Shani Orgad is a lecturer in the department of Media and Communications. Her first degree was in Media and Communications with Sociology and Anthropology from The Hebrew University, and she has a Masters and a PhD in Media and Communications from the LSE. Her research interests include media representations and contemporary culture, representations of suffering, new media, the Internet and computer-mediated communication, narrative and media, media and everyday life, media and globalisation, health and new media, gender and the media, and methodological aspects of doing Internet research.
She has lectured on Media, Culture and Society, Media Representations in a Global Age, Internet, and Computer Mediated Communication and Globalisation and Media and Gender to undergraduates and postgraduates in both Cambridge University and the London School of Economics. In 2008 Shani won an LSE Teaching Prize for Outstanding Teaching Performance.
Biography
I undertook my first degree at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in Media and Communications with Sociology and Anthropology. I have both a Masters and a PhD in Media and Communications obtained at the LSE. I have lectured two undergraduate Media courses at the University of Cambridge, as well as part of an MSc course on Gender and Media at the LSE. I joined the Department of Media and Communications as a lecturer in September 2003.
Research Interests
My main research interest concerns the significance of media representations for people's understanding of themselves, of one another, and the world. I am and particularly interested in how new media enable people to present and understand themselves and how their personal narratives and representations interact, reflect and challenge larger public narratives and images. I have recently completed a research project which explored the representations of the survivor in contemporary media and public discourse.
My current research, Media Representations in a Global Age (forthcoming, Polity Press), examines how transformations in the contemporary media landscape, specifically the expansion of new media, the increasing global scope of communication, and the blurring between public and private realms, change and shape the ways in which issues of public concern are framed, imaged, and constructed, and what consequences this may have.
My other interests include representations of suffering, new media, the Internet and computer-mediated communication, narrative and media, media and everyday life, media and globalisation, health and new media, gender and the media, and methodological aspects of doing Internet research.
I co-direct (with Dr Bruna Seu and Professor Stan Cohen) a research project on 'Mediated Humanitarian Knowledge; Audiences' Reactions and Moral Actions', funded by the Leverhulme Trust.
I recently completed a research project on the impact mobile television entitled, "This Box Was Made For Walking|". The research explored how mobile television is likely to transform viewers' experience of watching television and how it will change advertising. A report commissioned by Nokia was published in November 2006 and a special event was held at the BAFTA in London on 10 November 2006.
My previous research focused on the online participation of breast cancer patients in Internet spaces. While much has been debated about the significance of the Internet, the actual processes of communication in which people engage online are as yet little understood. Exploring the ways in which participants in online spaces configure their experience into a story, my study offers an innovative way of understanding online communication as a socially significant activity. It is based on e-mail and face-to-face interviews with breast cancer patients, as well as an analysis of breast cancer related websites. The substantive focus of storytelling online is analysed in its specificity as a social phenomenon. At the same time it is connected to a broad range of debates on communication and Internet, health and illness and social agency. I have written about this in my book Storytelling Online: Talking Breast Cancer on the Internet| (Peter Lang, 2005).
In 2004 I was invited by the Caesarea Edmond Benjamin de Rothschild Institute for Interdisciplinary Applications of Computer Science| to give a keynote lecture on my research in a series on Gender and Technology|. The lecture was titled "The pink side and the darker side of women and the Internet: the case of breast cancer patients' online communication|".
Another interest is in qualitative methods of Internet research. I wrote about this in chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Information and Communication Technologies (edited by Mansell et al, 2007) Virtual Methods (edited by Hine, Berg, 2005) and Internet Inquiry: A Dialogue Among Qualitative Researchers (edited by Markham & Baym, Sage, 2008), and in a review of the book "Online Social Research" in New Media & Society (February 2005). I am part of an international research group who is engaged in the study of qualitative methods of Internet research, together with Nancy Baym (University of Kansas), Annette Markham (University of the Virgin Islands), Lori Kendall (SUNY) and others.
We held a roundtable on this topic at the AoIR conference in Toronto, 2003 and a workshop at the AoIR conference in Sussex, 2004.
