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2005 7: 533New Media SocietyChristine Ogan, Filiz Çiçek and Muzaffer Özakça

Letters to Sarah: analysis of email responses to an online editorial

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ARTICLE

Letters to Sarah: analysisof email responses to anonline editorial

............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

CHRISTINE OGANFILIZ ÇIÇEKMUZAFFER OZAKÇAIndiana University, USA

............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

AbstractAn editorial opposing the violence being perpetrated onthe Palestinians by the Israeli government that was writtenon the Common Dreams website prompted severalhundred email responses to the author. The essay had beenreposted to many listservs and other websites around theworld. In a case study approach, we track the repostingsand qualitatively and quantitatively analyze the responses tothat editorial, to determine the nature of the discourse inan electronic environment. The study found that readers ofthe essay were prompted to write to the author largelywhen they agreed with her position because of theirpolitical or religious views, linked to their own experienceor feelings, wished to relate their own personal stories, andwhen they were male.

Key wordsalternative media • Common Dreams • content analysis •editorial • email • Israel • letters-to-editor • linking •Palestinians • public opinion

new media & society

Copyright © 2005 SAGE PublicationsLondon, Thousand Oaks, CA and New DelhiVol7(4):533–557 [DOI: 10.1177/1461444805054117]

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INTRODUCTIONThe internet has opened up many possibilities for expression by peoplewho have been shut out of the discourse in mainstream media. So it is nowonder that alternative media are thriving on the web. People who felt thatthey had never had a voice before are suddenly able to be published and toparticipate in public forums where their views are valued rather thandiscarded. It is important that we learn more about the nature of thediscourse in these environments, so that we have a better understanding ofthe full range of public opinion in the United States and around the world.This study takes a small step in that direction. The research focuses on a casestudy of one internet editorial that prompted hundreds of email responses toits author. The email communication is analyzed within the framework ofresearch on letters to the editor and the expression of public opinion onpolitical topics.

Communication research has not told us a lot about people’s depth offeelings on issues of public importance. When we wish to know what thepublic thinks about the way in which a leader is running a country orthe ways that Congress should vote on an issue that is before them, we relyon polling organizations to measure their attitudes or likely behavior. Thepolling organizations need to initiate the response; it does not come directlyfrom the people. So we have only limited ways of knowing whether peoplewould actually express concern about these issues if they were not calledupon to do so.

Evidence of public feeling that arises from personal commitment comesthrough letters, emails or calls to elected representatives, participation inpublic marches or demonstrations and appearance at town meetings or otherpublic forums. In addition, such participation may be encouraged or forcedby organizers of such events or activity. For example, the US organizationMoveOn.org, a political action committee working through electroniccommunication via the web and email, alerts members and potentialmembers to opportunities for contacting their elected representatives or forcontributing money to particular campaigns.

The only way to measure totally voluntary expressions of public opinionis through the telephone contact made to talk radio or television programs,letters to an editor, or contributions made to listservs, online forums andchatrooms dedicated to public issues. But even in those environments,editing takes place. Editors select callers to put on the air and opinion pageeditors select from among the letters they receive. Wahl-Jorgensen (2001,2002) studied the process of selection of letters to the editor submitted tothe San Francisco newspaper, The Bay Herald, and determined that thepublished letters:

privilege individual expression over the expression of activist groups. Second,they prefer the emotionally charged, personal stories of individuals and search

New Media & Society 7(4)

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for an aesthetic authenticity that shows the writers’ words ‘come from theheart’ and invite the forging of emotional bonds between readers and writers.(2001: 304)

Although most research on the letters sections of newspapers considersthem to be a place for democratic communication, Wahl-Jorgensen (2002)found editors and editorial writers at The Bay Herald to be skeptical of thatview. They described a poor quality of public participation and a non-representative sample of the reading public:

To be more specific, the editors speak the ‘idiom of insanity,’ which plays offthe idea that contributors to the section – the members of the letter-writingpublic – are insane or ‘crazy’. (2002: 185)

The researcher noted that the editorial staff at the paper, and possibly atother newspapers around the country, made decisions about who shouldhave entitlement for expression and then how and why they may be allowedto speak (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2001).

With the exception of unmoderated electronic lists and chatrooms, aselection process takes place that may be biased in favor of certain kinds ofexpression. The research on which this article is based measures publicopinion that is entirely spontaneous, therefore offering an unusualopportunity for studying the communication that is made possible by newtechnologies.

This study grew out of an editorial published on the Common Dreamswebsite on 10 April 2002 written by Sarah Shields, a professor of historyat the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. The editorial, written inthe form of an open letter to her father, who is a rabbi, expressed herserious concern about Israeli oppression of Palestinians in the occupiedterritories. In the months following publication of the editorial, Shieldsreceived hundreds of emails from readers expressing their reactions. Many ofthose messages referred to other websites where the editorial was reposted.It was also reposted to a number of listservs, both in the US and in severalother countries. Analysis of the content of those emails is the subject of thisstudy. We believe this study is important to the understanding of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in a general sense and also to theunderstanding of the expression of public opinion in the electronicenvironment. But perhaps more importantly for the purposes of this article,the study provides a context for the expression of alternative viewpointswithin the framework of the internet.

Wahl-Jorgensen’s study (2001) found that activist groups were clearlydenied access to the letters section. The editor held the view that activistshad other outlets for expression, had no need of the newspaper for a forumand that the newspaper was the only place where private individuals could

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air their opinions. If that position is widely accepted by editors at USdailies, then it is no wonder that the internet holds an attraction for thosegroups.

In his study of letters to the editor of the Chicago Tribune in the early 20thcentury, Nord (1995) was able to analyze a range of letters submitted to thenewspaper. Because editor James Keeley saved letters that were published aswell as those that were not published, a better sense of the range of opinionsubmitted could be determined. Using reader response theory as a frame,Nord found three reader purposes – ‘to speak to the public, to the editorand to the self – interacted with another dimension of reader response:orientation to the text’ (1995: 71). Of particular interest to this study is thegroup of letters that Nord found were oriented to the text through cuingand linking:

Cuing was a fairly simple response: An item in the paper triggered aconventional religious, political, or ideological reaction. Somewhat morecomplex is the response I call linking. By linking, I mean the strategy ofmaking sense of one event or story by linking it to others, by stringing newsitems together into a curriculum of meaning. (1995: 73–4; see Carey, 1986)

Nord (1995) states that readers have to make sense of the incoherence ofthe daily sampling of occurrences and observations without beginning orend that they find in newspapers or television news broadcasts, by makingtheir own connections, interpolations and inferences. In other words, theylink.

