Current Members
Limor Shifman
Limor Shifman, the principal investigator of the DigitalValues project, is a professor at the Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. She studies digital media and popular culture, and is particularly interested in two realms: understanding the big meaning of small texts (such as jokes) and identifying patterns in seemingly chaotic universes of user generated content. Her work has been published in venues such as Journal of Communication, American Sociological Review, New Media and Society and Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. She is a former research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute , University of Oxford, and a former visiting scholar at the USC Annenberg school of Communication and Journalism. She loves conversing with interesting people, exploring new places, reading and eating (also cooking, sometimes). Email: limor.shifman@mail.huji.ac.i Website: https://limorshifman.huji.ac.il/
Blake Hallinan
Blake Hallinan is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Communication and Journalism at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. They study the politics of classification and evaluation on digital platforms, including how recommendation systems determine relevance, how social media measures civility, and how artists adapt to engagement metrics. Their new project investigates how users make sense of and contest algorithmic governance. Blake’s work addresses interdisciplinary audiences interested in the public implications of algorithms and has been published in venues such as New Media & Society, Information, Communication & Society, and the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. They have a PhD in Communication from the University of Colorado Boulder. Outside of work, Blake is likely to be involved in some combination of the following activities: being very online, playing video games, making satisfying spreadsheets, and/or reading SFF books. Email: blake.hallinan@mail.huji.ac.il Twitter: @blakeplease Website: www.blakehallinan.com
Tommaso Trillò
Tommaso Trillò is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research interests cover different facets of digital visual culture, including memetic photography, platform-specific visual vernaculars, and broadly defined internet aesthetics. Interrogating different types of user-generated content, His work investigates the connection between collective imaginaries and the images we post to social media. Tommaso’s research addresses a broad audience from across the social sciences and has been published in venues such as Journal of Communication, Information, Communication & Society, and the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. Tommaso holds a PhD in Political Sciences from the University of Łodz, Poland (2019), where he conducted his research in the context of the Marie Skłodowska Curie project ‘Gender and Cultures of Equality in Europe’. Before his doctorate, Tommaso read for an MSc in Migration Studies at the University of Oxford. Outside of work, Tommaso interests include a potentially unhealthy obsession with rugby football and a newfound passion for the lore produced by Taylor Swift’s fan base. Email: tommaso.trillo@mail.huji.ac.il Website: tommytrillo.wordpress.com Twitter: @TommyTrillo
Avishai Green
Avishai Green is a doctoral researcher in the DigitalValues project, and a PhD student at the Department of Political Science. His PhD thesis, “What We Value When We Post About Values,” explores the construction of political values through social media discourse through examinations of the use of the term “values” on both Twitter and Instagram and an exploration of political hypocrisy accusations in American Twitter discourse. Born in Jerusalem, Avishai holds an MA (Magna Cum Laude) in Political Science and a joint BA (Magna Cum Laude) in PEP (Philosophy, Economics and Political Science program) and Amirim – Interdisciplinary Honors Program in the Humanities, both from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Avishai is interested in political epistemology, post-truth, and populism, topics he explored in both his MA thesis – “Telling it Like it Isn’t: Populism and Truthfulness – Embracing Sincerity, Abandoning Accuracy?” – and his BA thesis – “Speaking Bullshit to Power: Populism and the Rhetoric of Bullshit.” When he is not following political news and reading too much about Donald Trump, Avishai enjoys playing ultimate frisbee, rock climbing, riding his bike, and traveling. Email: avishai.green@mail.huji.ac.il Twitter: @avishaigreen
Saki Mizoroki
Saki Mizoroki is a doctoral student at the University of Tokyo and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After working as a journalist/editor/translator for a total of fourteen years, Saki decided to return to academia. Her research focuses on gender representation in Japanese media. Born and bred in Tokyo, she studied international politics and law at Sophia University in Tokyo, completing a one-year exchange program at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and then earned the Master of Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley. She has extensive journalist experiences at a traditional top-national Japanese newspaper, The Asahi, and new online media, BuzzFeed Japan. She keeps writing for a Japanese magazine as a freelancer. She is an avid ballet dancer and loves hiking in the mountains. Email: saki.mizoroki@mail.huji.ac.il Twitter: @SMizoroki
Rebecca Scharlach
Rebecca Scharlach is a doctoral researcher in the DigitalValues project, and a PhD candidate at the Department of Communication and Journalism. Her PhD thesis aims to provide a comprehensive conceptual and empirical account of the construction of values by social media platforms. Since October 2019, she has been conducting a comparative study, looking into different spheres of value construction across social media platforms. Following this logic, the three papers comprising her Ph.D. focus on different sites of value construction: policies, platform design, and platforms’ social initiatives. One of the main aims is to evaluate how these sites interact with each other, in an attempt to provide a holistic account of platform value construction. Rebecca was born and raised in Germany, holds a BA and MA (summa cum laude) in Media Studies (University of Siegen; Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf). Email: rebecca.scharlach@mail.huji.ac.il Twitter: @rscarlets Website: https://www.rebeccascharlach.com/
Pyung Hwa (Tim) Park
Tim Park is a Ph.D. student in the Department of International Relations at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He holds a BA and MA degree from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research interests include the Arab-Israeli conflict, Middle Eastern politics, and East Asian politics. He wrote his MA thesis for the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies on the topic of North Korea’s involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict during the Cold War. Tim was born and raised in Seoul, Korea, and in his free time, he tries to stay updated on the fast-changing world of K-Pop and K-Dramas as much as possible. Email: pyunghw.park@mail.huji.ac.il Twitter: @PyunghwP
Michal Salamon
Michal Salamon is an M.A. student in the Department of Communication and Journalism at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, focusing on the internet and new media. She is part of the Smart Institute scholars program and a member of the DigitalValues ERC-funded project. She is interested in the perception of "fake" visuality on social media, taking into consideration both the technology itself (such as Deepfake, filters & Photoshop) and the norms and values that surround it. Her thesis examines call-out videos on YouTube about digital manipulation and dishonest presentation on social media. In addition to her academic projects, she works as a data analyst and enjoys exploring different fields of research.
Email: michal.salamon@mail.huji.ac.il
Naama Weiss Yaniv
Former Members
Bumsoo Kim
Bumsoo Kim is an Assistant Professor at Pusan National University, Busan, Republic of Korea. Bumsoo was a postdoctoral fellow in the project between 2019-2021. He received his Ph.D. from the College of Communication of Information & Sciences at the University of Alabama in 2019. Focusing on social media, his research interests include big data analytics, network heterogeneity, affective polarization, and local communication ecology. His work has been published in New Media & Society, Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, Computers in Human Behavior, and so forth. Bumsoo is from Seoul, Korea. He loves playing tennis and hiking with his kids.
Bat Sheva Hass
Bat Sheva was the project’s coordinator between 2019-2022. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Bat Sheva’s main focus has been on anthropology of religion, anthropology of conversion, gender and religion. Specifically, her dissertation is an integration between anthropology of conversion, anthropology of religion, the politics of belonging, and politics of identity. The case study she is undertaking is a story of Dutch women who converted to Islam and how they perceive their sense of identity and belonging in their current and former lifestyles. Bat sheva holds two M.A’s (in Anthropology and in Social Work- Management of Nonprofit Organizations). Her main hobbies include learning new languages, theater, art, performing, flamenco and fashion.