Detecting stories: Revealing hidden ‘voices’ in public political discourse

The article argues that notwithstanding politicians’ desire to conceal from the public parts of the content of their indoor discussions, we nevertheless find ‘traces’ of their closed door debates in their public addresses. The article suggests that we need to regard at least some of these traces as an inevitable part of the process of constructing political discourse. It provides a comparative analysis of in-camera and public political discourse in Israel, suggesting techniques for identifying unintentional disclosure of information. These techniques are applied to cases drawn from Israeli politics in which politicians have sought to conceal information in public and semi-public forums. Such scrutiny can not only help to sharpen our discernment of the hidden voices in political discourse, but also to understand a crucial mechanism for the construction of borders between confidential and public political discourse.