Online media overview: Palestine
This sheetprovides asummary presentationof thecountry'secosystemof online media.
ESSENTIAL FACTS
> High level of Internet penetration allowed by Israel's infrastructures, but 3G deployment is made impossible by bandwidth restrictions.
> Attacks on press freedom are still regular occurrences, and political parties have a stranglehold on media independence.
> News websites are extremely popular and devote much space to political news.
> Paper-format dailies are now being left behind by pure players and websites associated with TV and radio stations.
> Facebook and Twitter are much-used by citizen-journalists to document the day-to-day life in the occupied territories or the consequences of periods of conflict.
> News websites and social media reflect the high degree of political polarisation in society.
> Online advertising investment is very low and prevents the media sector from becoming a viable industry.
News websites to watch:
Quds News Network, Al Huriya News Agency, Visualizing Palestine.
METHODOLOGY
Each country file starts with four indicators to illustrate the environment within which the online media are evolving:
- Internet penetration level, according to the 2013 figures from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU)
- Online advertising revenue per Internet user per annum, for 2015, according to Arab Media Outlook projections cross-referenced with the ITU statistics
- The 2015 Work Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters without Borders
- The Freedom of the Net 2014 Index, compiled by Freedom House
The above four indicators are represented graphically in the four quarters of a "sonar" screen, in which the coloured area is proportional to the absolute value (in the case of Internet penetration level) or relative value (in the case of word press and Internet freedom scores and for advertising revenue) across the sample for the eight indicator countries.
A table then lists the five principal news websites most visited in that country, in accordance with the Alexa platform ranking.
For each of these news websites we indicate the following:
- The website URL
- The number of Likes on its Facebook page
- The number of its followers on Twitter
- The type of news website:
