About

Amit Schejter is a professor whose research focuses on the influence of new technologies and digital media over people's daily lives, as well as the effect of such use on the overall democratic process. He has published nearly a dozen books/volumes and over 100 JCR peer-reviewed journal articles in various reputable outlets. His work addresses the social and psychological effects of technological elements in web-based mass communication, including interactivity, navigability, multi-modality, and agency in web interfaces, and how these factors impact online users' thoughts, emotions, and actions.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Law
• Computer Science
• Geography
• Social Science
• Computer Security
• Criminology
• Psychology
• Advertising
• Media studies
• Business
• Public relations

Selected publications

• ‘Does anyone here remember my grandfather?’ How can digital memory work in social media shape the remembrance of a relatively forgotten event?

  Memory Mind & Media · 2026-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract This study focuses on a unique Facebook group: ‘Cyprus Immigrants Organisation’, whose members are mostly refugees who were once held in camps in Cyprus in the late 1940s and their descendants. The study offers a content analysis of 687 posts and comments published by group members during 2022. It reveals how a Facebook group made possible, produced, and promoted narratives of a topic that receives relatively little attention in the literature, media, and other memory spaces. The study highlights the range of memory-related content and activities within a Facebook group. We found three main activities of memory work within the group: (a) Members try to shape a coherent narrative of the events; (b) Members discuss acts of remembrance, suggesting additional activities and sharing personal initiatives; (c) Members aim to emphasise their personal connection and belonging to the Cyprus exiles’ community by sharing photographs, artwork, and documents. These memory practices, alongside processes such as gathering knowledge, sharing memories, shaping narratives, and commemorating, highlight the uniqueness of a Facebook group as a platform for memory. These kinds of activities would not be possible on such a scale without the digital environment or, more specifically, a Facebook group. With numerous narratives and collaborative knowledge gathering, the group exemplifies a democratised process of multi-generational memory work and narrative construction.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• No Country Is an Island: The Israeli Media System as a Developmental, Post-Colonial, and Sub-imperial Entity

  2025-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Free to talk or free to block: The capability to communicate in public forums from a comparative perspective

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Conceptualizing participation: Defining and analyzing public participation in policymaking processes

  Telecommunications Policy · 2024-05-21 · 5 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Communication rights and capabilities

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2024-07-23

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  We question whether and how the capability to communicate can be safeguarded by the mechanism of establishing communicating as a right. In order to do so, we define what communications are, explore the nature of rights and specifically the scope of the right to communicate and how that term relates to the notion of ‘communication rights’, and introduce the idea of the capability to communicate and the elements it is comprised of, which need to be identified in order to identify what type of right the right to communicate is and communication rights are, and to ensure the viability of these rights. The capabilities approach and its focus on positive rights serves as the main theoretical foundation for this analysis.

  PublisherDOI

• Israel

  2024-08-09 · 2 citations

  otherOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Israel has a unicameral parliament, the Knesset; elections are national and proportionate, and the executive branch represents a coalition of parties. As a postcolonial entity, the Israeli media landscape resembled at first what in some modeling may have been described as the “development” model — a variety of partisan newspapers, only government-run radio, and no television. Israel entered the 2010s as a highly advanced technological society. The introduction of international streaming services alongside the return to power of Benjamin Netanyahu in 2009 sets the pace and rules for development to come. Over-the-top streaming entered the market before the government had the opportunity to set any regulatory rules. A unique phenomenon in democratic regimes, Galey Tsahal has been broadcasting since the early days of the state and its two stations have emerged as a hip and popular noncommercial alternative to public radio.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Capabilities Divide: ICT Adoption and Use among Bedouin in Israel

  Journal of Human Development and Capabilities · 2024-07-02 · 2 citations

  article

  The Bedouin community, a subpopulation of the Arab minority in Israel, has been subject to systematic discrimination throughout the state’s history, including in accessibility to digital services. Based on 25 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with Bedouin men and women residing in unrecognised villages – townlets that are not legally designated as municipal entities by the state and therefore lack basic infrastructure – this study asks whether and how the capabilities approach can be used to assess and examine ICT usage among the Bedouin as a marginalised community with distinct needs. The analysis illuminates the tensions and contradictions that characterise their digital experiences and shows that the capabilities approach is particularly apposite for understanding digital exclusion while compensating for the shortcoming of the digital divide framework. The findings uncover the ubiquitous presence of mobile smartphones among Bedouin users as the central enabler of their desired capabilities while pointing out the vital place religion plays in the community members’ decision-making regarding the use of ICTs for the realisation of their desired capabilities.

  PublisherDOI

• Mass Media: The Case of Israeli Broadcast Media and Arab-Israelis

  Palgrave studies in digital inequalities · 2023-01-01 · 2 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Digital Capabilities

  Palgrave studies in digital inequalities · 2023-01-01 · 9 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Context: Marginalized Communities in Israel and the West Bank

  Palgrave studies in digital inequalities · 2023-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Noam Tirosh

  Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

  82 shared

• Baruch Shomron

  Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz

  52 shared

• Jonathan Mendels

  43 shared

• Muhammad Abu Jafar

  42 shared

• Shula Mola

  42 shared

• Malka Shacham

  University of Gothenburg

  42 shared

• Ghalia Abu-Kaf

  41 shared

• Amneh Sharha

  39 shared

Labs

• Media Effects Research LabPI

  Investigates social and psychological effects of technological elements unique to web-based mass-communication.

Education

• Ph.D., communications and information

  Rutgers The State University of New Jersey

  1995

• M.S., Communications

  Boston University

  1991

• Ll.B, Law

  Hebrew University of Jerusalem

  1986