Conference Presentation
Polyvocal Content Analysis
Speaker
Dr. Lillian Boxman-Shabtai
Date & Time
Tuesday, 26 January 2027
15:00–16:00 CET
Format
Live Online via Zoom
Contact
lilly.boxman@mail.huji.ac.ilDr. Lillian Boxman-Shabtai
Senior Lecturer
Department of Communication and Journalism
Faculty of Social Sciences
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Israel
Presentation Details
Tuesday, 26 January 2027
15:00–16:00 CET
Christians and Muslims in Israel — Facts, Myths and Lived Reality
Religion, Society & Interreligious Studies
International Academic Conference Series
Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature
Belgrade, Serbia
Live online via Zoom
Academic Profile
Lillian Boxman-Shabtai is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research lies at the intersection of cultural studies, political communication, and digital media, focusing on how media meanings are produced across texts, audiences, and platforms.
A central concern of her work is meaning multiplicity: why the same media content can sustain different, and sometimes competing, interpretations. Her research develops interdisciplinary theories of polysemy and interpretation alongside methodological approaches for studying interpretive diversity without reducing it to measurement error. Her recent work extends this agenda to intertextuality and digital culture, examining how quotation, parody, remix, memes, and other forms of cultural reuse shape meaning-making, collective memory, and political and cultural expression across changing media environments.
Abstract
Authors: Lillian Boxman-Shabtai, Yaara Cohen, Yara Daas, Noorman Rajabi, Amit Ashkenzi
This paper addresses a persistent tendency in textual analysis to suppress disagreement about textual meaning. Disagreement, we argue, is an analytically useful feature of interpretation; suppressing it can compromise understating of complex texts and analytical categories. Building on this premise, we introduce polyvocal content analysis, a method that combines principles from content analysis, consensus coding, and social semiotics to systematically analyze texts while preserving their polysemy. We demonstrate the method through an analysis of 180 pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian TikTok posts published during the 2021 and 2023-2025 Israel-Hamas wars, and coding decisions about them from a team of Israeli and Palestinian coders. Focusing on the identification of criticism, we compare posts that yielded intercoder agreement with those that produced persistent disagreement. The analysis identifies four recurring mechanisms underlying interpretive divergence: centrifugal multimodality, fractured facticity, inferential criticism, and functional ambiguity. Polyvocal content offers a holistic and ethical way to theorize meaning multiplicity in contemporary media environments.
Research Interests
- Collective Memory
- Content Analysis
- Digital Culture
- Humor
- Interpretation
- Intertextuality
- Media Audiences
- Mixed Methods
- Political Communication
- Polysemy
- Social Media
Academic Background
PhD, Media, Technology, and Society Program
Northwestern University, United States
Visiting Scholar
University of Colorado Boulder, United States
Lecturer
Department of Communication and Journalism
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Senior Lecturer
Department of Communication and Journalism
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Selected Research
Boxman-Shabtai, Lillian. (2024). The Marketplace of Interpretations: A Method to Trace Diversity in Digital Interpretive Traces. Information, Communication & Society.
Boxman-Shabtai, Lillian. (2023). Encoding Polysemy in the News. Journalism.
Baden, Christian, Boxman-Shabtai, Lillian, Tenenboim-Weinblatt, Keren, Overbeck, M., and Aharoni, Tali. (2023). Meaning Multiplicity and Valid Disagreement in Textual Measurement: A Plea for a Revised Notion of Reliability. Studies in Communication and Media.
Yarchi, Moran and Boxman-Shabtai, Lillian. The Image War Moves to TikTok: Evidence from the May 2021 Round of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Digital Journalism.
Boxman-Shabtai, Lillian and Shifman, Limor. Evasive Targets: Deciphering Polysemy in Mediated Humor. Journal of Communication.
Official Academic Profiles
Department of Communication and Journalism
Faculty of Social Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Visit Department →Conference Participation
Dr. Lillian Boxman-Shabtai presents "Polyvocal Content Analysis" at the Religion, Society & Interreligious Studies International Academic Conference Series on Tuesday, 26 January 2027, from 15:00 to 16:00 CET.
The conference, "Christians and Muslims in Israel — Facts, Myths and Lived Reality," is organised by the Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature, Belgrade, Serbia, and takes place live online via Zoom.
Keywords
Suggested Citation
Boxman-Shabtai, Lillian. "Polyvocal Content Analysis." Presentation at Christians and Muslims in Israel — Facts, Myths and Lived Reality, Religion, Society & Interreligious Studies International Academic Conference Series, Institute for Hebrew Language and Literature, 26 January 2027.
Attend Dr. Lillian Boxman-Shabtai's Presentation
Join Dr. Lillian Boxman-Shabtai's live online presentation, "Polyvocal Content Analysis," on Tuesday, 26 January 2027, from 15:00 to 16:00 CET.