Doha: Professor Mohamed Zayani of Georgetown University in Qatar(GU-Q) has been awarded the 2016 Global Communication and Social Change Best Book Award from the International CommunicationAssociation (ICA). Zayani’s book, Networked Publics and Digital Contention: The Politics of Everyday Life in Tunisia (Oxford University Press, 2015), is part of the Oxford Studies in Digital Politics Series.
Zayani received the award at 66th Annual ICA Conference, held from June 9-13 in Fukuoka, Japan, and convened under the theme “communicating with power”. The ICA, which is associated with the United Nations, has more than 4,500 members in 80 countries.
Based on extensive fieldwork and in-depth interviews, the book looks at how the Internet has redefined politics within authoritarian contexts. It explores how popular everyday forms of politics that are woven into new information and communication practices have enabled networked Arab publics to negotiate agency, reconfigure political action, and reimagine citizenship.
Manuel Castells, Wallis Annenberg Chair of Communication Technology and Society at the University of Southern California, described Zayani’s book as “one of the best analysis of the social movements that led to transformation of the Arab world, and a major contribution to the understanding of social movements of the digital age.”
The Peninusula
