The 2019-20 Israeli Electoral Digital Campaigns: Algorithmic Campaigns’ Slippery Slope

Abstract

This article focuses on the three Israeli digital campaigns during 2019–20 elections through their most prominent negative trends, namely: fake news, accounts and identities; politicians’ chat bots; influence and interruption networks, illegal information accumulation on Israeli citizens via social media and voting apps; anonymous and fake spam, and a complete lack of compliance with the statutory and regulatory framework. With technology’s speedy advancement, legal tools’ lagging, and political actors’ exploitation of the situation to their benefit, it seems that these campaigns, setting forth a fifth phase of political communication – Algorithmic Campaigns – constitute a rather bleak and grim future, as far as elections are concerned, thereby calling for rethinking.

Keywords: Israel; elections; electoral campaigns; algorithmic campaigns; fake news; political spam; interruption networks