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.

List of Illustrations

Series Preface

Acknowledgements

A Note on Transliteration

Glossary

Introduction

1. Making Media, Making the Nation: Syria's Tanwir in Neoliberal Times

2. The Whisper Strategy

3. The Death of Tanwir in Real-Time Drama

4. The People's 'Raised Hands'

5. Fear and Loathing on the Internet: The Paradoxes of Arab Networked 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

Notes

Bibliography

Index