Ep. 19 Brian Hughes “Distributed Solidarities and Extremism”

Playing for Team Human is Brian Hughes. Brian is a recent graduate of the Media Studies Graduate Program at CUNY Queens College, home to Team Human and the Laboratory for Digital Humanism. Hughes’s work explores media origins and portrayals of extremism. On today’s episode, Hughes begins by sharing his research on Arab Nationalism as related to media technologies from global broadcast to networked communications. Using his recent MA thesis as the springboard, Hughes and Rushkoff take a deep look at nationalist and extremist affinities that have surfaced both at home and abroad. How do hypertext, memes, and even magick fit into this story? Tune in to find out.

Read Brian Hughes’s MA thesis linked in the abstract below and at queenscollege.media:

“The 20th Century witnessed several opportunities to unify the Arab peoples as a political and identitarian bloc. None of these attempts, however, resulted in a lasting pan-Arab nationalism. Brian Hughes‘s thesis, Communications Technologies and the End of Arab Nationalism, argues that the nationalist paradigm was at odds with those communications technologies available to spread the 20th Century Arab nationalist message. This mismatch has had dire and lasting consequences into the new millennium, including the rise of violent jihadist ideologies such as those of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.”

More of Brian’s work can be found at the following links:

http://qc-cuny.academia.edu/BrianHughes

On CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/16/opinions/how-to-fix-the-fake-news-problem-hughes/

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/24/opinions/social-media-false-narratives-hughes/

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