[ecrea] New Book – Shooting a Revolution: Visual Media and Warfare in Syria

book release -
out with Pluto Press Nov 2018
https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745337142/shooting-a-revolution/

/Shooting a Revolution: Visual Media and Warfare in Syria/
/Donatella Della Ratta
/
/Pluto Press, November 2018/

 From ISIS propaganda videos to popular regime-backed TV series and 
digital activism, the Syrian conflict has been dramatically affected by 
the production of media, at the same time generating in its turn an 
impressive visual culture. Yet what are the aesthetic, political and 
material implications of the collusion between the production of this 
sheer amount of visual media being continuously shared and 
re-manipulated on the Internet, and the performance of the conflict on 
the ground?

This ethnography uses the Syrian case to reflect more broadly on how the 
networked age reshapes contemporary warfare and impacts on the enactment 
of violence through images and on images. In stark contrast to the 
techno-utopias celebrating digital democracy and participatory cultures, 
Donatella Della Ratta’s analysis exposes the dark side of online 
practices, where visual regimes of representation and media production 
dramatically intertwine with modes of destruction and the performance of 
violence.

Exploring the most socially-mediated conflict of contemporary times, the 
book offers a fascinating insight into the transformation of warfare and 
life in the age of the internet.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Making Media, Making the Nation: Syria's Tanwir in Neoliberal Times
2. Market and Politics' Elective Affinities: The Whisper Strategy
3. The Death of Tanwir in Real Time Drama
4. Toward New Political and Cultural Forms: The People's 'Raised Hands'
5. Fear and Loathing on the Internet: The Paradoxes of Arab Digital Activism
6. Screen Fighters: Filming and Killing in Contemporary Syria
7. Syria's Image-Makers: Daesh Militants and Non-Violent Activists
8. Notes on a Theory of Violence and the Visual in the Networked Age


'/This gripping work maps the media transformations in Syria - from the 
high hopes during the 2011 protests to the depression and despair of a 
never-ending war... what hits us most is Della Ratta's deep insider 
knowledge to blend personal insights with urgent critical theory. 
Tactical media theory at its best' - /

/Geert Lovink, founding director of the Institute of Network Culture, 
author of Networks Without a Cause /

/
/

/'In this innovative and original book, Donatella Della Ratta critically 
engages with the visualization of violence and the violence inherent to 
visuality, in the Syrian conflict. Essential reading for scholars of 
media, visual cultures, film, politics, political economy and sociology 
and those interested in understanding war in the digital age' - /

/
/

/Dina Matar, Head, Centre for Global Media and Communication, SOAS/


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