Shai Kassirer

Shai holds a BA in Communication Studies and European History and a MA in Environmental Studies, both from Tel-Aviv University, Israel. He wrote his postgraduate thesis on news-coverage of environmental campaigning in Israel, and worked for many years as a researcher and campaigner for environmental non-governmental organisations in Israel and the UK. His PhD research on hydro-policies discourse is fully funded by the University of Brighton, and is taken as part of the Centre for Research in Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics (SECP) and the School of Art and Media.

Shai serves as the PGR representative on the Research and Enterprise Committee of the School of Media. In October 2018 he was appointed Vice-Chair of the Science and Environment Communication Section of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA). 

Interest fields: Environmental Communication, Environmental Movement, Political Geography, Risk Communication, Climate-Change Communication, Environmental News Discourse, Hydro-politics, Depoliticisation.

Email address: s.kassirer@brighton.ac.uk

Qualification: PhD

Timeframe: 3 years

Shai-Kassirer

Thesis title

Media Analysis of Hydro-Policies for Climate-Resilience in Israel: Depoliticisation of Desalination Discourse (1990-2018)

My research

Shai’s study critically examines the discursive aspects of the transformation in Israel’s hydro-policies during the past three-decades, and the construction of a large-scale seawater desalination facilities as a response to the intensifying risk of climate-change induced droughts. Shai conducts a media analysis of droughts and hydro-policies discourse in Israel from 1990-2018, through a longitudinal critical discourse analysis of newspaper reporting and multimodal discourse analysis of television advertisements produced by the Israeli Water Authority from 2008-2018.

The newspaper critical discourse analysis studies the reporting of hydro-policies and desalination as responses to droughts in Israel from 1990 to 2017, during four periods which have been identified as holding the potential of being critical discourse periods. The overall timeframe examined includes the droughts of 1989-1991, 1999-2001, 2004-2011 and 2014-2017. This environmental communication project analyse the hydro-policy debate by using two complementing perspectives: Climate-Resilience and depoliticisation of environmental discourse. 

Funder: University of Brighton

Conference presentations

October 2018 - ECREA 7th European Communication Conference: Centres and Peripheries: Communication, Research and Translation, Lugano Switzerland
Paper title: Sustainable Water Consumption: discourse analysis of television infomercial campaigns from Israel (2008-2018)

July 2018 – Movements 2018 Conference at Nottingham Contemporary, UK
Paper title: Depoliticisation of Environmental Discourse: Dangers and Opportunities, Lessons from Israel

June 2018 - Israel at Seventy: Challenges and Opportunities, The 34th Annual Meeting of the Israel Studies Association at the University of California, Berkeley, USA
Paper title: Droughts and Desalination in Israel (1989-2016): Newspaper Discourse of Water Scarcity from a Climate-Resilience and Politicization Perspective.

June 2018 – IAMCR Eugene, Reimagining Sustainability: Communication and Media Research in a Changing World at University of Oregon, Eugene USA 
Paper 1 title: Reimagining Sustainable Water Consumption: discourse analysis of eight television infomercial campaigns from Israel (2008-2018)
Paper 2 title: Media Analysis of Hydro-Policies for Climate Resilience in Israel: Depoliticisation Desalination Discourse (1989-2016)

June 2017 - The 2017 Conference on Communication and Environment in Leicester
Paper title: Adapting Climate Resilience to Communication Research: Theoretical and Critical Possibilities.

March 2013 - Environment 2050 Tel Aviv
Paper title: Saving Palmachim Beach: Media representations and organizational aspects of a public environmental campaign

October 2012 - The Annual Conference for Science and Environment of the Israeli Science, Ecology and Environment Society at Tel Aviv University.
Paper title: 'Where are the scientists?' Media representations of environmental campaigns in Israel

Supervisors

Professor Julie Doyle

Dr Frauke Behrendt