{"title":"What it takes to be religious: Religion online vs. online religion1","authors":"Filiz Çömez-Polat, Göklem Tekdemir","doi":"10.1386/jammr_00061_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jammr_00061_1","url":null,"abstract":"How individuals live their religion has been one of the most frequently studied areas of social sciences in recent years. The starting point of this study is based on the observation that people who describe themselves as religious have different ways of using social media platforms in relation to their religious beliefs. Similar to the diversity observed in the definitions of religiosity over Christianity in the West, different interpretations of Islam and Islamic way of living have also become prevalent in Turkey. With the intensification of computer-mediated communication, the communication resources and forms of discourses (re)produced online of the religious people have also diversified. This study aims to examine how active users of social media in relation to their religious values and commitments evaluate the construction and byproducts of religion online. The results show that there are three main repertoires related to the use of social media and religiosity in Turkey: religiosity as religious duties, religiosity as interpreting Islam and religiosity for managing impressions. The results can be evaluated together with the secularization theory, that is, discourses about being religious ‘warn’ individuals about the negative consequences of social media use, while offering an alternative to the positive ones.","PeriodicalId":36098,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Arab and Muslim Media Research","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135274516","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Understanding the use of information sources during the COVID-19 pandemic: The case of Kuwait","authors":"Cristina Navarro, Yasser Abuali, Fatemah Yousef, Rania Alsabbagh","doi":"10.1386/jammr_00059_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jammr_00059_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the uses of sources in the news coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in Kuwait between 1 January and 31 December 2020. Our study analyses the sources and actors that were presented in 673 news stories on COVID-19 that were published in nine outlets, comparing media platforms and across time as the pandemic evolved. Our results show that political sources dominated these stories, which demonstrates the strong influence of the government in constructing the news. It also suggests that the media could not find the right balance between elite and other voices, including those of health professionals. Contrary to the previous literature, citizen and civic society sources did not play an important role in the pandemic coverage. This confirms the difficulty of non-elite voices to be heard in the media in Kuwait. Surprisingly, the state-owned and larger media outlets used fewer and a narrower range of information sources. The extreme dependence on elite actors, especially political figures, health and business representatives, and the abuse of anonymous and media sources, prove that the health crisis that impacted the world in 2020 affected all aspects of society, including journalism. This led political authorities to take responsibility for responding to the coronavirus outbreak. Overall, the media discourse during the first year of the pandemic was characterized by the political control of the narrative.","PeriodicalId":36098,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Arab and Muslim Media Research","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135274726","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The representations of journalists in Naguib Mahfouz’s novellas: How are they reflected in today’s journalism in Egypt?","authors":"Mohamed Hossam Ismail","doi":"10.1386/jammr_00064_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jammr_00064_1","url":null,"abstract":"This interdisciplinary study explores representations of journalists linking literary criticism with media cultural studies. The researcher examines works from the sixties by Nobel laureate writer and novelist Naguib Mahfouz. While the article concentrates on Mahfouz’s works dealing with journalism, it presents a qualitative analysis of three novellas of his from the sixties: The Thief and the Dogs, The Beggar and A Drift on the Nile . In these works, Mahfouz presents cogent and well-founded arguments on the image of the Egyptian journalists, which manifest itself until now. The article argues that the psychological and social aspects of journalism that Mahfouz delineates are recalled nowadays in the vast, ubiquitous mediascape Egypt inhabits as evidence of the self-perpetuated nature of the masterful Egyptian culture. In this work Norman Fairclough’s model of discourse analysis is employed to survey the roles and characteristics of journalists in a context of power and ideology during President Nasser’s regime and shows not only how they are similar to those of journalists nowadays but also the evolution of journalists under el-Sisi neo-authoritarianism. It also draws on the thoughts of theorists like Lucien Goldmann, mainly the concept of ‘world vision’ to inspect the problem of the identity of Egyptian journalism. The study concludes that these three novels show journalists’ negative image as traitors, subservient to political power, sellers of trivia or full of nihilism. Mahfouz’s representations reflect the outputs of Egyptian media milieu under authoritarian Nasser’s era. The article reflects upon contemporary authoritarian regime in Egypt, discussing the types of media practitioners currently exist who almost repeat the almost-closed cultural circle, only with a complete control of intelligence apparatus.","PeriodicalId":36098,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Arab and Muslim Media Research","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135274894","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Multimodal Islamophobia: Gendered stereotypes in memes","authors":"Carmen Aguilera-Carnerero, Megara Tegal","doi":"10.1386/jammr_00063_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jammr_00063_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on the potential of memes as apparently innocuous communicative digital tools to spread gendered Islamophobia. Following theories of meme families, we studied a corpus of 100 memes retrieved from popular internet meme sites from 2017 to 2021. We applied the principles of multimodal discourse analysis to analyse Shifman’s three dimensions of memes (content, form and stance) and described a large sample of memes, categorizing them into three popular tropes of Muslim women found in literature and electronic media. Our