Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Web Journalism in the Ultra Orthodox (Haredi) Community



Hello Readers,

Another publication is in the process of being published soon. It involves the worldviews and professional inclinations of web journalists in the ultra-Orthodox world, with an emphasis on the Israeli community. The work was generously supported by the EU's Research and Innovation initiative - Marie Curie foundation, as well as by the LINKS I-Core initiative of Israel's Science Foundation. Here are is the draft of the abstract that should be published shortly in a European journal.





Fundamentalist Web Journalism: Walking a Fine Line between Religious Ultra Orthodoxy and the New Media Ethos

Oren Golan and Nakhi Mishol-Shauli



New media journalism has perturbed traditional reporting not only in mainstream-modern societies, but also within religious-cum-insular communities. Focusing on the Jewish ultra-Orthodox community in Israel, and in light of web-journalists’ continuous struggle with leading clergy and an apprehensive public, this study grapples with the question, how do ultra-Orthodox web journalists view their work-mission as information brokers for an enclave culture? The study gleaned from 40 in-depth interviews with web journalists and discussions with community web activists. Results uncovered three major schematas that drive their praxis: (1) Communal-Haredi (2) Western-Democratic (3) Journalist Ecosystem. Findings suggest a rising archetype of fundamentalist web journalism that rests its professional ethos on writers’ practice, rather than on formalized training or communal dictums. Web-journalists were found to strongly identify with their community, yet, often unintentionally, also to act as a secondary form of authority and harbingers of change.

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