TY - JOUR T1 - Building the sacred community online: the dual use of the Internet by Chabad JF - Media, Culture & Society Y1 - 2015 A1 - Golan, O A1 - Stadler, N KW - Chabad KW - community KW - Digital Religion KW - fundamentalism KW - religion KW - religious communities AB - Religious communities have ongoing concerns about Internet use, as it intensifies the clash between tradition and modernity, a clash often found in traditionally inclined societies. Nevertheless, as websites become more useful and widely accessible, religious and communal stakeholders have continuously worked at building and promoting them. This study focuses on Chabad, a Jewish ultra-Orthodox movement, and follows webmasters of three key websites to uncover how they distribute religious knowledge over the Internet. Through an ethnographic approach that included interviews with over 30 webmasters, discussions with key informants, and observations of the websites themselves, the study uncovered webmaster’s strategies to foster solidarity within their community, on one hand, while also proselytizing their outlook on Judaism, on the other. Hence, the study sheds light on how a fundamentalist society has strengthened its association with new media, thus facilitating negotiation between modernity and religious piety. VL - 38 UR - http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0163443715615415 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Fundamentalist web journalism: Walking a fine line between religious ultra-Orthodoxy and the new media ethos JF - European Journal of Communication Y1 - 2018 A1 - Golan, O A1 - Mishol-Shauli, N KW - fundamentalism KW - journalist motivations KW - new media and religion KW - online journalism KW - religion KW - religion and media KW - ultra-Orthodox KW - Ultra-Orthodox Jews KW - web journalism AB - New media journalism has perturbed traditional reporting not only in mainstream-modern societies but also within religious-cum-insular communities. Focusing on the Jewish ultra-Orthodox community in Israel and in light of web journalists’ continuous struggle with leading clergy and an apprehensive public, this study grapples with the question, ‘How do ultra-Orthodox web journalists view their work mission as information brokers for an enclave culture?’ The study gleaned from 40 in-depth interviews with web journalists and discussions with community web activists. Results uncovered three major schemata that drive their praxis: (1) Communal-Haredi, (2) Western-Democratic and (3) Journalist Ecosystem. Findings suggest a rising archetype of fundamentalist web journalism that rests its professional ethos on writers’ practice, rather than on formalized training or communal dictums. Web journalists were found to strongly identify with their community, yet, often unintentionally, also act as a secondary form of authority and harbingers of change. VL - 33 UR - http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0267323118763928 IS - 3 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Strategic Management of Religious Websites: The Case of Israel’s Orthodox Communities JF - Journal of Computer-mediated Communication Y1 - 2015 A1 - Golan, O A1 - Campbell, H KW - fundamentalism KW - internet KW - Orthodox Judaism KW - religious communities online KW - websites AB - This study investigates how webmasters of sites affiliated with bounded communities manage tensions created by the open social affordances of the internet. We examine how webmasters strategically manage their respective websites to accommodate their assumed target audiences. Through in‐depth interviews with Orthodox webmasters in Israel, we uncover how they cultivate 3 unique strategies ‐‐ control, layering, and guiding ‐‐ to contain information flows. We thereby elucidate how web strategies reflect the relationships between community, religion and CMC. VL - 20 UR - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jcc4.12118 IS - 4 ER -