findings revealed that most misogynistic Islamophobic memes characterize Muslim women as oppressed by their own community. A smaller degree of memes portrays Muslim women’s bodies as sexualized and assailable, and finally very few memes depict them as terrorists. We contend that internet memes can be a powerful and efficient means to disseminate vitriolic rhetoric in a subtle and camouflaged way leading to the trivialization and, eventually, acceptance of their hateful discourse.","PeriodicalId":36098,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Arab and Muslim Media Research","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135274514","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Digital communication and Ramadan at the time of COVID-19","authors":"Dario Fanara","doi":"10.1386/jammr_00032_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jammr_00032_1","url":null,"abstract":"COVID-19 has presented both a health and an information risk with the viral spread of sometimes partial, false or erroneous news. In the Arab region, the media spheres have been saturated with information regarding coronavirus news. From social and traditional media, Arab audiences\u0000 have been bombarded with a plethora of information, some of which was confusing and contradictory. As coronavirus sweeps across the world, many questions have been raised about the possibility of practicing the rites of the month of Ramadan and to observe fasting by Muslims. With the multiplication\u0000 of the responses from medical staff, doctors of the law and political representatives, COVID-19 has simultaneously become a health, religious, political and ethical problem for the Muslim world. The premise elaborated so far calls for an in-depth research on the return of news on the official\u0000 Facebook pages of three online magazines during the coronavirus emergency. The research carries out a qualitative media content analysis of all the news published by three digital ethnic newspapers: The Muslim News (United Kingdom), the Saphir News (France) and the Daily Muslim\u0000 (Italy). The magazines have undertaken to stem the spread of fake news by offering users data and updates on COVID-19, proposing themselves as authoritative voices and reliable sources of information. Ramadan turns out to be a very central element in the three magazines in different measures,\u0000 since it is an issue that becomes more and more urgent for the Muslim community as the weeks go by. The centrality of the religious element in the information flows is in line with the centrality of Islam in the individual and community life of the faithful. The health and religious emergency\u0000 were narrated together providing updates on the daily measures to be put in place. Individuals have been called to face the health emergency stimulated by their sense of responsibility towards others also through religious principles. Social media have played an important role from religious,\u0000 cultural and social points of view in one of the most important moments of the year for the Islamic community.","PeriodicalId":36098,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Arab and Muslim Media Research","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77677321","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Broadcasting and national identity construction in Qatar: The case of Al-Rayyan TV","authors":"Noureddine Miladi, Moez Ben Messaoud, Jamel Zran","doi":"10.1386/jammr_00035_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jammr_00035_1","url":null,"abstract":"This research sought to study the contents of Al-Rayyan TV programmes and their relationship to the construction of national identity in Qatar, a task this channel has taken as an editorial line since its inception in 2012. In this article, we present findings of an audience-based exploration\u0000 of Al-Rayyan TV’s viewership. Fieldwork data was gathered via a base of 720 survey questionnaires from a sample of Qatari society as well as fifteen interviews conducted with experts and social media activists. The aim was to find out respondents’ views about the role of the channel\u0000 in promoting Qatari identity and culture. Research questionnaires were managed at intervals between August and November 2020. Fieldwork results showed that the surveyed viewers believe that the channel plays a significant role in preserving Qatari national culture and heritage. However, when\u0000 it comes to rating Qatari TV channels in order of importance, respondents’ favourite TV broadcaster in terms of news and current affairs programmes was Al Jazeera, followed by beIN Sports, Qatar TV, Al-Rayyan TV and finally Al Kass. Research findings also reveal an evident trend among\u0000 young Qataris and professionals who find social media networks the most convenient platforms to view and share content from Al-Rayyan TV. People watch video clips from the most popular programmes, such as Al-Sabah Rabah, Umm Rashid, Taraheeb and In the Shadows of Doha, among\u0000 others, which they receive via Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. However, concerns via-à-vis Al-Rayyan TV’s repetitive content and a programme schedule that does not include much entertainment content cannot be missed from viewers’ responses. The dwindling popularity of the\u0000 channel among Qatari youth is perceived as one such result of its inability to transform itself in the age of digital explosion.","PeriodicalId":36098,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Arab and Muslim Media Research","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88261700","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Kurdish women and TV journalism in Iraqi Kurdistan: Experiences and strategies","authors":"Marco Nilsson, Leah Esmaiel","doi":"10.1386/jammr_00036_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jammr_00036_1","url":null,"abstract":"Few studies on female TV journalists in the Middle East have been conducted. Neither have Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts been used to analyse women journalists’ experiences of their professional practice and their strategies for navigating a male-dominated media world in\u0000 the Middle East. For this unique study, ten Kurdish women journalists that work for six different TV stations in Iraqi Kurdistan were interviewed. Informed by different forms of capital, the thematic analysis revealed four themes that capture the respondents’ experiences and strategies:\u0000 coping with perceptions of pretty dolls and honorary men; coping with the threat of violence and a bad reputation; coping with the gendered distribution of news assignments; and tackling glass ceilings and unwritten rules. A particularly interesting result of the study was that while the strategies\u0000 range from proclaiming any news hard news to openly defying orders