Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research - Volume 5, Issue 2, 2012

This article is an academic investigation of the burgeoning trend of cross-cultural transfer of images within the current global communication scene, in which a dominant technology is transcending political borders and geographical barriers, and threatening to create a global audience with a unified public opinion. News values, sensationalism and cross-cultural framing of news are three constructs pertinent to the investigation of the Darfur coverage in the international and Muslim media.

The article compares western media coverage and frames of the Darfur crisis with the coverage and frames present in two newspapers from the Muslim world. It tests the hypothesis that, in the absence of Islamic proximity as a news value, sensationalism-driven western news sources continue to dominate the news scene and, as a result, pass the negative characterization of Islam and Muslims to the Muslim world through a process of cross-cultural framing.

The global symbol of the Palestinian liberation movement for over four decades, the death of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat from sudden multiple organ failure in a military hospital near Paris on 11 November 2004 generated extensive, and at times conflicting, international media coverage. Arafat’s state funeral began with a French presidential ceremony near Paris, followed by a funeral procession that took place in Cairo on 12 November 2004. Later that day, Arafat’s coffin was returned to Ramallah in the West Bank for interment. This article analyses representations of Arafat’s funeral in ten British national newspapers, all of which were published on 13 November 2004. Located within the wider paradigm of orientalist interpretations of Middle Eastern socio-political events, and taking British press coverage of Arafat’s funeral as an example, this study reveals how the media discourse serves positively to reinforce ‘familiar’ British cultural norms and values, whilst negatively devaluing and demonizing Palestinians and/or Arabs and Muslims. Moreover, it contends that the predominantly unfavourable coverage of Arafat’s funeral in the majority of British newspapers led to no subsequent change in the framing of Palestinians, and was arguably a continuity of the conventionally negative representation of the Palestinian narrative in the British media.

This study uses frame analysis to examine how the New York Times framed the conflict in the Sudanese region of Darfur. A qualitative content analysis of the New York Times editorials (52 editorials) between 2003 and 2008 reveals a simplistic and reductionist framing of the conflict. Most of the New York Times’ depictions framed the conflict as an ethnic strife between ‘Arab’ invaders and ‘African’ victims. The New York Times blamed ‘the Arab-dominated’ Sudanese government for backing the Janjaweed (local Arab militia), called for more sanctions against the Sudanese government and demanded the bringing of war criminals to the International Criminal Court (ICC). To its credit, the New York Times highlighted vital humanitarian aspects of the conflict, yet failed to recognize its local intricacies and root causes. The author argues that the only viable solution to the conflict in Darfur will be a fair and equitable negotiated peace settlement between the Sudanese parties to the conflict.

This study examines how human rights organizations (HROs) use various Internet platforms as a communication tool in Egypt. It attempts to investigate four issues: (1) main themes related to human rights posted on the websites of HROs in Egypt; (2) visual and technical aspects utilized in these websites; (3) websites use of interactive communication facilities with different publics; and (4) perceptions of HRO directors about the Internet as an effective communication tool to reach out to the target publics. The researcher analysed websites of the main 34 human rights organizations in Egypt to explore how they employ these websites as suitable communication tools. A questionnaire was designed to examine how personnel and executives of HROs perceive the value of the Internet.

Findings of the study show that the HROs in Egypt use all available means to reveal violations of human rights, including their Internet sites. These bodies are mainly concerned with issues relating to basic human rights such as rights to be treated equally and not to be violated in custodies and prisons. The HROs use their websites also to present and manifest issues related to people’s rights to express their opinions through assemblies and media. The websites of the HROs applied some visual aspects in their presentations of issues related to human rights and neglected others. The analysed websites are poorly presented in terms of using tables, graphics, audio and video clips. Lack of visual and technical aspects used in the websites may be understood in terms of limited resources available to them. As for using feedback facilities by the websites of HROs, findings indicate that mutual communication and interactivity are far from being applied through the websites. Findings also show that nearly all respondents recognize that the most important usage of the Internet is for e-mails to contact HROs’ members and to provide information to their publics. Building relationships with audiences was among the common uses of the Internet as a communication medium. On the other hand, respondents approached for this research did not perceive categories of interactive communication as common uses of the Internet. They also believed that the key objective of using the Internet is to reinforce concepts of human rights. Participants in the study also perceived that their websites had the potential to provide new advantages to their organizations such as flexibility to avoid state control and censorship that are usually imposed by the government in Egypt. Despite the fact that governments may impose censorship through procedures of licences and regulations or filtering Internet content through control of the servers, they believed that the Internet is still the most free medium in comparison to other traditional mass media.

Contributing to the expanding field of cinema and diaspora studies, this article reports on a critical media ethnographic study of the Moroccan diaspora in Antwerp (Belgium) and its engagements with ‘homeland’ films. Unlike most previous studies on diasporic film culture, this case focuses on how a diasporic group deals with a relatively small homeland film industry. It was found that Moroccan films are especially linked to memories and nostalgia as well as to active social positionings vis-à-vis various socio-cultural formations. Hence, the notion of ‘re-membering’ is introduced to capture this dual engagement with homeland films. Further, the relative marginal position of ‘homeland’ films among the diaspora is used to reflect on the centrality of national homelands in conceptualizations of diaspora. Based on this study, sub- and supranational as well as local and religious belongings are highlighted as crucial markers of diasporic identity.