Dr. Aysha Agbaria

I study social media as a space for personal and social identity formation and change. I explore the intersection of social media, gender, religion, and nationality. This interdisciplinary approach combines insights from communication studies, sociology, and religion to address contemporary challenges in the media landscape. My Ph.D. research focused on the place of new media in the process of increased religiosity among Palestinian Muslim women in Israel. To expand this research, I am studying hijab and social media in other MENA countries.

My current research examines how social media platforms help shaping religious identity and practice. I investigate the intersection of society, religion, and social media. By focusing on power dynamics and media perception, I study the contribution of social media to both identity formation and social change. I focus on Muslim women as my research population and hijab as a religious practice and identity performance while presenting a wide interdisciplinary approach.

Publications

Articles

1. Agbarya, A. (2024). Presentation of National Identity on Social Media in Times of Crises: the case of a Palestinian anti-violence movement in Israel. Media, Culture and Society.
2. Agbarya, A. (2023). Audience Perception and Religious Identity Among Social Media Users: The Case of Muslim Arab Women in Israel. International Journal of Communication, 17, 18.
3. Agbarya, A., & John, N. (2023). Making a complex story simple: The exclusion of social media from life stories. New Media & Society, 0(0). DOI: 10.1177/14614448231170605
4. Agbarya, A., & John, N. (2021). Online tie and content management and changing religious identity among Muslim Arab women in Israel. Information, Communication & Society, 1-16. DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2021.1942956.
5. John, N., & Agbarya, A. (2021). Punching up or turning away? Palestinians unfriending Jewish Israelis on Facebook. New Media & Society, 23(5), 1063-1079.‏
6. Lewis, N., Martinez, L. S., Agbarya, A., & Piatok-Vaisman, T. (2016). Examining patterns and motivations for drug-related information seeking and scanning behavior: a cross-national comparison of American and Israeli college students. Communication Quarterly, 64(2), 145-172.

Articles in Arabic

7. Agbarya, A. (2023). The relationship between the Palestinian researcher in Israel and the research participants: The case of Palestinian Muslim women. Mada Alcarmel: Arab center for applied social research. ورقة بحثيّة جديدة: “العلاقة بين الباحثة الفلسطينيّة في إسرائيل ومشارِكات البحث: الفلسطينيّات المسلمات أنموذجًا”. - مدى الكرمل (mada-research.org)
8. Agbarya, A. (2023). Identity in the mediated discourse of the Arab united list (Islamic movement) in a year and a half. Mada Alcarmel: Arab Center for Applied Social Research.

Book Chapters

9. Birkner, T., Agbarya, A., Meyers, O., & Somerstein, R. (2022). The News Media and the Ever-Present Fear in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. In Media and the Dissemination of Fear(pp. 129-152). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.