Media in the Middle East: Activism, Politics, and Culture PDF
Preview Media in the Middle East: Activism, Politics, and Culture
EDITED BY Nele Lenze, Charlotte Schriwer, and Zubaidah Abdul Jalil Media in the Middle East Activism, Politics, and Culture Media in the Middle East Nele Lenze · Charlotte Schriwer Zubaidah Abdul Jalil Editors Media in the Middle East Activism, Politics, and Culture Editors Nele Lenze Zubaidah Abdul Jalil Middle East Institute Middle East Institute National University of Singapore National University of Singapore Singapore, Singapore Singapore, Singapore Charlotte Schriwer Middle East Institute National University of Singapore Singapore, Singapore ISBN 978-3-319-65770-7 ISBN 978-3-319-65771-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-65771-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017951532 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image: © Oleksandr Rupeta/Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland C ontents Part I On Media Activism and Political Involvement 1 Revisiting Cyberactivism Six Years after the Arab Spring: Potentials, Limitations and Future Prospects 3 Sahar Khamis 2 Constructing an Alternative Public Sphere: The Cultural Significance of Social Media in Iran 21 Gi Yeon Koo 3 You’ve Come A Long Way Baby: Women’s New Media Practices, Empowerment, and Everyday Life in Kuwait and the Middle East 45 Deborah L. Wheeler Part II On Governmental and Non-Governmental Media Organisations 4 Location, Regulation, and Media Production in the Arab World: A Case Study of Media Cities 71 Yushi Chiba v vi CONTENTS 5 Preventing a Mobilization from Spreading: Assad and the Electronic War 89 Matthieu Rey 6 Spectacles of Terror: Media and the Cultural Production of Terrorism 107 Suzi Mirgani Part III Media, Culture and Language in the Middle East 7 Winning Hearts and Minds through Soft Power: The Case of Turkish Soap Operas in the Middle East 145 Jana Jabbour 8 Locating Emirati Filmmaking within Globalizing Media Ecologies 165 Dale Hudson 9 Protest Poetry On- and Offline: Trans-regional Interactions in the Arabian Gulf: An Example from Bahrain 203 Nele Lenze 10 Arabic in a Time of Revolution: Sociolinguistic Notes from Egypt 223 Ivan Panovic Index 257 e C ditors and ontributors About the Editors Nele Lenze is a Visiting Assistant Professor a GUST and a Senior Research Fellow at National University of Singapore. She holds a PhD in Middle East Studies and Media Studies from the University of Oslo where she lectured on the Arab online sphere. She obtained her master’s in Arabic literature from Freie University Berlin. Lenze co-edited Converging Regions: Global Perspectives on Asia and the Middle East (2014) with Charlotte Schriwer as well as The Arab Uprisings: Catalysts, Dynamics, and Trajectories (2014) with Fahed Al-Sumait and Michael Hudson. Her first monograph Politics and Digital Literature in the Middle East. Perspectives on Online Text and Context is forthcoming in 2018. Charlotte Schriwer is a researcher who has focused mainly on the his- tory of the Levant, (Jordan, Syria, Lebanon), in particular on its agri- cultural history from the twelfth century to the 1800s. She has also explored the question of ethnic identity in the Ottoman architecture of the Levant. Since joining Middle East Institute in 2011, she has started a project documenting the history of protest art in the Arab world, with a focus on the Arab Uprisings. She holds a Ph.D. in History and an M.A. in Middle East Studies from the University of St Andrews, Scotland, and an M.A. in Islamic Art and Archaeology from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Charlotte Schriwer co-edited Converging vii viii EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS Regions: Global Perspectives on Asia and the Middle East (2014) with Nele Lenze. Zubaidah Abdul Jalil graduated with a Bachelor’s in Business Management (BBM) from Singapore Management University. She lived in the Middle East for an extended period of time, having studied in Amman, Jordan and at the Sultan Qaboos College in Oman. She cur- rently works as Publications Executive at the NUS Middle East Institute. Contributors Lina Ben Mhenni is an activist, author of the popular blog “A Tunisian Girl,” and a Teaching Assistant in Linguistics at the Faculty of Human and Social Sciences, Tunis University. After unrest began in Tunisia in December 2010, she travelled across the country to take photos and video footage of the protests and of people who were attacked in the ensuing government crackdowns. She also reported for many websites and news TV channels (Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera English, France24) when foreign journalists could not access the country. Her book, Tunisian girl, la bloggeuse de la révolution, has been translated into several languages. Yushi Chiba is a Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. He holds a Ph.D. in Area Studies from Kyoto University. He is the author of Contemporary Arab Media: From Transnational Radio to Satellite TV (2014, Japanese); “The Geographical Transformation of Arab Media: The Decline of Offshore Media and the Rise of the Media City,” Asian and African Studies Vol. 12 No. 1 (2012); and “A Comparative Study on the Pan-Arab Media Strategies: The Cases of Egypt and Saudi Arabia,” Kyoto Bulletin of Islamic Area Studies Vol. 5 No. 1 (2012). Dale Hudson is an Associate Teaching Professor of Film and New Media and Curator