability to react to, local and global health crises stem from information provided by mass media11 and given mainstream media's central role in communicating regulation and legislation of new technologies,12 more empirical evidence is needed about [End Page 287] journalistic coverage of communication technologies in times of crisis. This review attempts to provide some insights into this topic, focusing specifically on surveillance technologies.

Journalistic accounts of surveillance commonly produce both supportive and critical approaches, with emphasis on the former.13 While some popular press reported fears of collateral surveillance via location-aware mobile phones,14 and specifically losing privacy by way of state surveillance,15 the more prominent coverage that legitimized surveillance emphasized justifications for personal and national security.16 Within this discussion, media coverage of surveillance is understood as mostly superficial, largely overlooking socio-cultural, political, and ethical implications of the practice,17 thus negating citizens' understanding of the surveillance debate, and at times even distancing them from it.18 As such, we reflect in this article on the meanings of incorporating the memory of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany—which became over the years a prominent shared interpretive frame in the Israeli society—19 into the coverage of COVID-19 mobile phone surveillance.

Utilizing the Holocaust as an interpretive framework for understanding surveillance technology is not new. It was found that in the context of the Israeli Biometric Database project, the Holocaust was introduced into vernacular discourse to explain the worrisome aspects of surveillance where social media users constructed an equivalence between contemporary Israel and Nazi Germany using sensitive and extremely provocative language thus far considered rare and controversial.20 Avi Marciano suggests that this desacralization of the Holocaust was only found in vernacular discussions where official mainstream media maintained the prevalent dogma of Holocaust "uniqueness."21 In what follows, we suggest that changes have been made in this arena where some of the vernacular discourse rhetoric found its way into mainstream media coverage challenging the "Holocaust uniqueness dogma."22

Delegitimizing ISA Surveillance through Holocaust and Nazi Germany Remembrance

Media outlets covering ISA surveillance during the first wave of the pandemic stressed how the COVID-19 pandemic "is the first time Israel will enact cellular location tracking of citizens' mobile phones not in the framework of terror investigation."23 This required media outlets to re-think the relationship of [End Page 288] surveillance and the civic society, and in turn the relationship between the state and its citizens. In this process, the media utilized the memory of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany as an interpretive framework, inter alia by equating contemporary Israel with Nazi Germany and pointing out procedures enacted "then" and "there" as omens to the dangers experienced "here" and "now."

In an interview conducted by Ynet, journalists brought about an important call from Edward Snowden, who addressed the issue of mobile phone tracking in Israel,

"I truly find it hard to understand how this thing you have [ISA tracking] did not incite a major public outcry …" Snowden argued, adding: "we need to remember that a large portion of your population is there [in Israel] as a result of a horrible tragedy, an intentional horror created by abusing of the documentation system produced by the Nazis in Germany.24

The references to Nazi Germany continued in the interview:

Using mass surveillance against the entire population and the ability to use the gathered database with a swipe of a button without the supervision of the Parliament or courts of law should be extremely worrisome. And if it is not frightening people, I do not think there is anything I can say that will convince them, because surely Israelis are much more familiar than I am with the historical dangers of this kind of acts.25

Choosing Edward Snowden as the figure to discuss the issue plays on his appeal to knowledge and experience in the covered matter, being a renowned whistle-blower on state-led surveillance. Specific to the context of mobile phone tracking, Snowden added:

"It is already clear that systems designed to cope with the disease are too slow and too flawed. This is why governments prefer using these kinds of [technological surveillance] tools, excusing them as 'effective.' But the excuse of effectiveness stood at the heart of the most horrible governments in the last century."26 In this case, addressing the Holocaust and the memory of Nazi persecution signals ISA mobile phone tracking as illegitimate, constructing a critical stance toward the issue. It also reveals a case in which the Holocaust is being remembered without [End Page 289] self-consciousness of commemoration where technology is re-imagined as an important factor between Nazis and their victims.

