Amish and Ultra-Orthodox Women’s Responses to New Media

• In Event: Women and Girls Respond to Media: Using and Interpreting Media Texts and Spaces

Abstract

This study explores how women in fundamental religious societies cope with new media and their apparent contradiction with these communities' values and practices. It focuses on Amish and ultra-Orthodox Jewish (Haredi) communities. Questionnaires containing both closed and open-ended questions about the use of new media were completed by 82 participants, approximately half from each group. Findings show that while their discourses included similar framings of danger and threat, the two groups developed different patterns of use (and nonuse) of new media. A quarter of the Amish women used the internet, half of the Haredi women did so, and in both groups only a few used mobile internet. The strategies applied by these women to negotiate the tensions between their roles as gatekeepers and agents of change – nonuse, control and setting limits – are analyzed as valuable currencies in the cultural and religious market of fundamental societies.

Author

• Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar, Department of Communication