Editorial

Postcolonial Play in the Orient’s Sandbox

22 Dec 2023

Postcolonial Play in the Orient’s Sandbox
Souvik Mukherjee, Zahra Rizvi Editorial In this introduction to the special double issue, the guest editors outline their vision behind the work by giving a short overview of the orientalist bias in game studies, the postcolonialist turn in the field, and the need for South Asia-centric scholarship to contribute to and invite South-South discourse in games scholarship. This short introduction also introduces the various contributions to this double issue which…

Editorial

Ambivalence, Discontent, and Divides in Southeast Asia’s Islamic Digital Realms: An Introduction

30 Jun 2021

Ambivalence, Discontent, and Divides in Southeast Asia’s Islamic Digital Realms: An Introduction
Martin Slama, James Bourk Hoesterey Editorial This introductory article to the special issue Ambivalence, Discontent, and Divides in Southeast Asia’s Islamic Digital Realms discusses the latest transformations in the field of Islam in Southeast Asia with a particular focus on digital media. It introduces the three key themes – ambivalence, discontent, divides – through which the special issue approaches contemporary socioreligious phenomena in Islamic Southeast Asia as they find their expressions…

Editorial

Authoritarianism, Digital Dissidence and Grassroots Media in the Middle East and North Africa region

20 Dec 2019

Authoritarianism, Digital Dissidence and Grassroots Media in the Middle East and North Africa region
Josepha Wessels Editorial As an introduction to this special issue of CyberOrient, this text provides an insight into ongoing research in studies of digital layers of revolutions, digital communication, and dissidence in the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) region. Providing a short overview of the latest developments of uprisings and street demonstrations in the region, the text reflects on similarities and differences between the various revolts currently…

Editorial

Constructing and Consuming Gender through Media

10 May 2016

Constructing and Consuming Gender through Media
Mona Abdel-Fadil Editorial Gender is constructed, performed and consumed through media in multiple ways. In this special issue of CyberOrient, we aim to bring together research on a range of Middle Eastern and Muslim cultural media products. In addition, a couple of the articles and essays shed light on the ways in which gender and gender activism may be enacted online in a variety of ways. The overarching…

Editorial

A Safe Refuge? Minorities and the State in Iranian Cyberspace

10 Nov 2015

A Safe Refuge? Minorities and the State in Iranian Cyberspace
James Marchant, Bronwen Robertson Editorial The Iranian state has consistently restricted spaces in open society for minorities to express their identities, especially where such identities are construed as representing a threat to the religious, political and sexual orthodoxies promulgated by the clerical establishment. As a result, many members of assorted Iranian minority groups have taken to cyberspace to build communities, articulate self- and group-identities, organise to overcome discriminatory practices, and…

Editorial

Problematizing Cyber Warfare

10 May 2015

Problematizing Cyber Warfare
Helga Tawil-Souri Editorial This special issue of CyberOrient engages with the relationships between "cyber" and "real" battlespaces, the mediatization of war, the need to expand our definition of warzones, and the importance of asking who participates in wars, to what ends, using what kinds of technologies, and for what purposes. Taken together, the five essays demonstrate the expansion and blurring of the spaces of war. As importantly, they…

Editorial

The History of Telephony in the Non-West

10 Nov 2014

The History of Telephony in the Non-West
Burçe Çelik Editorial This special issue of CyberOrient deals with the history of telephony in the non-west. Although the comprehensive histories of different media technologies in the west have been well covered in the existing media and history literature, the roles that these imported technologies played in the non-west have not been elaborated in detail. The telephone as a technology of communication took up differing roles in private…

Editorial

Arab Women’s Changing Identities, Activisms and Resistances in a Changing Region

10 May 2014

Arab Women’s Changing Identities, Activisms and Resistances in a Changing Region
Sahar Khamis Editorial The wave of uprisings which swept the Arab world in 2011 did not just instigate a "political awakening" that has shaken the power structures in a number of Arab countries and resulted in dictators fleeing their countries, resigning from office, or facing brutal death. Rather, it also instigated a "social awakening" that has shaken Arab societies' commonly held assumptions about gender roles and women's ability…

Editorial

Orchestrating Hip-hop Culture Online: Within and Beyond the Middle East

10 Nov 2013

Orchestrating Hip-hop Culture Online: Within and Beyond the Middle East
Anders Ackfeldt Editorial This current issue of CyberOrient brings together academics active at Scandinavian universities focusing on hip-hop from different aspects and fields. From different perspectives the authors seek to make sense of the impact, functions and dynamics of Middle Eastern and/or Islamic representations in hip-hop music online, both within and beyond the Middle East.

Editorial

The Net Worth of the Arab Spring

10 May 2012

The Net Worth of the Arab Spring
Ines Braune Editorial When I was asked to be the guest editor of the current issue of CyberOrient, I realized this is a welcome opportunity to arrange and re-sort some aspects, points, and arguments about the role of the media during the Arab Spring. In the course of the events late in 2010 and early in 2011, I felt enthusiastic and overwhelmed - not primarily as a scholar…

Editorial