Untold stories of Syrian women surviving war

Issue title: Sympathetic stereotypes: the Syrian Uprising in western media and scholarshipIn "I must save my life and not risk my family’s safety!”: Untold Stories of Syrian Women Surviving War, Alhayek provides several case studies of Syrian women whose lives were irreversibly changed as a result of the events that unfolded after March 2011. The stories of these women vividly illustrate how difficult it is to come up with a neat and easily accessible profile for the suffering of Syrian women. Yet, this is precisely what Western media, albeit sympathetic, has attempted to achieve. Stories on child brides being sold to wealthy old men from the Gulf, though on the surface highlighting the suffering that Syrian women have undergone, are shown by Alhayek to have grossly misrepresented not only Syrian women, who are in fact as complex and multi-faceted as their Western counterparts, but also Syrian families for being willing to take part in such arrangements in the first place. Through interviews with six Syrian women, Alhayek brings home the idea that our understanding of the Syrian Uprising must be based on stories that are collected from below rather than on stereotypes imposed from above. The case studies defy any simplified narrative that one may wish to impose on them. In one case study, for example, the army is directly responsible for killing civilians, while in the other the army is shown to have been very respectful of women, especially in the early phase of the Uprising.Publisher PD

Emotional Realism, Affective Labor, and Politics in the Arab Fandom of Game of Thrones

This article examines the Game of Thrones (GoT) fan phenomena in the Arab world. Although I contextualize GoT as a commodity within HBO’s global ambitions to attract a global audience, I study GoT Arab fans as an organized interpretive online community. I examine the Arabic fan Facebook page “Game of Thrones‒Official Arabic Page” (GoTOAP), which has over 240,000 followers, as a case study of cultural production and consumption by fans. Based on interviews with members of the administration staff of the GoT-OAP Facebook page, as well as textual analysis of the page’s posts, I ask: How is fan culture around GoT produced in the Arab world? How are the boundaries between being fans, media producers, and consumers negotiated? Are there connections between the themes of GoT and the current unrest across the Arab region? If so, how are they articulated? Through emotional realism and hybridity, I show that Arab fans find ways to negotiate their fandom of GoT with their local context and lived experiences

Watching television while forcibly displaced: Syrian refugees as participant audiences

In this article, I explore how Syrian refugees and internally displaced people are using social media to reshape interpretations of their own status through their engagement with quality TV texts that tackle the refugee crisis. I focus on the discourse surrounding the Syrian Television Drama series Ghadan Naltaqi (GN) [We’ll Meet Tomorrow] which is particularly interesting because of the dialogue that has developed between the forcibly displaced segment of its audience and the writer/creator of the show, Iyad Abou Chamat. Methodologically, this research is based on 26 semi-structured interviews conducted in Arabic language: one interview with Chamat, and 25 interviews with members of his audience who friended Chamat on Facebook after GN aired. I demonstrate that Facebook serves as an outlet for interactivity between displaced drama producers and audiences in a way that imitates the dynamics of live theater. While such interactivity is facilitated by technology, the emergence of this interactive relationship is owned to the desires for (re- )connection of both drama creators and audiences stemming from the alienation of war, violence and displacement. The particularity of the Syrian war-related topic in GN and its applicability to both the creator of the series as well as to audiences’ lived experiences evoked a significant level of online participation with Chamat. I use the term ‘participant audiences’ to describe the interactive, emotional responses of displaced audiences and their online engagement with TV content that address the disconnections they experience because of conflict and displacement while offering them possibilities for coping with violence, marginalization, and suffering. I show how the entertainment interventions of drama creators help displaced people both to mitigate the traumatic effects of a highly polarizing conflict, and to find a healing space from violent and alienating dominant media discourses

I\u27m Sorry My Hair is Blocking Your Smile : A Performative Assemblage and Intercultural Dialogue on the Politics of Hair and Place

This performative essay is an instance of embodied writing, an assemblage by seven individuals responding to a shared moment from different perspectives on the politics of hair. In the process we engage the sociological imagination as we turn private troubles into public issues, or better yet, we collectively show how public issues are our private troubles

Collaborative Autoethnographic Writing as Communal Curative

This collaborative autoethnography reflects on how each author experienced COVID-19 and associated precarity. We explore the ways in which this experience relates to our identities (both particular and plural), and our positionalities in terms of privilege and marginality. As a collective of diverse collaborators, we confront dialectical questions of self and society. Our contributions reveal our advantage/disadvantage, mobility/immobility, and the borders and boundedness before/during/after COVID-19. We show the power of curative writing in collaborative autoethnography and how the sharing of our experiences of vulnerability represents an invitation to human connection

