Media Studies, the Spatial Turn, and the Middle East

Abstract

What questions do the ‘spatial turn’ in the humanities and the social sciences pose for the study of the media and culture of the Middle East? And how might attending to the spaces and spatiality of media in the Middle East help us to better understand the historical present? This article puts Middle East and Arab media and cultural studies into dialogue with an interdisciplinary literature that considers media as spatial and geographic phenomena. I examine how the question of space has arisen or might contribute to the study of media and culture in the Middle East by examining three areas of research in which that question has emerged: the place of media in domestic and public spaces and mobilities, the representation of place and space, and the geography of media industries and media infrastructure.