Media Culture in Nomadic Communities

Media Culture in Nomadic Communities examines the ways that new technologies and ICT infrastructures have changed the communicative norms and patterns that regulate mobile and nomadic communities’ engagement in local and international deliberative decision-making. Each chapter examines a unique communicative event, such has how the Maasai of Tanzania have used online petitions to demand government action, how Mongolians in northern China have used microblogs to record and debate land tenure, and how herding communities from around the world have supported the Lakota Sioux protests at Standing Rock. Through these case studies, Hahn argues that mobile and nomadic communities are creating and utilizing new communicative networks that are radically changing local, national, and international deliberations.

Allison Hailey Hahn is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY). Her research and teaching examine the ways that information and communication technologies influence argumentation strategies and communicative networks among pastoral-nomadic communities in Kenya, Tanzania, Mongolia, and China.