Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research - Volume 10, Issue 2, 2017

The literature on the uses of media or new media by diasporas has become a crucial locus for examining the elaboration, in an era of globalization, of transnational identities. However, by doing this, this literature has tended to emphasize these populations’ transnational mediated connections to the detriment of other kinds of mediated interactions. While being symbols of these transnational connections, these populations have, in a way, in this literature on media and diasporas, ceased to be ordinary media users. In contrast with this kind of perspective, we conducted, in 2012, a qualitative study among 40 families of Maghrebi origin living in the Paris region, aiming at analysing their ordinary media and new media uses. While taking into account the transnational dimensions of their practices, we tried to do it without giving to these an over-emphasis that would have been detrimental to an understanding of their broader banal media and new media experiences. In this article, we explain how we conceived our research, both in theoretical and in empirical terms, before discussing some of its main results. While underlining the significance for our interviewees of their mediated transnational interactions, we stress the need for being cautious, when considering these, of not obscuring the importance of mediated interactions operating at other scales, which we describe here.

Satellite TV and the Internet revolutions have reinvigorated religious discourse in public spaces. Across the world, religious TV channels and Internet religious websites have taken up the roles of traditional religious spaces such as churches, mosques, synagogues, gurdwaras and temples. Islamic religious content through fatwa (religious verdict) programmes and other online and satellite TV genre has attracted considerable attention over the last fifteen years. Such programmes have become influential platforms in constructing people’s opinions. On Islamic-oriented satellite TV channels, fatwa provision has nowadays become a sophisticated phenomenon exceeding the traditional scope of religious teaching. To understand fatwa and its possible impact, it is necessary to gauge the plethora of platforms available for audiences and users as sources of understanding their religious needs starting with satellite TV programmes to the unlimited online platforms for the diffusion of their religious decree. This research attempts to understand the extent to which fatwa programmes on satellite TV and radio are significant in shaping people’s opinion. Through the implementation of an extensive survey questionnaire on a sample of the Qatari society in addition to interviews with experts and religious scholars, findings show that fatwa on satellite programme can be very important in helping viewers better understand their religion. The results also indicated that respondents included in the survey showed apathy when it comes to the implementation of rulings coming from muftis on TV. In short, respondents may watch fatwa or religious programmes on satellite TV or they may listen to them on the Qur’an radio in Qatar but they do not necessarily consider them as totally authentic. Authentic scholarly views on matters of religious seem to be more credible when they originate from a reputable Imam whom they see face to face. Moreover, results show that satellite TV has facilitated the emergence of the pan-Arab mufti or global Faqeeh. It has also facilitated the emergence of independent muftis and freed fatwa from the official religious authorities in various countries.

With this article we explore the effects of new technologies in dispersed communities, focusing on the identity construction process and the representation of otherness in the female blogosphere of Portuguese diaspora in the United Kingdom. The theoretical framework interlinks reflections on diaspora and migration issues, the concept of nation, imagined communities, national imaginary and fictional traditions, identity representations and otherness. The methodological approach includes quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis (WebCA) of blogs from the Portuguese diasporic community in England and takes as reference the research by Manuel Cunha (2009). I attempted to identify the marks of Portugueseness, otherness and identity peculiarities and have reached diametrically opposite conclusions compared with Cunha’s study. I did not find an excessive display of classic symbolic resources of Portuguese identity in the blogs of migrants or the idealization of Portugal; on the contrary, I found an open wound, strong critics about society, economic problems, unemployment and corruption of the Portuguese government. If in Cunha’s study Portugal appears to be the ‘promised land’, here the host land takes that place. The United Kingdom is mainly described as a haven of economic, cultural and social opportunities that were denied to the migrants in their country of origin. Although the fascination for the host land is dominant, I also detected speeches that reveal loneliness, non-identification and misunderstanding of some practices in the English society, and otherness towards the English, and other migrants. This study also reveals signs of hybridization between the host culture and the culture of origin in the migrant’s daily life and changes in the consumption of ethnic media. In addition, this work shows how blogging practices enable a true interaction between current and future migrants that goes beyond the cyberspace, turning into relations of friendship, altruism and support.

This article examines the power dynamics that shape the production culture of the Islam Channel, a Muslim television based in London. A study of production culture is critical as it stands to support our understanding of how religious television programming comes to take the form it does. This article adopts the discourses of the ‘clash’ drawn from culturalist Samuel Huntington and reformist Edward Said’s theses to identify the power dynamics facing the Channel. The study employs an ethnographic research design that forms a two-layer analysis that includes the sociocultural environment that the Channel exists and its institutional context. While the first layer of the research design discusses the discourses of the ‘clash’ that exist in the western society, the latter examines the missionary (da’wah) goals of the Channel. The results of the analysis point to the extent to which the missionary (da’wah) goals of the Channel manifest the ‘clash’ that shape its production culture and the ‘clash’ between the western and Muslim cultures. The Channel’s endeavour to seclude itself from ‘a suspect community’ (e.g., fundamentalists and extremists) has nurtured the ‘culture of caution’ among members of the production community at the Islam Channel. Such a ‘culture of caution’ has impacted the production quality and working life of employees involved in the production of magazine talk show Living the Life (2012 – present).

This research assesses social media as a tool of popular mobilization and their role in supporting democratic processes using the case study of Tunisia four years after the revolution. Social media have been widely used during the Arab Spring in the MENA region; yet, their democratizing effects have not been thoroughly researched in countries that have recently undergone democratic transitions. Tunisia offers a unique opportunity to assess whether online democracy initiatives retain their credibility among the citizens and to what point they contribute in promoting and strengthening democracy. The research was conducted using a qualitative method through interviews with Tunisian activists and representatives of NGOs who use the Internet as a tool of democratization. It provides new evidence on the role of the Internet as a democratizing tool and to the potential dangers to political stability that it poses to countries in the process of democratic consolidation.

Storytelling is one of the oldest ways of giving human experiences a meaning and presenting the world from one’s own perspective. Stories are amongst key cultural resources for identity construction. Throughout the history of technologies, storytelling has become highly mediatized, enabling new and more interactive forms of storytelling. The presented research focuses on digital, diasporic love stories that are shared on an online diasporic discussion forum by younger women from the Moroccan diaspora in Germany. Based on a qualitative content analysis of selected story threads, this article argues that these German-speaking stories provide their readers with alternative identity narratives to those in mainstream mass media. This article will demonstrate how through these narratives users interactively negotiate issues related to ethnic identities, religious and cultural values and gender roles on the networked communication space provided by the discussion forums. Considering the limited space for self-representations of migrant Muslim women in the mainstream German mediascape, this self-made form of storytelling and the self-representations that the forums provide seem even more important for the identity construction of young women in the Moroccan diaspora. However, these stories do not always lead to dialogue and peaceful negotiations; they may also lead to deepening of conflicts existing within the diasporic community.