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- Volume 10, Issue 1, 2017
Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research - Volume 10, Issue 1, 2017
Volume 10, Issue 1, 2017
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Quoting the Prophet online: Communicative functions of hadith quotations in webbased Arabic discourse
Authors: Jennifer Boutz, Claudia Brugman and Alia LancasterAbstractQuoting from sacred texts is a common practice in even secular discussions in Arabic-speaking communities. The current study looks at how a set of quotations are used to support a writer’s position in discussions on public media forums. In particular, the article explores the use of quotations from the hadith, the collected reports of the Prophet Muhammad’s words and actions, in online message boards associated with two Arabic-language news websites. We examine how hadith quotations provide both illocutionary meaning (such as advising or persuading) and interpersonal meaning (identifying the participants as sharing knowledge of these sacred texts, and potentially also identifying the speaker as being observant or highly cultured). We show that for a range of topics, participants use hadith quotations to invoke authority, and that part of the contribution to the rhetorical force of the argument may involve a portion of the text that is not quoted.
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Of Palestine and other things: The spectre of untranslated songs in Elia Suleiman’s The Time that Remains
More LessAbstractThis article has its origins in a more ambitious project tackling instances of screen dialogues that remain unsubtitled, rendering them incomprehensible to viewers from foreign linguistic communities. Palestinian director Elia Suleiman’s The Time that Remains (2009) was intended to take up a modest section of a few paragraphs elaborating on the function of tarab songs in mediating the affective-discursive modalities of the film, but the narrative resisted the oppressive – and deeply regulated – confinements of a representational analysis. Rather than receding to the background, the songs seemed to insert themselves along ruptures transcending the pure discursivity of the soundtrack, giving rise to a question that forms the thrust of the article: what affective-discursive function do these songs serve and how much meaning is lost by failing to subtitle them for the benefit of non-Arab audience? Drawing upon insights from affective-discursive theories, Deleuzian approaches to cinema and Heideggerian insights into the nature of understanding, what follows is an investigation of the relationship between cinema and translation, specifically how subtitles merit examination as a unique form of praxis. I shall argue that songs and some objects in films interpellate viewers on both representational and non-representational planes of meaning-construction that often gets lost in audio-visual translation.
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The effectiveness of the use of social media in government communication in the UAE
More LessAbstractThe purpose of this article was to explore the effectiveness of the use of social media by the UAE government. It is a network analysis utilizing mainly quantitative data. A total of 100 UAE government accounts, operated by 25 entities, were examined using web-based analytical tools. General findings indicate that the communication accounts of UAE government entities reveal how they interact with stakeholders via social media. Most perform an active role in terms of publicity, outreach, marketing and transparency. However, the level of maturity in social media usage has generally not blossomed enough to be as effective as they could be in terms of stakeholders’ participation and engagement. Also, there are significant differences between the effectiveness of individual entities in terms of their outreach, transparency and participation. In general, they do not utilize the full range, capacity or features of social media in their communication.
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Creating English as a language of global news contraflow: Al Jazeera at the intersection of language, globalization and journalism
More LessAbstractThis study examined discourse Al Jazeera news executives, reporters and spokespersons produced during news coverage of the launch of Al Jazeera English in 2006. The study argues that Al Jazeera created meaning for English as a language of global news contraflow in its journalistic effort to balance the western dominance of global news in English. By adopting the news format and language that are most prevalent in the global news sphere and shifting the perspective from which news stories were told to the Global South, Al Jazeera English added new layers of meaning to news in English. The textual analysis using grounded theory provides a model that researchers may use in studying the ways news companies in the Global South use language to reach new audiences. The model contains public service, understandings of audience, and characteristics of journalists as units of analysis as they intersect with language.
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Is it the same fight? Comparative analysis of CNN and Al Jazeera America’s online coverage of the 2014 Gaza War
Authors: Kareem El Damanhoury and Faisal SalehAbstractMajor international conflicts tend to receive intensified media coverage, which is often framed differently when compared across distinct news networks. This study compares the framing of the 2014 Gaza War by two news organizations operating inside the United States at the time, CNN and Al Jazeera America (AJAM). A content analysis of 74 online news articles during the 50-day war was conducted to examine the type and nature of sources, the reporting on the death toll, the length of the articles and the use of multimedia. The study revealed that AJAM cited only Palestinian citizens in its articles and always differentiated between militants and civilians when reporting on the Palestinian death toll, while nearly 15 per cent of CNN articles did not clarify whether it had been a militant or a civilian who had died. AJAM and CNN would reference Haaretz newspaper in some articles, yet CNN would also reference other Israeli news outlets. In the meantime, unlike its sister channels Al Jazeera Arabic (AJA) and Al Jazeera English (AJE), AJAM seemed to be shifting to American journalistic practices with regard to the use of routine sources and social media in its coverage of the 2014 Gaza War.
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