In terms of word choice, alongside specific references to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust (as in Snowden's interview) a somewhat different, broad, or nonspecific references to Nazi Germany were found in the coverage. For example, in one of the early accounts addressing the topic, Haaretz's readers were informed that "at one and a half a.m., in a quick abduction, the transitioning government approved the most draconian regulations Israel has ever known in its history for mass surveillance of law-abiding citizen."27 The reporting went on, tying covered events with the history of "such measures":

And like in history books, most of the horrified, mentally drained, and shaken public, is not at all troubled with this attack on the most fundamental values of democracy … But history proved that providing governments with virtually unrestricted tools sponsored by panic will only lead to more and more of such measures, that themselves will also be enacted at one a.m. via alternate routes in the dark."28

Similar to the vocabulary chosen in Snowden's interview, media coverage here focused on history and "unrestricted tools" of somewhat illegitimate (according to the writer) governments. This correspondent does not directly use the terms Holocaust or Nazi Germany, such as in the earlier example, yet the constructed sentiment appears to be similar. Journalists at Walla provided readers with similar broad codes and interpretations, arguing that "we are familiar with demented outcomes in demented regimes."29 To that added reporters in Haaretz: "History is paved with examples in which emergency regulations became a custom."30

In this broader perspective, Germany remains a point of reference even if not specifically in the context of the Holocaust. Haaretz, for example, addressed mobile phone surveillance in the following manner: "You would not believe how quickly the ISA can turn into the Stasi. As quickly as a democracy turns into a dictatorship."31 The writer continued: "'Shame on you' people tell me, 'the Stasi? You compare our fine young men to the Stasi?' … Well, I hope [they are] not. The ISA is not yet the Stasi but it might become the Stasi. Give them [End Page 290] emergency defense regulations, remove supervision, give them orders and they will comply."32

The broad references to historical events and demented regimes were accompanied with specific vocabularies that stressed Nazi-like imageries. A piece from Haaretz shed light on the use of one such word, discussing the role of Professor Siegal Sadetzki, the director of public health in the Israeli Health Ministry during the first wave of the pandemic:

She is neither a leader nor a public figure, rather, she is only a senior administrator in the Ministry of Health; But when a country goes through accelerated processes of weakening democracy, slipping into a state of dictatorship and trampling the rule of law—a senior administrator like Sadetzki is exactly what a prime minister like Netanyahu needs. She serves him well. She and her very dangerous ideas … [she as an] architect of the totalitarian regime.33

A second example in Haaretz addressed "administrators" and the dangers of entrusting them with decision-making:

"Even if you trust the ISA … do you trust the Ministry of Health and all its administrators?" They continued: "So how can one defend us against state surveillance or sweeping invasion of privacy? How can we avoid the situation where an administrator in the Ministry of Health can know our location, know what we are doing on the phone?"34

In this case, as in the above example, choosing the word "administrator" is not coincidental. We argue that choosing the terms "administrators" and "architect" of a totalitarian regime joins an overall usage of vocabularies that echo Nazi Germany in Israeli culture: A fear of cruelty executed by civil servants entrusted with great power. Thus, media coverage juxtaposed Israel's COVID-19 surveillance with Nazi methods for tracking and documenting Jews in the Holocaust as part of an overall totalitarian regime controlling privacy and movement. Israel's surveillance system during the COVID-19 pandemic is constructed as a small step toward totalitarianism similar to that enacted in Nazi Germany.

Across the board, mobile phone surveillance joined a discursive construction equating contemporary Israel and Nazi Germany in the context of surveillance [End Page 291] technology. Similar to the discursive constructions in the coverage of other surveillance methods (e.g., biometric devices),35 references to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust that are already a consensual part of Israeli collective consciousness36 become a rhetorical tool for emotive construction of a catastrophe. The past is used here as a teachable moment in time—an omen for a slippery slope toward devastating outcomes.

To stress this point, we should briefly exemplify and contrast the vocabularies and images discussed thus far with other references to Germany existing in the coverage, ones that do not employ a rhetoric of warning through comparison. In some cases, Germany became a point of reference, where Walla, for example, suggests that: "In the early years of the ISA, their official website shamefully admits, 'it was tasked with state internal affairs which the government defined as national objectives that reflect the resilience of the state. Within these … aiding the police work against activists protesting the Reparations Agreement between Israel and Germany. …'"37 As such, it is apparent that references to Germany do not have to evoke a harsh comparison or dark imageries. They can, in fact, simply be a historical contextualization of the case at hand.

