Book Review: New Media and Communication across Religions and Cultures, edited by Isaac Nahon-Serfaty and Rukhsana Ahmed

Youth are coming of age in a digital era and learning and exercising citizenship in fundamentally different ways compared to previous generations. Around the globe, a monumental generational rupture is taking place that is being facilitated—not driven in some inevitable and teleological process—by new media and communication technologies. The bulk of research and theorizing on generations in the digital age has come out of North America and Europe; but to fully understand the rise of an active generation requires a more inclusive global lens, one that reaches to societies where high proportions of educated youth live under conditions of political repression and economic exclusion. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA), characterized by authoritarian regimes, surging youth populations, and escalating rates of both youth connectivity and unemployment, provides an ideal vantage point to understand generations and power in the digital age. Building toward this larger perspective, this article probes how Egyptian youth have been learning citizenship, forming a generational consciousness, and actively engaging in politics in the digital age. Author Linda Herrera asks how members of this generation who have been able to trigger revolt might collectively shape the kind of sustained democratic societies to which they aspire. This inquiry is informed theoretically by the sociology of generations and methodologically by biographical research with Egyptian youth.

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BOOK REVIEW - NEW MEDIA, OLD NEWS

Facta Universitatis Series Philosophy Sociology Psychology and History ◽

10.22190/fupsph1701073m ◽

2017 ◽

pp. 073

Author(s):

Marta Mitrovic

Keyword(s):

New Media ◽

Digital Age

Fenton, Natalie, ed. New Media, Old News: Journalism and Democracy in the Digital Age. University of London, UK: Goldsmiths, 2010, p. 232.

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Book Review: Transforming Education with New Media

Issues and Trends in Educational Technology ◽

10.2458/azu_itet_v2i1_ploat ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Mustafa Polat

Keyword(s):

New Media

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Pamięć w kulturze teraźniejszości

Kultura i Spoleczenstwo ◽

10.35757/kis.2016.60.4.8 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 60 (4) ◽

pp. 121-141

Author(s):

Elżbieta Tarkowska

Keyword(s):

Popular Culture ◽

New Media ◽

Collective Memory ◽

Communication Technologies ◽

Future Research ◽

Contemporary Culture ◽

The Past ◽

Cultural Phenomenon ◽

Social Time ◽

Media And Communication

One of the most substantial interdisciplinary topics in the study of contemporary culture is change in social time, which is expressed in the compression of time (and space) and changing relationships between the past, present, and future. Research and analysis situate the present in an exceptional position in contemporary culture, providing us with the term ‘culture of the present.’ At the same time, however, we are dealing with a phenomenon labeled the ‘explosion of memory’—an astounding multidirectional and multifaceted rise in interest in the past. It is therefore worthwhile to investigate the structures and mechanisms of collective memory, as well as how the past is defined in contemporary culture, from the perspective of time as a social and cultural phenomenon. Questions should be asked regarding the mechanisms that unite the dominance of the present in culture with a rising interest in the past. The perspective of social time reveals that the ‘culture of the present,’ the current dominating forms of memory intensification, and the heightened awareness of the past, are influenced by the same or similar factors. These include new media and communication technologies, as well as consumption and popular culture, which change the structure of time, condense the time horizon, alter the manner in which the past is experienced, and modify the mechanisms of collective memory.

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Contemporary Social Movements in a Hybrid Media Environment

Annual Review of Sociology ◽

10.1146/annurev-soc-121919-054627 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 46 (1) ◽

pp. 443-465

Author(s):

Neal Caren ◽

Kenneth T. Andrews ◽

Todd Lu

Keyword(s):

Social Movements ◽

New Media ◽

Organizational Forms ◽

Media Environment ◽

Media Technologies ◽

Analytical Skills ◽

The Media ◽

Media And Communication ◽

New Media Technologies

Media are central to the dynamics of protest and social movements. Contemporary social movements face a shifting environment composed of new media technologies and platforms that enable new identities, organizational forms, and practices. We review recent research focusing on the ways in which movements shape and are shaped by the media environment and the ways in which changes in the media environment have reshaped participation, mobilization, and impacts of activism. We conclude with the following recommendations for scholarship in this burgeoning area: move toward a broader conception of media in movements; expand engagement with scholarship in neighboring disciplines that study politics, media, and communication; develop new methodological and analytical skills for emerging forms of media; and investigate the ways in which media are enhancing, altering, or undermining the ability of movements to mobilize support, shape broader identities and attitudes, and secure new advantages from targets and authorities.

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On the relativity of old and new media: A lifeworld perspective

Convergence The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies ◽

10.1177/1354856519834480 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 25 (4) ◽

pp. 657-672 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Manuel Menke ◽

Christian Schwarzenegger

Keyword(s):

New Media ◽

Empirical Data ◽

Theoretical Work ◽

Daily Basis ◽

Communication Studies ◽

Theoretical Approaches ◽

Media Change ◽

Media And Communication ◽

Depth Interviews ◽

Accurate Observation

It is an old, yet, accurate observation that the ‘newness’ of media is and most probably will continue to be a catalyst for research in media and communication studies. At the same time, there are numerous academic voices who stress that studying media change demands an awareness of the complexities at play interweaving the new with the old and the changes with the continuities. Over the last decades, compelling theoretical approaches and conceptualizations were introduced that aimed at grasping what defines old and new media under the conditions of complex, disruptive media change. Drawing from this theoretical work, we propose an empirical approach that departs from the perception of media users and how they make sense of media in their everyday affairs. The article argues that an inquiry of media change has to ground the construction of media as old or new in the context of lifeworlds in which media deeply affect users on a daily basis from early on. The concept of media ideology (Gershon, 2010a, 2010b) is used to investigate notions of ‘oldness’ and ‘newness’ people develop when they renegotiate the meaning of media for themselves or collectively with others. Based on empirical data from 35 in-depth interviews, distinct ways how the relativity but also relationality of old and new media are shaped against each other are identified. In the analysis, the article focuses on the aspects of rhetoric, everyday experiences, and emotions as well as on media generations, all of which inform media ideologies and thereby influence how media users define old and new media.

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