Fadi Hirzalla, MSc

Faculty of Humanities, Research Institute for History and Culture
Faculty of Social Sciences, Langeveld Institute for the Study of Education and Development in Childhood and Adolescence Utrecht University, Netherlands

Phone: 0031-6-28910250

Research areas
multiculturalism, internet, political citizenship, young people, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Islam

Biography
From 1997 to 2003, I studied economics and political science (hons.), with a minor study in social and political philosophy. My MSc thesis is about ideological profiling, mobilization and power in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

From 2006 to 2009, I wrote a PhD thesis at the Amsterdam School of Communications Research (http://www.ascor.uva.nl/home.html) about the internet’s potential in young people’s civic life. I will defend this thesis on the 21st of September 2010. On the same subject, and in the same period, I participated in a international three-year, EU-funded research project called CivicWeb (see www.civicweb.eu).
Currently, I am a teacher at the University of Amsterdam.

In July 2010, I joined Wired Up (http://www.uu.nl/wiredup), a research project focusing on how immigrant youth in the Netherlands use the internet for learning processes and identify formation. Since 2004, I have been an editor for the magazine ZemZem (www.zemzem.org) and a member of the board of the Netherlands Institute Palestine / Israel (www.nipi.nl).

Publications
Hirzalla, F., Zoonen, L. van & Ridder, J. de. (forthcoming, 2010). Internet use and political participation: Reflections on the mobilization/normalization controversy. The Information Society.

Hirzalla, F. & Van Zoonen, L. (forthcoming, 2010). Greenpeace and WWF online: Affective political marketing. International Journal of Learning and Media.

Hirzalla, F. (2010). The internet in young people’s civic life: Web production, contents, use, and attitudes. Enschede: Ipskamp.

Duits, L., Van Zoonen, L. & Hirzalla, F. (2010). As the world Spunks: Does internet help to transform youth journalism? In P. Dahlgren en T. Olsson, Young citizens, ICTs and democracy (pp. 91-105). Gothenburg: Nordicom.

Hirzalla, F. & Van Zoonen, L. (2009). De online/offline-deling voorbij: Convergenties van online en offline participatievormen onder jongeren. Tijdschrift voor Communicatiewetenschap, 37(3), 215-237.

Van Zoonen, L., Hirzalla, F. & Müller, F. (2009). Fitna: De slag op YouTube. In M. Aerts en M. van den Haak (eds.), Popvirus: Popularisering van religie en cultuur (pp. 51-66). Amsterdam: Aksant.

Hirzalla, F. (2008). Generatie Y, burgerschap en het internet: Een verkenning van websites. In Jaarboek Kennissamenleving 2008 (pp. 222-49). Amsterdam: Aksant.

Hirzalla, F. (2007). The Internet and Democracy: Participation, Citizens and Politics. Javnost / the Public, 14(2), 83-96. *See for research reports: www.civicweb.eu.