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Dissemination and the Digital: The Creation of an Academic Book Trailer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2016

Shafique N. Virani
Shafique N. Virani*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

Academics who concentrate on the study of Islam live in challenging times. The proliferation of “popular” sources of news and information evokes both significant concern as well as tremendous possibility. This is true across the academy, not only in our own field. In a recent issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, a team of medical scientists analyzed 153 videos about vaccination and immunization on YouTube. What they found was very disturbing. A staggering number of YouTube videos portrayed vaccinations in a negative light, and about half contained messages completely contradicting established medical science. Furthermore, the research team found that videos with negative portrayals of vaccinations were highly provocative and powerful, and received more views and better ratings by YouTube users than those videos that portray vaccinations in a positive light. The study concludes that this situation is extremely dangerous and that public health officials must consider how to effectively communicate their scientifically founded viewpoints through internet video portals.

Type
Essays: Special Section: Speaking Truth Beyond the Tower: Academics of Islam Engaging in the Public Sphere
Information
Review of Middle East Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , Winter 2011 , pp. 192 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © Middle East Studies Association of North America 2011

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References

End Notes

1 Keelan, Jennifer et al., “YouTube as a Source of Information on Immunization: A Content Analysis,” Journal of the American Medical Association 298, no. 21 (2007).Google ScholarPubMed

2 University of Virginia, “Summit on Digital Tools in the Humanities: Report on Summit Accomplishments” (http://www.iath.virginia.edu/dtsummit/SummitText.pdf, 2005), p. 4.

3 Kroker, Arthur and Kroker, Marilouise, Critical Digital Studies: A Reader (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2008), jacket.Google Scholar

4 Davidson, Cathy N., “Humanities 2.0: Promise, Perils, Predications,” HASTAC Discussion Forum on the Future of the Digital Humanities,” http://www.hastac.org/forums/hastac-scholars-discussions/future-digital-humanities.Google Scholar

5 Virani, Shafique N., The Ismailis in the Middle Ages: A History of Survival, A Search for Salvation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Jacoby, Russell, The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe (New York: Noonday Press, 1987)Google Scholar, Willinsky, John, Technologies of Knowing: A Proposal for the Human Sciences (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999).Google Scholar

7 The original URL was http://wwwl.utm.utoronto.ca/shafiquevirani/ima/.

8 I later learned of the existence of other, non-academic book trailers. The first was apparently made public in 2002 by Sheila Clover of Circle of Seven Productions, see http://www.cosproductions.com/about, accessed January 31, 2011.

9 Schnapp, Jeffrey T. and Shanks, Michael, “Artereality (Rethinking Craft in a Knowledge Economy),” in Art School (Propositions for the 21st Century), ed. Madoff, Steven Henry (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), p. 147.Google Scholar

10 Todd Presner, Jeffrey Schnapp, et. al., “The Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0,” UCLA Mellon Seminar on the Digital Humanities, http://stanford.edu/~schnapp/Manifesto%202.0.pdf.

11 McPherson, Tara, “Introduction: Media Studies and the Digital Humanities,” Cinema Journal 48, no. 2 (Winter 2009), p. 120.Google Scholar

12 Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Our Cultural Commonwealth, ed. Welshons, Marlo (New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 2006), p. 10.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., p. 14.