סיקור מחאת 2020–2021 נגד ראש הממשלה בעיתונות וברשתות החברתיות: לקראת שינוי תקשורתי פרדיגמטי ושינוי תפיסתי של מובילי המחאה

Over the course of one year (June 2020-June 2021), a series of demonstrations were held near the residence of the Prime Minister of Israel at the time, Benjamin Netanyahu, which were nicknamed “The Balfour Protest.” The protest, which was unique mainly due to the extensive use of social media, marks a theoretical and paradigmatic change in the representation of protests in the media and protestors-media relations.The study examines the characteristics of the media coverage of the protest in social media and the online press. It explains the characteristics of the protest from the point of view of the protest leaders, the media representation, and the relationship between the protestors and the media. The study proposes a new theoretical conceptualization of the relationship between protest leaders and the mainstream media, using the concept of Harold Bloom’s “misreading” theory. It also examines the media coverage in both media from a new perspective – of distance from the protestors.The findings demonstrate a process of paradigmatic change in the representation of the protest in the media, resulting from a change in the perspective of the distance towards the protestors – from the “protest paradigm,” which presents protests as violent and distant, to “our protest paradigm,” which is expressed in rhetorical and visual proximity to the protestors on both media platforms.