Teaching
I teach a compulsory course in the MSc Global Media and Communications on Representation in the Age of Globalisation (MC416) and the doctoral seminar: NYLON - Culture and Politics (SO507) (together with Richard Sennett). In the academic year 2005-6 I directed the MSc in New Media, Information and Society. I am involved in various other teaching, in the courses Theories and Concepts in Media and Communications (MC400), Media and Globalisation (MC411), Research Seminar for Media, Communications & Culture (MC500), Methods of Research in Media and Communications (MC4M1), as well as doctoral supervision. I also teach in the Summer School International Journalism and Society - The Role of the Media in the Modern World (IR245).
Publications
2011
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Orgad, S. (2011). Proper distance from ourselves: The potentialof estrangement in the mediapolis. International Journal of Cultural Studies (14):4.
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Chouliaraki, L. and Orgad, S. (eds) (2011). Proper Distance: Mediation, Ethics and Visibility, Special Issue of the International Journal of Cultural Studies(14):4.
2010
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Orgad, S. (2010) Reflections on ethical aspects of doing online research with participants and their narratives. MeCCSA website.
2009
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Orgad, S. (2009). Watching how others watch us: The Israeli media's treatment of international coverage of the Gaza war, The Communication Review, 12 (4).
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Orgad, S. (2009). The Survivor in contemporary culture and public discourse: A genealogy, The Communication Review, 12 (2): 132-161.
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Orgad, S. (2009). Mobile TV: Old and New in the Construction of an Emergent Technology. Convergence, 15 (2): 197-214.
2008
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Orgad, S. (2008). 'Have you seen Bloomberg?:' Satellite News Channels as Agents of the New Visibility, Global Media and Communication, 4(3): 301-327.
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Orgad, S. (2008). How Can Researchers Make Sense of the Issues Involved in Collecting and Interpreting Online and Offline Data? (pp. 33-53) In A. N. Markham & N. K. Baym (eds), Internet Inquiry: Conversations About Method. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
2007
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Orgad, S. (2007). The interrelations between 'online' and 'offline': questions, issues and implications. In R. Mansell, C. Avgerou, D. Quah and R. Silverstone (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Information and Communication Technologies. Oxford: OUP.
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Orgad, S. (2007). Interactivity. Encyclopaedia of Children, Adolescents, and the Media. London: Sage.
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Orgad, S. (2007). The Internet as a moral space: The legacy of Roger Silverstone, New Media & Society, 9(1): 33-41.
2006
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Orgad, S. (2006). The cultural dimensions of online communication: A study of breast cancer patients' Internet spaces. New Media & Society, 8(6): 877-899. Available for download here.
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Orgad, S. (October 2006). Patient users and medical websites: the user experience of Internet environments, paper for the EDS LSE Innovation Research Programme, London School of Economics. Available for download here.
2005
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Orgad, S. (2005). Storytelling Online: Talking Breast Cancer on the Internet. New York: Peter Lang. The book can be ordered here.
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Orgad, S. (2005). The transformative potential of the online communication: The case of breast cancer patients' Internet spaces. Feminist Media Studies, 5 (2). 141-161. Available for download here.
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Orgad, S. (February 2005). Review of "Online Social Research: Methods, Issues, & Ethics", S. S. Chen & G. J. Hall (eds), New Media & Society, 7 (1).
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Orgad, S. (2005). Moving from online to offline relationships with research participants. In C, Hine (ed.), Virtual Methods: Issues in Social Research on the Internet. Oxford: Berg.
2004
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Orgad, S. (2004). Help yourself: The World Wide Web as a self-help agora. In D. Gauntlett & R. Horsley (eds), Web.Studies: Rewiring Media Studies for the Digital Age. Second Edition. London: Arnold.
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Orgad, S. (2004). Just do it! The online communication of breast cancer as a practice of empowerment. In M. Consalvo, N. Baym, J. Hunsinger, K. Jensen J. Logie, M. Murero, M. & L. R. Shade (eds), Internet Research Annual Volume 1: Selected Papers from the Association of Internet Researchers Conferences 2000-2002. New York: Peter Lang.
Recent Interviews
The benefits and drawbacks of online health communities, Times (health section), 18 October 2007
The future of mobile TV, El Universal newspaper, Mexico, 26 January 2007 (in Spanish). Read here|
The media coverage of the abduction of Madeline McCann, Expresso newspaper, Portugal, 31 May 2007
Contact Details
Dr Shani Orgad
Room S110
Department of Media and Communications
London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE
UK
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7955 6493
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7955 7248
Email: s.s.orgad@lse.ac.uk|
If you are coming to the LSE, you will find my office on the first floor of St. Clements Building. For details, click here|