Philip N. Howard: The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information Technology and Political Islam (2010)

– First book to move beyond potential and hypothetical relationships between technology diffusion and democratic transitions to look at lived experiences for countries under study
– Draws on a statistical study that compares data trends across 74 Muslim countries between 1990 and 2008
– Addresses 2009 presidential elections in Iran

Around the developing world, political leaders face a dilemma: the very information and communication technologies that boost economic fortunes also undermine power structures. Globally, one in ten internet users is a Muslim living in a populous Muslim community. In these countries, young people are developing their political identities–including a transnational Muslim identity–online. In countries where political parties are illegal, the internet is the only infrastructure for democratic discourse. In others, digital technologies such as mobile phones and the internet have given key actors an information infrastructure that is independent of the state. And in countries with large Muslim communities, mobile phones and the internet are helping civil society build systems of political communication independent of the state and beyond easy manipulation by cultural or religious elites.

This book looks at the role that communications technologies play in advancing democratic transitions in Muslim countries. As such, its central question is whether technology holds the potential to substantially enhance democracy. Certainly, no democratic transition has occurred solely because of the internet. But, as Philip Howard argues, no democratic transition can occur today without the internet. According to Howard, the major (and perhaps only meaningful) forum for civic debate in most Muslim countries today is online. Activists both within diasporic communities and within authoritarian states, including Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, are the drivers of this debate, which centers around issues such as the interpretation of Islamic texts, gender roles, and security issues. Drawing upon material from interviews with telecommunications policy makers and activists in Azerbaijan, Egypt, Tajikistan and Tanzania and a comparative study of 74 countries with large Muslim populations, Howard demonstrates that these forums have been the means to organize activist movements that have lead to successful democratic insurgencies.

Publisher Oxford University Press, 2010
ISBN 0199736413, 9780199736416
285 pages

review (Evgeny Morozov)

publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2012-11-11)

Stefan Szczelkun: Exploding Cinema 1992 – 1999: Culture and Democracy (2002)

The Exploding Cinema is a fusion of projection, performance and social occasion. Architectural spaces, transformed with the use of slides and looped film projections, are used as the backdrop for a programme of short videos, film and performance. A ‘master of ceremonies’ sets up an informal dialogue with the audience, introduces the films and gives filmmakers who are present the chance to speak. She invites the audience to show their films in the future – with the promise that nothing will be censored and everything will be shown. By thoughtful programming this open way of soliciting material results in a varied and lively programme, which continues to attract large audiences.

The Exploding Cinema is democratically run by an open collective. In the last ten years it has put on more that 100 events, showing the work of around 1000 filmmakers, with audience numbers averaging around 200. It is fiercely independent of public grants and supports itself entirely from admission charges.

The group is contextualised against a background of, on the one hand, similarly open cultural formations experienced by the author since 1967 and, on the other, by a history of underground cinema and home movies.

Culture’s central function is taken as being the ongoing total qualitative assessement of any community’s condition. The need for a theoretical framework to develop this basic concept leads to a consideration of Jurgen Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action (1981) critiqued using Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge. The relation between cultural expression, a community of understanding and democratic consensus is argued as being at the base of an appreciation of such collective activity.

Groups like Exploding Cinema are often complex and multi-layered, with multiple and dynamic authorship. Their discourses can be largely informal, oral and unrecorded. Research methods used should be transparent and their limitations acknowledged.
It is proposed that representations that arise from a triangulation of several methodologies would provide a better basis for historical discourse than any singular approach. Two methodologies are used to analyse existing data (Content Analysis and Semiotics) and two are used to obtain new data (Participant Observation and Oral History). The partial results of each of these are then brought together with traditional archival methods to construct a historical account in which thematic and chronological strands are interwoven.

Phd Thesis
School of Communications, Royal College of Art London, 2002

ExplodingCinema.org online resource

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Gábor Hushegyi, Zsolt Sőrés: Transart Communication: Performance & Multimedia Art Studio erté 1987-2007 (2008) [English, Slovak, Hungarian]

“Monografia dokumentuje dvadsaťročnú činnosť legendárneho umeleckého združenia Štúdio erté v anglickom, slovenskom a maďarskom jazyku. Skupinu založili József R. Juhász, Ilona Németh, Ottó Mészáros a Attila Simon v roku 1987 v Nových Zámkoch. Počas svojho pôsobenia sa združenie preslávilo organizovaním festivalov alternatívneho, experimentálneho a multimediálneho umenia, umením performancie, výstavnou, ale aj edičnou a edukačnou činnosťou. Aktivity zoskupenia nie je možné vnímať mimo spoločensko-politického kontextu strednej Európy v 80. a 90. rokoch minulého storočia. Práve spoločenská realita totalitného systému a menšinového geta boli príčinou ich vzniku. Činnosť skupiny v knihe priblížia texty Gábora Hushegyiho a Zsolta Sőrésa a rozsiahla obrazová dokumentácia.”

Edited by Gábor Hushegyi, József R. Juhász, Ilona Németh
Publisher Kalligram, Bratislava, 2008
ISBN 8071499757
296 pages

Transart Communication on Monoskop wiki
Jozsef R. Juhász on Monoskop wiki
performance art in Slovakia on Monoskop wiki

Publisher

PDF (17 MB, updated on 2021-11-4)