communication studies

Online Social Research in Iran: A Need to Offer a Bigger Picture

10 Nov 2015

Online Social Research in Iran: A Need to Offer a Bigger Picture
Ali Honari Article Given the limits of in-country and survey research in closed societies, the World Wide Web – in particular online forums - offers an alternative field for observing and understanding these societies and their development. However, the praise given to the Internet’s role in bringing about political change in Arab uprisings and the 2009 elections post protests has resulted in a tendency in the existing literature…

Article

Visual Representation, Propaganda and Cyberspace: The Case of the Palestinian Islamist Movements

10 May 2015

Visual Representation, Propaganda and Cyberspace: The Case of the Palestinian Islamist Movements
Attila Kovacs Article The article analyzes the changing position of the visual representation in the context of Islam from the starting point set up in the Qur’an and more specifically in the prophetic tradition to the theoretical positions of Islamic reformism and radicalism and the practice of Islamism movements. To understand this changing relationship is crucial for the research of ideology and propaganda of the contemporary Islamist movement.…

Article

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

The Introduction of Telephone into Turkish Houses: Private Space, Borders of the Neighborhoods and Solidarity

10 Nov 2014

The Introduction of Telephone into Turkish Houses: Private Space, Borders of the Neighborhoods and Solidarity
GĂĽlengĂĽl AltıntaĹź Article This essay is based on the data collected in a two-year research project (between 2010–2012), under the title Telephony And Turkish Modernization: Social History of Telephone Since The Ottoman Era (1881–2010), which was primarily concerned with the social history of telephone in Turkey during is peculiarly long history of implementation and dispersal. The project was conducted as oral history and archive research, and a comparative…

Article

The Telephone and the Social Struggles in Turkey: An Overview of a Social History of a Communication Technology

10 Nov 2014

The Telephone and the Social Struggles in Turkey: An Overview of a Social History of a Communication Technology
Burçe Çelik Article This essay presents an overview of social history of telephone technology in Turkey, by taking the user-perspective to its center. As part of the set of essays in this special issue dealing with the history of telephony in the non-west, this essay seeks to explore how the telephone has become part of social practices of people, how it has integrated into the social struggles of…

Article

Mobile Revolution: Toward a History of Technology, Telephony and Political Activism in Egypt

10 Nov 2014

Mobile Revolution: Toward a History of Technology, Telephony and Political Activism in Egypt
Kira C. Allmann Article This article examines the use of everyday mobile technologies, and mobile telephony in particular, in political activism and protest during the 2011 Egyptian uprisings and throughout its continuing aftermath. The Arab revolutions have their own, now familiar, nomenclature, derived from the semantics of revolution and the digital age. Much of the language used to describe and analyze events in the Middle East has emphasized the…

Article

Reflections on Oral History: Four Cities on the Social History of Telephone Technology in Turkey

10 Nov 2014

Reflections on Oral History: Four Cities on the Social History of Telephone Technology in Turkey
Burçe Çelik, Derya Gurses Tarbuck Comment Throughout the history of the Turkish Republic, the telephone has collectively been perceived as a technology of modernity, progress, wealth and cultural capital. Yet due to a deteriorated infrastructure, which has hindered penetration of the telephone to the entire country, only a small segment of society was able to install a telephone in their private dwellings as well as in their place of business. This…

Comment

Review: Technology and National Identity in Turkey. Mobile Communications and the Evolution of a Post-Ottoman Nation

10 Nov 2014

Review: Technology and National Identity in Turkey. Mobile Communications and the Evolution of a Post-Ottoman Nation
Petr KuÄŤera Book Review Technology and National Identity in Turkey is a social study of technology or, more precisely, of the cultural, historical, social, psychological and individual contexts, attitudes, and practices connected to and resulting from the use of mobile phones in Turkey. It also looks into the ways this technology has been 'domesticated' or 'nationalized' and links it to the shaping of national identity.

Book Review

Online and Offline Continuities, Community and Agency on the Internet

10 May 2013

Online and Offline Continuities, Community and Agency on the Internet
Jon W. Anderson Article How the Internet spawns community and gets its features into offline life is a recurring problem met in searches for “impacts” of its successive iterations in the Middle East and arises particularly in assessing equivocal findings most recently about social media in the Arab Spring uprisings. But the problem is more methodological than ontological: it lies in viewing the Internet through a media lens on…

Article

Review: Media, Power, and Politics in the Digital Age. The 2009 Presidential Election Uprising in Iran

10 May 2013

Review: Media, Power, and Politics in the Digital Age. The 2009 Presidential Election Uprising in Iran
Zuzana Krihova Book Review In the light of the recent presidential elections in Iran, a collection of academic essays - Media, Power, and Politics in the Digital Age - edited by Professor Yahya Kamalipour provides us with a unique retrospection. It allows us to follow the dramatic and controversial 2009 elections in Iran, while exploring some more universal topics such as the interplay of media, power and politics, or…

Book Review

Review: iMuslims: Rewiring the House of Islam. Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks

10 May 2013

Review: iMuslims: Rewiring the House of Islam. Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks
Vit Sisler Book Review The book has an overwhelming scope, ranging from methodological and theoretical issues related to the research of Islam in cyberspace to detailed analysis of particular and diverse segments of the cyber Islamic environments such as the Islamic blogosphere or the use of the Internet by jihadi movements. The author clearly demonstrates his command of the subject by the vast number of examples, mainly websites, blogs…

Book Review

Tweeting like a Pigeon: The Internet in the Arab Revolutions

10 Nov 2012

Tweeting like a Pigeon: The Internet in the Arab Revolutions
Miriyam Aouragh Comment The extraordinary uprisings since December 2010 represented the long-prepared transformation from fatalism to people power. The online–offline dialectic allowed the revolution to be mediated with global ramifications - from Wisconsin to Barcelona to Athens. This techno-social nexus forms a crucial element of the overall push and pull factors and this contribution reassess the "Net Worth" from a critical perspective. The fetishizing flora and fauna labels…

Comment

Review: Von Chatraum bis Cyberjihad: Muslimische Internetnutzung in lokaler und globaler Perspektive

10 Nov 2012

Review: Von Chatraum bis Cyberjihad: Muslimische Internetnutzung in lokaler und globaler Perspektive
Göran Larsson Book Review The book titled Von Chatraum bis Cyberjihad: Muslimische Internetnutzung in lokaler und globaler Perspektive, edited by Matthias Brückner and Johanna Pink, focuses on different aspects of the Islamic and Muslim presence on the Internet. It is divided into three subsections. The first focuses on Internet use in the Islamic world, the second on trans-locality and the Internet, and the third on global Islam.

Book Review