While research on youth media offers persuasive arguments about what young people are doing with information and communication technologies (ICTs), a significant absence from the literature pertains to the general neglect of Palestinian youth engagements with inexpensive ICTs and digital media forms. Despite a few perceptive analyses, several studies ignore the role of popular culture in Palestinian refugee life-worlds. This article explores how Palestinian youth living in a refugee camp in the West Bank appropriate old and new media to create personal and social narratives. Drawing insights from Paul Ricoeur’s work, non-representational theory, feminist, media, and cultural studies, the article probes the issues through a set of interrelated questions: What are the salient features of the Palestinian youth media initiative? What kinds of media narratives are produced and how do these relate to young people’s notions of identity and selfhood? How do young people refashion the notion of the political?
AouraghM (2008) Everyday resistance on the internet: the Palestinian context. Journal of Arab and Muslim Media Research1(2): 109–130.
2.
AsthanaS (2011) Affective affinities, embodiment, and the political in Palestinian and Israeli youth media practices. Special issue on Aesthetics of Atrocity, Afterimage39(1–2): 18–21.
3.
AsthanaS (2012) Youth Media Imaginaries from Around the World. New York: Peter Lang.
4.
BakardjievaM (2009) Subactivism, lifeworld and politics in the age of the internet. The Information Society25: 91–104.
5.
BulleS (2009) ‘We only want to live’: from Israeli domination towards Palestinian decency in Shu’fat and other confined Jerusalem neighborhoods. Jerusalem Quarterly38: 24–34.
6.
DaiuteC (2010) Critical narrating by adolescents growing up in war: case study across the Former Yugoslavia. In: McLeanKCPasupathiM (eds) Narrative Development in Adolescence: Creating a Storied Self. London: Springer.
DurhamD (2004) Disappearing youth: youth as a social shifter in Botswana. American Ethnologist31(4): 589–605.
9.
GiacamanRAbu-RmeilehNMHusseiniASaabHBoyceW. (2007a) Humiliation: the invisible consequence of war for Palestinian youth. Public Health121: 563–571.
10.
GiacamanRShannonHSSaabHAryaNBoyceW (2007b) Individual and collective exposure to political violence: Palestinian adolescents coping with trauma. European Journal of Public Health17(4): 361–368.
11.
HartJ (2007) Empowerment or frustration? Participatory programming with young Palestinians. Children, Youth and Environments17(3): 1–28.
12.
HirschkindC (2010) New media and political dissent in Egypt. Revista de Dialectología y Tradiciones Populares65(1): 137–154.
13.
Johnson-HanksJ (2002) On the limits of life stages in ethnography: toward a theory of vital conjunctures. American Anthropologist104(3): 865–880.
14.
Khoury-MachoolM (2007) Palestinian youth and political activism: the emerging internet culture and new modes of resistance. Policy Futures in Education5(1): 17–36.
15.
KuntsmanASteinR (2015) Digital Militarism: Israel’s Occupation in the Social Media Age. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
16.
MerzS (2012) ‘Missionaries of the new era’: neoliberalism and the NGOs in Palestine. Race & Class54(1): 50–66.
17.
NabulsiM (2014) Hungry for freedom: Palestine youth activism in the era of social media. In: Linda HerreraLSakrR (eds) Wired Citizenship: Youth Learning and Activism in the Middle East. New York: Routledge.
18.
NajjarA (2010) Othering the self: Palestinians narrating the war on Gaza in the social media. Journal of Middle East Media6: 1–30.
19.
Nguyen-GillhamVGiacamanRNaserGBoyceW (2008) Normalising the abnormal: Palestinian youth and the contradictions of resilience in protracted conflict. Health and Social Care in the Community16(3): 291–298.
20.
NormanJM (2009) Creative activism: youth media in Palestine. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication2(1): 251–274.
21.
RancièreJ (2008) Aesthetic separation, aesthetic community: scenes from the aesthetic regime of art. Art & Research: A Journal of Ideas, Contexts and Methods2(2): 1–15.
22.
ReguilloR (2009) The warrior’s code? Youth, communication and social change. In TufteTEnghelF (eds) Youth Engaging with the World. Göteborg: Nordicom, pp. 21–39.
23.
RicoeurP (1992) Oneself as Another, trans. BlameyK. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
24.
RotherL (2007) Youth media and media education as agents of social transformation. In: CarlssonUvon FeilitzenC (eds) In the Service of Young People? Studies and Reflections on Media in the Digital Age. Göteborg: Nordicom, pp. 271–287.
25.
SaidE (2004) Humanism and Democratic Criticism. New York: Columbia University Press.
26.
SawhneyNYacoubRNormanJ (2009) Jerusalem and Belfast: envisioning media arts for cultural identity and urban renewal in divided cities. Jerusalem Quarterly Journal, Institute for Jerusalem Studies39: 62–80.
27.
Shalhoub-KevorkianN (2006) Negotiating the present, historicizing the future: Palestinian children speak about the Israeli separation wall. American Behavioral Scientist49(8): 1101–1124.
28.
Shalhoub-KevorkianN (2012) E-resistance and technological in/security in everyday life: the Palestinian case. British Journal of Criminology52: 55–72.
29.
Tawil-SouriH (2009) Towards a Palestinian cultural studies. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication2(1): 181–185.
30.
Tawil-SouriH (2011) Colored identity: the politics and materiality of ID cards in Palestine/Israel. Social Text107: 67–97.
31.
ThriftN (2004) Intensities of feeling: towards a spatial politics of affect. Geografiska Annaler, Series B86: 57–78.
32.
van TeeffelenTGiacamanF (2007) Challenging the Wall: A Pedagogy of Hope. Bethlehem: Arab Educational Institute.
33.
van TeeffelenTBitarHAl-HabashS (2005) Resilience in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. In: UngarM (ed.) Handbook for Working with Children and Youth: Pathways to Resilience across Cultures and Contexts. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 417–433.
34.
WeizmanE (2012) Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation. New York: Verso.
