Several Islamic television channels have flourished since the liberalization of the broadcasting industry in Turkey in the 1990’s. While the programming of these Islamic TV channels was initially distinctly “religious” in character, with shows aimed at educating viewers in the culture of scriptural Islam, most of these channels have started producing what they call morally and socially appropriate entertainment programs to provide a safe haven for the Turkish family in what they deem to be a degenerate media scene. An overview of the programs aired on these Islamic channels reveals that the family – more than the ritualistic and scriptural aspects of Islam – has become their main focus. There are many shows on various Islamic TV channels in which audiences are provided with guidance and techniques that will assist to cultivate conduct of themselves and their families. This paper examines the relationship between the increasing prominence placed by Islamic television channels on the family and the changing constellations of religion and secularism as well as emerging forms of governance in contemporary Turkey. It argues that the increasing prominence given by Islamic television stations to the family and its values is an indication of a) a new configuration of Islamic discursive traditions and practices along secular lines, and b) the new rationalities and technologies of governance that play a constitutive role in producing and authorizing particular forms of morality and subjectivity (Asad 1993; Mahmood 2005). A growing body of media scholarship maintains that television has become a quintessential technology of governance that endorses a neoliberal idea of citizenship by aligning TV viewers with a supply of techniques for shaping and guiding themselves and their private associations with their families (Hay 2010, Ouellette and Hay 2008). Based on a year-long ethnographic investigation of media professionals involved in Islamic television production, viewers of Islamic television stations, and state institutions that regulate broadcasting in Turkey, this paper explores how Islamic television in Turkey situates the family as the locus of a neoliberal idea of citizenship and of a modern yet Islamically appropriate lifestyle by seeking to cultivate in their viewers affects and ethical dispositions as well as knowledge and skills to administer and transform themselves, their household, and their families.

How does global consumer culture shape subjectivities despite – or rather within – Islamic discourses of modesty and anti-capitalism? How do neoliberal demands toward the individual as defined by Aihwa Ong (Flexible Citizenship, 1999) and Nikolas Rose et al. (Governmentality, 2006) merge with religious discourses, the latter traditionally also containing concepts such as constant self-improvement and discipline? While many studies of the Iranian society tend to neglect socioeconomic factors in favor of religious and cultural perspectives, this paper proposes that the way in which individuals assimilate or refuse structures of global capitalism is strongly influenced by one’s social background. Consumption as a way of forming and expressing identities is a highly contested practice in Iran, where identity politics have changed drastically after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Especially with its association to Western cultures and ideas, consumer culture in Iran reflects the negotiation of social conflicts clearly. Despite the institutionalization of the revolutionary discourse about piety and anti-materialism, structures of global capitalism have found their way into the country. An examination of the visual and discursive material from contemporary Iranian lifestyle magazines shows that practices such as managing and disciplining the Self, the constant improvement of one’s personality and body, as well as increasing personal responsibility for success are an important part of the public discourse in Iran. They are reflected in the journals by endorsing different products, tastes, and choices of lifestyle. Analyzing the magazines’ strategies to address different income groups brings to light distinct ways in which practices of modern Self-management are embedded in an Islamic framework. As will be demonstrated, some journals designed for high income-level groups frame the successful Self almost exclusively in relation to the outward appearance while other, middle class-oriented magazines rather engage in discourses based on religious or moral values. In the context of Iran’s ambivalent relationship with global capitalism, these results render the socioeconomic background an influential factor in the process of conceptualizing images of a modern Iranian Self.

This paper examines the use of everyday mobile technologies, and mobile telephony in particular, in political activism and protest during the 2011 Egyptian uprisings and throughout its continuing aftermath. The data for this project comes from semi-structured personal interviews with activists, protesters, journalists, and regional experts as well as original online survey data and participant observation of protest activity and organizational culture within the April 6th movement. Drawing upon these sources, the author argues that the Arab Spring presents a powerful case where mobile technology – due to its technical characteristics, its physicality, and the demographics of its users – helped straddle the largely socioeconomic digital divide between traditional media sources (state TV, satellite TV, and landline phones) and ‘new’ media outlets (the Internet and its various social networking platforms). The author situates these mobile media phenomena broadly within the mobilities paradigm and social movement theory and places them within their unique technical and social context in Egypt. Being ‘mobile’ has become a trademark of the Internet age to such a pervasive degree that it paradoxically obscures the dialectic between physical and virtual mobility. Various ‘immobilities,’ including socioeconomic conditions, geopolitical agendas, physical infrastructure, and urban development, create and maintain digital divides and limit media access in the long term. The success of the revolutionary moment was in part due to the convergence of the physical mobility of activists within the urban space of Cairo and the virtual mobility of data. In moments of street protest, mobile phone users bridge the gap between “wired” (connected) and “non-wired” participants. However, during the revolution’s aftermath, pre-existing digital divides have become re-entrenched in the absence of the physicality of the protest environment. The result is an increased migration of activists toward political ‘echo chambers’ online. Technological mobility is both a useful unit of analysis in the socio-political story of the Egyptian uprising and a meaningful theoretical frame for examining digital Orientalism and its intersection with an encroaching neoliberal technoscape. There are profound implications for the mediation of democratic discourse and the continuing curation of collective memory. Events in Egypt are no more a ‘’cell phone revolution’’ than they are a Facebook or Twitter revolution. However, mobile telephony plays a crucial and underrepresented role in the technological story of the Egyptian uprisings as both a ubiquitous technology and a highly mobile one, which daily traverses the interstitial space between the ‘online’ and the ‘offline.’

