Prof. Karine Nahon

Karin NahonKarine Nahon is the elected president of the Israel Internet Association (ISOC-IL), an Associate Professor of Information Science in the Lauder School of Government and Ofer School of Communications at the Interdisciplinary Center at Herzliya (IDC), Israel, and an Affiliated Associate Professor in the Information School at University of Washington (UW). She is a member of the Social Media Lab (SoMe Lab), affiliated faculty at the Center for Communication and Civic Engagement at University of Washington. She is the former director of the Virality of Information (retroV) research group and former director of the Center for Information & Society at University of Washington.

Using interdisciplinary lenses, her research focuses on politics of information, and information politics. More specifically, she studies power dynamics and network gatekeeping in social media, and the role of virality and information flows in elections and in politics in general. Professor Nahon is the author of the book Going Viral 2013 (co-authored with Jeff Hemsley). The book received the ASIS&T Best Information Science Book Award, The American Library Association Outstanding Academic Titles. She has published over 80 research papers in her area in top-tier journals like JASIS&T, ARIST, JCMC, IJoC, ICS and TIS. Since 2013 she serves as the co-chair of the Digital and Social Media track at HICSS.

In addition to her academic role, she also helps shape information policy and promote transparency and accountability through leadership roles on national and international bodies. Currently, she is a board member of Wikimedia, the Freedom of Information Movement. In the past she was a member of the Chief Information Office (CIO) Cabinet and represented Israel in the UN in the committee for science and technology.