Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research - Volume 5, Issue 3, 2012

In this study, we explore the ways in which young adults in the United Arab Emirates use communication technologies – especially social media – at a time of rapid change in the Arab world. Because young adults represent a large segment of the population within the Middle East and also lead in technology adoption in this region, this group plays an important role in how meanings are assigned to these new technologies. To better understand this group’s uses of and attitudes about new communication technologies one year after the Arab Spring, we asked undergraduates at four UAE universities to complete an online survey; results from the nearly 200 completed surveys are reported here. Findings not only aid in understanding how this group uses these technologies, but also help reveal the meaning-making process through which such technologies have been integrated into daily life in this region.

The job satisfaction of journalists is a crucial aspect of the media industry, which is highly reliant on the experience and qualification of its journalists, particularly the Arab media, which were increasingly under the spotlight as prime global news resources during the Arab Spring pro-democracy protests. An example of quality reporting during this time was the pan-Arabic television network, Al Arabiya. Like journalists around the globe, Al Arabiya news workers are often torn between producing quality journalism and producing journalism that attracts income. However, this study found that Al Arabiya news workers, unlike western journalists, were satisfied with their job even when they felt the management aggressively pursued business goals.

The pressures of economic, geopolitical and cultural globalization have challenged the sovereignty of nation states by weakening their ability to control and safeguard their citizens. The main focus of this study is to analyse the TV consumption habits of an ethno-national minority such as the Arab Palestinian community of Israel (the APCI) in a global media environment characterized by satellite TV from the Arab World. The main hypothesis, which was supported by this study, is that virtual satellite broadcasting from the Arab World has weakened the ties of this community to the Israeli nation state and strengthened their affiliation with external ethnic, religious and political groups and transnational or regional identities and cultures. This study attempted to explore their viewing habits and their attitude towards the minorities’ collective identity by interviewing a representative sample of Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel using a closed questionnaire. The main finding of this study is that the APCI are active media consumers (particularly TV) who are dissatisfied with the media from the State of Israel. Therefore, our research population spent less time consuming TV content from inside the state and more time consuming TV contents from the Arab World. Finally, this challenge of the sovereignty of the nation state was also reflected in a higher degree of trust and credibility assigned to TV from the Arab World as compared with TV coming from inside the State of Israel.

This article examines product boycotts driven by religious and political reasons, and develops insights regarding how corporations may respond to minimize the impact of such boycott calls. Conclusions show that Arla Foods was late in interpreting the signals of a crisis, so it could not identify possible dangers and deal with it in good time. Crisis prevention was not an active area of Arla’s Crisis Management Plan in the Middle East in the years before the Cartoon Crisis. Moreover, issues management did not receive adequate attention before the crisis. Arla neglected the prevention stage and only fully started their crisis communication when the crisis was well underway. The lack of preventive measures taken meant that Arla’s aggressive communication strategy was mainly used in a reactive fashion throughout the crisis. The research findings suggest that the company lacked local representatives; Arla also did not engage in a continued two-way communication with its Middle Eastern stakeholders, overlooking the fact that opinion leaders play an important role in influencing the opinion and behaviour of consumers in the Arab countries.

Empirical evidence suggests that media influences attitudes towards Muslims and Islam. However, the majority of the research in this area focuses on adult population. This study, being the first to focus on adolescents, reviewed media influence on their attitude towards Muslims and Islam in India. Survey results from a sample of 343 non-Muslim Indian adolescents revealed a significant association between media as the primary source of information and negative attitude towards Muslims and Islam. Users with preference to BBC, Fox News and Aaj Tak showed a greater mean negative attitude. However, there is a relative change in the overall attitude of those adolescents who have close associations with Muslim friends. Adolescents with media inclination believe media portrayals of Muslim and Islam to be positive, but users with Muslim friends feel the portrayals to be negative. Also when the level of knowledge was measured, media had no role to play. Finally, sentiment analysis of media content concerning Muslims revealed a dominant presence of negative sentiments as compared to positive sentiments. Western media showed greater negative sentiments than the Indian media, with Fox News, BBC and New York Times being the most negative in their coverage.