Electronic elsewheres

the long version

Media do not simply portray places that already exist: they actually produce them. In exploring how world populations experience "place" through media technologies, the essays included here examine how media construct the meanings of home, community, work, nation, and citizenship. Tracing how media reconfigure the boundaries between public and private--and global and local--to create "electronic elsewheres," the essays investigate such spaces and identities as the avatars that women are creating on Web sites; analyze the role of satellite television in transforming Algerian neighborhoods; inquire into the roles of radio and television in Israel and India; and take a skeptical look at the purported novelty of the "new media home."