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Session Submission Summary

Media, Activism and the New Political: Inter-Asian Perspectives

Fri, May 22, 10:30 to 11:45, Caribe Hilton, Flamingo D

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This workshop focuses on the interrelationship of media and politics within and across InterAsia, a spatially and historically networked region stretching from the Middle East through East Asia. Since the Arab Spring ignited global attention to Tunisia and Egypt, there has been much interest in the role of new media and its potential to mobilize social and political change. Current discussions of the relationship between media and politics focus primarily on the question of mass mobilization and collective action. A central question concerns how the new networks of mobile, social and digital media alter capabilities of physical "amassment" and "amplification"—the spontaneous scaling up or conversion of individuals into collective, visible, and vocal public presences—and whether and how they can unsettle and even overturn established political orders. We move beyond the mechanics of mediated social mobilization and strive instead to better understand the broader range of instances when media are politically productive, taking into account how everyday life is transformed into political action in these newly mediated environments. We are interested in examining comparatively how extant structures, agents, practices, and in fact the very horizons of politics in the initial decades of the twenty-first century have been transformed.

Presentations in this workshop will examine instances of mediated activism in relation to historical and institutional transformations that have taken place in the Middle East and North Africa, China and India, playing out alongside significant geo-political changes. Mediated activism in these regions have emerged in the context of rapid urbanization, new claims for citizenship, and growing inequality against the background of both the "rise of India and China" and the decade-long wars waged by US-led forces in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. Through presentation of works-in-progress, this workshop seeks to understand how media have changed what it means to "act politically" or how it relates to the increasingly fluid nature of politics today.

Sub Unit

Individual Presentations