The Naked Blogger of Cairo

The Naked Blogger of Cairo PDF Author: Marwan M. Kraidy
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674969502
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
A Times Higher Education Book of the Year Uprisings spread like wildfire across the Arab world from 2010 to 2012, fueled by a desire for popular sovereignty. In Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere, protesters flooded the streets and the media, voicing dissent through slogans, graffiti, puppetry, videos, and satire that called for the overthrow of dictators and the regimes that sustained them. Investigating what drives people to risk everything to express themselves in rebellious art, The Naked Blogger of Cairo uncovers the creative insurgency at the heart of the Arab uprisings. “A deep dive into the cultural politics of the Arab uprisings...Kraidy’s sharp insights and rich descriptions of a new Arab generation’s irrepressible creative urges will amply reward the effort. Reading Kraidy’s accounts of the politically charted cultural gambits of wired Arab youth rekindles some of the seemingly lost spirit of the early days of the Arab uprisings and offers hope for the future.” —Marc Lynch, Washington Post “The Naked Blogger of Cairo is a superb and important work not just for scholars but for anyone who cares about the relationships between art, the body, and revolution.” —Hans Rollman, PopMatters

The Naked Blogger of Cairo

The Naked Blogger of Cairo PDF Author: Marwan M. Kraidy
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674737083
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
Across the Arab world, protesters voiced dissent through slogans, graffiti, puppetry, videos, and satire that called for the overthrow of dictatorial regimes. Investigating what drives people to risk everything to express themselves in rebellious art, Marwan M. Kraidy uncovers the creative insurgency at the heart of the Arab uprisings of 2010–2012.

The Next Billion Users

The Next Billion Users PDF Author: Payal Arora
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674983785
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Book Description
Why do citizens of states with strict surveillance care so little about their digital privacy? Why do Brazilians eschew geo-tagging on social media? What drives young Indians to friend “foreign” strangers on Facebook and give “missed calls” to people? Payal Arora answers these questions and many more about the internet’s next billion users.

Words are Weapons

Words are Weapons PDF Author: Philippe-Joseph Salazar
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300223226
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
The first book to offer a rigorous, sophisticated analysis of ISIS's rhetoric and why it is so persuasive ISIS wages war not only on the battlefield but also online and in the media. Through a close examination of the words and images ISIS uses, with particular attention to the "digital caliphate" on the web, Philippe-Joseph Salazar theorizes an aesthetic of ISIS and its self-presentation. As a philosopher and historian of ideas, well versed in both the Western and the Islamic traditions, Salazar posits an interpretation of Islam that places speech--the profession of faith--at the center of devotion and argues that evocation of the simple yet profound utterance of faith is what gives power to the rhetoric that ISIS and others employ. At the same time, Salazar contends that Western discourse has undergone a "rhetorical disarmament." To win the fight against ISIS and Islamic extremism, Western democracies, their media, politicians, and counterterrorism agencies must consider radically changing their approach to Islamic extremism.

The Video Game Industry

The Video Game Industry PDF Author: Peter Zackariasson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136258248
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
The Video Game Industry provides a platform for the research on the video game industry to draw a coherent and informative picture of this industry. Previously this has been done sparsely through conference papers, research articles, and popular science books. Although the study of this industry is still stigmatized as frivolous and ‘only’ game oriented, those who grew up with video games are changing things, especially research agendas, the acceptance of studies, and their interpretation. This book describes and defines video games as their own special medium. They are not pinball from which they grew, nor movies which they sometimes resemble. They are a unique form of entertainment based on meaningful interactions between individuals and machine across a growing sector of the population. The Video Game Industry provides a reference foundation for individuals seriously interested in the industry at the academic level. As a result, this book will serve as a reference in curricula associated with video game development for years to come.

Precarious Imaginaries of Beirut

Precarious Imaginaries of Beirut PDF Author: Judith Naeff
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319659332
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
This book investigates a shared experience of time and space in the post-civil-war city of Beirut: “the suspended now”. Based on the close analysis of a large corpus of cultural objects; including visual art, literature, architecture and cinema; the book argues that last decades have witnessed a gradual shift in understanding this temporality from being a transitional phase to a more durable experience of precariousness. The theoretically rich analyses take us on a journey through Beirut’s real and imagined geographies, from garbage dumps to real estate advertisements, and from subterranean spaces to martyr’s posters. For scholars of cultural analysis, urban studies, cultural geography and critical theory, the case of post-1990 Beirut offers a fascinating case of neoliberal urban renewal, which challenges existing theories. For scholars of Lebanon and Beirut, this study complements existing work on post-civil-war Lebanese cultural production rooted in trauma studies by its focus on the city’s continual exposure to violence.

