Digital religion and blame attribution: Ultra-Orthodox new media framing of the Meron disaster

In this study, I examine blame attribution in the ultra-Orthodox new media following the Meron disaster using qualitative content analysis of the public digital sphere. Findings reveal a structural bifurcation between institutional news websites and social media counter-publics, in which marginalized groups negotiate communal boundaries. Institutional outlets maintain a positive social identity, while social media facilitate an internal moral reckoning. In these digital spaces women challenge selective accountability and patriarchal modesty discourses by rejecting their traditional roles as spiritual scapegoats and demanding more gender-equitable accountability. Thus, through technology usage traditional communal gatekeeping is being transformed into a complex, shared, distributed sense-making process.