TV broadcasting in authoritarian states: A tool to craft influence and identities Centre for Syrian Studies CSS

Dr Omar Al-Ghazzi is Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science – LSE. He works on the geopolitics of global communications, particularly in relation to news media and popular culture. His published work focuses on the political contestation of narratives around digital technologies, as well as of representations of time and memory, with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa. He is an editor in the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication.

Anti-Ottoman dramas: A gendered temporality of honour and humiliation

This talk focuses on anti-Ottoman narratives on Syrian TV. I show how anti-Ottomanism continues to animate televised imaginaries of sovereignty by way of its gendered representations of history along the binary of humiliation and honour. Drawing on historic Syrian TV drama series about the Ottoman era, and on the discourse instigated by Arabic-dubbed Turkish series, I make the case that the portrayal of virile masculinity as historically authentic has mired Syrian visual culture across media genres.