Mediated forms of communication increasingly influence the social relations and different spheres of life in the regions of South Asia, Southeast Asia and in the Arab-speaking region. In order to understand the profound social and political changes that go hand in hand with these medialisation processes, an independent and systematic media perspective needs to be generated from within the disciplinary framework of Area and Islamic Studies. This volume has a strong focus on the internet and on the diversity of internet-based communication in the three regions mentioned above. Furthermore, it stresses the need for a new cross-media approach that goes beyond the analysis of single media and helps to understand the transnational and local dynamics of an increasing media convergence.

Nadja-Christina Schneider, Junior Professor for Mediality and Intermediality in Asian and African Societies at Humboldt University Berlin. Areas of interest: medialization processes and social change, debates about Islam and gender. Bettina Gräf, PhD, studied Islamic Studies, Arabic Studies and Political Science. Currently she is working at Zentrum Moderner Orient (Berlin) on the concept of Islam as political order at the beginning of the Cold War.