Masbirim Israel
2012
Hershkovitz, Shay
In 2010, Israel’s Ministry of Information and Diaspora Affairs launched a new campaign: Masbirim Israel. Its purpose was to “recruit” Israeli citizens to the task of improving the nation’s public image in the world. It was the first time a well-organized campaign was launched, systematically employing new-media tools and calling on Israeli citizens to independently take part in improving their country’s international image—all at the behest of a government ministry. The executive authority in effect delivered some of its responsibilities and obligations to private hands. This article discusses prosumption in the political sphere and expands the idea of prosumption to a domain in which the state itself is the producer and its citizens are the consumers. Prosumption is perceived as acts conducted by citizens who operate to fulfill aims (i.e., produce products) that traditionally have been in the purview of the state. The article presents two arguments: First, the campaign is an expression of the idea of prosumption in the political sphere. By integrating Israel’s citizens in the process of public relations (PR), they become prosumers in the sense that they participate in the production of a public good that traditionally has been supplied by the state. Second, the Masbirim Israel campaign is an expression of a glocalized and grobalized condition in Israeli reality, as it reflects trends of neoliberal values and practices of privatization and expresses the political opinions of (extreme) nationalism and particularism to nonformally “recruit” its citizens to the national PR effort.
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