from the managers, and to claiming that one’s ability to advance depends on having a strong personality, the focus is consistently on individualistic survival strategies. When masculinity and male norms still dominate\u0000 the contents of symbolic capital, it may result in seemingly counterproductive practices such as the lack of a distinct ‘we’ feeling among women journalists. For women journalists, the cost of transforming their cultural and social capital into symbolic capital that is effective\u0000 in the journalistic field is affected by both the journalistic field and the society at large, which creates contextually bound obstacles to women journalists in Iraqi Kurdistan.","PeriodicalId":36098,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Arab and Muslim Media Research","volume":"49 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88908756","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Egyptian imaginaries of resistance: Cinematic remembrance of the Suez crisis","authors":"Ehab Galal","doi":"10.1386/jammr_00033_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jammr_00033_1","url":null,"abstract":"Current politics in Egypt has revived the idea of a strong connection between the army, the Egyptian people and its leaders. This imaginary was introduced by Egyptian cinema about the time of the 1952 revolution. In the early days of national independence, the Suez crisis of 1956 in\u0000 particular holds the symbols and images needed to create the set of semantics supporting this imaginary. Based on theories on national and postcolonial imaginaries, I analyse two Egyptian films on the Suez crisis: Port Said from 1957 and Maliqat al-Bihar (Giants of the Sea)\u0000 from 1960 including shorter references to other films from the period. By examining the postcolonial semantics of these films, I identify three elements that together retell the Egyptian nation. First, the Suez crisis is pictured as eliminating the colonial enemies due to the actions of strong\u0000 leaders. Second, a pan-Arab alliance is installed. Third, enemies from within are disconnected from the true Egyptian assessed by loyalty to the nation. The result is a strong imaginary of the correlation between the army, people and in particular its leaders.","PeriodicalId":36098,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Arab and Muslim Media Research","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81924616","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Muhammad cartoon controversy in New Zealand newspapers","authors":"S. Kabir","doi":"10.1386/jammr_00028_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jammr_00028_1","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines the construction of the controversy surrounding the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, as it appeared in three New Zealand newspapers and discursively identifies how three New Zealand newspapers framed Islam and Muslims from an Orientalist perception. This study argues that these newspapers framed the issue of Muhammad cartoon controversial image in a way that reinforces the notion of a clash of culture between Islam and ‘the West’ and identified that Islam is a threat to the civilization. The metaphors employed, the visual texts incorporated, the terminologies they imposed appear to dehumanize Islam and Muslims, which also violates the philosophical stand of the freedom of expression. The news frame that these newspapers adopted in covering the controversial cartoon issue also supports an elite political agenda without respecting the religious norms of a minority group. However, the dehumanization of Islam and Orientalist perception of clash of cultures were mostly absent in their editorials. Therefore, the news frame conflicts with editorials’ construction of the issue in most cases. Furthermore, while one newspaper’s editorials dehumanized Islam and Muslims by espousing Orientalist perception of clash of cultures, the other two played a constructive role towards Islam and Muslims.","PeriodicalId":36098,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Arab and Muslim Media Research","volume":"46 1","pages":"143-156"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84140666","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mapping the fake news infodemic amidst the COVID-19 pandemic: A study of Indian fact-checking websites","authors":"Kaifia Ancer Laskar, Mohammad Reyaz","doi":"10.1386/jammr_00026_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jammr_00026_1","url":null,"abstract":"Fake news, a term that was never heard a decade back, has established a subculture of misinformation and disinformation, whether intentionally or unintentionally, on social media by its users. The personal bias as well as unverified content sharing through the click of a button has not only led to the epidemic of fake content across the world, but in countries like India, it has also led to lynching and violence in various places. This article tries to find the rate of debunked or fact-checked content during the COVID-19 pandemic in India related to the enforcement of the nationwide lockdown, false claims of cure or immunity boost, political blame gaming, the impact of the pandemic on economy, religious polarization, as well as fake news on related issues concerning other countries apart from India. We try to discern in this article whether fact-checked items of disinformation were more on communal issues than the cure/claims of alternative medicines. We also try to unearth if there were a larger number of international items covered by the fact-checking sites given the status of the COVID-19 crisis in other countries than the lockdown (issues related to nationwide lockdown declared in India). Using content analysis of two fake news debunking websites Boom Live and Alt News, for six months (March–August 2020) during the COVID-19 pandemic, we argue that there were a lesser number of disinformation or fake news on treatment-related fake news compared to those on polarizing issues. We also posit that there were more fake news on the nationwide lockdown imposed in India than on its impact on the economy. In a bid to map the fake news and disinformation debunked by these two select websites, we find that the genealogy of fake news works with our personal biases and fears, thereby making media literacy all the more indispensable given the reach of internet-based news. The urgent need for stringent regulations by an autonomous body of the government to curb the fake news ecosystem is recommended by us along with emphasizing digital media literacy.","PeriodicalId":36098,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Arab and Muslim Media Research","volume":"77 1","pages":"93-116"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79983751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}