The political legitimacy of the February 20th prodemocracy movement is grounded in cultural belief, values, and local political cultures. Their online campaign videos send a message of not only what a Morocco should look like but also what constitutes a ‘Moroccan’. All of their online campaign videos start with “I am Moroccan and I will take part in the protest” while providing their personal reasons for joining the movement; ranging from freedom, education, equality, end to corruption, labor rights to Amazigh and other minority rights. The use of three simultaneous languages in these videos calls for a new Moroccan collective identity that includes all ethnicities, all languages, all religions and all socioeconomic classes. With the high illiteracy rate and the historical marginalization of Berber language, the movement targets different audiences by utilizing Daarija instead of classical Arabic and simultaneously uses Berber and French in their campaign videos. All these woven together in a cultural driven discourse invite empathy, patriotism, and identification. Political desire is articulated from a position that recognizes a lack of power in relation to the state and encourages a reformulation of power relations. The rhetoric within these videos call for universal values of diversity in terms of ethnicity, language, gender, and class while simultaneously making claims to Moroccan identity and “Moroccan values” such as freedom, education, economic social justice, and ethnic and gender equality. These videos exemplify the rhetorical tactics February 20th movement deploys to bring together diverse segments of the population that is ready to mobilize. Identity becomes redefined where the ‘I am’ with its defensive closure and insistence of fixity on position is now a more nuanced collective understanding of Moroccanness. The immediate rhetorical exigencies the February 20th movement faced within the larger Moroccan society makes these campaign videos increasingly important. These videos enable us to think about ways in which we read the language of reform in a divided audience where identity becomes of critical importance. This paper will examine how these online campaign videos functioned rhetorically in the negotiation and navigation of vernacular dialectics of inclusion and exclusion and in constituting a sympathetic and engaging public that function on the everyday politics. In particular, this paper will argue that these video campaigns deploy a “collective identity” for mobilization, empowerment, and collective action by deconstructing ‘Moroccanness’ and reconstructing and shaping a new constituted public that is engaging and sympathetic to the cause.

This paper analyzes the rapidly growing video game production in the Middle East. It is based on interviews with 10 major Arab and Iranian game producers and on content analyses of 80 games developed in the Arab world and Iran between 2005 and 2011. The research methodology encompasses recent trends in Middle Eastern studies, cultural studies, and game studies. Substantive portions of the materials considered in this paper were gathered during fieldwork trips to Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. Video games represent a mainstream media and a popular leisure time activity for Middle Eastern youth. They exhibit strong popular appeal and economic relevance, contrasted by a lack of culture prestige and scientific coverage. Until recently, games of American, European and Japanese origin dominated the Middle Eastern markets. Today, the global video game production is increasingly challenged by local independent entrepreneurs as well as state-subsidized companies. We are in crucial need of critically understanding the political, economic, and cultural dimensions of video game development in the Middle East, particularly the role of the state in this cultural production. This paper identifies the key challenges game producers in the Middle East face and analyzes the adaptation strategies the producers use in order to overcome them. The challenges are organized around two sets. The first set is related to the role of the state, namely to lax or nonexistent copyright protection, regulation of cultural production, and media control. The second set is more broadly defined and deals with the social and cultural aspects influencing video game production in the region; namely cultural communication patterns, cultural identity, and religious values. Essentially, this paper argues that there exists a set of concerns that most of the producers in Iran and the Arab world share and that fundamentally shape their production strategies, namely emphasis on self-representation and respect for their religion and culture. Nevertheless, given the fact that the genres, patterns, and game mechanics the Iranian and Arab games appropriate almost invariably follow their Western counterparts, what emerges from the Middle Eastern game production is a story of cross-cultural exchange, where “authenticity” as well as “hybridity” is simultaneously construed and contested. From a broader perspective, this paper aims to transcend the media-centric logic that typically dominates discussions of new media in the Middle East and to establish a framework for theorizing video game development in the region in its broader political, social, and cultural contexts.