Some research has been conducted on the expressions of opinion thatcirculate on the internet through public forums and chatrooms (Bakardjieva,2003; Bordia and DiFonzo, 2004; Moloney et al., 2003; Marcoccia, 2004;Papacharissi, 2004; Schultz, 2000; Tanner, 2001). However, since mostopinion expressed in these forums is anonymous, the opinion-givers take noownership of their statements. Coffey and Woolworth (2004) determinedthat contributor anonymity in online forums detracts from the positiveeffects of public discussion of issues of community interest. Those who sentmessages in response to Shields’ editorial identified themselves and oftenprovided addresses.

One empirical study of public opinion tested the spiral of silence theory,comparing face-to-face deliberation with CMC to determine the impact ofthe computer-mediated environment. In the study, groups discussed pro-lifeand pro-choice opinions in face-to-face and computer-mediated situations.Subjects taking either position when in the minority in the group spoke upmore often than those in the majority. Among their results the authorsfound their ‘most intriguing finding’, that the ‘low social presence [of CMC]could encourage members of a minority to speak up, in the apparent


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facilitation of egalitarianism, but this activity might not entail explicitexpression of minority views’ (McDevitt et al., 2003: 468).

In a study of the role of communication variables, group membership,attitude strength and perceptions of public opinion in predicting public andnon-public forms of participation in the US, as measured in the 1996American National Election Study, Scheufele and Eveland (2001: 40) founda positive relationship between the degree of public and non-public formsof participation: ‘More strongly held beliefs, in other words, are equallyimportant for promoting public and non-public forms of participation.’

In both the previous studies the opinions were solicited by theexperimenter or the pollster. The findings suggest that those holdingminority beliefs will speak out under the right circumstances. Whenindividuals are under no pressure to offer opinions on issues of publicconcern, what kinds of opinions will they express? Will they offer opinionsmore often when they agree or disagree with the opinion that is presentedin the media? What role will gender play? Will they tend to be emotional intheir response?

These are all open questions that need to be explored, but opportunitiesdo not present themselves often to do so. This case study presented such anopportunity. Obviously the circumstances of this research were not neutral,but as the Scheufele and Eveland study demonstrated, strength of belief is animportant factor in public expression of such beliefs. Shields’ editorial(included in the appendix to this article) took the form of a letter from adaughter to her rabbi father about the religious lessons taught to her as achild, which appeared to her to conflict with the actions taken by the Israeligovernment in its attacks on the Palestinians in the occupied territories.

The Israeli–Palestinian issue has been an important foreign policy topicfor the US public for at least as long as the state of Israel has existed. Galluphas been tracking public opinion on US policy regarding Israel for manyyears. On the Gallup website (www.gallup.com), Americans polled in 1988registered support for Israel over the Palestinians by a margin of 37 percentto 15 percent. Since that year, between 38 and 64 percent of those polledsaid they sympathized more with Israelis than with Palestinians (Gallup,2004). The latest poll on the subject in February 2004 registered 55 percentsupport for Israel and 18 percent support for the Palestinians. In addition,Americans were asked how important a peaceful solution to the Palestinian–Israeli conflict is to US public policy. When last measured in June 2003, 50percent of those polled said it was very important, and another 37 percentsaid it was somewhat important as a foreign policy goal. That poll alsofound that 74 percent of Americans feel that the US should not favor eitherthe Israelis or the Palestinians in the regional conflict (Gallup, 2004).However, public opinion on the Middle East may not be related to howinformed the US public actually is about the issue. In a February 2003 poll,


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Gallup found that only 37 percent of those queried could identify ArielSharon as prime minister of Israel when supplied with his name (Carlson,2003).

COMMON DREAMSCommon Dreams is a ‘national non-profit citizens organization working tobring progressive Americans together to promote progressive visions forAmerica’s future’ (Common Dreams, 2004). Founded in 1997, theorganization uses the internet as a ‘political organizing tool’. Editor CraigBrown began a news clips operation for the web based on a service that hehad provided in the early 1990s for then-Congressman Tom Andrews whenhe served as Andrews’ chief of staff. The site promises to source publicpress releases and statements from ‘America’s progressive community’without filters and in real time (Common Dreams, 2004). The progressivecommunity is defined as more than 120 groups listed on the site (seeCommon Dreams News Center: www.commondreams.org/community.htm). Although most of those statements come from a rangeof published sources, some of them are original contributions from readersof the site. The homepage lists a range of mainstream and alternative newssources for the articles that it publishes; sources also include other alternativenews websites. Further, the organization solicits donations to the productionof the site. It claims more than 1 million unique readers each month andsays that the funds are needed to keep pace with the work required toproduce a first-rate progressive website.

Readership of the views on the site is not detailed as to politicalpersuasion, age, gender or other demographics. An article on the site claimsthat alexa.com rank-ordered websites by popularity in July 2003 and foundCommon Dreams to weigh in at 2651 among all websites over the previousthree months. At the time it ranked higher than MoveOn.org, AlterNet.org,MotherJones.com, The American Prospect (www.prospect.org), theAmerican Civil Liberties Union (www.aclu.org) and Howard Dean forPresident (http://deanforamerica.com). Common Dreams readers areprobably not as apt to be republican as they are democrats or independents.

The political leanings of the visitors to the website, and therefore toexposure to Sarah Shields’ letter to her father, do not represent the fullrange of views in the US public. Although supporters of the Palestiniansliving in the Occupied Territories are more likely to be politically liberalthan conservative, the converse is not necessarily true – that all supporters ofIsrael are conservatives. Despite the political leanings of the readers ofCommon Dreams, our measures go beyond political views to the kinds ofarguments and use of emotion in the responses to the Shields editorial. Itshould be noted also that many people who read the editorial did sobecause it was forwarded to them by a friend or as part of the content of a


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listserv, or because they found it on a website with a very different politicalor religious bent.

