scholarly journals The Unsacred and the Spectacularized: Alan Kurdi and the Migrant Body

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 205630511880388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasmin Ibrahim

While images can provide a transformative experience, they can also become objects of virtual voyeurism, functioning within regimes of representation while possessing the power to resist dominant ideologies. This article examines this phenomenon of “claiming the dead and dispossessing them” through the case study of Alan Kurdi who became an iconic symbol representing the trauma of people fleeing conflict zones in the Middle East. As an iconic image, it raised awareness of the plight of the Syrian refugees, but the image also became locked into a “sensorium” (Rancière) where it created communion through its pathos but equally was trapped into an aesthetic regime which re-centered the migrant body as a new type of (in)humanity in Europe. The Internet as a platform for this sensorium constantly re-appropriates iconic imagery into new artistic and creative formats where images can be stripped from context, re-hashed, and endlessly circulated as cultural artifacts, bearing the burden of history yet being disenfranchised from it.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
James Theroux

The case method can be classified as a type of experiential learning because students treat the problem in the case as if it were real and immediate. Until the Internet there was no practical way for cases to actually be real and immediate. The Internet makes possible instantaneous distribution of cases, and it makes possible their creation in real time. This article describes a recent attempt to use the Internet to bring business reality to business courses, and to facilitate communication among instructors, students, and the case company. It explores the challenges and difficulties involved in producing a new type of case study, and it assesses the feasibility of doing so on a regular basis. The goal of the author is to stimulate a dialog about how the Internet can be used to move forward all of our teaching methods, but especially the one that is prominent in schools of business: the case method.


First Monday ◽  
2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Sean McLaughlin

The use of the Internet for political action by non-state dissident actors in the Middle East by W. Sean McLaughlin This paper examines how non-state dissident actors in the Middle East use the Internet for political action in the face of state-imposed constraints on Internet access. Non-state dissident actors have revisionist goals and the Internet offers certain advantages for accomplishing these political objectives. States seek to limit the effectiveness of these dissident objectives and can use various methods, such as limiting Internet infrastructure or imposing censorship constraints, in efforts to oppose Internet-based dissidence. In response, dedicated dissidents can find ways to overcome these state-imposed constraints and continue with their dissident activities. Based on this understanding, this paper develops a dynamic model for Internet-based dissidence and then applies it to three different case studies: The Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA). All three case study groups used the Internet in a surprisingly competent and sophisticated manner, overcoming the various state-imposed constraints on their activities. That non-state dissidents in the Middle East have successfully used the Internet for political dissidence may have important implications for the political landscape in the region.


2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farid Shirazi

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of social media in communication discourse in the Islamic Middle East and North African (MENA) countries.Design/methodology/approachBy applying the theory of social networks and a method known as critical discourse analysis (CDA) this study investigates the role of social media in the recent waves of popular unrest in the MENA region.FindingsThis study finds that social media not only played an important role in citizens’ participation in communication discourse and mobilization, but also that these media activities intensified in part because of the authorities’ failing rationales against protesters, as shown in the four‐part CDA validity test.Research limitations/implicationsThis study is limited to a particular time frame covering the recent democratic discourse in the MENA region for the period 2009‐2011. While this research is limited to the case study of the MENA region, the author believes that lessons learned from this case study can be applied to other developing countries across the globe.Practical implicationsSocial media tools available via the internet have provided web users across the globe effective tools and services to share and disseminate information by interactively collaborating with each other in digital communities through blogs, social networking and video sharing sites. In this context, social networks are considered to be effective media for communication discourse. The intensive use of social media networks among citizens’ of the MENA region indicate that the internet has the potential to be a multivocal platform through which silenced and marginalized groups can have their voices heard.Originality/valueWhile the existing literature focuses largely on deploying Habermasian critical discourse analysis to media discourse within the context of democratic and well developed nations, this paper presents one of the few studies that extends the CDA method to non‐democratic countries. As such it contributes to the existing knowledge and understanding of the mobilizing effects of social media in communication discourse.


Author(s):  
Odile Moreau

This chapter explores movement and circulation across the Mediterranean and seeks to contribute to a history of proto-nationalism in the Maghrib and the Middle East at a particular moment prior to World War I. The discussion is particularly concerned with the interface of two Mediterranean spaces: the Middle East (Egypt, Ottoman Empire) and North Africa (Morocco), where the latter is viewed as a case study where resistance movements sought external allies as a way of compensating for their internal weakness. Applying methods developed by Subaltern Studies, and linking macro-historical approaches, namely of a translocal movement in the Muslim Mediterranean, it explores how the Egypt-based society, al-Ittihad al-Maghribi, through its agent, Aref Taher, used the press as an instrument for political propaganda, promoting its Pan-Islamic programme and its goal of uniting North Africa.


2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mu Hansheng ◽  
Liu Chuanxi ◽  
Li Peng ◽  
Pang Huihua

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