Focused on two networks, Al-Jazeera and BBC Arabic, this study provides an in-depth quantitative and qualitative analysis of different media strategies employed in the coverage of Covid-19. The author draws primarily from Critical Discourse Analysis, supplemented by an analysis of corpora from both Al-Jazeera and BBC, comprising news items, documentaries and discussion shows. An array of key topics are examined for their language and lexis, including political leaders and governments, the public and victims of Covid-19. The two networks’ coverage of these topics are closely compared and contrasted, with both employing strategies of exemplification, nominalisation, functionalisation, naming and labelling. The analysis shows that the two networks have displayed a solidarity discourse throughout the pandemic, emphasising the need to fight the disease. In addition, the networks have consistently stressed the gravity of the pandemic, urging adherence to local regulations. It is ultimately argued that examining the coverage of Covid-19 from a dialectical perspective will enable us to unravel the social, cultural, political, and ideological motives behind the production of pandemic media discourse. The book will appeal to students and researchers in linguistics, media and communications, and Middle Eastern studies, as well as to general readers interested in conflict and pandemic response.

Responding to urgent calls to de-westernise Media and Journalism Studies and shed light on local agencies, this book examines digital journalistic practices in the Arab region, exploring how Arab journalists understand their roles and how digital technologies in Arab newsrooms are used to influence public opinion. Drawing on dozens of articles penned by Arab media professionals and scholars, supplemented with informal conversations with journalists, this book reviews the historical development of digital journalism in the region and individual journalists’ perceptions of this development. While technology has provided a new platform for citizens and powerful agents to exchange views, this text examines how it has simultaneously allowed Arab states and authorities to conduct surveillance on journalists, curtail the rise of citizen journalism, and maintain offline hierarchal forms of political, economic, and cultural powers. Mellor also explores how digital technology serves to cement Western hegemony of the information world order, with Arab media organisations and audiences judged to be mere recipients, rather than producers, of such information. Arab Digital Journalism offers an important contribution to the emerging field of digital journalism in the Global South and is a valuable resource for students and researchers interested in media, journalism, communication, and development studies.

This monograph explores and investigates key issues facing Middle Eastern societies, including religion and sectarianism, history and collective memory, urban space and socioeconomic difference, policing and securitization, and gender relations. In the Middle East, television drama creators serve as public intellectuals who, with uncanny prescience, tell the world something. As this volume demonstrates, fictional television provides a crucial space for social and political debate in much of the region. Writing from a range disciplines—anthropology, communication, folklore, gender studies, history, and law— contributors include seasoned academics who have dedicated their careers to researching Middle Eastern media and emerging scholars who build on earlier work and introduce fresh perspectives. Together, they provide an invaluable overview of Middle Eastern serial television and their political impact, drawing examples from Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. Bringing together a diverse range of academic perspectives, this book will be of key interest to students and scholars in media and communication studies, Middle Eastern Studies, and popular culture studies.

Focused on the triangular relationship between rabbis, journalists and the public, this book analyses each group’s role in influencing the agenda around religion in Israel. The book draws upon the author's original research, comprising an analysis of the coverage of religion on four Israeli news websites, a series of surveys of rabbis, journalists, and the public, as well as a large number of interviews conducted with a range of stakeholders: community rabbis, teacher rabbis, and religious court judges; reporters, editors, and spokespersons; and the Israeli Jewish public. Key questions include: What are rabbis’ philosophical views of the media? How does the media define news about Judaism? What aspect of news about religion and spirituality interest the public? How do spokespersons and rabbis influence the news agenda? How is the triangular relationship between rabbis, journalists and the public being altered by the digital age? Despite a lack of understanding about mass media behaviour among many rabbis, and, concurrently, a lack of knowledge about religion among many journalists, it is argued that there is shared interest between the two groups, both in support of mass-media values like the right to know and freedom of expression. It is further argued that the public's attitude to news about religion is significant in determining what journalists should publish. The book will be of interest to those studying mass communications, the media, Judaism and Israeli society, as well as researchers of media and religion.

This volume provides a comparative analysis of media systems in the Arab world, based on criteria informed by the historical, political, social, and economic factors influencing a country’s media. Reaching beyond classical western media system typologies, Arab Media Systems brings together contributions from experts in the field of media in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to provide valuable insights into the heterogeneity of this region’s media systems. It focuses on trends in government stances towards media, media ownership models, technological innovation, and the role of transnational mobility in shaping media structure and practices. Each chapter in the volume traces a specific country’s media – from Lebanon to Morocco – and assesses its media system in terms of historical roots, political and legal frameworks, media economy and ownership patterns, technology and infrastructure, and social factors (including diversity and equality in gender, age, ethnicities, religions, and languages). This book is a welcome contribution to the field of media studies, constituting the only edited collection in recent years to provide a comprehensive and systematic overview of Arab media systems. As such, it will be of great use to students and scholars in media, journalism and communication studies, as well as political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists with an interest in the MENA region.

This handbook showcases how educators and practitioners around the world adapted their routine media pedagogies to meet the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, which often led to significant social, economic, and cultural hardships. Combining an innovative mix of traditional chapters, autoethnography, case studies, and dialogue within an intercultural framework, the handbook focuses on the future of media education and provides a deeper understanding of the challenges and affordances of media education as we move forward. Topics range from fighting disinformation, how vulnerable communities coped with disadvantages using media, transforming educational TV or YouTube to reach larger audiences, supporting students’ wellbeing through various online strategies, examining early childhood, parents, and media mentoring using digital tools, reflecting on educators’ intersectionality on video platforms, youth-produced media to fight injustice, teaching remotely and providing low-tech solutions to address the digital divide, search for solutions collaboratively using social media, and many more. Offering a unique and broad multicultural perspective on how we can learn from the challenges of addressing varied pedagogical issues that have arisen in the context of the pandemic, this handbook will allow researchers, educators, practitioners, institution leaders, and graduate students to explore how media education evolved during 2020 and 2021, and how these experiences can shape the future direction of media education.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Computational Data and Social Networks, CSoNet 2020, held in Dallas, TX, USA, in December 2020. The 20 full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 83 submissions. Additionally the book includes 22 special track papers and 3 extended abstracts. The selected papers are devoted to topics such as Combinatorial Optimization and Learning; Computational Methods for Social Good Applications; NLP and Affective Computing; Privacy and Security; Blockchain; Fact-Checking, Fake News and Malware Detection in Online Social Networks; and Information Spread in Social and Data Networks.

Ethnic minority groups in Canada have set up their own communication infrastructure that has evolved over time from the analog to the digital age, and continues to remain relevant across generations. Offering a reassessment of contemporary media outlets, The Handbook of Ethnic Media in Canada asks how ethnic media have changed, why they continue to be relevant, and what impact this media sector has on ethnocultural communities as well as broader society. Building on past studies that highlight particular functions of ethnic media – publishing information that is vital to settlement and civic engagement and providing an alternative to mainstream media, among others – this volume generates insights on new dynamics of the ethnic media sector that are prevalent in the digital age. Contributors re-examine theoretical and methodological approaches to ethnic media research, explore the practices of ethnic media along cultural, linguistic, and religious lines, and interrogate the policies that affect ethnic media production and consumption. At its core, the question of how Canadians engage with ethnic media is a question about what this media sector means for the sociocultural, economic, and political integration of Canadians, both majority and minority, and Canada’s race relations. The Handbook of Ethnic Media in Canada provides a rich resource for anyone concerned about the role media plays in the complex relationship between ethnicity, race, belonging, and marginality.