METHODA total of 338 messages were sent directly to Sarah Shields’ email address,which was included at the end of the editorial she published on theCommon Dreams website on 10 April 2002, and were content analyzed.The messages were analyzed for demographic information, topic, tone ofarguments used, type of response and use of emotion. Since many of theemail authors did not access the website directly, but rather located theeditorial through other means, we tried also to track the reposting of theeditorial to the extent possible through a variety of search engines andthrough the references provided in the email messages. Since this researchconstitutes a case study of voluntary communication to a very focused essayon a controversial subject, the findings cannot be generalized. However, thevalue of the work lies in the analysis of the large number of messages sentto the author and in the tracking of the reposting of the original editorial.Since, to our knowledge, no previous research of this nature has ever beenconducted, we chose to ask research questions rather than pose hypotheses.Our main questions are as follows:

RQ1: Where was the message ‘Please, Dad, Tell Me: How Do I Stop BeingComplicit’ posted in addition to its original publication on CommonDreams.org and in what ways was it altered in its reposting?

RQ2: Were the emails to Sarah Shields favorable to her position or opposed toit?

RQ3: What types of arguments were made in response to Shields’ criticism ofthe Israeli government, and what types of evidence were used to support thosearguments?

RQ4: How was emotion used in the responses to Shields’ letter to her father?

RQ5: What role did religion play in the responses to Shields’ letter to herfather?

RESULTSRepostings/source of informationMany of the authors of the emails (119) explained where they read theeditorial. Of those who provided that information, 36.1 percent said that itwas forwarded to them by a friend or acquaintance. Another 25.2 percentsaid that they read it on the Common Dreams site. Other US-websites werenamed by 8.4 percent; 1.7 percent listed non-US websites; and 15.1 percentlisted an unspecified website. Some people (8.4%) said that they had heardthe letter read out on Pacifica’s ‘Democracy Now!’ The daily independentradio program airs on more than 140 Pacifica, community and nationalpublic radio stations, as well as on public access cable television stations,


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satellite television stations and the internet. Finally, 5 percent of those listinga source said that they read the editorial on an electronic list or discussiongroup.

When we tried to locate the repostings through web searches, we foundthe editorial on a variety of religious, human rights, pro-Palestinian, pro-Israeli and politically liberal websites. Common Dreams published Shields’editorial in the ‘featured views’ section of the site. All items published byCommon Dreams provide a connection to the US Code on fair use ofcopyrighted material. The editors also note that readers are allowed to usethe material they find on Common Dreams only under the fair useprovision and that all other uses need to be cleared with the copyrightowner. We did not make a determination about the fair use of therepostings of Shields’ editorial to other sites but noted the followingirregularities. Chronogram.com posted it with no credit given to CommonDreams, but instead attached their own copyright to the content. Severalsites, including Indymedia@UK (www.indymedia.org), Coalition for PeaceWith Justice (www.peace-with-justice.org) and intervarsity.org included areference to Common Dreams along with Sarah Shields’ name andaffiliation. To avoid the issue of crediting the original in a repostingsituation, several other sites linked to the Common Dreams publication(Stevenson Society: www.stevensonsociety.org, and Metafilter:www.metafilter.com). The Palestine Chronicle (www.palestinechronicle.com)reposted with credit to Common Dreams but said that the piece was beingdistributed through Middle East News Online (www.middle-east-online/english). Matrix Masters (www.matrixmasters.com) reposted on 1 May2002. The site italicized some parts and did not include the entire editorialbut did give credit to Common Dreams and linked to the original.Jerusalemites (www.jerusalemites.org), an Amman, Jordan-based organizationto promote the Palestinian cause, posted the article in the English sectionwith Shields’ name but no other reference to the source of the article. TheTech Report Forums (www.techreport.com), a personal computinginformation site, included the editorial as if Shields had posted it herselfunder the religion and politics section with no reference to CommonDreams. At least one site, the Islamic Center of Irvine(www.islamiccenterofirvine.com), printed only part of the letter withoutcredit to Common Dreams. And the editorial appeared in a Yahoo group forEgyptians with an extra note after Shields’ email address: ‘I’m out of mymind, but feel free to leave a message.’ We were unable to find the source ofthis additional line, but it also appeared in some of the emailcorrespondence to Shields. Finally, some sites, including Hopedance.orgadded a comment sent to them by Shields as a result of an email that theysent to the author.


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Some of the other repostings were interesting for different reasons. WestBy Northwest (www.westbynorthwest.org), a non-profit online magazine,added an editorial comment about the quality of the piece and the MarcChagall painting of Abraham and the Three Angels. They also provided alink to the Common Dreams website. The United Church of Christ inCarlsbad, California (www.pilgrimucc.org) listed the Shields editorial in agroup of other opinions with the note that the website editor did not agreewith most of the content, but had reposted it because it responded toanother published opinion. The site did not give credit to Common Dreamsbut did list Shields as the author. The Movement for National Unity inHaiti (MOUN; www.moun.com), organized in opposition to Aristide,reposted the article with Israeli, US and Palestinian flags flying on top. Table1 lists the websites that continued to post the editorial for at least two yearspast the time of the essay’s appearance on Common Dreams.

