"The COVID-19 pandemic has reorganized existing methods of exchange, turning comparatively marginal technologies into the new normal. Multipoint videoconferencing in particular has become a favored means for web-based forms of remote communication and collaboration without physical copresence. Takin
...
g the recent mainstreaming of videoconferencing as its point of departure, this anthology examines the complex mediality of this new form of social interaction. Connecting theoretical reflection with material case studies, the contributors question practices, politics and aesthetics of videoconferencing and the specific meanings it acquires in different historical, cultural and social contexts." (Publisher description)
more
"As the revolutions across the Arab world that came to a head in 2011 devolved into civil war and military coup, representation and history acquired a renewed and contested urgency. The capacities of the internet have enabled sharing and archiving in an unprecedented fashion. Yet, at the same time,
...
these facilities institute a globally dispersed reinforcement and recalibration of power, turning memory and knowledge into commodified and copyrighted goods. In The Arab Archive: Mediated Memories and Digital Flows, activists, artists, filmmakers, producers, and scholars examine which images of struggle have been created, bought, sold, repurposed, denounced, and expunged. As a whole, these cultural productions constitute an archive whose formats are as diverse as digital repositories looked after by activists, found footage art documentaries, Facebook archive pages, art exhibits, doctoral research projects, and ‘controversial’ or ‘violent’ protest videos that are abruptly removed from YouTube at the click of a mouse by sub-contracted employees thousands of kilometers from where they were uploaded. The Arab Archive investigates the local, regional, and international forces that determine what materials, and therefore which pasts, we can access and remember, and, conversely, which pasts get erased and forgotten." (Back cover)
more
"This ethnography uses the Syrian case to reflect more broadly on how the networked age reshapes contemporary warfare and impacts on the enactment of violence through images and on images. In stark contrast to the techno-utopias celebrating digital democracy and participatory cultures,
...
Donatella Della Ratta’s analysis exposes the dark side of online practices, where visual regimes of representation and media production dramatically intertwine with modes of destruction and the performance of violence." (Publisher description)
more
"Transformations in the Arab media landscape are a key element in the regional dynamics of political change. Where do the private owners of Arab media outlets stand on the scene? What part, if any, have they played in weakening dictatorships, countering sectarianism and political polarisation, and r
...
eforming business practices in the Arab world? Arab Media Moguls charts the rise of some leading investors and entrepreneurs in Arab media, examining their motives, management styles, financial performance and links to political power. Responding critically to scholarship on Western moguls, this book uncovers the realities of risk and success for Arab media potentates and billionaires." (Publisher description)
more
"In CARGC Paper 2, Della Ratta explored how one 2013 Syrian television serial, Wilada min al-Khasira [Birth from the Waist] responded in real time to unfolding events of the Syrian revolution. She
...
argued that the serial offers a living site for scholarly reflection on how cultural production and the power relations that shape it might shift, recombine, and adapt in the context of the three-year-old uprising turned into an armed conflict. Della Ratta mobilized the television serial to explore how the geopolitical relationships between Syrian and Gulf political elites had been dramatically reconfigured." (Description)
more
"Communication Rights and Social Justice offers historical perspectives on struggles to use the instruments of state and political participation - power, inter-governmental treaties and declarations, and various forms of political advocacy and protest politics - to articulate the concept of communic
...
ation as a fundamental right. The contributions make up an intergenerational and multi-vocal dialogue. Different generations of scholars, activists and practitioners, who have been engaged with mobilizations at different times, present their views; some adopt a more academic style, others reflect autobiographically on personal experiences. The collection acknowledges the plural geo-cultural roots that compose what have eventually become a network of transnational mobilization dynamics that are increasingly global, digitally mediated, multi-stakeholder and faced by new and forthcoming challenges." (Publisher description)
more