Digitality and Debordered Spaces in the Era of Streaming: A Global South Perspective

Emerging digital entertainment media in the Global South are anchored in nation-state configurations, benefit from supranational affordances, and aspire to global operations. Drawing on Sassen's third spaces, the article focuses on the case of Shahid, a Middle East-based video streaming platform and a hybrid media venture that operates at the intersection of the local and the global. The article suggests digital media entertainment territoriality is such that content services simultaneously inhabit geographic nation-state borders and transversally closed bordered spaces, and point to potential reconfigurations of power dynamics with such ventures functioning as spaces for negotiating cultural politics in the region.

Automated summary

The article examines the territoriality and cultural politics negotiation of emerging digital entertainment media in the Global South, using the Middle East-based video streaming platform Shahid as a case study. These ventures simultaneously inhabit geographic nation-state borders and transversally closed bordered spaces, potentially leading to reconfigurations of power dynamics.