• Table 1 List of websites where Shields’ letter appeared

TYPE OF WEBSITE NAME OF WEBSITE URL FOR HOME PAGE

Religious Radience Weekly http://www.radienceweekly.com

Religious Islamic City http://www.islamiccity.com

Religious Al-Muhajabah’s Islamic Pages http://www.muhajabah.com

Religious Ummah.com; The MuslimDirectory Online

http://www.ummah.com

Religious Islam.com http://www.islam.com

Religious/ethnic Al-Bushra; Arab AmericanRoman Catholic Community

http://www.al-bushra.org

Religious/political Islamic World; Links to newsstories related to War onTerrorism

http://www.islamic-world.net

Religious Catholic InformationNetwork

http://www.cin.org

Religious First Presbyterian Church;Wilmette, IL

http://www.fpc-wilmette.org

Religious Pilgrim United Church ofChrist; Carlsbad, CA

http://www.pilgrimucc.org

Religious Friends of Sabeel; Voice ofPalestinian Christians

http://www.fosna.org

Religious Islamic Center, Irvine, CA http://www.islamiccenterofirvive.com

Religious/political Not in My Name; Jewishgroup opposing theoccupation

http://www.nimn.org


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• Table 1 continued


Religious American MuslimAssociation of NorthAmerica

http://www.al-AMANA.org

Social/cultural West by Northwest;ecumenical non-profit onlinejournal

http://www.westbynorthwest.org

Social/cultural Professors for Peace http://www.listserv.org/com/net

Social/cultural Chronogram; Onlinemagazine of events and ideas

http://www.chronogram.com

Social/cultural/political

Matrixmasters; political andsocial criticism

http://www.matrixmasters.com


Parallel-youniversity;London-based opinion list –political, cultural, etc.

http://www.parallel-youniversity.com


Converge; New Zealandonline community network –NGO

http://www.converge.org.nz

Political San Francisco Green Party http://www.sfgreenparty.org

Political Socialist WorkersOrganization of USA

http://www.socialistviewpoint.org

Political Stevenson Society; socialorganization of democraticand independent voters

http://www.stevensonsociety.org

Political MOUN (Movement forNational Unity in Haiti)

http://www.moun.com

Political Deir Yassin; pro-Palestiniansite in memory of peoplewho died here

http://www.deiryassin.org

Political Women Against theOccupation; Canadian site

http://www.nonprofitnet.ca/wao

Political Democratic Underground;liberal political articles anddiscussion list

http://www.democraticunderground.com

Peace/justice NucNews; liberal politicalsite linking to news onvarious topics

http://www.nucnews.net

Peace/justice Globalist; organization forglobal unity, sustainability,justice, peace – pro-Palestinian

http://www.globalist.org

Peace/justice Hague Peace http://www.haguepeace.org

Peace/justice Maaber; in Arabic, non-violence and resitance

http://www.maaber.org


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Peace/justice Physicians for Human Rights http://www.phusa.org

Peace/justice Rabbis for Human Rights http://www.rhr.israel.net

Non-governmentalorganization(NGO)

Peace with Justice; Educationand advocacy coalition forpeace in Israel

http://www.peace-with-justice.org

Media Jerusalemites; an NGO basedin Amman

http://www.jerusalemites.org

Media King5; part of larger mediacompany based in Seattle

http://www.king5.com

Media Indymedia in UK http://www.indymedia.org.uk

Media The American Reporter; acombination of PHP andnews site

http://www.american-reporter.com

Media Outlook India; onlinemagazine based in India

http://www.outlookindia.com

Media Palestine Chronicle; onlineindependent internationalmagazine

http://www.palestinechronicle.com

Media Halekala Times; onlineedition from Maui, Hawaii

http://www.mauisfreepress.com

Media Arab News; Saudi Englishlanguage daily

http://www.arabnews.com

Media Voices and Choices Radio;summary from program onWRUW FM in Cleveland

http://www.voicesandchoicesradio.org

Discussion list Pacifica’s “Democracy Now!” Radio program

Discussion list Tech Report; personal;computing, technology andculture forum

http://www.tech-report.com

Discussion list Interversity http://www.interversity.com

Discussion list My Potential; discussion listof Deepak ChopraFoundation

http://www.discussion.mypotential.com

Discussion list El-Omda; Discussion list forEgyptians and aboutEgyptians

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/el-omda

Personal homepage

Payk.net; discussion list forIranians

http://www.payk.net

Personal homepage

Filchyboy; links to stories ofinterest

http://www.filchyboy.typepad.com

Personal homepage

A personal page by a manwho appears to haveBuddhist links and is based inCanada

http://www.homepage.mac.com


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Demographics of email authorsOf the 382 respondents, 41.4 percent were female while 58.6 percent weremale. We might have expected men to prevail in the expression of opinionthrough their emails based on existing research of gender and publicopinion. In their study of women and expression of political opinions,Atkeson and Rapoport (2003) summarize the research on women’s politicalattitudes and expression of those attitudes before analyzing responses to thegender differences in attitude expression on the National Election Studyover a 50-year period. They found that while research shows women to bemore liberal than men on issues of public policy and that women exceedmen in voter turnout and equal men in protest involvement, other areas ofpublic expression find men in the lead. Those differences show up in maledominance in contacting public officials, discussing politics with friends andrelatives, attending political rallies and in making attempts to influence theway others’ vote. They cite Krosnick (1990) and Shapiro and Mahajan(1986) when they state that in political attitude holding and expression,women lag far behind men. In their own study of gender differences, theyanalyzed the number of open-ended comments related to the likes anddislikes of candidates and parties and in the percentage of ‘don’t knows’ tofixed response questions. The authors found,

surprisingly, that despite increases in personal resources of women citizens overthe past 5 decades, women’s lower political communication compared to man’shas largely remained unchanged. Women comment on their likes and dislikesof the candidates and political parties less than men and report ‘don’t know’more often than men in closed-ended questions about candidates, policies andgroups. (Atkeson and Rapoport, 2003: 517)

More than three-quarters (78.6%) of the emails to Shields came from alocation within the USA. Although this was an expected finding, it is moreinteresting that 5.1 percent wrote from Western Europe, 4.7 percent from an



Personal homepage

Interesting Monstah No longer available

Personal homepage

Electric Edge; personal siteof a website designer

http://www.electricedge.com

Inspirational Kothmann Media http://www.kothmannmedia.com

Weblog Hope Dance; RadicalSolutions Inspiring Hope

http://www.hopedance.org

Other Metafilter; a weblog thataccepts posts

http://www.metafilter.com

Ccmep; unidentified http://www.Ccmep.org


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Arab country, 2.8 percent from Israel, 3.3 percent from Canada, 1.9 percentfrom the Occupied Territories and 3.3 percent from Asia, Africa and otherlocations. The widespread distribution of the location of the source of theemails reinforces the global nature of the web, even for material publishedon a US domestic site. The majority of the responses were written in Aprilwithin a week or two of publication (65.8%), but because of repostings, theemails continued in May (24.2%) and throughout the next 10 months.