Reading Mobile Phone Surveillance through Lessons of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany

In this short review, we have shown how the media coverage of ISA COVID-19 surveillance included historical references that framed mobile phone tracking as part of a larger Jewish-related narrative. Historical narratives and memories, in this case, became a reference point to who we see ourselves as a society and a fertile ground for imagining a national character against a dark historic backdrop. Here, collective memory became a journalistic tool for meaning-making of current events and enhancing their value.38 Fear-based memory became a means for explaining complexity of an event, and its weight in the world.39 Employing this memory in the context that, at face value, seems the furthest from its occurrences; in the context of the mobile phone, as related to global health pandemic in the year 2020, teaches us that in the Israeli society, the memory of the Holocaust remains a handy, immediate framing device. This memory frame, whether explicit or implicit, broad or specific, allowed the construction of dreading, negatives frames of this regulation. Through references to the Holocaust and [End Page 292] Nazi Germany, journalists made themselves agents of memory "without the intention of commemorating."40

Literature on pandemic reporting suggests that during global health crises journalists often prompt fear through provocative language and visuals beyond what is deemed appropriate.41 The interpretive frames mentioned above do offer a critical point of view, questioning the need for Israel's mobile phone surveillance. Yet, when employing such emotive imageries and references, mainstream media outlets might miss their important role in promoting affective responses to, and management of, mortality, compromised safety, risk perceptions, and ability to enact informed decision-making during times of health crises.42

Moreover, we wish to suggest that utilizing the memory of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany as an interpretive frame in mainstream media coverage teaches us about the possible expansion of popular, even vernacular, rhetoric of remembrance into official one. This is an important finding, as so far two main trends were found to characterize the relationship between vernacular and dominant discourses in studies of online media platforms. On the one hand, it was found that vernacular discourse online tends to emulate dominant, official discourse of Holocaust remembrance, but not the other way around.43 On the other hand, it was found that vernacular discourses might negate, even criticize, dominant forms of Holocaust remembrance. In an analysis of Holocaust-related references framing Israeli biometric surveillance Marciano found that much of users' discussions of the topic online created a discursive construction of equivalence between contemporary Israel and Nazi Germany.44 In comparison, in institutional discourse on the topic, particularly in the media, no such comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany has been made or implied.

Interestingly, in the coverage of ISA mobile phone surveillance, these references (although much softer in nature than the ones users used in the biometric context) did find a place in mainstream media as well. Thus, we suggest here a third option, or a third relationship between vernacular and dominant Holocaust remembrance, in which dominant forms adopt narratives and rhetoric stemming from vernacular commemoration discourses. This might instruct us on the broadening nature of mainstream media coverage paradigms in times of social media prevalence, and in the context of the memory of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany in particular. [End Page 293]

Aya Yadlin

Aya Yadlin is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Communication at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Her research critically explores the role online media platforms play in processes of cultural negotiations in global contexts. aya.yadlin@biu.ac.il

Avi Marciano

Avi Marciano is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Communication Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, Israel. His research focuses on social, political, and ethical aspects of surveillance, with particular attention to parental surveillance. avimarci@bgu.ac.il

Notes

1. Yadlin, Aya, and Avi Marciano. "COVID-19 surveillance in Israeli press: Spatiality, mobility, and control." Mobile Media & Communication 10, no. 3 (2022): 421–447. https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579211068269 Marciano, Avi, and Aya Yadlin. "Media coverage of COVID-19 state surveillance in Israel: the securitization and militarization of a civil-medical crisis." Media, Culture & Society 44, no. 3 (2022): 445–463. https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437211037008

2. The corpus analyzed in this study consists of 155 journalistic items that covered ISA surveillance. We have collected all journalistic items (news reports, feature articles, editorial columns, and opinion pieces) that were published in Ynet, Ha'aretz, Walla, and Mako between two key dates: March 14, 2020, following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's first announcement about the implementation of ISA surveillance, to June 8, 2020, following Israeli Supreme Court's decision to discontinue the surveillance. This is considered the "first wave" of the pandemic in Israel.

