"The study examines the case of a Shia online news agency, Shafaqna, to argue that Internet news production by different Muslim organizations has not been limited to propagation nor circulation of religiously sanctioned news but has also been utilized as a way of building interactive identity with r
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eligion as a public practice of digital significance. The case of Shafaqna demonstrates an increasingly participatory culture within religious institutions. This inlusion, however, is not so much about radically changing the oragnization of the hazwa, with its long transnational history of seminary education and public services. Rather, it is about integrating network strategies with the employment of new technologies so as to consolidate transnational associational ties within a long tradition of religious networks revolving aorund clerical authority. Such new strategies demand a new perspective and practicing authority that is both participatory and hierarchical." (Summary)
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"This ethnography uses the Syrian case to reflect more broadly on how the networked age reshapes contemporary warfare and impacts on the enactment of violence through images and on images. In stark contrast to the techno-utopias celebrating digital democracy and participatory cultures, Donatella Del
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la Ratta’s analysis exposes the dark side of online practices, where visual regimes of representation and media production dramatically intertwine with modes of destruction and the performance of violence." (Publisher description)
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"This study reveals that news briefs are the most commonly found type of pieces published in the emerging Syrian media sector. Together, news briefs, news reports and feature stories constitute 90 percent of what was published during the monitoring period. Investigative reports were very rare. News
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briefs were not only the most common in news agencies and electronic newspapers but also in a large number of online and print magazines. Military and field developments as well as political issues were the most frequent topics that the Syrian media covered. Services and infrastructure, social, and rights-related topics had limited coverage in the Syrian media during the monitoring period. The issue of refugees also had limited coverage in the articles and reports published by the Syrian media during the monitoring period. One of the main structural weaknesses in Syrian media outlets is the very low number of sources that are citied in news briefs, news reports and feature stories – the overall average number of sources was less than one per article." (Findings and recommendations, page 43)
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"Against the backdrop of the war in Syria BBC Media Action produced and broadcast 150 episodes of the radio drama Hay el Matar (Airport District) between 2015 and 2017. Funded by the European Commission as part of a broader project aiming to help build an open and inclusive society in Syria, the dra
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ma and an accompanying weekly discussion programme was available online and on BBC Arabic. Set in a fictional Damascus suburb, Hay el Matar followed the daily lives of residents and featured love affairs, family feuds and tragedies. Each episode was scripted by a team of Syrian writers and touched on a different issue - from violence, radicalisation and migration, to economic insecurity and forced marriage. To understand how listeners engaged with Hay El Matar, BBC Media Action commissioned and trained local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to conduct focus group discussions with listeners in Syria and Lebanon. We found that the drama prompted listeners to think about topical issues, challenges stereotypes and have a view of the Syrian conflict that extended beyond their own personal experience. It also challenged their assumptions and prompted them to talk about and reflect on other people’s multi-faceted experiences of the conflict." (https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaaction)
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"Beim Stichwort „mündliches Erzählen“ denkt man hierzulande vor allem an „Märchen“, kurze und wundersame Erzählungen der Landbevölkerung vergangener Zeiten. Tatsächlich aber kannten alle Kulturen raffinierte Erzählkünste, die häufig auch Schriftliteratur und Theater inspirierten. Au
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s historischen Berichten über Erzähler und ihre Auftritte, ethnologischen Forschungen und nicht zuletzt durch zahlreiche Erzählungen der verschiedenen Kulturen entsteht eine ebenso informative wie vergnügliche Kulturgeschichte des mündlichen Erzählens. Die bezeichnenden Formen und Funktionen der vielfältigen Erzähltraditionen ergeben ein schillerndes Bild der Kommunikationsform „Erzählen“: die Interaktion zwischen Erzähler und Hörern in den Dörfern Afrikas etwa, die Improvisationstechnik der Epenerzähler Mittelasiens oder die Unterschiede zwischen männlichem und weiblichem Erzählen im islamischen Orient. Öffentliches Erzählen diente stets auch der Verständigung über Werte und Einstellungen. Die modernen Massenmedien können den interagierenden Erzähler nicht ersetzen, was verständlich macht, warum dieses „Urmedium“ neuerdings auch in der „Mediengesellschaft“ wieder eine überraschende Faszination ausübt." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"The article revisits classical debates about the positive and negative relation of popular culture and socio-political developments with regard to the Arab world. Within the Frankfurt School and modern Cultural Studies at times contradictory approaches to the role of entertainment in political cult