of Film and New Media at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). He has a M.A. from New York University, and earned his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). With Patricia R. Zimmermann, he co-authored Thinking through Digital Media: Transnational Environments and Locative Places (London: Palgrave, 2015). As a digital curator for the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF), he curated “Viral Dissonance” in 2014. Hudson was EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS ix also a member of the pre-selection committee for the 2014 Abu Dhabi Film Festival (ADFF). Jana Jabbour is a Ph.D. in Political Science and International Relations (Sciences Po Paris). She is a lecturer at Sciences Po Paris, and a research associate at Centre de Recherches Internationales (CERI) and Institut de Recherches sur le Moyen-Orient (IREMMO), where her research and publications mostly focus on the MENA region’s political economy and international relations. She is also a co-founder of a research group on “Rising powers in the international system” whose aim is to examine the role of the BRICS and other rising middle powers in world governance. Sahar Khamis is Associate Professor at the University of Maryland. She is an expert on Arab and Muslim media, and the former Head of the Mass Communication and Information Science Department in Qatar University. She is a former Mellon Islamic Studies Initiative Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago. She is the co-author of the books: Islam Dot Com: Contemporary Islamic Discourses in Cyberspace (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and Egyptian Revolution 2.0: Political Blogging, Civic Engagement and Citizen Journalism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Additionally, she authored and co-authored numerous book chapters, journal articles and conference papers, region- ally and internationally, in both English and Arabic. Khamis is a media commentator and analyst, a public speaker, a human rights commis- sioner, and a radio host. Gi Yeon Koo is a researcher at the Institute of Cross Cultural Studies in Seoul National University and a post-doctoral fellow of Hanyang University in South Korea. She is also teaching at Yonsei University. She received her Ph.D. degree in Cultural Anthropology from Seoul National University. She recently published an article entitled, “Women as Subject of Defiance and Everyday Politics of Hijab as Dress Code in Modern Iran,” Asian Women, Vol. 30 No. 4 (2014). Suzi Mirgani is Manager and Editor for Publications at the Center for International and Regional Studies, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar. She received a Ph.D. in Communication and Media Studies from Eastern Mediterranean University. She co-edited Food Security in the Middle East (2014), and Bullets and Bulletins: Media and Politics in the Wake of the Arab Uprisings (forthcoming). Mirgani is x EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS also an independent filmmaker, and writer and director of several short films, including “Hind’s Dream,” which was selected for the Short Film Corner at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. Ivan Panovic is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies at Nanyang Technological University. He has an M.A. in Sociology & Anthropology from the American University in Cairo, and a D.Phil. in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford. He co-authored Working with Written Discourse (2014) with Deborah Cameron. Panovic also presented “Fresh History, Stale Hopes: an Anthropological Reading of Early Literary Engagements with the Egyptian Revolution,” and “Another Word on the Wall: Graffiti in Cairo in the Service of the Revolution,” at the 2013 and 2012 Middle East Studies Association Annual Meetings, respectively. Matthieu Rey is an Assistant Professor in Collège de France (Paris- France). He holds a Ph.D. in History from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS, Paris). His recent publications are “‘Fighting Colonialism’ versus ‘Non-Alignment’: Two Arab Points of View on the Bandung Conference,” in The Non-Aligned Movement and the Cold War eds. Natasa Miskovic et al. (2014) and “Une dècennie de silence: les Kurdes à l’heure de l’absence de rébellion (1946–1958),” (A Decade of Silence: the Kurds During the Absence of Rebellious Movements (1946–1958)), in Enjeux identitaires en mutation: Europe et bassin méditerranéen (Identity Issues in Transition: Europe and the Mediterranean Region), eds. John Tolan et al. (2014). He also intends to publish a book on the parliamentary system in Iraq and Syria between 1946 and 1963. Deborah L. Wheeler is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the United States Naval Academy. She holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago. Her Senior Fulbright research grant to Kuwait allowed her to publish The Internet in the Middle East: Global Expectations and Local Imaginations in Kuwait (2005) and also a series of articles. She co-authored a chapter with Lauren Mintz, entitled “Girls Just Want to Have Fun? Internet Leisure and Women’s Empowerment in Jordan,” in Handbook on the Economics of Leisure, ed. Samuel Cameron (2011). She also contributed a chapter, “Does the Internet Empower? A Look at the Internet and International Development,” in Handbook of Internet Studies (2011).
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