3. Michael Schudson. "Lives, laws, and language: Commemorative versus non-commemorative forms of effective public memory." The Communication Review, 2, no. 1 (1997): 3–17; Michael Schudson. "Journalism as a Vehicle of Non-commemorative Cultural Memory." Journalism and Memory, pp. 85–96. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2014.

4. Aleida Assmann, "Transformations between History and Memory," Social Research: An International Quarterly, 75, no. 1 (2008): 49–72, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/527984; David Noon, "Operation Enduring Analogy: World War II, the War on Terror, and the Uses of Historical Memory," Rhetoric & Public Affairs 7, no. 3 (2004): 341, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41939926; Barbie Zelizer, "Reading the Past Against the Grain: The Shape of Memory Studies," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 12, no. 2 (1995): 214–239, https://doi.org/10.1080/15295039509366932.

5. Schudson, "Lives, laws, and language, 3–17.

6. Ibid, 3.

7. Aya Yadlin-Segal, "'It happened before and it will happen again': Online user comments as a noncommemorative site of Holocaust remembrance." Jewish Film & New Media 5, no. 1 (2017): 24–47.

8. Schudson, "Lives, laws, and language," 3–17. Schudson, "Journalism as a Vehicle" 85–96.

9. Moshe Zukerman, "Holocaust in the sealed room." Tel Aviv: privately published (1993).

10. Changhong Yang, Jun Yang, Xiangshu Luo, and Peng Gong. "Use of mobile phones in an emergency reporting system for infectious disease surveillance after the Sichuan earthquake in China." Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 87 (2009): 619–623; Anita Shet, Karthika Arumugam, Rashmi Rodrigues, Nirmala Rajagopalan, K. Shubha, Tony Raj, George D'souza, and Ayesha De Costa. "Designing a mobile phone-based intervention to promote adherence to antiretroviral therapy in South India." AIDS and Behavior, 14, no. 3 (2010): 716–720.

11. Darrick T. Evensen and Christopher E. Clarke. "Efficacy Information in Media Coverage of Infectious Disease Risks: An Ill Predicament?" Science Communication 34, no. 3 (2012): 392–418.

12. Aya Yadlin-Segal and Yael Oppenheim. "Whose dystopia is it anyway? Deepfakes and social media regulation." Convergence, 27, no. 1 (2021): 36–51.

13. Elisabeth Eide and Kjersti Lånkan. "Autonomous journalists and anonymous politicians? Norwegian media coverage of the NSA surveillance and the «Snowden Affair»." Norsk Medietidsskrift, no. 23 (2016): 1–21; Inga Kroener. "'Caught on Camera': The media representation of video surveillance in relation to the 2005 London Underground bombings." Surveillance & Society 11, no. 1/2 (2013): 121–133.

14. Adriana De Souza e Silva. "Location-aware mobile technologies: Historical, social and spatial approaches." Mobile Media & Communication 1, no. 1 (2013): 116–121.

15. Adriana De Souza e Silva and Jordan Frith. "Locational privacy in public spaces: Media discourses on location-aware mobile technologies." Communication, Culture & Critique 3, no. 4 (2010): 503–525.

16. Adriana De Souza e Silva and Jordan Frith. "Locational privacy in public spaces" 503–525; Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, Lucy Bennett, and Gregory Taylor. "The normalization of surveillance and the invisibility of digital citizenship: Media debates after the Snowden revelations." International Journal of Communication 11 (2017): 740–762.

17. Avi Marciano. "The discursive construction of biometric surveillance in the Israeli press: Nationality, citizenship, and democracy." Journalism Studies 20, no. 7 (2019): 972–990.

18. Kathleen M. Kuehn, "Framing mass surveillance: Analyzing New Zealand's media coverage of the early Snowden files." Journalism 19, no. 3 (2018): 402–419.

19. Liat Steir-Livny. "Traumatic past in the present: COVID-19 and Holocaust memory in Israeli media, digital media, and social media." Media, Culture & Society, Vol. 44, no. 3, (2021): 01634437211036997.

20. Avi Marciano. "Vernacular Politics in New Participatory Media: Discursive Linkage Between Biometrics and the Holocaust in Israel." International Journal of Communication 13 (2019): 277–296.

