Electronic Elsewheres: Media, Technology, and the Experience of Social Space (Volume 17)

by Chris Berry (Editor), Soyoung Kim (Editor), Lynn Spigel (Editor)

Media do not simply portray places that already exist; they actually produce them. In exploring how world populations experience "place" through media technologies, the essays included here examine how media construct the meanings of home, community, work, nation, and citizenship. Tracing how media reconfigure the boundaries between public and private-and global and local-to create "electronic elsewheres," the essays investigate such spaces and identities as the avatars that women are creating on Web sites, analyze the role of satellite television in transforming Algerian neighborhoods, inquire into the roles of radio and television in Israel and India, and take a skeptical look at the purported novelty of the "new media home." Asu Aksoy, Istanbul Bilgi U; Charlotte Brunsdon, U of Warwick; Ratiba Hadj-Moussa, York U (Toronto); Tamar Liebes-Plesner, Hebrew U; David Morley, Goldsmiths, U of London; Lisa Nakamura, U of Illinois; Arvind Rajagopal, New York U; Kevin Robins, Goldsmiths, U of London; Jeffrey Sconce, Northwestern U; Marita Sturken, New York U; and Shunya Yoshimi, U of Tokyo.

312 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Chris Berry is the Professor of Film and Television Studies in the Department of Media and Communication at Goldsmiths, University of London. In the 1980s, he worked for China Film Import and Export Corporation in Beijing, and his academic research is grounded in work on Chinese cinema and other Chinese screen-based media, as well as neighboring countries. He is especially interested in queer screen cultures in East Asia; mediatized public space in East Asian cities; and national and transnational screen cultures in East Asia.

Reviews

[Erkan Saka · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was particularly impressed by three chapters here:
1) Designing the Smart House: Posthuman Domesticity and Conspicuous Production by Lynn Spige
2) The Undecidable and the Irreversible: Satellite Television in the Algerian Public Arena by Ratiba Hadj-Mouss
Nice one also touches upon Islamist anxieties in terms of globalized media usage...
3) The Elsewhere of the London Underground by Charlotte Brunsdo