[Air-L] New Issue of CyberOrient: Online Journal of the Virtual Middle East

[Vit Sisler]

Dear colleagues,

it is my pleasure to inform you that a new issue of CyberOrient
journal is now available online.

All the best,
Vit Sisler


CyberOrient: Online Journal of the Virtual Middle East
http://www.cyberorient.net/
Vol. 6, Iss. 2, 2012


Articles

Cyberactivists Paving the Way for the Arab Spring: Voices from Egypt,
Tunisia and Libya
Mohammed El-Nawawy and Sahar Khamis
http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=7994

The wave of Arab revolutions and uprisings that has been shaking all
corners of the Arab Middle East since 2011 and that has come to be
known as the Arab Spring owed a major portion of its success to online
activism. The spark that ignited these revolutions in the offline
world was ignited by the Arab cyberactivists’ well-coordinated
campaigns, calling for the toppling of corrupt regimes in their home
countries. These campaigns were launched through various forms of
social media, such as blogs, Facebook, Twitter and Flicker with the
goal of introducing drastic political changes and allowing for a
higher margin of freedom in a region that has often been associated
with autocracy and dictatorship. Three Arab countries in particular –
Egypt, Tunisia and Libya – have witnessed sweeping transformations,
leading to the ousting and court trials of members of their old
regimes and the holding of democratic presidential and parliamentary
elections. This study utilizes qualitative, on-the-field interviews
with cyberactivists in these three countries to provide a unique
perspective into how they have paved the way for a new era of openness
and democratic reform in their respective countries.

Mythical Roots, Phantasmic Realities and Transnational Migrants:
Yemenis Across the Gulf of Aden
Samson A. Bezabeh
http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=8043

This article analyzes the relationship between transnational
migration, state-based religious cosmologies and new electronic media.
It illustrates the way mythical realities and a Christian cosmology
have structured the existence of the Yemeni diaspora. In analyzing the
way mythical realities have been deployed, I seek to understand how
old ways of creating boundaries have been redeployed in electronic
landscapes. Much has been written regarding the interface between
religion and media. Yet little attention has been paid to the
phantasmic element that exists in digital-based transnational
discourses. Drawing on the Lacanian concept of jouissance in this
article, I pinpoint how mythical realities, important for creating
boundaries, also operate at the phantasmic level. In doing so, I
ultimately aim to show how transnational migration across borders
operates within a field that is dotted with religious mythology and
phantasmic realities that are increasingly expressed in the electronic
landscape. I also show how the changing relationship between Muslims
and Christians should be explained by taking more factors into account
than concrete human reality. Explanations should also be sought in the
distant past and in the domain of fantasy, which has so far proved to
be uncomfortable ground for most scholars studying religious dynamics
in the Horn of Africa.

The Time of Concluding the Contract in E-Commerce from Islamic Legal Perspective
Abdulrahman Alzaagy
http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=8029

The issue of when a contract between face-to-face parties is deemed to
be concluded presents no legal difficulty to deal with in conventional
dealings. However, the borderless nature of the Internet presents
questions as to when a contract is deemed to be irrevocably formed and
therefore raises questions regarding contract validity. As a general
rule, a contract is formed when there is an exchange of offer and
acceptance between the parties. However, in online contracts the
contracting parties are not in face-to-face meeting and thus the
exchange of offer and acceptance involves the possibility that such
correspondence may not reach its intended recipient because of
technical errors or other technological complexities. As a result,
this article tends to engage in a critical study to determine the time
when a contract formed in the cyberspace is concluded in the light of
Islamic contracting principles with reference to a number of
International legal frameworks.


Comments

Tweeting like a Pigeon: The Internet in the Arab Revolutions
Miriyam Aouragh
http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=8000

The extraordinary uprisings since December 2010 represented the
long-prepared transformation from fatalism to people power. The
online–offline dialectic allowed the revolution to be mediated with
global ramifications - from Wisconsin to Barcelona to Athens. This
techno-social nexus forms a crucial element of the overall push and
pull factors and this contribution reassess the "Net Worth" from a
critical perspective. The fetishizing flora and fauna labels from
earlier hyped political-techno events --"Cedar", "Green", or "Orange"
revolutions-- that coincided with particular geo-political algorithms,
were initially copied and pasted as emblematic solicitations. But
whether Wikileaks or the Palestine Papers, and YouTube videos or blogs
disclosing practices of torture and corruption—opinions have been
shaped and decisions were mediated by online technologies. This piece
demonstrates the overflow of YouTube music clips through the prism of
the Tunisian revolution. I will look at these dynamics through the
lens of Palestine as an informative ethnographic comparison because it
helps indicate the power structure behind technology and allows me to
assess the multiplicity of internet politics and argue that online
activities and offline power structures do not exist in isolation and
are unequally mediated.


Reviews

Blogistan: The Internet and Politics in Iran
Zuzana Krihova
http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=7913

Sreberny and Khiabany's book Blogistan deals with various paradoxes
and contradictions of Iranian policy towards the information and
communication technologies (ICTs). Placing the Iranian blogosphere
within the rapidly modernized telecommunication sector and looking at
the democratic potentials of the Internet being suppressed by Iranian
state policies, Blogistan reveals how the contradictions between the
development of ICTs and its state's control as well as tension between
market interests and revolutionary claims create a contradictory
blogosphere in Iran.

Von Chatraum bis Cyberjihad: Muslimische Internetnutzung in lokaler
und globaler Perspektive
Göran Larsson
http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=7922

The book titled Von Chatraum bis Cyberjihad: Muslimische
Internetnutzung in lokaler und globaler Perspektive, edited by
Matthias Brückner and Johanna Pink, focuses on different aspects of
the Islamic and Muslim presence on the Internet. It is divided into
three subsections. The first focuses on Internet use in the Islamic
world, the second on trans-locality and the Internet, and the third on
global Islam.


--
Vit Sisler, Ph.D.

Charles University in Prague
Faculty of Arts & Philosophy
Institute of Information Science and Librarianship
New Media Studies

http://uisk.jinonice.cuni.cz/sisler/