Anonymous, 26 May 2013
Research on Middle East, Islam and digital media
keyword: conflict

Book: Diasporas and Diplomacy: Cosmopolitan contact zones at the BBC World Service (1932–2012)

The book analyzes the exercise of British ‘soft power’ through the BBC’s foreign language services, and the diplomatic role played by their diasporic broadcasters. The book offers the first historical and comparative analysis of the ‘corporate cosmopolitanism’ that has characterized the work of the BBC’s international services since the inception of its Empire Service in 1932 – from radio to the Internet.

Book: Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education

The author argues that the textbooks used in the school system are laced with a pro-Israel ideology, and that they play a part in priming Israeli children for military service. She analyzes the presentation of images, maps, layouts and use of language in History, Geography and Civic Studies textbooks, and reveals how the books might be seen to marginalize Palestinians, legitimize Israeli military action and reinforce Jewish-Israeli territorial identity.

Report: New Technology and the Prevention of Violence and Conflict

The International Peace Institute, in cooperation with the United Nations Development Programme and the United States Agency for International Development, released its report titled New Technology and the Prevention of Violence and Conflict, edited by Francesco Mancini.

Book: The Technology Of Nonviolence: Social Media and Violence Prevention

Once peacekeeping was the purview of international observers, but today local citizens take violence prevention into their own hands. These local approaches often involve technology--including the use of digital mapping, crowdsourcing, and mathematical pattern recognition to identify likely locations of violence--but, as the author shows, technological advances are of little value unless they are used by a trained cadre of community organizers.

Book: Political Cartoons and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The book provides readers an engaging introduction to cartoon analysis and a novel insight into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The author examined over 1200 Israeli and Palestinian editorial cartoons to explore whether changes in their content anticipated the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in October of 2000.

Report: The State of Global Jihad Online: A Qualitative, Quantitative, and Cross-Lingual Analysis

The New America Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute, released a paper titled The State of Global Jihad Online: A Qualitative, Quantitative, and Cross-Lingual Analysis authored by Aaron Y. Zelin from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

New Book: Distant Witness: Social Media, the Arab Spring and a Journalism Revolution

In this book, NPR social media chief Andy Carvin – “the man who tweets revolutions” - offers a unique first-person recap of the Arab Spring. Part memoir, part history, the book includes intimate stories of the revolutionaries who fought for freedom on the streets and across the Internet - stories that would have never been recorded before the days of social media.

Book: Arab Cultural Studies: History, Politics and the Popular

This book seeks to both showcase and further develop innovative research and debates on contemporary Arab cultural production. Popular culture in the form of cinema, popular music, literature, visual media and cyber-cultures, both local and imported, enjoy a central role in Arab cultural life, and the contributors to this innovative collection showcase the tremendous cultural output emerging from the Arab world. They present sensitive, conceptual readings whilst remaining mindful of the place of this work within a wider framework that seeks to prevent isolationist readings of cultural phenomena.

New Book: Image Warfare in the War on Terror

The book provides an innovative re-examination of the war on terror, arguing that since September 11th 2001, image warfare has replaced techno-war as the dominant warfighting model. Roger suggests that image warfare is a form of warfare in which Al Qaeda currently dominates while the West is still playing catch-up. By dealing with the deployment of disturbing images generated by the 9/11 attacks from bin Laden videos, suicide terrorism and hostage executions to prisoner abuses, Roger provides us with a new vocabulary through which these acts can be discussed and understood.
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