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ure are being debated. In Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies rather positive readings of entertainments’ political potential seem to prevail. During the “Arab Spring” the impact of participatory values promoted by both popular culture and the new social media (“entertainment is political”) appeared to be actually tangible. The article discusses the dynamic relation of entertainment television and individualization on a theoretical and empirical level. On the basis of a large body of follow-up discourses of media reception (group discussions) with young Egyptians during the time of the “Arab Spring,” we ask whether contemporary television shows promote both individualization on a cognitive, affective and practical level of experience as well as the appreciation of individualization as a social value. We argue that popular culture reveals tendencies of differentiation and modernization in Arab societies, which are all too often described as “collectivistic.” The case study shows that critical faculty, media literacy and the appreciation of individual articulation can be triggered by entertainment. Moments of “ironic pleasure” and transitions of simulated empathy and stimulated action are discussed." (Abstract)
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"In spite of harsh censorship, conservative morals and a lack of investment, women documentarists in the Arab world have found ways to subtly negotiate dissidence in their films, something that is becoming more apparent since the ‘Arab Revolutions’. In this book, Stefanie Van de Peer traces the
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very beginnings of Arab women making documentaries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), from the 1970s and 1980s in Egypt and Lebanon, to the 1990s and 2000s in Morocco and Syria." (Publisher description)
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"The book develops the analytics of grievability as an analytical framework that unpacks the ways in which news about death constructs grievable death and articulates relational ties between spectators and sufferers. The book employs the analytics of grievability in a comparative manner and analyses
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the coverage of three different case studies (terror attack, war and natural disaster) by two transnational news networks (BBC World News and Al-Jazeera English). This comparative analysis showcases the centrality of news media in selectively cultivating a sense of cosmopolitan solidarity in a global age." (Publisher description)
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"Visual Imagery and Human Rights Practice examines the interplay between images and human rights, addressing how, when, and to what ends visuals are becoming a more central means through which human rights claims receive recognition and restitution. The collection argues that accounting for how imag
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es work on their own terms is an ever more important epistemological project for fostering the imaginative scope of human rights and its purchase on reality. Interdisciplinary in nature, this timely volume brings together voices of scholars and practitioners from around the world, making a valuable contribution to the study of media and human rights while tackling the growing role of visuals across cultural, social, political and legal structures." (Publisher description)
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"This article examines the work of women’s non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on West Bank radio as they represent women, a marginalized community, within a patriarchal, traditional and religious society. It also examines the commercial and societal difficulties faced by radio stations in their
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interactions with NGOs. Using a quantitative and qualitative approach, this article analyses data from six commercial, rather than state-owned or community, radio stations in four West Bank cities and discusses the frustrations of both parties as they work together. Contributing to the limited literature on the role of radio in the West Bank, the article also draws on interviews with representatives from the chosen stations and the NGOs that broadcast material on radio stations. The findings suggest that, for the NGOs and in contrast to other media, radio plays an important, albeit currently limited, role as amplifiers for their campaigns. Yet the radio stations do not contribute substantively, if at all, to encouraging NGO community-building activities and, in fact, restrict themselves to a commercial-based association." (Abstract)
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"International development stakeholders harness communication with two broad purposes: to do good, via communication for development and media assistance, and to communicate do-gooding, via public relations and information. This book unpacks various ways in which different efforts to do good are com
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bined with attempts to look good, be it in the eyes of donor constituencies at large, or among more specific audiences, such as journalists or intra-agency decision-makers. Development communication studies have tended to focus primarily on interventions aimed at doing good among recipients, at the expense of examining the extent to which promotion and reputation management are elements of those practices. This book establishes the importance of interrogating the tensions generated by overlapping uses of communication to do good and to look good within international development cooperation." (Publisher description)