The Military-Entertainment Complex

The Military-Entertainment Complex PDF Author: Tim Lenoir
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674724984
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
With the rise of drones and computer-controlled weapons, the line between war and video games continues to blur. In this book, the authors trace how the realities of war are deeply inflected by their representation in popular entertainment. War games and other media, in turn, feature an increasing number of weapons, tactics, and threat scenarios from the War on Terror. While past analyses have emphasized top-down circulation of pro-military ideologies through government public relations efforts and a cooperative media industry, The Military-Entertainment Complex argues for a nonlinear relationship, defined largely by market and institutional pressures. Tim Lenoir and Luke Caldwell explore the history of the early days of the video game industry, when personnel and expertise flowed from military contractors to game companies; to a middle period when the military drew on the booming game industry to train troops; to a present in which media corporations and the military influence one another cyclically to predict the future of warfare. In addition to obvious military-entertainment titles like AmericaÕs Army, Lenoir and Caldwell investigate the rise of best-selling franchise games such as Call of Duty, Battlefield, Medal of Honor, and Ghost Recon. The narratives and aesthetics of these video games permeate other media, including films and television programs. This commodification and marketing of the future of combat has shaped the publicÕs imagination of war in the post-9/11 era and naturalized the U.S. PentagonÕs vision of a new way of war.

Feminist in a Software Lab

Feminist in a Software Lab PDF Author: Tara McPherson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674728947
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277

Book Description
For over a dozen years, the Vectors Lab has experimented with digital scholarship through its online publication, Vectors, and through Scalar, a multimedia authoring platform. The history of this software lab intersects a much longer tale about computation in the humanities, as well as tensions about the role of theory in related projects. Tara McPherson considers debates around the role of cultural theory within the digital humanities and addresses Gary HallÕs claim that the goals of critical theory and of quantitative or computational analysis may be irreconcilable (or at the very least require Òfar more time and careÓ). She then asks what it might mean to designÑfrom conceptionÑdigital tools and applications that emerge from contextual concerns of cultural theory and, in particular, from a feminist concern for difference. This path leads back to the Vectors Lab and its ongoing efforts at the intersection of theory and praxis.

Leaks, Hacks, and Scandals

Leaks, Hacks, and Scandals PDF Author: Tarek El-Ariss
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691181934
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Book Description
How digital media are transforming Arab culture, literature, and politics In recent years, Arab activists have confronted authoritarian regimes both on the street and online, leaking videos and exposing atrocities, and demanding political rights. Tarek El-Ariss situates these critiques of power within a pervasive culture of scandal and leaks and shows how cultural production and political change in the contemporary Arab world are enabled by digital technology yet emerge from traditional cultural models. Focusing on a new generation of activists and authors from Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula, El-Ariss connects WikiLeaks to The Arabian Nights, Twitter to mystical revelation, cyberattacks to pre-Islamic tribal raids, and digital activism to the affective scene-making of Arab popular culture. He shifts the epistemological and historical frameworks from the postcolonial condition to the digital condition and shows how new media challenge the novel as the traditional vehicle for political consciousness and intellectual debate. Theorizing the rise of “the leaking subject” who reveals, contests, and writes through chaotic yet highly political means, El-Ariss investigates the digital consciousness, virality, and affective forms of knowledge that jolt and inform the public and that draw readers in to the unfolding fiction of scandal. Leaks, Hacks, and Scandals maps the changing landscape of Arab modernity, or Nahda, in the digital age and traces how concepts such as the nation, community, power, the intellectual, the author, and the novel are hacked and recoded through new modes of confrontation, circulation, and dissent.

Global Media Studies

Global Media Studies PDF Author: Marwan Kraidy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134380143
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329

Book Description
Emphasising the connection of globalisation to local culture, this collection considers the diversity of modes of reception, reception contexts, uses of media content, and the performative and creative relationships that audiences develop.