Religion was important to many of the emailers – 104 to be exact. Ofthose who identified their religion and used it as a basis for their comment,half were Jewish, 26 percent were Muslim, 19.2 percent were Christian, 1.9percent belonged to another faith and 2.9 percent made a point of sayingthat they were not religious. Many of those identifying a religion said thatthey were religious leaders. The rest of the emailers did not mention theirreligion in connection to their comments and appeared more interested inthe editorial from a political perspective. As noted in the section on thearguments used to support their view, messages often cited references topassages in scripture – usually in the Bible or the Koran, but sometimes inother religious texts. This is not surprising, since the conflict in the region islargely related to control of the holiest sites of Islam, Judaism andChristianity.

Nature of the comments to ShieldsThe vast majority of the email messages were directly on the topic of theeditorial – 93.7 percent, similar to Nord’s group of people writing to theChicago newspaper who engaged with the text of the material in thenewspaper ‘directly and seriously’ (1995: 67). Most of those messages weretelling Shields that even though they could not take any action personally,they were pleased that she was stating her views publicly and they supportedher in this effort. Another group wrote to tell her that they supported her,but also wanted to inform her of their own efforts. Often they would referher to their websites or describe their own peace movement activity (5.2%).They generally sought to enlarge their own movement by adding Shields tothe fold. Some of this group only used Shields’ editorial as a springboard forshowing off, often lecturing her or wanting to negotiate the type of actionsin which arena that needed to be taken.

Of the people who explicitly said that they agreed with or opposedShields’ view, 88.8 percent said that she expressed their own sentiments andonly 7.9 percent said that they opposed her viewpoint, while another 3.4percent said that they found themselves in support of only part of themessage. Those opposing her view who did not make a personal attack,usually picked apart her arguments one by one, making their own counter-arguments and using the email reply function to do that after each majorargument in the editorial.


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The tone of the messages sent to Shields was overwhelmingly positive(84.5%) while only 7.8 percent of the emailers sent negative messages.Positive messages included a variety of emotional adjectives, including‘strong and moving’, ‘touching’, ‘eloquent’, ‘poignant’, ‘comforting’ and‘encouraging’. Those writers also applaud Shields for her courage, honestyand truth-telling, for her role as a spokesperson for injustice or as achampion for human rights. The messages supporting Shields’ view almostalways used some emotional language, even if only as an introduction to amore logical statement.

A mixture of positive and negative elements characterized 2.9 percent ofthe messages, while 4.8 percent were neutral. Shields’ editorial largely spoketo the choir in terms of its persuasive impact. Of the total, 78.8 percent sentmessages that appeared to reinforce the views that were already held by thesender and only 0.5 percent said that they were persuaded to change theirviews, while another 1.9 percent wrote to say they found her position newand interesting. Shields’ framing of her opinion as a good Jewish daughterwho now felt enormous guilt for the actions of the Israelis against thePalestinians clearly struck a chord in many people. It was as if they weresecretly carrying around thoughts like these, discovered them in her writing,and immediately had to tell her that she had relieved them of a burden.Many of those writers said to Sarah, ‘You help me understand my ownfeelings’, or ‘You gave voice to what I was wrestling with’. From the largenumber of people who wrote variations on this message, we believe that theframe of the editorial served as a trigger that prompted people to go to thecomputer and fire off a supportive response, a response that they might nothave written in an environment without the internet. However, Shields’approach did not attract many opponents. Only 7.6 percent of the messagesexpressly rejected Shields’ position and 11.1 percent made no commentrelated to their own position. The types of communication sent to Shieldsincluded:

• questions that asked for a reply, often wanting to engage in a dialogue withher on some phase of the topic (17.2 %);

• personal statements of views, rhetorical questions or both (80.4 %); and• questions asked or statements made, but mostly used as an opportunity to

forward material of their own (2.4 %). The people taking this approachusually sought to connect Shields to their own causes or groups.

In the body of the message, many of the emailers (93) related personalexperiences to illustrate their own point of view. These experiencesfunctioned in the way that Nord (1995) described as linking, or a way tomake sense of the idea or situation by relating it to something in their ownlives. Of the messages that provided such examples, 4.3 percent of theemailers described their personal experiences or those of family or friends


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related to a Holocaust or Second World War experience in Europe. Lifeexperiences in Israel (11.8%) or in the Occupied Territories (10.8%)constituted another group of these examples. Still others established aconnection to Shields by providing stories of suffering a similar fate to thePalestinians (4.3%) or a range of other experiences (68.8%). Some examplesmight better illustrate the process of connecting. This is a section from alonger letter from an American who has family ties to the Palestinians.1

My Palestinian relatives have always wondered why the US hates them somuch & what they did wrong to deserve a lack of compassion. My Christianrelatives (father’s side) are from Beit Jala (next to Bethlehem) & from Jerusalem.I traced my roots in ‘73; most of them fled in ‘48 to Jordan & Lebanon (mymother’s side is from there, also Christian, & I only mention my faith becausewe now have a President & an Atty General who claim we’re a Christiannation & rescue Christians). The ones who still remain in Beit Jala & Jerusalemare the ones who are the worst off economically. I remember going out earlyone morning to pick figs from a fig orchard (with some cousins) that an unclehad just outside Beit Jala. Well, the Israeli govt expropriated that prop. & builta Jewish settlement, referred to as a Jewish neighborhood by that govt. You &other American Jews are the best hope for Palestinians & Israelis for a justpolitical solution; esp. for us, because any admission of wrongdoing is the firststep that must be taken to create healing & any feeling of trust.

This woman describes her religious connection to the theme of theeditorial. She relates to Shields’ editorial through her remembrance of herfather and his teaching.

I’m a Jewish woman whose own father died in 1979. His message to me wasto love anyway. I’ve been working on that ever since. Your letter expresses myown views better than anything I’ve read or heard.

My heartfelt thanks for your courage and your wisdom. You are not alone inthis and we will surely find a way through it. Thank you, thank you, thankyou for your great compassion.

