"The Story of an Uprising examines the political and media dynamic in pre-and post-revolution Egypt and what it could mean for the country's democratic transition. We follow events through the period leading up to the 2011 revolution, eighteen days of uprising, military rule, an elected president's
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year in office, and his ouster by the military. Activism has expanded freedoms of expression only to see those spaces contract with the resurrection of the police state. And with sharpening political divisions, the facts have become amorphous as ideological trends cling to their own narratives of truth." (Back cover)
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"Despite being a heavily-censored society, China has over 560 million active internet users, more than double that of the USA. In this book, social media expert and China-watcher Liz Carter tells the story of how the internet in China is leading to a coming together of activists, ordinary people and
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cultural trendsetters on a scale unknown in modern history. News about protests and natural disasters, or gossip and satirical jokes, are practically uncensorable and spread quickly through Weibo – the Chinese Twitter - and the Chinese internet underground. More than that, a grassroots, foundational shift of assumptions and expectations is taking place, as Chinese men and women cast off the communist era ‘stability at all costs’ mantra and find new forms of selfexpression, creativity and communication with the world." (Publisher description)
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"The essay analyses two cases of digital activism in Turkey, which visualize 'networked erasure' to illustrate how censorship is a systematic process. The first case, an interactive online database called Blocked Web, launched in 2007, collects and organizes data on state-classified web site bans, a
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nd represents cyber censorship as grounded in legal and media infrastructures. The second example, the Interactive Mass Grave Map, produced by the Human Rights Association of Turkey, marks the locations of hundreds of unmarked graves in which disappeared citizens are thought buried and connects historical human erasure to contemporary censorship. Through visual analysis and personal fieldwork interviews, I explore the ways that these projects extend theoretical approaches to control in the digital age and hack into 'switching power' (Castells, 2009). Foregoing the sensationalism that can accompany close-ups on a victim or banned web site, the examples employ a distanced approach that visualizes and points to state-media cronyism, institutionalized discrimination, and widespread apathy." (Abstract)
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"Masudul Biswas and Carrie Sipes perform a comparative content analysis of Twitter and Facebook posts from a sample of Syrian and Libyan activist groups. By considering online content in the context of post-revolution Libya and the continuing upheaval in Syria, the authors shed new light on online a
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ctivist agenda-setting. They find that while social media is used as a tool to maintain and expand momentum during revolution, in a post-revolution climate the same media serves as a venue for idea-sharing and political discourse." (www.arabmediasociety.com)
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"Examining the opportunities presented by the real-time generation of new, relatively unregulated content online, Uncommon Grounds evaluates the prominent role that new media has come to play in artistic practices – and social movements – in the Arab world today. Analysing alternative forms of c
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reating, broadcasting, publishing, distributing and consuming digital images, this book also enquires into a broader global concern: does new media offer a ‘democratisation’ of – and a productive engagement with – visual culture, or merely capitalise upon the effect of immediacy at the expense of depth? Featuring full-colour artists’ inserts, this is the first book to extensively explore the degree to which the grassroots popularity of Twitter and Facebook has been co-opted into mainstream media, institutional and curatorial characterisations of ‘revolution’ – and whether artists should be wary of perpetuating the rhetoric and spectacle surrounding political events." (Publisher description)
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"Analysis of the unprecedented use of social media on Syria points to important findings on the role of new media in conflict zones. In particular, social media create a dangerous illusion of unmediated information flows. Key curation hubs within networks may now play a gatekeeping role as powerful
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as that of television producers and newspaper editors. The implications for policymakers driven by responsibility to protect concerns are serious. The pattern in social media toward clustering into insular likeminded communities is unmistakable and has profound implications. We need a more sophisticated understanding of structural bias in social media and the difficult challenges in activist curation. It is not enough to develop methods for authenticating particular videos or vetting specific claims." (Summary)
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"Das Buch konzentriert sich auf den Aspekt des möglichen Einsatzes von Blogs zur Schaffung einer Gegenöffentlichkeit. Dazu werden englischsprachige, ägyptische Blogs untersucht, die während der Revolte gegen das Mubarak-Regime erstellt wurden. Zentral ist dabei die Frage, ob und wie ägyptische
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Blogger versuchen, mithilfe ihrer Blogs Nachrichten und Positionen zu vermitteln, die in der staatlich autorisierten Medienberichterstattung während des Mubarak-Regimes unterdrückt wurden. Dazu werden ausgewählte Blog-Einträge mittels einer Dokumentenanalyse daraufhin untersucht, ob mit ihnen erkennbar eine Gegenöffentlichkeit konstituiert werden soll und wie dies gegebenenfalls geschieht." (Klappentext)
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"Media Evolution on the Eve of the Arab Spring brings together some of the most celebrated and respected names in Arab media research to reflect on the communication conditions that preceded and made the Arab uprisings possible." (Publisher description)
