Engaging the disengaged: Collective action, media uses, and sense of (virtual) community by evacuees from Gush Katif

Former residents of the evacuated Gush Katif region, once parts of closely knit and cohesive communities, have been spread across Israel in temporary settlements since the disengagement, in 2005. The goal of this study was to learn how the evacuees interacted with one another online to organize politically and retain their social capital. The study focused on Katif.net, the major Internet site in use by the former residents of Gush Katif. This is an unusual case of a virtual community that continues to thrive online even as its offline predecessor has been evacuated.