In addition to the cyber youth interest, over the past few years I have been involved with multiple projects focusing on Emergent Self-Educating Communities in the Digital Age. This work has been funded by two sources, the EU Commission's Marie Curie foundation and the LINKS iCore project. This funding has enabled me to achieve a better empirical understanding of online communities and their offline counterparts.
My research group functions as a community net lab focusing on the ways that clearly defined (primordial) communities (re)form social boundaries through the use of new media (i.e. the Internet, mobile communication) and knowledge that is constructed online. Members of the group engage in different communities (i.e. Zionist religious Jews, Haredim, Philippines in Israel, Reform Jewry, the Custodia Terrae Sanctae Franciscan order) and investigate different social aspects of their new media activities including acquiring life skills, online dating, online journalism, religious mobile app developments and more. Thus informal knowledge and its dissemination through new media are evaluated as it impacts social identities and boundaries of each community.
My research team includes, my graduate students, postdoctoral affiliates and research assistants as follows:
Dr. Deby Babis
Yaakov Don
Liraz Cohen
Dr. Michele Martini
Alon Diamant-Cohen
Eldar Fehl
Akiva Berger
Matan Milner
Imad Jraisy