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"Jamal Khashoggi is known for his very sharp critics to Saudi Arabian Governments. He was murdered at the Consulate facility of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul-Turkey. The case has become a concern of international society, put the questions of freedom of expression and press as well the security of journa
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list. This article is a normative legal research that is aimed to analyze the international human rights law’s protection to the journalist's activities and to discuss the case of Khashoggi, specifically on the issue which authorities that have obligations to impose legal sanctions to the alleged perpetrators. The research suggests that there have been international human rights norms and principles that protect journalist activities. In addition, it suggests that Turkey has jurisdiction to launch an investigation and prosecute the perpetrators who involve in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi." (Abstract)
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"Is there an inevitable global violent clash unfolding between the world's largest religions: Islam and Christianity? Do religions cause violent conflicts, or are there other factors at play? How can we make sense of increasing reports of violence between Christian and Muslim ethnic communities acro
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ss the world? By seeking to answer such questions about the relationship between religion and violence in today's world, Ziya Meral challenges popular theories and offers an alternative explanation, grounded on insights inferred from real cases of ethno-religious violence in Africa and the Middle East. The relationship between religion and violence runs deep and both are intrinsic to the human story. Violence leads to and shapes religion, while religion acts to enable violence as well as providing responses that contain and prevent it. However, with religious violence being one of the most serious challenges facing the modern world, Meral shows that we need to de-globalise our analysis and focus on individual conflicts, instead of attempting to provide single answers to complex questions." (Publisher description)
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"Digital Middle East sheds a critical light on continuing changes that are closely intertwined with the adoption of information and communication technologies in the MENA region. Drawing on case studies from throughout the Middle East, the contributors explore how these digital transformations are p
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laying out in the social, cultural, political, and economic spheres, exposing the various disjunctions and discordances that have marked the advent of the digital Middle East." (Publisher description)
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"Christian media in a highly fragile region are faced with a number of challenges: the issues of security, trust and persecution have prevented them from develping more inclusive strategies, strengthening their relationship with their audience or conducting qualitative or quantitative audience resea
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rch. The problem of funds and the competitive fundraising market have resulted in low-quality, monotonous productions with limited diversity, and limited capacity to hire professionals in the filed, as well as compromised their vision and strategies. Therefore, the challenges they face have affected their working strategy, negatively impacted their performance and limited their responses to the needs of Christian communities and the wider societies in the region." (Conclusion)
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"L’objet de ce livre est de décrire le système médiatique français et sa manière de traiter les conflits libyen et syrien à l’aune du « modèle de propagande » mis sur pied par Edward Hermann et Noam Chomsky dans les années 1980, dans leur ouvrage de référence Manufacturing Consent. A
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insi, à rebours de l’image d’Epinal de médias consciencieux, impartiaux et garants de la vérité que les journalistes aiment renvoyer, cet essai tente de démontrer comment un large consensus structure la présentation qui est faite de l’actualité en matière internationale. De la prédominance des partis pris et de l’instrumentalisation généralisée des informations — entre autres — se dégage une nouvelle manière de voir le discours médiatique et de comprendre sa nature propagandiste." (Dos de couverture)
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"Entrepreneurship and innovation are currently high on the media industry agenda, but focus has so far been mostly on the economic sustainability of new ventures. Considering the repressive political climate in Egypt, Naomi Sakr explores the tension between economic growth and the ethical, democrati
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c practices of Egyptian startups. The study highlights, among other things, the temporal dimensions of sustainability, where focus on social sustainability can be seen as investment in stakeholder relationships that create long term economic returns." (Page xxxii)
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