Research Topic

This study aims to examine the ways in which student organizations construct identity by way of online social media. Specifically, its umbrella question asks: How do student organizations construct, affirm and mediate identity through online social media? To address this query, the proposed research case studies the social media activity of Hillel Jewish student centers in the US. Accordingly, the work seeks to document and unveil the corpus of meanings embedded in social network posts. Within social networks, special attention will be given to visual aspects, identity work enacted by social media webmasters and the interpretive gaze of Jewish students who incorporate religious and national schemes into their personal epistemology environments.
Research Proposal

Methodology

The work seeks to reveal and document the corpus of meanings embodied in the information uploaded on posts on the Instagram social network, with an emphasis on the visual dimension, thus expanding the phenomenology of the activity of student organizations in the online social network. In ethnographic-digital-visual research of this kind, the images are used as a reliable and accessible source of information that is not subject to the influence of the researcher (Utekhin, 2017). The digital social networks, including the Instagram network, create new social practices, as they assist in 'social networking' (networking), and allow users to present themselves and their social world (Utekhin, 2017). Furthermore, digital anthropology provides an additional and up-to-date layer as a reinforcement for a possible interpretation in cultural analysis.

The research is based on the study of sign systems (semiotics), and the analysis of discourse represented in Instagram posts. This is to examine aspects of the informal activity of young people in the academy, the online activity of student organizations and the processes of identity building in the digital space. The information was collected using a field-based approach of information capture, based on past studies that analyzed visual dimensions of online communication and semi-structured interviews with Hillel representatives with an emphasis on teams entrusted with the management of the social network in the Hillel organization on American campuses.

All data collected will be coded and analyzed with Dedoose qualitative research software in line with the principles set forth by Glaser & Strauss (1967). Coded data will be discussed and compared to past literature on Jewish identity construction. 

Data coding image from the thesis

Thesis (Hebrew)

Identity construction