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- Volume 3, Issue 1, 2010
Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research - Volume 3, Issue 1-2, 2010
Volume 3, Issue 1-2, 2010
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Islam through editorial lenses: How American elite newspapers portrayed Muslims before and after September 11, 2001
Authors: Melina Trevino, Ali M Kanso and Richard Alan NelsonIslam is now the second largest religion and continues to grow rapidly, with about 1.61 billion Muslims worldwide. However, many misconceptions about this religion and its followers still persist in the United States due to media portrayals, cultural and language barriers, and lack of understanding of true Islam. Critics argue that the oversimplification of Islam's principles has contributed to an ethnocentric bias among citizens. This study analyses the content of three elite newspapers: The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. The main purpose is to determine (1) whether American newspapers depicted Muslims more negatively after September 11, 2001, and (2) whether they significantly differed in their portrayal of Muslims a year before September 11 and a year after the terrorist attack. The study drew a stratified random sample of ten Sunday issues of each newspaper (e.g., five issues prior to September 11 and five issues after the tragic event) and analysed the editorial content of each selected issue. The findings revealed that all three newspapers portrayed Muslims more negatively after September 11, but that they did not significantly differ in their portrayal of Islam. Each newspaper had allotted more unfavourable terms than favourable and neutral terms combined for both periods. The dominant negative terms labelled Muslims as terrorists, extremists, fundamentalists, radicals, and fanatics. This study calls for future research to analyse the portrayal of Muslims in friendly as well as unfriendly countries to the United States.
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Radio and television in Morocco: New regulation and licensing for private channels
By Ahmed HidassUntil 2006, Morocco had only two radio and two television stations catering for a population of 30 million people. Like in most Arab countries, such stations traditionally fell under the administrative, financial and editorial authority of the State, something that contrasts with the status of the printed press, which remained, globally speaking, private and partisan.Over the last year, Morocco's broadcast media landscape has witnessed the emergence of more media outlets. New radio and television stations were created, all of which were private. Because of this, the public monopoly was abolished and public authorities (the King, Parliament and the Government) again adopted a code that would regulate the broadcasting media functioning. As such, Morocco seems to be revisiting its past. Before gaining independence, when it first launched its media, Morocco possessed as many public as private stations.However, newly launched private television stations, although constituting the first initiative in the Maghreb, are only broadcast by satellite, and their programmes are limited in time. New radio stations are all local and with basic programming. They are restricted to music and entertainment. The administrative regulating authority, Haute Autorit de la Communication Audiovisuelle, however, has not granted licenses for all projects. But no project has been proposed that would cover a wider scope of programming with country-wide coverage through regular antenna for radio or television. Broadcast media require heavy investment, as the infrastructure for the production and broadcast services is costly. In Morocco, this tends to deter broadcasting operators, especially when returns are not immediate and when the leeway for free expression is fluctuating or undermined.To compensate for the weakness of the private sector and to meet the challenge of the 485 Arabic satellite chains received by the Moroccan public, the State has created a fund aimed at stimulating broadcasting, by relieving money pressures from the shoulders of Moroccan producers and broadcasting outlets; yet this also calls into question the degree of their independence. The path to such independence has indeed proved to be fraught with obstacles during coverage of some events, such as the Casablanca terrorist attacks in 2006, when the new radio and television stations restricted themselves to the mere transmission of official news updates.
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Communication revolution and academic freedom
More LessThe rationale behind the strong relationship between the knowledge society and the university is knowledge, its production through research, transfer and integration, through education and cultivation of critical judgment, diffusion, through publishing and application, and through university outreach to its social environment. In order for scholars to deal with the challenges and opportunities of the communication revolution, they have to focus on, among other issues, protecting their academic freedom, which is a core value in academic life.This article is an attempt to investigate how the communication revolution impacts academic freedom and how universities need to change in order to safeguard it. This work proves that the communication revolution has not only transformed university activities in research, teaching and outreach but has also changed how universities are organized, financed and managed. Therefore, the concept, regulations and practice of academic freedom have to be reconsidered.This article concludes that the comprehensive view of academic freedom in Arab and African universities incorporates a full engagement of the academic community in the development process of the whole society to compensate the lack of sovereignty of law and of good governance. This article also demonstrates that Islamic culture is consistent with the spirit and necessities of the communication revolution and the knowledge society, and calls for the most extensive possibility of the freedom of expression to be safeguarded.
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Arab news networks and conspiracy theories about America: A political gratification study
More LessThis study employs the gratification approach to examine the influence of Arab news networks on the belief in conspiracy theories about America in Kuwait. The data revealed that the 378 respondents strongly believed in the conspiracy theories. A factor analysis extracted four gratifications sought from viewing Arab news networks: information, social discussion, free marketplace of information and reinforcement. The regression analysis indicated that gender, the free marketplace of information gratification and viewing the Arabic BBC all negatively predicted the general belief in conspiracy theories about America, while no variable predicted belief in the 9/11 conspiracy theories. None of the variables was a positive predictor of belief in the theories. This study concludes that Arab news networks are not guilty of being a source of conspiracy theories about America, and that they may, on the contrary, be helping Arabs to consider certain aspects in a new light.
