Dr. Baruch Shomron

September - December 2021


Dr. Baruch Shomron


News: Baruch Shomron is the new holder of the Israel professorship at JGU's Institute of Communication.

Baruch Shomron was granted a Minerva Postdoctoral Scholarship through the Minerva Fellowship Programme (DFG). This enabled him to stay at the Institute of Publishing of the JGU until 2023.


Lecture on November 30th, 2021
An Interdisciplinary Approach to Media Capabilities and the Promotion of Human Rights for Minority Groups

Abstract:

The moral basis of a just society lies in the “social contract” that stands as an agreement of cooperation for the advancement of individuals in society at stated by Hobbes and by Rousseau. Yet, minority groups saliently suffer systematic discrimination, exclusion, inequalities, xenophobia and racism in various aspects of life including their exclusion from government budgets, political power, and key positions in state institutions and society. This reality is highly harmful to their wellbeing, quality of life, human rights and freedom.
Therefore, improving this situation entails the redistribution of resources in society as proposed by John Rawls’ theory of distributive justice and Isaiah Berlin’ approach of positive liberties. In an attempt to operationalize the philosophical ideas of human rights and the fair distribution of resources in society into measurable factors, I utilize Amartya Sen’s and Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach to examine the role of traditional and digital media in enabling or hindering individuals’ capabilities. This is done through the examination of media representations of various minority groups in Israel (e.g., Palestinian-Israelis, ultra-Orthodox Jews, migrants and refugees).


Dr. Baruch Shomron is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kreitman School of Advanced Graduate Studies, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel, since 2021. He earned his Ph.D. at the Department of Communication Studies, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel, in February 2021, where he worked as a Lecturer, Research Assistant and Teaching Assistant since 2014. He received several grants, awards and scholarships, most recently a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Kreitman School of Advanced Graduate Studies, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel (2021) and the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Doctoral Candidates from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel (2021).

During Dr. Baruch Shomron’s stay in Mainz (Sept-Dec 2021) he advanced his project “An Interdisciplinary Approach to the (Digital) Media Capabilities of Promoting Human Rights for Minority Groups in Israel and Germany,” presented his research in a public lecture, gave a workshop on related issues as well as prepared the findings for publication in scientific peer-reviewed journals and academic conferences.


Publications

(a) Doctoral dissertation

Shomron, B. (2021). The Participation of Palestinian-Israelis in Public and Commercial Television and Radio in Israel as Capability. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel / Adviser: Prof. Amit Schejter

(b) Refereed chapters in collective volumes

Shomron, B. (2020). “Palestinian-Israelis Right to Communicate on Public Media, Case Study: the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation (IBC) vs. the Israeli Broadcasting Authority (IBA).” In Amal Jamal (Ed.) The Contradictions of Control – State Policies Towards Arab Citizens and the Impact on their Behavior (pp. 95-116). Walter Lebach Institute for the study of Jewish-Arab Coexistence, Tel Aviv University.

(c) Refereed articles in scientific journals

Shomron, B. & Schejter, A. (2019). “He too will become a nation and he too will become great”: The information needs of the "Bnei Menashe" immigrant community in Israel as capability. International Communication Gazette, 82(4), 384-403.

Shomron, B. & Schejter, A. (2019). Broadcast media and their social-networks sites: the case of Palestinian-Israeli representations and capabilities. Television & New Media, 22(5), 482-500.

Shomron, B. & Schejter, A. (2020). The Communication Rights of Palestinian-Israelis Understood Through the Capabilities Approach. International Journal of Communication, 14, 1725-1743.

Shomron, B. & Tirosh, N. (2020). Contemporary Migrants and Media Capabilities – Understanding Communication Rights in International Migration Policies. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

Shomron, B. & Schejter, A. (2020). Diversity in broadcasting as an enabler of capabilities: The case of Palestinian-Israeli women on public and commercial radio and television. Feminist Media Studies.

Abdulaev, N. & Shomron, B. (2020). Celebrity Politicians as Health-Promoting Role Models in the Media: the Cases of Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and Benjamin Netanyahu. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society. PMCID: PMC7549860 and PMID: 33071454

Shomron, B. (2021). The capability ‘to be secure’: Media coverage of African asylum seekers during Covid-19 in Israel. Journal of Refugee Studies. PMCID: PMC7928720

Shomron, B. & Schejter, A. (2021). The participation of Palestinian-Israeli politicians in public and commercial television and radio in Israel as capability. International Communication Gazette.

Shomron, B. (2021). The mediated discourse and voice of euthanasia: the Israeli media as a case study. BMJ Medical Humanities. PMID: 33893226

Shomron, B. & Schejter, A. (2021). Palestinian-Israeli’s voice in Israeli media as capability. Israel Studies in Language and Society, 14(1), 258-279.

Shomron, B. & Schejter, A. (2021). Violence and crime as inhibitors of capabilities: the case of Palestinian-Israelis and Israeli mass media. The Communication Review.

 

 

Another article together with his host (Prof. Dr. Yossi David, Israel Professorship in Communication Science, JGU) is already in preparation: Shomron, B. & David, Y. Protecting the community: How digital media promotes safer behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic in authoritarian societies, a case study of the ultra-Orthodox community in Israel.