"The Mapping Digital Media research confirms that digital television and the internet have had a radical impact on media businesses, journalists, and citizens at large. As might be expected, platforms distributing journalism have proliferated, media companies are revamping their operations, and citi
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zens have access to a cornucopia of news and information sources. Other findings were less foreseeable: digitization has brought no pressure to reform state broadcasters, less than one-third of countries found that digital media have helped to expand the social impact of investigative journalism, and digitization has not significantly affected total news diversity. The Global Findings reveal other common themes across the world: Governments and politicians have too much influence over who owns, operates, and regulates the media. Many media markets are rife with monopolistic, corrupt, or untransparent practices. It’s not clear where many governments and other bodies get their evidence for changes or updates to laws and policies on media and communication. Media and journalism online offer hope of new, independent sources of information, but are also a new battleground for censorship and surveillance. Data about the media worldwide are still uneven, unstandardized, and unreliable, and are often proprietary rather than freely accessible." (Website Open Society Foundations)
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"Social Media and the Politics of Reportage explores the journalistic challenges, issues and opportunities that have risen as a result of social media increasingly being used as a form of crisis reporting within the field of global journalism, with a focus on the protests during the 'Arab Spring'."
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(Publisher description)
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"Today, DIY- do-it-yourself - describes more than self-taught carpentry. Social media enables DIY citizens to organize and protest in new ways (as in Egypt's "Twitter revolution" of 2011) and to repurpose corporate content (or create new user-generated content) in order to offer political counternar
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ratives. This book examines the usefulness and limits of DIY citizenship, exploring the diverse forms of political participation and "critical making" that have emerged in recent years. The authors and artists in this collection describe DIY citizens whose activities range from activist fan blogging and video production to knitting and the creation of community gardens. Contributors examine DIY activism, describing new modes of civic engagement that include Harry Potter fan activism and the activities of the Yes Men. They consider DIY making in learning, culture, hacking, and the arts, including do-it-yourself media production and collaborative documentary making." (Back cover)
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"Rather than viewing social media activism as the harbinger of social change or dismissing it as mere “slacktivism,” the article provides a more nuanced argument by identifying the conditions under which participation in social media might lead to successful political activism. In social media,
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networks are vast, content is overly abundant, attention spans are short, and conversations are parsed into diminutive sentences. For social media activism to be translated into populist political activism, it needs to embrace the principles of the contemporary culture of consumption: light package, headline appetite and trailer vision. Social media activism is more likely to successfully mobilise mass support when its narratives are simple, associated with low risk actions and congruent with dominant meta-narratives, such as nationalism and religiosity. Success is less likely when the narrative is contested by dominant competing narratives generated in mainstream media." (Abstract)
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"This article discusses the role of ‘cyberactivism’ or the role played by new media in paving the way for political transformation, in both the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions of 2011. It starts with a discussion of the potentials of cyberactivism in both of these revolutions, especially how t
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hese new types of social media can act as effective tools for supporting the capabilities of the democratic activists by allowing forums for free speech and political networking opportunities; providing a virtual space for assembly; supporting the capability of the protestors to plan, organize and execute peaceful protests, while documenting the protests and governmental reactions to them; and providing forums for collaboration between the Tunisian and the Egyptian activists. It also sheds light on some of the limitations of the role of social media in both of these revolutions and highlights some of the overlaps and divergences between the role of cyberactivism in both of them, through comparing the similarities and differences in contexts, actors and tools." (Abstract)
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"This book sheds light on the growing phenomenon of cyberactivism in the Arab world, with a special focus on the Egyptian political blogosphere and its role in paving the way to democratization and socio-political change in Egypt, which culminated in Egypt's historical popular revolution." (Publishe
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r descripton)
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"Research on new media has always highlighted the assumption that in authoritarian contexts, communication technologies provide political activists with ampler space than available in the heavily policed physical world. However, social and political changes taking place throughout Egypt and the Arab
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region reflect a shift. In a country like Egypt, where only around 30 % of the population have internet access, the vibrant digital media scene is relocating itself once more in public spaces. Digital initiatives, such as Askar Kadhibun (Lying generals) and Musirrin (Steadfast), are transforming online media material into older (pre-modern) modes of traditional media, such as graffiti and traveling street performances. This constitutes a shift towards the ascendancy of popular cultural production, and a challenge to the reification and sacrilization of digital media in a context where poverty and illiteracy play a major role in both the dissemination of information and in political mobilization." (Abstract)
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