"120 years to build an ark?
Tell me more about products you have purchased in Ikea" https://www.facebook.com/dosim.metsaitsimm?ref=ts&fref=ts
As
my case study, I have picked an Israeli-Jewish Facebook page named
"Twitting Orthodoxies". This religious Facebook page gathers the “best of”
Israeli-Jewish religious practices, community and cultural related posts,
including large amount of memes. Of all the memes posted on this page, 12 were
sampled, to create a representation of a full year. Thus, I sampled one meme
from each month during the last year (Sep. 2012- Aug.2013) in order to include
a wide array of Jewish holidays, memorial days and days of routine. The main theme of all selected memes is
international/global content that combines Jewish commandments, practices, rituals,
schedule, prayers and sacred texts with popular culture artifacts from around
the world (i.e. art, movies, music, food, characters and organizations).
The
focus of this case study will be on user generated content (the memes) as an intercultural
text that reflects a dialog between popular culture and religion. My main
thesis within this context is that Jewish religion functions as an interpretive
frame work that does not necessarily exclude religious Jewish people from
contemporary popular discourses. On the contrary, the Jewish religion as
reflected in said memes, constitute a perspective for understanding popular
culture, as well as an ever changing way of life. This dialog is demonstrated
by memes that, at the same time, use religion to unfold possible meanings of
cultural artifact, as well as using popular culture to demonstrate an actual
millennia-old history of religious practices. By this case study, I wish to
demonstrate that religious identity is no longer a matter of physical or
geographical presence, and is open to personal interpretation and individual
construction.
The
research component of the suggested case study consists of two layers: the
first, a textual analysis of the 12 memes, and the second, an ethnographic work
including in-depth interviews with the memes’ prosumers (consumers that produce
their own content on-line). My goal is to create a Grounded Theory method to
investigate the issue of religious memes, bearing in mind my own presumptions
regarding media research, influences on my own understanding of the texts as a
secular new-media consumer and the interpretation, intentions and motivations
of the creators of the memes. I believe
that such examination can provide a deeper understanding of online
participation as a mean of constructing and maintaining a religious identity
and a communal sense in a globalized world, as the memes and their creators
will demonstrate the global flow of culture in a specific Jewish Israeli
context. 
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