Sheizaf Rafaeli

Professor Sheizaf Rafaeli received his PhD from Stanford University, where he went on to serve as a member of the faculty. He has received awards for excellence from the University of Haifa and Ohio State University.

Prof. Rafaeli studies the design, use, and impact of online communication systems, and his interests lie in the managerial, educational, social, business, and political aspects of information systems, literacy, social opportunities and threats, and digital gaps.

He founded the Center for Information Society Research and headed the Center for Internet Research and the Internet Lab at the University of Haifa. Rafaeli is a Senior Research Fellow at the Samuel Neaman Institute for National Policy Research at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. He served two terms as head of the Faculty of Management at the University of Haifa, where he headed the School of Business Administration, and cofounded the Department of Information and Knowledge and the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management.

Rafaeli headed the establishment of the Faculty of Management at the University of Haifa, prior to which he headed the Information Systems Program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

He is a frequent guest on television and radio. Among other things, he produced a series of radio programs for the Broadcast University of Israel. He is the cofounder and editor of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (JCMC), which has been published continuously since 1994, and is one of the first online scientific journals in existence.

Prof. Rafaeli has authored several software systems, as well as books on management information systems, statistical analysis, and electronic spreadsheets. He is co-editor of Network and Netplay published by MIT Press, he has published hundreds of articles in leading journals, and his studies have been cited in excess of 10,000 times in the scientific literature. Rafaeli is a member of the editorial board of the Open University Publishing House, and sits on the editorial boards of several scientific journals. He wrote a weekly column for Calcalist for a decade.

Rafaeli has served as visiting professor at a number of major universities, including the University of Michigan, the University of California, Stanford University, Ohio State University, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, the Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, and universities in China, India, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Korea, and Australia.

Over the years, Prof. Rafaeli has supervised and mentored dozens of PhD students, and produced a second generation of young faculty members who work in numerous universities and colleges in Israel and around the world.

Rafaeli is member of the Scientific Management of the Israeli Centers for Research Excellence (I-CORE) and Learning in a Networked Society (LINKS). He is an active board member of a number of NGOs, including Wikimedia, which engages in Wikipedia and knowledge sharing, Milestones for Life, which provides support for people with disabilities, Al-Manara, which focuses on people with disabilities in Arab society, and NPTech, which engages in digital access and support for the third sector.

Rafaeli led the creation of MOOC (Massive Online Open Courses), which were among the first online courses in the world. Thousands of students from dozens of countries participated in his course titled “Digital Culture/Clutter: Life and Death on the Net” on edX, which was founded by Harvard and MIT.

He has created numerous online systems, including an online Citizen’s Advice Board service, which operated in several languages for more than twenty years. Rafaeli served as a jury member of the Stockholm Challenge, which rewards projects that use ICT for public benefit.

Rafaeli is the recipient of several national and international prizes and awards, including the Malachim Bareshet (Angels in the Web) trophy, the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Young Researcher Award, and the Ben-Gurion Award.

Throughout his career, from when he served in Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs posts, and as an educational coordinator at a military academy, to supervising dozens of PhD and hundreds postgraduate students, Rafaeli remained committed to training the next generation for innovation, creativity, and social responsibility.

Professor Rafaeli was appointed to serve as President of Shenkar in February 2020, and assumed office in April the same year.

Awards and recognition:

• Young researcher award of the AERA
• 2006 WebAward
• "Angels in the Net" (Mlachim Bareshet") national award

Published works

• Jones, G. Ravid, G. and Rafaeli S. (2004) Information Overload and the Message Dynamics of Online Interaction Spaces: A Theoretical Model and Empirical Exploration, Information Systems Research Vol. 15 Issue 2, pp. 194–210.
• Rafaeli, S. (1988). Interactivity: From new media to communication. In R. P. Hawkins, J. M. Wiemann, & S. Pingree (Eds.), Sage Annual Review of Communication Research: Advancing Communication Science: Merging Mass and Interpersonal Processes, 16, 110–134. Beverly Hills: Sage.
• Rafaeli, S. and Ariel, Y. (2007) "Assessing Interactivity in Computer-Mediated Research", in Joinson, A.N., McKenna, K.Y.A., Postmes, T. and Rieps, U.D. (Eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Internet Psychology, Oxford University Press, (Chapter 6, pp. 71–88) 2007