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Media research in the Arab world and the audience challenge: Lessons from the field
By Aziz DouaiThis study focuses on the trepidations, concerns and pitfalls audience researchers face when carrying out fieldwork studies in the Arab world. Based on extrapolations and detailed observations from field research projects, combining surveys, focus groups and interviews, this article has outlined five main challenges in the process of audience research in the region: (1) recruitment strategies, (2) time issues, (3) group dynamics, (4) gender issues in interviews and (5) the significance of culture. In dealing with regional media audiences, researchers confront challenges ranging from hostile attitudes, suspicions of researchers' motives and even outright distrust to overzealous collaboration. Beyond these political/cultural factors, socio-economic considerations, such as literacy rates, not only affect respondents' self-reports and response rates, but may fundamentally skew the recruitment process. While some of these challenges are rooted in the practice of audience research irrespective of cultural setting, sociocultural and political realities create challenges specific to the region.
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Global Class: New media and intercultural communication
By Yusuf DevranIt has been evident that developments in communication technologies have paved the way for new opportunities in education, as has been the case in other fields of human activity. This article reports on a unique project called the Global Class, which is an interactive course based on Internet technology. It is a joint venture run since 2005 by the Department of Public Relations and Publicity at Yeditepe University in Istanbul, Turkey, and the Faculty of Communication at Nebraska Lincoln University in the United States. The Global Class is an intercultural communication project that aims to bring students from two continents together on the same platform in order to form a common ground of understanding about each other's culture.In short, this article explores the impact of the Global Class project on students from two different countries, and seeks answers as to whether stereotypes and biases can be removed through this interaction. The findings are also expected to shed some light on the extent to which effective collaboration can be achieved between the students of two or more countries, and to reveal how biases against other cultures can be eradicated through new communication technologies.
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Uses and gratifications of commercial websites in Egypt: Towards a new model
Authors: Abd El-Basit Mahmoud, Paul Klimsa and Philip J AuterAn online survey was conducted with Egyptian users who visited commercial websites. A total of 296 people responded to an Arabic survey that questioned the reasons they use commercial websites as well as what gratifications they obtain from the experience. Education level and type of job were found to be significant predictors of commercial website use. Social interaction and information gathering were found to be key predictors of how long a respondent stayed on a website. Positive attitudes about a commercial website were found to be correlated with gratifications sought from using the site as well as perceived gratifications obtained from the experience. As expected, gratifications sought were positively correlated with gratifications obtained. Amount of time spent these websites was correlated with gratifications sought and obtained.This study attempts to clarify the motives, attitudes and obtained gratifications from commercial websites, as well as the relationships among these elements. The present research has demonstrated that the intersection of uses and gratifications theory and online marketing can lead to a deeper understanding of the marketing constraints and utilities offered by interactive computer-mediated communication technology.
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Credibility of Palestinian media as a source of information for opinion leaders
More LessThe main concern of this research is the credibility of Palestinian media amongst opinion leaders. The study surveyed 860 opinion leaders, (442) in the West Bank and (418) in Gaza, using purposive sample techniques. To assess credibility, opinion leaders were asked to answer according to the credibility scale developed by Gaziano and McGrath. The findings show that 35.6 of the opinion leaders considered the Al-Jazeera satellite TV station to be the most credible media source. Of the sample, 6.9 said the Internet is the most credible media. The majority of Hamas leaders (62.3) trust their media and consider Hamas' media to be the most credible source. Only 8.1 of Fateh opinion leaders trust their media as a source of information. Among the local daily newspapers, Al-Quds seems to be the most credible source.
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Book Reviews
More LessI-Muslims: Rewiring the House of Islam Gary Bunt (2009) C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd. 360 pp., ISBN 978-1850659501 (pbk), Price: 12.99Islam Dot Com: Contemporary Islamic Discourses in Cyberspace (The Palgrave MacMillan Series in International Political Communication, Mohammed El-Nawawy, Sahar Khamis (2009) Pallgrave MacMillan, 280 pp., ISBN 978-0230600355 (Hardback), Price: 55.00How Arabic Journalists Translate English-Language Newspaper Headlines: Case Studies in Cross-Cultural Understanding Ghayda A. Ali and Basil Hatim. (2009) Edwin Mellen Press Ltd. 347pp., ISBN 978-0773438385 (Hardcover), Price: 74.95News from the BBC, CNN and Al-Jazeera: How the Three Broadcasters Cover the Middle East Leon Barkho. (2010) Hampton Press Inc. 185pp., ISBN 978-1572739758 (pbk), Price: 15.53
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