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Dear Friends and Colleagues,
I am pleased to announce the publication of Issue 12.2 of
the Journal of Arab and Muslim Media Research (JAMMR) which has an interesting line up of timely papers. The journal is an international refereed academic platform, published by Intellect in the UK.
You may access the papers of this issue as well as other issues from the JAMMR’s homepage.
https://www.intellectbooks.com/journal-of-arab-muslim-media-research
I am hoping you will find this publication a valuable resource for research about media, communication and society in the Arab World and the Middle East.
Issue: 12.2-
Volume (12): Issue (2); December 2019.
A new transnational arena? An analysis of cross-border web traffic towards professional online news sites in the Arab world
Abstract
In recent years, Arab news industries have been confronted with an unparalleled increase in demand for journalistic offers. In parallel, Internet penetration throughout
the Arab world has increased significantly, leading to a shift of consumption away from traditional channels towards the digital realm. This paper addresses the impact of those recent developments on a shared transnational communicative arena throughout the
Arab world. It includes geographically disaggregated traffic data of 630 inductively collected professional online news sources. Using a network analysis approach, it has been assessed that indeed, cross-border consumption of professional online news is a
common and general feature in the region. Traffic flows between the countries are highly diversified without patterns of sub-segmentation. At the same time, the strength of traffic flows reflects the traditional leading role of the media industries in the
United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Yet, weaker traffic flows between the other Arab countries are common and diverse, leading to a high over-all integration of the Arab transnational communicative arena within the digital realm.
Digitally mediated martyrdom: The role of the visual in political Arab activist culture
Abstract
Digitally mediated images depicting death and martyrdom as a trope of resistance and contestation against oppressive regimes emerged as recurring and critical instruments of dissent during the Arab uprisings of 2010-11. While the trope of death and martyrdom
as a form of political expression and resistance is not a new phenomenon in the Middle East, the affordances of digital and social media technologies have brought forth new opportunities for activists and everyday citizens to construct, circulate, and communicate
martyr narratives. Drawing from literature in visual politics, digital activist culture, and media and communication, this textual and iconographical analysis of visual tropes focuses on the brutal killing of Egyptian youth Khaled Said, on his construction
as a posthumous injustice symbol, and on his subsequent transformation as a martyr of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. Activists and everyday citizens participated in symbolically resurrecting Said
in and through digitally mediated images and transforming him into a martyr to represent the popular struggle for social justice and universal human rights. The article examines how Said is
made a martyr through complex creative processes of recurrent visual appropriation, mediation, re-appropriation, and remediation. It shows that the creative authorship of martyrdom is increasingly hybridised, decentralised, and driven by a memetic protest
dynamic. The article proposes the term digitally mediated martyrdom to designate the emergence of a new kind of visually-oriented, socially constructed, and ritualised protest dynamic. It develops the conceptual framework for understanding digitally
mediated martyrdom as a contemporary political practice within activist cultures and popular social justice movements.
It also argues digitally mediated martyrdom represents the emergence of a new and transnational protest dynamic.
Social media and power in the Arab world: From dominant ideology to popular agency
Abstract:
Conceptualizing the social and political possibilities of digital mass mediated communication in modern societies has generated a critical debate, ranging from proponents who
conceive of its promising profound potential to skeptics who dismiss it as a trivial socio-political vacuity. For some observers in the field, social media has been mobilized to maintain hegemonic structures through a ‘weaponization’ of popular narratives
on behalf of the dominant political elite. For others, social media discourse has signaled the end of grand narratives of political ideology, and has ultimately ushered in the age of subjective digital narcissism not unlike that of consumer culture in late
capitalist societies. Beyond these two broader frameworks of inquiry, this paper seeks to investigate the critical agency, popular sovereignty, and transformative possibilities in socio-digital discourse in the modern Arab Gulf region. Recognizing the dominant
and residual ideology within social media narratives, the paper deploys Raymond Williams’ critical and insightful concept of ‘structures of feeling’ in order to critically assess the alternative emergent collective expressions that diverge from, yet respond
to, hegemonic and dominant discourse. One of the main goals of this paper, therefore, is
to go beyond the conventional analysis of “utopian versus dystopian” binary instumentalization of social media in the region, to
challenge the claim that media (both as technology and technique) determine social and political consciousness. More specifically, and in contrast to McLuhan’s famed dictum that ‘the medium is the message’, this papers contends that digital and social
media virtues and contributions are not confined to the instrumental communication that serves practical purposes. Rather, and more fundamentally, digital and social media involve the practices and lived experiences of individuals, culture and society, especially
those that constitute the formations of collective and emergent identities.
