SPA Seminar Series: Dr Geoff Hughes (University of Exeter) - "Cracks in the Screen: Technology, Media Liberalization and Authority in Networked Jordan"

This talk will examine how Jordan’s rapidly evolving media sector is transforming the nature of authority in Jordan. An older generation of leaders, known as sheikhs, confronts technologies they often don’t understand and a new generation that has little respect for their elders’ genealogical claims. Amidst a proliferation of social media tools that allow young people to use the idiom of the tribe to act quickly and decisively—even violently—in the political field without regard for their elders, the Jordanian government seeks to reassert control over a media sector that is increasingly international, for-profit, and privately held. Yet a new generation of would-be tribal leaders is rushing into the breach. Drawing on case studies of sheikhs, policemen, and journalists, I argue that the future of authority in Jordan will depend on the continued ability of leaders to use media to move between various scales, representing themselves individually while also convincingly standing in for li