Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research - Volume 9, Issue 2, 2016

This study researches journalists’ attitudes towards journalism regulations, mainly publication laws. The study focuses on the Sultanate of Oman as one case study from the Arab world. To the best of the researchers’ knowledge, no local work on this topic has previously been undertaken. However, there do exist some studies that deal with textual and critical analyses of the legalizing press laws in the Sultanate. This study employs the survey method and uses the questionnaire to research journalists’ attitudes, especially those of journalists working on the Arabic dailies Al-Watan, Oman, Al-Shabiba, Al-Zaman and Al-Ro’ya. The questionnaire covered fourteen different topics from which a number of conclusions could be drawn. Notably among them, the majority of journalists working in the Sultanate do not have the necessary background in press legal culture. Furthermore, many of the surveyed journalists thought that the Publications and Publishing Law contradicts the Basic State Law of the country (the Constitution) in some of its stipulations and that it is out of step with current local, regional and international developments in the world of media and communication. Because of this it shackles press work.

The shifting political landscape in the Middle East and North Africa have riveted the world’s attention and drawn media scholars’ scrutiny to the ‘Arab Internet’ at large. Despite this attention, research on the ‘Arab Internet’ has not received its due, and it is even more limited when it comes to exploring online news and journalism. Scholarly works and mainstream media commentary on the subject continue to be predominantly anecdotal with little support from grounded data and evidence. Striving to fill this gap, we argue in this article that the Internet’s seeds of the ‘Arab Spring’ were fomenting for years, slowly but perceptibly transforming Arab news and journalism. To understand these social upheavals requires a dissection of ‘online journalism’, i.e. the new forms of journalistic practice facilitated by the Web. This article analyses the burgeoning online journalism field in the Arab world, and debates the journalism shifts wrought by the Internet, and the future of journalism practices in the Arab world. We argue that Arab online journalists are constructing a new mode of professional practice, best described as ‘alternative’ journalism practice.

This study revolves around the use of new teaching technologies as media in course delivery. It examines the differences in the uses of and gratifications from new teaching technologies in a sample of students who are digital natives and a sample of instructors who are mostly reluctant to adopt and use new teaching technologies in their course delivery. The purpose is to assess the usefulness, as well as the effective use, of new tools from both students’ and instructors’ perspectives. By using a TAM approach, the study investigates the educational benefits from those technologies by listing the different uses and expectations in students and instructors. The study also focuses on identifying the potential barriers posed by those technologies in the teaching and learning processes, as well as identifying the added values brought by those technologies to the teaching process. But more than identifying the uses of and gratifications accruing from new teaching technologies, the study highlights the mental fracture operating between nonlinear-thinking digital natives and linear-thinking instructors, a gap that places the education community in front of new challenges, as it imposes a deep re-adaptation of class pedagogy and teaching methods.

This study attempts to investigate the uses and effects of companies’ Facebook pages among Jordanian users and examine the relationships with uses, reasons for use, interactions on the pages, and effects of these pages among them. The current study is theoretically guided by a uses and dependency model through a questionnaire survey administered to a convenience sample of 395 Facebook users who live in Jordan, from 1 August to 30 September 2015. The results indicate that most respondents use companies’ Facebook pages as a source of brand information. Our findings also indicate that the reasons for using companies’ Facebook pages, the interactions on these pages, as well as their uses are positively associated with the effects of its use.

Eritrea is a tiny north-eastern African nation that attained statehood during the postmodern period. This ancient seat of culture and civilization was subjected to a series of colonial aggressions and invasions, leading to the emergence of revolutionary warring fronts that waged fierce guerilla warfare for 30 years to attain independence. Eritrean society is highly diversified in terms of geography, language, ethnic nationalities, religion and culture. Colonial rulers brought modern means of mass communication such as the printing press, radio, TV and films to Eritrea. Eritrea fell into the hands of an authoritarian regime on attaining independence and the media in Eritrea is strictly under government control. Satellite TV channels from the Middle East started beaming into Eritrea from 1996, and the Eritrean youth are avid consumers of the global messages from across the borders. Following an in-depth interview method as a research technique, using an unstructured, openended questionnaire, the present study presents how ethnicity and religion play a role in making meaning out of the messages of Middle East-based Arabic TV channels among lowland Tigre-/Arabic-speaking Eritrean youth aged 18–25 years. The researchers have observed the way foreign TV channel programmes have influenced family norms, social roles for women, sexual norms, lifestyles and music preferences of young Tigre viewers. The study concludes that Islam and Arabic language are two important factors influencing the lowland Tigre youth in picking up Arabic channels as they reinforce the same culture and traditions apart from creating Pan-Arab identities among the Arabic-/Tigre-speaking youth, at the same time preserving the indigenous culture from the influence of the West.

This study focuses on identifying the factors that affect online banner advertising recall in Egypt. Based on previous literature and an exploratory study, three main independent variables were chosen to examine their simultaneous effect on advertising recall. These variables are exposure duration (Short/Long), task orientation (Surfer/Goal) and website context (Simple/Complex). Also, two moderating factors – the level of involvement and attitude towards websites – were considered in order to study their effect on the relationship between the examined independent variables and advertising recall. An experimental factorial design (2×2×2) was used to examine the effect of each of the possible scenarios and combinations of independent variables on ad recall. A non-probability quota sample was used. The results showed that 34% did not even remember seeing an ad on the website and only 10% recalled the brand name correctly from the first question. Only a significant interaction effect of exposure duration, task orientation and website context on ad recall was found.