21. Ibid.

22. Adi Ophir. "The order of evils: Toward an ontology of morals." (2005); Norman Finkelstein. "The Holocaust Industry." Index on Censorship 29, no. 2 (2000): 120–129.

23. Ynet reporters, "ISA will surveil coronavirus patients? Draconian measure," Ynet. March 13, 2020. https://www.ynet.co.il/digital/technews/article/ByWuy69r8 (Accessed May 11, 2020).

24. Ronen Bergman, "Edward Snowden: 'What Netanyahu does, far more dangerous than the coronavirus,'" Ynet. April 10, 2020. https://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-5710279,00.html (Accessed May 11, 2020).

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid.

27. Noa Landau, "Backed by the slogan 'silence, we are disinfecting', security branches take more and more control over our lives." Haaretz. March 17, 2020. https://www.haaretz.co.il/health/corona/.premium-1.8684727 (Accessed May 11, 2020).

28. Ibid.

29. Daniel Dolev, "'Not in realm of education and the realm of health': This is how ISA civic operations were authorized," Walla. April 13, 2020. https://news.walla.co.il/item/3351757 (Accessed May 11, 2020).

30. Editorial, "The ISA state is up-and-coming," Haaretz, April 17, 2020. https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/editorial-articles/.premium-1.8774765 (Accessed May 11, 2020).

31. Yossi Klein, "Give them 24 hours and the ISA will turn into Stasi," Haaretz. March 25, 2020. https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/.premium-1.8706850 (Accessed May 11, 2020).

32. Ibid.

33. Rogel Alpher, "Prof. Sadetzki, release us from your intimidations," Haaretz. May 7, 2020. https://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/television/tv-review/.premium-1.8826470 (Accessed May 11, 2020).

34. Ran Bar-Zik, "Even if you destroy your mobile phone, you would not be able to evade state cellular surveillance," Haaretz. March 18, 2020. https://www.haaretz.co.il/captain/software/.premium-1.8686018 (Accessed May 11, 2020).

35. Avi Marciano. "Vernacular Politics in New Participatory Media," 277–296.

36. Liat Steir-Livny. "Traumatic past in the present."

37. Amir Oren, "When those in power turn ISA into a civilian surveillance committee, the Supreme Court restraints its Gluttony," Walla. April 18, 2020. https://news.walla.co.il/item/3352367 (Accessed May 11, 2020).

38. Dan Berkowitz. "Telling the Unknown through the Familiar: Collective Memory as Journalistic Device in a Changing Media Environment." On Media Memory, pp. 201–212. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2011; Jill Edy, "Journalistic Uses of Collective Memory," Journal of Communication 49, no. 2 (1999): 71–85, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1999.tb02794.x.

39. Michael Schudson. "Journalism as a vehicle," 85–96.

40. Ibid.

41. Chioma Ihekweazu. "Ebola in prime time: A content analysis of sensationalism and efficacy information in US nightly news coverage of the Ebola outbreaks." Health communication 32, no. 6 (2017): 741–748.

42. Po-Lin Pan and Juan Meng. "Media frames across stages of health crisis: A crisis management approach to news coverage of flu pandemic." Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management 24, no. 2 (2016): 95–106.

43. Aya Yadlin-Segal. "It happened before and it will happen again," 24–47.

44. Avi Marciano. "Vernacular Politics in New Participatory Media," 277–296.

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Footnotes

  1. 1. Yadlin, Aya, and Avi Marciano. "COVID-19 surveillance in Israeli press: Spatiality, mobility, and control." Mobile Media & Communication 10, no. 3 (2022): 421–447. https://doi.org/10.1177/20501579211068269 Marciano, Avi, and Aya Yadlin. "Media coverage of COVID-19 state surveillance in Israel: the securitization and militarization of a civil-medical crisis." Media, Culture & Society 44, no. 3 (2022): 445–463. https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437211037008

  2. 2. The corpus analyzed in this study consists of 155 journalistic items that covered ISA surveillance. We have collected all journalistic items (news reports, feature articles, editorial columns, and opinion pieces) that were published in Ynet, Ha'aretz, Walla, and Mako between two key dates: March 14, 2020, following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's first announcement about the implementation of ISA surveillance, to June 8, 2020, following Israeli Supreme Court's decision to discontinue the surveillance. This is considered the "first wave" of the pandemic in Israel.