Another emailer recalls his father’s lessons:

My Daddy was supportive. He fought at Guadalcanal in WWII and was one ofonly six who returned from his battalion. He felt it was absolutely a necessarywar, but felt people romanticized war in general (the ones who’d never been inone). He always said, ‘Don’t trust the government, don’t believe everything youread and think outside the box!’

This letter describes an experience but does so to let Shields know thatJews living on the West Bank are in agreement with her position andworking hard to change things.

Your letter touched me, and I can understand your bewilderment. I am anIsraeli, a ‘West Bank Settler’ who has devoted much of my time in the last


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seven years to helping Palestinians. There ARE ways to help, and many of usare involved ... Today we go into the closed areas, we distribute food andmedicines. But quietly over the years we have met with our Palestiniancounterparts and worked to build not only understanding, but the groundworkfor a viable Palestinian state. Unlike Vietnam, we are not going to be able to‘divorce’ each other: the Palestinians and Israelis, the Jews and Arabs of thisregion, will have to live together somehow. We had better learn how to do sofor our mutual benefit.

The reading of Shields’ editorial prompted this woman to take action onher feelings.

I am the daughter of a man who, with his company, liberated a labor camp inAustria during World War Two.

In the neighborhood in which I grew up, we were one of two gentilefamilies. Two of my childhood friends’ Bubbas [fathers] had been tattooed. Andbecause of my Dad, we knew and respected what an extraordinaryachievement their very presence was.

I have been inordinately proud of my upbringing, my life as a token Shiksa,and appalled with the actions of the government of Israel and the U.S. But Ihave been reluctant to speak up. Until now.

This person is a Hindu living in the United Kingdom who is trying tomake sense of the actions of people of his faith towards another group ofMuslims:

I’m a Hindu, follower of the same religion whose other followers killed abouta thousand innocent muslims in Gujarat (India) last month. This time I wasn’tpresent in India and I’m thankful to God I never witnessed a riot first-hand.All the time I was there, I argued helplessly with many fellow Hindus who sopassionately believed in death to Muslims. However there were some Hinduswho did act rationally and were outraged when Muslim property was destroyedor innocent muslims killed.

And this man recalled his own experience when he read Shields’editorial:

Sarah, I am a farmer from northern Indiana. I have visited Israel twice andonce, hired a guide to drive me and my family to Gaza. He was terrified, butthe challenge of the forbidden won him over and we headed south. What wesaw, the poverty, the burned homes, the soldiers, to which we gave lifts,shocked him. He had no idea of the oppression. We all learned a lot that day.

The shame of all of us as citizens of this empire, is that we won’t look atwhat is around us. You have helped us do that.

These personal responses to the reading of the editorial are similar to theexperience of secondary emotion as identified by Damasio (1994) or asarticulated by Cho et al. (2003: 313) ‘as a psychological experience


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developed later, after the link between initial primary emotion, messagecharacteristics and situations has been identified and appraised’. Here, theoriginal emotion was recalled when the reader encountered Shields’ editorialand later responded to it. Cho et al. (2003) compared the emotionalresponses to television and newspaper messages related to the 9/11 terroristattack in the US. Although the researchers found that television was asignificant predictor of positive and negative emotional response and thatnewspapers were not, they called for an examination of the ‘role ofemotional responses as a consequence of political communication processesand also consider it as antecedent to political cognition and behavior’ (2003:324). As applied to responses to Shields’ editorial, readers who said that herwords tapped their own feelings were emotionally affected and those readerswho countered with their own ideas or tried to get Shields to act for theirown causes were probably not as emotionally engaged with the content.However, in order to understand whether the emotionally-charged emailmessages were followed by specific political cognition or behavior, we wouldneed to seek further input from the writers of those messages. As Kincaid(2002) has pointed out, emotion has been left out of most theories ofcommunication, so we have little to go on when trying to determine theconditions under which emotional experiences are called upon inresponding to Shields’ editorial or in the actions that might have followed.

ArgumentsAlthough the email messages were largely in support of the editorial’sposition, they frequently included arguments of their own, as if needing toadd their own evidence to show that Shields was on the right track – or thewrong track, if they disagreed with her position. We coded up to threetypes of arguments. Table 2 provides detail.

The opposing views generally went on the attack, often calling intoquestion her training or work as a historian. All such attacks came frommen. The research conducted on flaming in electronic messages is mixed,with two studies finding that women are as likely as men to flame (Savicki,1996; Witmer and Katzman, 1997) and other studies finding that men aremore likely to use assertive language (Bate and Bowker, 1988; Herring,1993). One emailer claimed to have checked the website of her universityand challenged her claim that she was an associate professor in the historydepartment. Other attacks were more personal and usually contained noevidence for their opposition. A few examples of this type of messagefollow:

You’re pitiful. You should be ashamed of yourself ...Unfortunately your father did not teach you history.What sort of academic vacuum have you been loitering in? The truth can be

found lying among the facts. I suggest you spend your research time reading a


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few elementary history books and reacquaint yourself with the intellectualpursuit of fact finding rather than indulging yourself with some kind of wackoFreudian self discovery, which is really designed as a passport for acceptanceinto your loony left social circles.

What your father probably forgot to tell you all through your childhood waswhat a stupid little girl you were. Lacking this recognition, you obviouslydedicated the rest of your life to filling this void. The above is an opinion. Yourtelevised letter to your father was shameful. What is not an opinion andbeneath contempt that you as a ‘professor of history’ present as fact what ispurely false. That you are a Jew is even more egregious; worse than an avowedanti-Semite. There is no debate here. You are wrong.

Get out of my country.I have one advice for you all, stop seeing evil in Israel. While your blindness

with hate will destroy you. I guess all the terror attacks from Muslems werefrom Mossad. I guess Mossad does a good recruiting job according to you. Ido not hate you, I just feel sorry for you, that the hate for Jews and Israel is acancer in your body. Finally, I ask, what has a Jew done to you, to make youhate us so much.

The surprising finding is that response to opinion on such a polarizedissue contained so few messages like those cited here. When individuals takesides on this issue they often close themselves off to opposing views, makingthem more likely to make ad hominem arguments. In a study of thediscussion threads of political newsgroups where feelings often run high,Papacharissi (2004) found that only 8 percent of messages were characterizedto be uncivil.

