Arab Media

In my Arabic culture class today we discussed media in the Arab world. It was a discussion that was strikingly similar to many of the ones we have recently had in Mass Communications. The print media in the Arab world is largely controlled by the government. But the government, much like the large media corporations in America, allow for a controlled amount of content diversity, which give the illusion of free speech, and multiple perspective reporting. The reality is much like the critique of the Uses and Gratifications theory. Although citizens are given multiple options for information sources, ultimately they are not choosing because the information has already been chosen for them.

There are a a few opposition newspapers, but they place themselves so rigidly against the mainstream that they are unable to sustain a large enough audience and quickly die out. The other type of newspaper, besides those printed by the governments for Arab countries, and those printed by opposition parties, are the newspapers printed for Arabs living abroad. Often these papers are printed in two languages, Arabic and German, English, French or Italian. They are wildly popular, as they give Arabs living abroad an Arab view on international and regional events. Some of these papers have an established following, such as the Jordan Times, and others are just beginning to make their mark, such as Alquds, which is a London based paper with a pro-Palestinian slant. These papers act as checks for the news systems in the western world and their accounts of international happenings.

I asked my Arab culture professor about blogging and citizen reporting, and he said that it was gaining popularity, but hadn't reached the level it has in America. Personal viewpoints expressed on social networking sites, such as Facebook, are still under scrutiny by the government, which makes all forms of first hand citizen news reporting risky. Still, people are claiming the technological wave for their own. A group of Egyptian activists used a Facebook group to start a strike which prompted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to up the salary of government workers by 30 percent.

Check out some Middle Eastern newspapers and the story about the Egyptian activists

http://www.jordantimes.com/

http://www.alquds.co.uk/ (Hit the translate button for this one!)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24390035/