  3. 3. Michael Schudson. "Lives, laws, and language: Commemorative versus non-commemorative forms of effective public memory." The Communication Review, 2, no. 1 (1997): 3–17; Michael Schudson. "Journalism as a Vehicle of Non-commemorative Cultural Memory." Journalism and Memory, pp. 85–96. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2014.

  4. 4. Aleida Assmann, "Transformations between History and Memory," Social Research: An International Quarterly, 75, no. 1 (2008): 49–72, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/527984; David Noon, "Operation Enduring Analogy: World War II, the War on Terror, and the Uses of Historical Memory," Rhetoric & Public Affairs 7, no. 3 (2004): 341, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41939926; Barbie Zelizer, "Reading the Past Against the Grain: The Shape of Memory Studies," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 12, no. 2 (1995): 214–239, https://doi.org/10.1080/15295039509366932.

  5. 5. Schudson, "Lives, laws, and language, 3–17.

  6. 6. Ibid, 3.

  7. 7. Aya Yadlin-Segal, "'It happened before and it will happen again': Online user comments as a noncommemorative site of Holocaust remembrance." Jewish Film & New Media 5, no. 1 (2017): 24–47.

  8. 8. Schudson, "Lives, laws, and language," 3–17. Schudson, "Journalism as a Vehicle" 85–96.

  9. 9. Moshe Zukerman, "Holocaust in the sealed room." Tel Aviv: privately published (1993).

  10. 10. Changhong Yang, Jun Yang, Xiangshu Luo, and Peng Gong. "Use of mobile phones in an emergency reporting system for infectious disease surveillance after the Sichuan earthquake in China." Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 87 (2009): 619–623; Anita Shet, Karthika Arumugam, Rashmi Rodrigues, Nirmala Rajagopalan, K. Shubha, Tony Raj, George D'souza, and Ayesha De Costa. "Designing a mobile phone-based intervention to promote adherence to antiretroviral therapy in South India." AIDS and Behavior, 14, no. 3 (2010): 716–720.

  11. 11. Darrick T. Evensen and Christopher E. Clarke. "Efficacy Information in Media Coverage of Infectious Disease Risks: An Ill Predicament?" Science Communication 34, no. 3 (2012): 392–418.

  12. 12. Aya Yadlin-Segal and Yael Oppenheim. "Whose dystopia is it anyway? Deepfakes and social media regulation." Convergence, 27, no. 1 (2021): 36–51.

  13. 13. Elisabeth Eide and Kjersti Lånkan. "Autonomous journalists and anonymous politicians? Norwegian media coverage of the NSA surveillance and the «Snowden Affair»." Norsk Medietidsskrift, no. 23 (2016): 1–21; Inga Kroener. "'Caught on Camera': The media representation of video surveillance in relation to the 2005 London Underground bombings." Surveillance & Society 11, no. 1/2 (2013): 121–133.

  14. 14. Adriana De Souza e Silva. "Location-aware mobile technologies: Historical, social and spatial approaches." Mobile Media & Communication 1, no. 1 (2013): 116–121.

  15. 15. Adriana De Souza e Silva and Jordan Frith. "Locational privacy in public spaces: Media discourses on location-aware mobile technologies." Communication, Culture & Critique 3, no. 4 (2010): 503–525.

  16. 16. Adriana De Souza e Silva and Jordan Frith. "Locational privacy in public spaces" 503–525; Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, Lucy Bennett, and Gregory Taylor. "The normalization of surveillance and the invisibility of digital citizenship: Media debates after the Snowden revelations." International Journal of Communication 11 (2017): 740–762.

  17. 17. Avi Marciano. "The discursive construction of biometric surveillance in the Israeli press: Nationality, citizenship, and democracy." Journalism Studies 20, no. 7 (2019): 972–990.

  18. 18. Kathleen M. Kuehn, "Framing mass surveillance: Analyzing New Zealand's media coverage of the early Snowden files." Journalism 19, no. 3 (2018): 402–419.

