Nili Steinfeld

Social Virtual Reality (SVR) enables designers to configure the conditions under which users meet and interact. This qualitative study examines two design dimensions in intergroup encounters: the visibility of identity cues in avatars, which governs which social group categories are immediately available to participants, and the plausibility of the environment, which governs which everyday interactional scripts are available for acting on them. 166 Israeli participants from the Haredi and Ethiopian Israeli minorities, and the Jewish non-Haredi majority population, took part in structured encounters across three theoretically selected designed configurations: a plausible environment with avatars displaying visible identity cues, the same environment with identity-neutral avatars, and a less plausible environment with visible identity cues. Session recordings, observational notes, open-ended questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were analyzed through inductive thematic analysis and compared across configurations descriptively. Where identity cues were visible, participants referred more often to appearance and group affiliation, formed group-based connections, and adapted their communication to others’ perceived backgrounds. Where avatars were identity-neutral, recognition was available through names, accents and interactional style. The less plausible environment was associated with more extended and exploratory dialogue, the plausible setting with rapid, task-focused agreement. Proximity-based affiliation, humor, embodied communication and interpersonal familiarization appeared across all configurations. Technological proficiency, unevenly distributed along the same social lines the encounter was meant to bridge, was translated into initiative and leadership, somewhat eroding the equal status condition intergroup contact emphasizes. The study positions SVR as a designed social environment and draws design implications for intergroup encounters.

1. Deepfake technology, known for its ability to fabricate hyper-realistic media content by manipulating images, audio, or video of real people, first captured public attention in 2017, when a Redd...

While much research highlights the negative psychological impacts of social media use, the current study examines how, in the aftermath of collective trauma, social media platforms can serve as spaces for resilience-building through the creative use of humor. On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a large-scale surprise attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip, resulting in over 1,200 Israeli casualties, 253 hostages, and extensive damage. Recognized as the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel’s history, it led to a war, causing significant distress and trauma among all the peoples of the region. Surprisingly, just days after the attack, humorous videos emerged on TikTok, uploaded by Israeli influencers, citizens, and reservists. This study examines the interaction between humor, TikTok performance, and public trauma during war. A quantitative content analysis of 257 TikTok videos from the initial post-October 7th period identified the styles, characteristics, and psychological functions of humor, and the unique nature of TikTok humor. Additionally, a thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with seven Israeli TikTok influencers explored their motivations for creating and sharing humorous content during this period and the influence of audience interactions on their actions. Findings show that humorous content followed platform rules, with trends, TikTok formats, and parodies being dominant. Creators aimed to boost morale while avoiding controversial political topics. Civilians and soldiers used humor differently: civilians focused on coping and stress at home, while soldiers focused on frontline and army routine. Interviews revealed TikTok as a therapeutic space, with humor serving as a defense mechanism. The creative process was calculated, filled with uncertainties and heightened sensitivity, as creators and users practiced resilience-building during their darkest hours.

This study examines how Social Virtual Reality (SVR) environments influence intergroup attitudes and majorityminority relations through structured Virtual Reality (VR) encounters. Seventy-two Jewish-Israeli participants from diverse backgrounds engaged in guided VR interactions designed to foster social proximity and dialogue. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study measured changes in diversity attitudes, intergroup anxiety, and willingness for social contact before and after the intervention. Findings indicate that SVR can reduce attitudinal gaps between majority and minority groups and enhance awareness of diversity-related issues. Participants reported increased engagement, with majority group members perceiving higher social meaning in the interaction. The study highlights SVR's potential for promoting equitable intergroup contact and facilitating inclusive communication, particularly in contexts where face-to-face contact is limited.

In recent years, the ‘digital resurrection’ of the deceased through Deepfake technology has become a reality accessible to the general public and has raised profound ethical discussions in society. While the academic literature focuses primarily on regulatory and political implications, the public reception of digital resurrection remains largely unexplored. Furthermore, much of the public discourse around Deepfakes centres on their malicious applications, despite the potential for digital resurrection to serve prosocial purposes. This study focuses on an Israeli campaign called ‘Listen to My Voice’ (2021), which ‘resurrected’ women murdered by their partners, having them ‘tell’ the stories of the abusive relationships that preceded their deaths. An analysis of viewer responses shows that the campaign elicited strong reactions straddling the line between technology and ethics. Quantitatively, most comments supported the use of Deepfakes, given the importance of the cause and the impactful messaging. Qualitatively, two key themes emerged: one technical, indicating that visceral realism sparked both emotional connections and fundamental misunderstandings of the technology itself. The second highlighted an ethical tension between desires to protect autonomy and justifications for posthumously using an individual’s likeness for positive aims. The findings suggest Deepfakes’ technical attributes, particularly tangibility, significantly shape its ethical reception—a phenomenon we term ‘the ethics of technological misunderstanding’.

Although previous studies examined the role of digital literacy in successful identification of misinformation, scant scholarly attention has been given to users’ attention to metadata as informative areas that attest to message credibility. This study introduces a novel approach and methodology to contribute to our understanding of how users evaluate and identify misinformation, and the relationship between users’ ocular attention to metadata, misinformation identification, and digital literacy. In an eye-tracking study, participants were asked to rate the credibility of online messages posted on social media and web pages. Throughout the session, participants’ eye movements were recorded. The results indicate that digital literacy predicts successful identification of online misinformation, as well as webpage scan patterns, specifically devoting attention and focusing gaze at metadata areas that provide cues attesting to the credibility of the messages. In addition, successful identification of misinformation is positively linked to ocular attention to information metadata. In other words, technology-savvy users devote more attention to information metadata, which leads to better identification of misinformation, and they are also directly more successful at identifying misinformation online.

This research investigated the effects of a single exposure to media content of a distinct valence and mass‐mediated contact with a distant minority outgroup on feelings/attitudes toward a local outgroup. Experimental Study 1 was conducted among 314 Israeli Jews. The findings of Study 1 showed the effects of a single exposure to positive and negative media items about asylum seekers in Europe on perceived threats posed by them. In this study we did not find a carry‐over effect of single‐exposure to a media item about asylum seekers in Europe on feelings toward the local outgroup—asylum seekers in Israel. Study 2 was conducted through an online survey among 1039 Israeli Jews. It showed the effect of recurring mass‐mediated contact with asylum seekers in Europe on perceived threats posed by them. Both Study 1 and Study 2 found carry‐over effects of realistic and symbolic threats from asylum seekers in Europe on feelings/attitudes toward asylum seekers in Israel. The findings of Study 2 also showed a carry‐over effect of positive mass‐mediated contact with a distant outgroup on attitudes toward a local outgroup. Based on the findings, we conclude that the positive media framing of distant outgroups may promote tolerance and acceptance of local outgroups.