Karine Nahon

Karine Nahon was born in 1972 in Tel Aviv

Karine Nahon was born in 1972. Her parents, Odette and Marcel Nahon, came to Israel from Lebanon before the Lebanese civil war, and she grew up in Holon. As a youth she was the national youth chess champion.

She studied at Tel Aviv University, earning bachelor's degrees in political science and computer science. She went on to a master's degree and a doctorate in management of information systems. Her doctoral work dealt with gatekeepers and gatekeeping in networks.

From 2004 she was on the faculty of the Information School at the University of Washington, and she later also joined Reichman University. She developed network gatekeeping theory and studied how information goes viral. Her book Going Viral, written with Jeff Hemsley, came out in 2013 and received several awards.

She has been active on information policy in Israel, advising Knesset committees and opposing internet content filtering. In 2012 she petitioned the High Court of Justice over the biometric database. She was president of the Israel Internet Association from 2017 to 2021.

She has taken part in the protests against the judicial reform. After the Iron Swords war began, she led the missing persons unit of the civilian command center. Since 2024 she has been dean of the Sammy Ofer School of Communications.