Middle East Now wants to to tag the strong themes of the contemporary Middle East, among internet, social media and real changes within the society.
The 2018 edition of the festival looks at the contemporary Middle East through an unusual observation lens: the hashtag symbol used every day by millions of people to tell their stories. Hashtag # Middleast looks to the Middle East in its complexity and wants to “tag” some of the strongest themes, from the role of social media and internet in the evolution of the society and in the cultural production, to their ability to provide information otherwise very hard to find. What does it mean to be connected in the Middle East, to use social media to communicate, launch new messages, ideas and inputs? The festival wants to shift the attention, on the storytelling that millions of individuals living in the Middle East – from the Palestinian housewife, to the jihad fighter, from the professionals of the great urban cities to the young people curious about new life experiences – build every day through the net. With Hashtag # MiddleEast, the Middle East makes a big selfie of itself: and we ask to our audience that follows us at every edition, to send us the hashtags they consider most significant, so that we can build together new opportunities for debate and discussion.