Audiovisual culture often privileges the instantly identifiable: the recognizable face, the well-timed stunt, the perfectly synchronized line of dialogue. Yet order and clarity do not come 'naturally' to the moving image. Light, motion, definition, compression: the conditions of recording, storing and screening can subject audiovisual media to countless variations, pulling them towards the indefinite and illegible. Filmmakers and artists often seek out and work with the resulting uncertainty, from the warping of space to the melding of senses, from glare to shadow and blur to glitch.
This...

This book argues that Internet diffusion and use in the Middle East enables meaningful micro-changes in citizens' lives, even in states where no Arab Spring revolution occurred. Using ethnographic evidence and taking a comparative perspective, it presents a grass roots look at how new media use fits into the practice of everyday life. It explores why citizens use social media to digitally route around state and other forms of power at work in their lives. This increase in citizen civic engagement, supported by new media use, offers the possibility of a new order of things, from redefining...