  19. 19. Liat Steir-Livny. "Traumatic past in the present: COVID-19 and Holocaust memory in Israeli media, digital media, and social media." Media, Culture & Society, Vol. 44, no. 3, (2021): 01634437211036997.

  20. 20. Avi Marciano. "Vernacular Politics in New Participatory Media: Discursive Linkage Between Biometrics and the Holocaust in Israel." International Journal of Communication 13 (2019): 277–296.

  21. 21. Ibid.

  22. 22. Adi Ophir. "The order of evils: Toward an ontology of morals." (2005); Norman Finkelstein. "The Holocaust Industry." Index on Censorship 29, no. 2 (2000): 120–129.

  23. 23. Ynet reporters, "ISA will surveil coronavirus patients? Draconian measure," Ynet. March 13, 2020. https://www.ynet.co.il/digital/technews/article/ByWuy69r8 (Accessed May 11, 2020).

  24. 24. Ronen Bergman, "Edward Snowden: 'What Netanyahu does, far more dangerous than the coronavirus,'" Ynet. April 10, 2020. https://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-5710279,00.html (Accessed May 11, 2020).

  25. 25. Ibid.

  26. 26. Ibid.

  27. 27. Noa Landau, "Backed by the slogan 'silence, we are disinfecting', security branches take more and more control over our lives." Haaretz. March 17, 2020. https://www.haaretz.co.il/health/corona/.premium-1.8684727 (Accessed May 11, 2020).

  28. 28. Ibid.

  29. 29. Daniel Dolev, "'Not in realm of education and the realm of health': This is how ISA civic operations were authorized," Walla. April 13, 2020. https://news.walla.co.il/item/3351757 (Accessed May 11, 2020).

  30. 30. Editorial, "The ISA state is up-and-coming," Haaretz, April 17, 2020. https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/editorial-articles/.premium-1.8774765 (Accessed May 11, 2020).

  31. 31. Yossi Klein, "Give them 24 hours and the ISA will turn into Stasi," Haaretz. March 25, 2020. https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/.premium-1.8706850 (Accessed May 11, 2020).

  32. 32. Ibid.

  33. 33. Rogel Alpher, "Prof. Sadetzki, release us from your intimidations," Haaretz. May 7, 2020. https://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/television/tv-review/.premium-1.8826470 (Accessed May 11, 2020).

  34. 34. Ran Bar-Zik, "Even if you destroy your mobile phone, you would not be able to evade state cellular surveillance," Haaretz. March 18, 2020. https://www.haaretz.co.il/captain/software/.premium-1.8686018 (Accessed May 11, 2020).

  35. 35. Avi Marciano. "Vernacular Politics in New Participatory Media," 277–296.

  36. 36. Liat Steir-Livny. "Traumatic past in the present."

  37. 37. Amir Oren, "When those in power turn ISA into a civilian surveillance committee, the Supreme Court restraints its Gluttony," Walla. April 18, 2020. https://news.walla.co.il/item/3352367 (Accessed May 11, 2020).

  38. 38. Dan Berkowitz. "Telling the Unknown through the Familiar: Collective Memory as Journalistic Device in a Changing Media Environment." On Media Memory, pp. 201–212. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2011; Jill Edy, "Journalistic Uses of Collective Memory," Journal of Communication 49, no. 2 (1999): 71–85, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1999.tb02794.x.

  39. 39. Michael Schudson. "Journalism as a vehicle," 85–96.

  40. 40. Ibid.

  41. 41. Chioma Ihekweazu. "Ebola in prime time: A content analysis of sensationalism and efficacy information in US nightly news coverage of the Ebola outbreaks." Health communication 32, no. 6 (2017): 741–748.

  42. 42. Po-Lin Pan and Juan Meng. "Media frames across stages of health crisis: A crisis management approach to news coverage of flu pandemic." Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management 24, no. 2 (2016): 95–106.

  43. 43. Aya Yadlin-Segal. "It happened before and it will happen again," 24–47.

  44. 44. Avi Marciano. "Vernacular Politics in New Participatory Media," 277–296.