The Long and winding road’: Digital Campaigns’ Regulation - The Israeli Case

Israel’s electoral propaganda laws were originated in the late 1950’s. when digital campaigns first emerged in Israel, during the early 2000’s, the laws were not adapted to fit the new era, leaving the online sphere as a no man’s land. Early enough Israeli legislature was criticized by the CEC (Central Election Committee) upon electoral appeals, for not handling the legal lacuna. As the politicians had no incentive to do so, and the law was not amended, an ongoing breach of the electoral laws took place, both in the general and the municipal electoral campaigns. Following the 2015 general elections, the Israeli president Ruvi Rivlin and the supreme court Judge Salim Jubran, who served as the CEC chairman, had appointed an official public committee (hence – The Beinisch Committee) to study the outdated electoral propaganda law and how it should be amended to fit the 21 st century. Although the Beinisch committee had submitted its final report in 2017, nothing has been done and the law was not amended. As law always lags technology, progress hasn’t stopped and the algorithmic campaigns era has begun. Campaigns were transformed and shifted from public arenas such as Facebook and Twitter to more subtle venues. One of the outcomes of campaigning on less central media platforms was a much more blatant disregard for electoral and general laws that slips under the public radar and represents the state’s incapacity to enforce its laws on political actors during electoral campaign. During the last five consecutive campaigns, things have started to change. First by judiciary legislation and eventually by a new bill, formally subjecting the online sphere to the electoral laws, forcing each content item online, whether on social media or on text messages and instant messaging services to be identified. Albeit negative phenomena of digital campaigns cannot be eradicated, certainly not at the phase we’re in, in which disinformation can hardly be attributed to its initiator, nor to its propagators and avatars operate on behalf of unidentifiable sources, legal means can lessen and minimize the negative outcomes algorithmic campaigns entail. The paper will illustrate the history of the attempts to regulate the digital campaigns’ sphere while wondering if the current state of the art does not leave us in a ‘too late, too little’ condition.