Since the nature of the editorial lent itself to emotional appeals (adaughter’s relationship to her father, a feeling of being complicit in the

• Table 2 Arguments included in emails sent to Shields

ARGUMENT PRIMARY SECONDARY TERTIARY

Statistics 2 3 1

Anecdotes/personel or other story 35 6 1

Emotional appeal 41 7 2

Argumentum ad hominem/attack on Sarah 12 0 2

Rights of Jews/Palestinians cited 16 12 2

Quotations/speeches/essays from other sources 88 5 4

Citing scriptures from any religion 7 5 2

Invokes other wars as evidence 29 23 7

Thanks Sarah, but makes no argument insupport of refutation

119 85 14

No direct argument made but adds forwardedmaterial

109 28 16

Other 4 0 0

Total 382 204 51


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violence occurring in the region, etc.) it is probably only natural that theemail responses are equally emotional in their comments. A total of 104 ofthe messages made specific mention of personal emotions. Words like‘moved to tears’, ‘wept at your voice’ (from the radio reading of theeditorial), ‘I cried, literally’, ‘My heart filled with hope’ and ‘I sit here atwork and find it hard to hold back the tears’ are repeated over and over inthe emails. Of the messages that include mention of personal emotion, 21.2percent specifically mentioned crying; another 73.1 percent talked of beingsomehow emotionally ‘touched’ by the editorial; 3.8 percent referred toanger at reading Shields’ words; and 1.9 percent made reference tosomething closer to revulsion. Many of the positive emotional responsesgrew out of the emailers conveying that they felt isolated and alone untilShields’ editorial expressed their own feelings on the matter. Often thosemessages came from people who said they were Jewish. While we mightexpect references to being moved to tears from women, in their messages anequal number of men and women made that statement. And a nearly equalnumber said they were emotionally touched by the editorial (30 men and26 women).

DISCUSSIONBefore Shields sent this editorial to Common Dreams for possiblepublication, she sent it to one regional and two national newspapers. Thenational papers did not even respond to her submission and the regionalpaper rejected it without providing a reason. In sending it to CommonDreams she was submitting the editorial to an organization usually definedas part of the alternative media. In its report on ‘The State of the NewsMedia 2004’, the Project for Excellence in Journalism (2004) examines thecurrent content and economic health and well being of all US media.However, the label ‘alternative’ is reserved for a section of the print mediaand focuses on weeklies. No ‘alternative’ section of internet media is listedin the fairly comprehensive report. The authors characterize the alternativeweeklies as ‘arguably the most dynamic of all the media we study’ (’Ethnic/Alternative’, 2004: 4). But they also note that the content of these papers islooking increasingly mainstream. The lack of availability of unpopularviewpoints may lead interested readers to the web for such content. Andcertainly Common Dreams, as one of those alternative media, was willingto post Shields’ views on their site. The audience found the editorial socompelling that it remained at the top of reader’s choices for several weeksfollowing publication and then prompted 382 emails to the author.

As the content of these emails reveals, their authors were not ‘insane’ asthe editorial staff in Wahl-Jorgenson’s study believed. On the contrary, mostof the messages came from politically engaged citizens in the US and othercountries who were concerned about the plight of the people in the region


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and the state of US foreign policy. Perhaps these people felt that they hadbeen excluded from public discussion of the issues related to the MiddleEast and resorted to writing emails to connect with someone who haddemonstrated expertise of the region’s history and expressed a point of viewnot found in the mainstream press. They were both surprised andappreciative of learning of another viewpoint than those available ontelevision and in their newspapers. They created their own ‘public sphere’when none was available to them. A reader of the message fromIndianapolis, IN, expressed support for this view.

Here in the great Midwest my political/religious/philosophical/etc views tendto be very much in the minority, & your Common Dreams piece has done agreat deal for me. I find it beautifully & brilliantly crafted. It’s art of thehighest integrity in my humble view.

Although this article makes no claim to representing written responses toother editorial content in the online or offline media, the findings regardinggender are worth further exploration. Many more men responded toShields’ editorial than women. This might be based on a lingering gendergap in internet usage. Although women on the net now exceed the numberof men, they engage with different types of content. In a 2000 study, thePew Internet & American Life Project (2001) broke down internet use byrace and gender, and more men of all races consulted the internet daily fornews and for political news. But in a more recent study of content creationonline (from weblogs to internet sites to posting comments to onlinenewsgroups), about 49 percent of female respondents said that they hadcreated content as compared to 51 percent of male respondents (PewInternet & American Life Project, 2004). The smaller number of messagesfrom women is consistent with their reluctance to express certain kinds ofopinions on political issues. And Papacharissi’s (2004) study ofcommunication in online political newsgroups found only five messages (outof 268) where the authors identified themselves as women. Although theliterature is mixed on the relationship between gender and use of assertivelanguage, flaming was a characteristic of messages sent only by males.Although negative messages that expressed anger also came from women,none of them attacked Shields personally as the sole content of the message.

What attracted us to this study in the first place was the large number ofresponses that Shields received as a result of the publication. And as wefollowed the repostings of the editorial to other websites and discussion lists,we were equally surprised at the way in which information moves aroundthe internet and the world. We were pleased to see this multiplier effect ofthe internet in the area of alternative media. Although we have no estimateof how many readers of the editorial there might have been, we know thatit spread to several continents and its impact was far greater than the reach


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of Common Dreams. A couple of examples illustrate this impact. Onewoman in a city close to Shields’ location wrote to describe the efforts shewas making to promote changes in US policy in the Middle East and askedShields to join her group. She might never have known that Shields heldthose views were it not for the publication of the editorial on the internet.Another person was inspired to forward the editorial to many others, askingthem to contact their representatives to call for change in policy on thenational level. However, the multiplier effect was not all seen as positive.One man who opposed Shields’ view said in his message to her:

If you are indeed a Jew, I hope you realize that your letter is being sent aroundthe country by Arab or Palestinian supporters as proof that what our‘homeland’ is doing to their people is even frowned upon by their people.How can you be Jew, an educated provider of knowledge and represent ourpeople like this?

Although Common Dreams would be labeled by most as a politicallyliberal site, it is clear that the editorial reached people who might notchoose to read most of the messages published there and yet had access toShields’ editorial. That is an encouraging prospect, as we consider theinternet as a tool for expanding political discourse. Future research on theimpact of news and opinion on the internet should make use of hyperlinkand tracking analyses to determine the diffusion and scope of informationthat appears on the web.

This research has focused on a single case study. But we believe that thefindings have implications for a wide range of discourse on opinions that areprominently displayed on the web. The impact of Shields’ editorialprompted responses as recently as April 2004. Research often focuses on theephemeral nature of the web, but because of archives and reposting ofinformation, information can take on a much longer shelf-life than mediaappearing in print or broadcast formats. We would like to see moreattention paid to this subject in future work. Although the research had itsbasis in work on public opinion and letters to the editor, it only begins tobuild theory on opinion expressed in relation to the internet. Further workneeds to be conducted to determine the circumstances under which peopleare prompted to write to authors of web-based information and opinion.We agree with Weger and Aakhus (2003: 36–7) when they observe thatinteractive media have more promise as ‘technologies of connection ratherthan technologies of dispersion such as television and newspapers’. Thehundreds of messages to Shields would not have been written in the absenceof accessible interactive communication technologies.

AcknowledgementThe authors wish to thank Sarah Shields for sharing the emails she received concerningher essay published on the Common Dreams website. Without the data this article could


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not have been written. The authors are also most grateful for the many conversations weshared about the meaning of the outpouring of responses to her insightful essay.

Note1 All messages appear as they were written in the original. No attempt to write out

abbreviated words or correct spelling or punctuation has been made.

Appendix

Please, dad, tell me: how do I stop being complicit?

By Sarah Shields (published 10 April 2002 byCommonDreams.org)

Dear Dad,It was an enormously heavy responsibility you raised me with. You taughtme that the Jews have been oppressed for centuries. You taught me that theHolocaust could only happen because the Germans were silent. You taughtme that Jews must never, never, never be silent when injustice occurs,because our silence makes us complicit.

You taught me about history and you taught me by your actions. As arabbi, you preached against racism in the south and had to leave a pulpit inLouisiana when they threatened to kill our family. You worked for openhousing laws, insisting that there should be no ghettos in America like theones your parents had lived in, in Europe. You counseled Jewish kids whowere conscientious objectors, eliciting the hostility of many who believedthat the Vietnam War was a valiant struggle for justice in our time.

It is a heavy responsibility I carry now. Because now I am complicit. Ihave not stood in front of the tanks that are killing other mothers’ childrenin refugee camps. I have not ridden in ambulances to help them get pastcheckpoints so that the injured could be cured. I have not laid in front ofthe bulldozers to prevent their destroying a family’s shelter.

What can I do about this injustice?Palestinians are losing their property, their lives and their children every

day. The Israeli army shoots at unarmed civilians, imposing collectivepunishments that make it impossible for Palestinians to get food, water, orpower. For decades, Israel has paid settlers to move into occupied territory.

International law reflects the consensus of the world’s sense of right.International law seeks to protect the powerless. And international law isclear. Occupying countries have to protect the lives and property of thelocal population. It is not legal to establish settlements at all. Why do Israeland the US pay Israelis to move into them?

There are Palestinian terrorists. They have been raised under occupation.Know what? Israeli soldiers treat occupied people the same way other


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armies have treated occupied people. The stories are horrendous. Arbitrarybeatings. Tauntings. Killings. Arrests without charge. Torture. Threateningparents in front of children. Stepping on ‘prisoners’ trying to move betweencheckpoints. Strip searches. The use of power to humiliate.

When people are humiliated and have no homes to return to because thehomes have been destroyed by the occupying army, when people arehumiliated and have no family to hold them in their arms because they havebeen shot and unable to get medical care, when people are humiliated andhave no hope for the future, They see no alternative to violence.

You taught me Judaism’s universal message. ‘I am a Jew because in allplaces where there are tears and suffering the Jew weeps.’ I believedEdmond Fleg’s words, ‘I am a Jew because Israel places man and his unityabove nations and above Israel itself.’

Dad, we have become the oppressors. One rabbinic student told me yearsago when I lived in Israel that this was the meaning behind the warning toremember that we were slaves in the land of Egypt. We were warned toremember, because sometimes slaves want to become masters.

We are the oppressors and we are also the victims. Jews are being killedand at the same time, the moral imperative that you taught me was part ofbeing Jewish seems to be vanishing. I believe that Jews are being used by anAmerican administration to accomplish its own ends, ends that have nothingto do with the ideals of Jews. We need to shout aloud that 80 percent ofthe billions that the US gives Israel in aid must be spent on weapons andthat more than half of those weapons are built in Texas. And Jews are beingused by an Israeli government that has no interest except territorialexpansion. Sharon is the ideological heir to Jabotinsky. Land for peace wasnever in that ideology. War makes conquest possible and all the people ofIsrael and Palestine are being drawn, tragically and together, into that war.

We must act and we must act immediately. Jews are being used tolegitimize the slaughter of Palestinians. Please, Dad, tell me how to be likeyou taught me to be. How do I stop being complicit?

I love you.Sarah

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CHRISTINE OGAN is a professor of journalism and informatics. A major focus of her researchhas been on the use of communication technologies in Europe and particularly in Turkey. Hermost recent book publication is Communication and Identity in the Diaspora: Turkish Migrantsin Amsterdam and Their Use of Media (Lexington Books, 2001).Address: School of Journalism, Indiana University, 206a Ernie Pyle Hall, 970 E. 7th St,Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. [email: [email protected]]

FILIZ ÇIÇEK holds a MFA degree in Sculpture from the Henry Radford Hope School of FineArts, Indiana University. She is currently a doctoral student in Central Eurasian studies atIndiana University.

MUZAFFER OZAKÇA is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in human–computer interactionin the School of Informatics, Indiana University. He is also interested in the social studies ofcomputing and planning to continue his research work in the area of social informatics.


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Internet-using Children and Digital Inequality: A Comparison between Majority and Minority Europeans

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