Redefining #YourAverageMuslim woman: Muslim female digital activism on social media
Abstract:
Orientalist discourses have largely shaped how Muslim women have come to be represented in western visual media as oppressed, subjugated, or foreign. However, with the advent of social media platforms, Muslim women are utilizing social
media spaces to rearticulate the controlling images promulgated through orientalist narratives. This article examines the complex relationship visual media shares with Muslim women, and demonstrates that the lens of orientalism continues to structure the imaginaries
that shape visual representations of Muslim women in art, news and film. This paper addresses how visual platforms and social media spaces such as YouTube, are being utilized by Muslim women to undertake digital activism that seeks to subvert essentialist
narratives. At the center of this discussion is YouTuber Dina Tokio’s 2017 documentary, titled “#YourAverageMuslim,” which tackles western preconceived notions, and instead offers a redefined version of the ‘Muslim woman’ predicated on resisting three narratives:
1) Muslim-Woman-As-Oppressed 2) Muslim-Woman-As-Subjugated, and 3) Muslim-Woman-As-Foreign-Other. This documentary clearly demonstrates how Muslim women are using social media platforms in specific ways to shape the discourses around Muslim women. In doing
so they are demonstrating their agentic capabilities, taking control of their representations, and speaking for themselves instead of being spoken for by others.
Beyond the ‘online’: Iranian women’s non-movement of resistance
Abstract
In many undemocratic countries where conservative law and patriarchal ideas are in place, women are considered second-class citizens particularly in domains of public life. After Iran’s Islamic
revolution, Iranian women were confronted with a theocratic regime, which imposed laws and norms, which limited women’s activities and violated earned liberties.
The activities of women under non-democratic states and patriarchal systems are thwarted by the repressive measures of authoritarian states as well as patriarchal society and hostile attitudes
of ordinary men and women. New normative frameworks and practices imposed gender segregation in various aspects. During these years, women attempt to resist these policies, not by deliberate organized campaigns but through daily practices in public life. Asef
Bayat calls these kind of resistance and activities “social non-movement”.
This article focuses on a rather under-researched form of social activism and attempts to describe the way in which social media might be supportive tools for women aiming to build active networks
and communicative spaces to deliberate on challenges to their lives. At the same time, these spaces function as the civic training ground where representations of political demands for social change put forth. This article discusses ways in which social media
have been used as platforms where women’s demands, among others, hold identity dimensions as well as violation of their basic and human rights.
Ikhwanweb: A digital archive for a post-Islamist movement?
Abstract:
The paper looks at
Ikhwanweb, the English website of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB), from its early days and through the years before the 25th January revolution. The archive is used as a theoretical concept to capture both the symbolic and material struggles that
the MB faced while trying to articulate its political vision. As a nodal point where power and knowledge intersect, the concept of archive was first theorised by Foucault and Derrida.
Ikhwanweb is examined as a digital archive, a site for both knowledge and memory production.
The first section deals with the main analytical concept; the second tells the troubled history of the material infrastructure required to run the website. Then two main threads are identified and examined. The need to distantiate the organisation from political
violence and that of reaching out ‘the West’ shaped the content of Ikhwanweb. The website also allowed the group to interact directly with policy-making circles and research institutions. Can this be said to be part of that process Bayat calls post-islamism?
The concluding section reflects on this question and suggests a more ambivalent picture.
Have a good read,
Noureddine Miladi (Editor)
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Noureddine Miladi (PhD)
Professor of Media & Communication
College of Arts and Science
Qatar University
PO Box: 2713
DOHA, QATAR
Office Tel: (+974) 4403 4872
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Noureddine_Miladi/contributions
Principal Editor:
JAMMR (refereed journal in Arab media)
ISSN 1751-9411 (Print); ISSN
1751-942X (Online)
Abstracted/ Indexed in:
Intellect, Ingenta, Google Drive, EBSCO, US-British Library, ProQuest Summon and ProQuest upload.
http://www.intellectbooks.com/journal-of-arab-muslim-media-research
