Dan Caspi | |
|---|---|
 Professor Caspi | |
| Born | 1 January 1945 Săveni, Romania |
| Died | 22 January 2017 (aged 72) |
| Occupation | University lecturer |
Dan Caspi (1 December 1945 – 22 January 2017) was a lecturer at the Communication Studies Department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba, Israel.[1][2][3]
Throughout his career, Caspi has combined research with public activity and extensive, lively commentary, publishing hundreds of articles in the printed daily and online press, including regular columns in a Jerusalem local paper, in the Israel Publishers’ Association monthly Otot ("Signals")' in Haayin Hashviit ("The Seventh Eye", an online media journal)' the op-ed section of ynet (an online newspaper produced by Yedioth Ahronoth) and a blog for Ha'aretz.
Dan Caspi (originally Casapu) was born in Săveni, part of the Moldavia region of northeastern Romania. His family soon relocated to nearby Dorohoi. Although physical handicapped by cerebral palsy(CP), he attended regular local schools in Romania and then in Israel after moving there with his family in 1960, at the age of 14. The family settled in Beersheba, Israel, where Caspi completed high school.
In the mid-1960s, Caspi began undergraduate studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in political science and sociology, followed by graduate studies in political science and communications. Caspi's doctoral thesis, supervised by Elihu Katz and Emanuel Gutmann, assesses Knesset Members’ perception of public opinion, as differentiated from actual public opinion. After receiving his degree in 1976, he spent a year of post-doctoral studies at MIT, under the auspices of Ithiel de Sola Pool., followed by work at other universities, including Rutgers, Manchester, Concordia, the London School of Economics and Paris VIII. During the mid-1980s, Caspi moved to the Open University of Israel and developed a communications studies program, writing and editing a series of textbooks now used at universities, colleges and professional schools in Israel. In 2000, he returned to Beersheba to help establish the Department of Communication Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, a department he headed until 2009. Caspi was married, with a daughter and four grandchildren. He died on 22 January 2017.
Over the past few years, Caspi has held several academic and public positions:
Caspi specializes in mass media, media and politics, public opinion and propaganda, media institutions, local media, minority media, media regulation and electoral campaigns. He has published over 20 books on communications and dozens of academic articles in Hebrew, English and Russian, including a children's book under the name Aba shel Inbal ("Inbal’s Father").[4]
• Dan Caspi, A Revised Look at Online Journalism in Israel: Entrenching the Old Hegemony. Israel Affairs. 17:3, 2011. 341-363.
• Dan Caspi and Nelly Elias. 'Don't patronize me: media-by and media-for minorities', Ethnic and Racial Studies, First published on: 28 April 2010 (iFirst) 34:1, 62-82.
• Dan Caspi, On Media and Politics: Between Enlightened Authority and Social Responsibility, Israel Affairs. 11:1, 2005.
• Hanna Adoni, Akiba A. Cohen and Dan Caspi, The consumer's choice: Language, media consumption and hybrid identities of minorities. Communications: European Journal of Communication Research 27:4, 2002. 411-436.
• Dan Caspi, Hanna Adoni, Akiba A. Cohen and Nelly Elias, The Red and the White and the Blue: the Russian Media in Israel. Gazette. 64:6, 2002. 551 - 570.
• Dan Caspi, When Americanization Fails? From Democracy to Demediocracy in Israel. Israel Studies Bulletin. 15. 1999. 1-5.
1. Dan Caspi and Nelly Elias, eds. Ethnic Minorities and Media in the Holy Land. London. Vallentine Mitchell. 2014.
2. Tal Samuel-Azran and Dan Caspi, eds. New Media and Innovative Technologies. Beersheba. Ben-Gurion University Press and Tzivonim Publishing, 2008.
3. Dan Caspi, ed. Communication and Politics in Israel. Jerusalem: Van Leer/ Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 2007, in Hebrew.
4. Dan Caspi and Yehiel Limor, eds. Mass Media in Israel[permanent dead link]. Tel Aviv: The Open University of Israel, 1998, in Hebrew.
5. Dan Caspi. ed. Communications and Democracy in Israel Jerusalem: Van Leer/ Hakibbutz Hameuhad,1997 (2nd printing – 1998; 4thprinting – 1999), in Hebrew.
6. Dan Caspi. ed. Trends and Traditions in Mass Communication: A Reader[permanent dead link].Tel Aviv. The Open University of Israel. 1995, in Hebrew.
7. Dan Caspi, Avraham Diskin and Emanuel Gutmann, eds.The Roots of Begin’s Success: The 1981 Elections. London: Croom Helm,1984.
Caspi has long been a staunch opponent of family-owned media conglomerates in Israel and has warned repeatedly of the connection between capital, the press and government, especially regarding the rise in power of the "media barons" who head these conglomerates. In the early 1990s, Caspi published pieces critical of their cross-ownership and control of television broadcast channels. One of his newspaper articles at the time, Citizen N. M. (Hadashot, October 8, 1992), coined a lasting nickname for Yedioth Ahronoth publisher Noni Mozes. In the mid-1990s, Caspi revealed that violence against women even occurs in academic circles, breaking his colleagues’ extended silence by publishing an article entitled Don't Ask Him (People in the Forefront (Haaretz daily supplement), January 27, 1995). The two articles respectively open and close his collection of articles entitled Agenda (see list of Hebrew books, above).
