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The growing number of undecided voters has attracted a lot of interest due to its important role in determining election results. Many studies have addressed the media consumption of undecideds but few have examined the role of undecideds' attitudes towards the media institution. This paper is innovative in its attempt to address the issue of the role of media trust in undecided versus decided voters' media engagement, based on a survey (N = 1427) followed by a multivariate analysis during the Israeli April 2019 elections campaign. The analysis revealed that although decided voters have more doubt in the accuracy of the news media, they still consume more news from more diverse sources, highlighting decideds as more critical and simultaneously more informed than undecideds. A parallel experiment (N = 121) identified that undecideds tended to rank a fake news item shared by one of their Facebook friends as credible significantly more often than decideds, demonstrating undecideds' lower critical ability to identify misinformation. The present study highlights the under-explored roles of undecideds (mis)trust of the news media and high susceptibility to believe fake news items, thus adding new evidence to the notion that elections are often won by the least informed and least critical citizens. We discuss the grim implications of our findings to current literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the first systematic analysis of memes created by Palestinians in Israel. An analysis of 150 memes reveals how memes are used to reflect on and intervene in Palestinian youths' navigation of life in mixed cities under prolonged war and colonialism. I analyze these memes at three different levels: global popular culture and politics, in relation to the Israeli State, and Palestinian in-group dynamics. The analysis reveals a divide between Palestinians and Israelis despite living in mixed cities, putting the myth of coexistence in such cities into question. Memes appear to function both in navigating the contested cultural and spatial politics and carving out space in the cultural landscape for youths' aspirations. I propose a framework that conceptualizes Internet memes as mapping tools of everyday life. I argue that memes map out the social, cultural, and political landscape in which meme makers live and operate, and further reveals the intricate ties between new media technology and the political, cultural, and spatial arenas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the central dilemmas and changes in social media use among people whose religious identity is in flux, with an emphasis on backstage processes of decision making. Drawing on 15 in-depth interviews with Muslim women in Israel, we found five main themes reflecting the main online changes users experience and effect. We suggest two different logics that the themes show in online decision-making regarding identity and self-presentation. The first is relatively predictable, whereby users reconstruct their social environment to fit their new religious identity. The second logic concerns the management of ties and content in accordance with religious obligations in ways that may not fit the user's personal welfare, and which are related to complex inner conflicts of the user. While previous literature stresses personal welfare as a main factor behind online tie and content management, in this article we show how users are willing to sacrifice their online welfare for the sake of their new identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]