"Despite the repressive power of the current regime the immense creativity of popular cultural practices, that negotiate and resist a repressive system, is a potent and dynamic force. This book draws on the expertise and experience of Iranian and international academics and activists to address dive...rse areas of social and cultural innovation that are driving change and progress. While religious conservatism remains the creed of the establishment, this volume uncovers an underground world of new technology, media and entertainment that speaks to women seeking a greater public role and a restless younger generation that organises and engages with global trends online." (Publisher)
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"Is today’s changing media landscape in the Middle East empowering women? This is the first book to address the dynamics of media ecology and women’s advancement in the contemporary Middle East. The book spans both the region and media forms, from Iran’s women’s press, via Maghrebi women fil...mmakers and Egyptian political films, Palestinian TV and Hezbollah’s TV station, Al-Manar. It takes as its starting point the diverse experiencees and multi-layered identities of women and treats media institutions and practices as part of wider power relations in society. By analysing media production, consumption and texts, it reveals where and how gender boundaries have been erected or crossed." (Publisher)
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"Digital Middle East sheds a critical light on continuing changes that are closely intertwined with the adoption of information and communication technologies in the MENA region. Drawing on case studies from throughout the Middle East, the contributors explore how these digital transformations are p...laying out in the social, cultural, political, and economic spheres, exposing the various disjunctions and discordances that have marked the advent of the digital Middle East." (Publisher)
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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...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)
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