ما وراء #فلسطين: الإعلام والحركات والتحرير

Call for Papers: Journal of Palestine Studies

Guest Co-Editors
 Dr. Gretchen King, Lebanese American University
 Saleh Masharqa, Media Development Center (MDC), Birzeit University
 Rana A. Sharif, University of California, Riverside & California State University, Northridge 

Hegemonic media narratives contribute to entrenching the Zionist settler-colonial project in Palestine, but Palestinians have consistently used diverse media tools in the service of movement building towards liberation. From newspapers and broadcast media to art and social media platforms, media and cultural production by and in support of Palestinian liberation are increasingly centering Palestinian narratives, thereby disrupting Zionist narrative hegemony and garnering global support for Palestinians. 

While Palestinians have historically used different media in their liberation struggles, at this juncture in the global digital revolution, we ask: how exactly are different media produced in Palestine and in the shatat (diaspora) today contributing to Palestinian liberation movement building? In the process, how are Palestinian digital media literacy, digital narratives, and digital diplomacy being deployed to counter anti-Palestinian racism, the weaponization of anti-Semitism, and the violation of Palestinian digital rights? What are the theoretical and conceptual aspects of movement media-making, including journalism, and media and social media activism, that are shifting political discourses in and about Palestine? What are the diverse and expansive ways in which the media offers generative expressions of resistance, futurity, and alternative Palestinian socialites? 

Positioning media as part of the arsenal mobilized in global social justice struggles, this special issue of the Journal for Palestine Studies seeks critical and interdisciplinary articles, essays, interviews, or roundtables examining the bilateral relationship between media activism and liberation movement building in the context of Palestine. We invite abstract submissions of 250 words that consider the creative and generative ways media elevate and affirm forms of Palestinian resistance otherwise foreclosed by both hegemonic systems of representation and the oppressive infrastructure of Zionist settler colonization, militarization, and occupation. 

This special issue aims to advance scholarship and teaching on social movement media studies and Palestine. Contributions from or co-authored in English or in Arabic with Palestinian students, researchers and/or media-makers in Palestine or in the diaspora are particularly welcome.

Please submit abstracts by November 20, 2023, with the expectation of completing the full article by March 1, 2024. Submit your abstracts through this form. Please direct any questions to [email protected].