SYRIAN ONLINE SPACES OF POSSIBILITIES: ALTERNATIVE AND ACTIVIST MEDIA FOR DIALOGUE AND RECONCILIATION

This research project examines small-scale media initiatives that promote counter-sectarian narratives and more inclusive discourse in displaced and war-affected communities. I call these initiatives “online spaces of possibilities,” which I define as fields of cultural production that offer a culture of possibilities embedded in the actual online and offline practices of media producers and audiences, who navigate capitalist technological structures and violent cultural environments to produce positive affect of affinities and connections in war and displacement contexts. In this dissertation, I explore two major research questions: how do displaced media producers use digital media to engage with displaced audiences across the political spectrum; and how do marginalized, displaced audiences use digital media to wield power and cope with unjust life conditions. I examine displaced media producers’ strategies of transformative possibilities to engage with displaced audiences across the political spectrum through seven case studies: Enab Baladi, Radio Rozana, ARTA FM, Radio Souriat, Syrische Frauen in Deutschland, Let’s Stand Again, and Diaspora Kitchen. To show the ways in which marginalized, displaced audiences use digital media to wield power and cope with unjust life conditions, I examine as case studies the audiences of three social media initiatives (Syrische Frauen in Deutschland, Let’s Stand Again, and Diaspora Kitchen). I analyze the audiences of these social media initiatives as diasporic networked counterpublics. Methodologically, I develop a multi-methodology approach that combines decolonial methodology, community-engaged participatory research approach, and ethics as method approach. I conducted this research fieldwork intermittently over 4 years (2018-2021). My main method is 83 online and offline interviews, supported by online and offline ethnography, and document analysis. Throughout this study, I show that in a cultural environment dominated by ideology, violence, and polarization, “online spaces of possibilities” produce a culture of possibilities that is enabling because it empowers media producers and audiences to engage cognitively and emotionally in pursuing and achieving media projects and goals to alleviate the inequalities and injustices that shape their communities’ everyday experiences. However, it is also constraining because it is shaped under regimes of power in their homeland and diaspora which includes authoritarianism, platform capitalism, and racism

Syrian Refugees in the Media

[Introduction]:  "It was September 2, 2015 when the Syrian refugee crisis abruptly came to dominate the English-language media. On that day broadcast and print outlets led with the iconic image of Alan Kurdi, 3, lying lifeless on a Turkish beach after his family’s failed attempt to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Europe. The shocking picture prompted solemn pronouncements from Western leaders regarding the world’s responsibility to care for refugees, even as actual policy in most Western countries got worse. In the United States, the increased attention to the refugee crisis prompted outright hostility. Thirty-one governors pledged not to accept Syrians in their states. The House of Representatives passed a bill suspending programs for admission of Syrian and Iraqi refugees with 47 Democrats and 242 Republicans voting in favor. The general tenor of media coverage helps to explain the nasty political environment. A quantitative comparison by Abby Jones found that British and Canadian media were more inclined to compassionate, welcoming themes than US outlets, which generally portrayed Syrians as dangerous strangers to be kept out of the country."</p

ICTs, Agency, and Gender in Syrian Activists’ Work among Syrian Refugees in Jordan

This article examines the work of Syrian activists with Syrian refugee women in Jordan and the relationship between their online and offline activism. Based upon fieldwork of a broader study in Jordan during the summer of 2013, including 19 in-depth interviews with feminist and humanitarian activists, this article demonstrates how they use information and communication technologies (ICTs) in varying and highly specific ways according to the historical, social, and political contexts. It is the work of these on-theground activists who use online media as a tool to garner support, and not mere online propaganda alone, that is the key to understanding the ways in which ICTs are used to improve the lives of marginalized Syrian refugee women. This article also demonstrates that just as ICTs can be used by activists to further their efforts at reform and to improve the lives of women, they can sometimes be misused to misrepresent feminist progress through the propagation of essentializing cultural and gender discourses.</p

Watching television while forcibly displaced: Syrian refugees as participant audiences

In this article, I explore how Syrian refugees and internally displaced people are using social media to reshape interpretations of their own status through their engagement with quality TV texts that tackle the refugee crisis. I focus on the discourse surrounding the Syrian Television Drama series Ghadan Naltaqi (GN) [We’ll Meet Tomorrow] which is particularly interesting because of the dialogue that has developed between the forcibly displaced segment of its audience and the writer/creator of the show, Iyad Abou Chamat. Methodologically, this research is based on 26 semi-structured interviews conducted in Arabic language: one interview with Chamat, and 25 interviews with members of his audience who friended Chamat on Facebook after GN aired. I demonstrate that Facebook serves as an outlet for interactivity between displaced drama producers and audiences in a way that imitates the dynamics of live theater. While such interactivity is facilitated by technology, the emergence of this interactive relationship is owned to the desires for (re- )connection of both drama creators and audiences stemming from the alienation of war, violence and displacement. The particularity of the Syrian war-related topic in GN and its applicability to both the creator of the series as well as to audiences’ lived experiences evoked a significant level of online participation with Chamat. I use the term ‘participant audiences’ to describe the interactive, emotional responses of displaced audiences and their online engagement with TV content that address the disconnections they experience because of conflict and displacement while offering them possibilities for coping with violence, marginalization, and suffering. I show how the entertainment interventions of drama creators help displaced people both to mitigate the traumatic effects of a highly polarizing conflict, and to find a healing space from violent and alienating dominant media discourses </p