The Public Sphere And Satellite Television In North Africa

The advent of satellite television and its adoption in the Maghreb brought about a profound social change. This book, which explores the relationships between the media and the public sphere, shows that the simple and quotidian act of watching satellite television as opposed to national television mobilizes novel ways of expressing identities along with a range of critical positions targeting political regimes. By bringing certain topics hitherto hardly present to the center of homes, the media reveals the pivotal functions of gender relations, which are today at the heart of social and political matters in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. Based on extensive fieldwork, this book offers a unique interpretation of the use of satellite television in authoritarian contexts and contributes to a better understanding of the media and the political public sphere. The book will interest teachers and students in communication, political studies, gender studies, sociology and anthropology of the Arab worlds and the Mediterranean.

Over the last several years, the debate about publics seems to have newly emerged. This debate critically reflects the Habermasian ideal of a (national) public sphere in a transnational context. However, it seems that the issue of a reconstruction of a global public sphere is more complex. In this brilliant and provocative book, Ingrid Volkmer argues that a reflective approach of globalization is required in order to identify and deconstruct key strata of deliberate public discourse in supra- and subnational societal formations. This construction helps to understand the new processes of legitimacy at the beginning of the 21st century in which the traditional conception of a ‘public’ and its role as a legitimizing force are being challenged and transformed. The book unfolds this key phenomenon of global deliberate interconnectedness as a discursive and negotiated dimension within ‘reflective’ globalization, i.e. continuously constituting, maintaining and refining the ‘life’ of the global public and conceptualizes a global public sphere. Offering insightful case studies to illustrate this new theory of the global public sphere, the book will be essential reading for students and scholars of media and communication studies , and social and political theory.

The introduction of satellite television and Web-based communications in traditional societies are often taken as manifestations of a new more democratic public sphere. In the book this Western intellectual tradition is taken to task for failing to grasp the real dynamics of an Arab public sphere that has yet to be realized. The author argues that we could not conceive of the Arab public sphere outside the boundaries of sustainable egalitarian and participatory political developments in Arabian societies.Ayish harnesses the notion of 'Islamocracy' or Islamic democracy to put forward a new public sphere perspective that draws on both Islamic moral values and contemporary political practices. According to the author, this synthesist approach holds a great promise both for inter-Arab World communications as well as for dialogue with other cultures based on mutual recognition and peaceful coexistence. Muhammad I. Ayish is Professor and Dean of the College of Communication at the University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates.He holds a Ph.D. in international communication (University of Minnesota, Twin-Cities). Ayish has published two books and over 50 articles in both Arabic and English on issues ranging from political communication to media convergence to war coverage to women representation.

In the last ten years, television has reinvented itself in numerous ways. The demise of the U.S. three-network system, the rise of multi-channel cable and global satellite delivery, changes in regulation policies and ownership rules, technological innovations in screen design, and the development of digital systems like TiVo have combined to transform the practice we call watching tv. If tv refers to the technologies, program forms, government policies, and practices of looking associated with the medium in its classic public service and three-network age, it appears that we are now entering a new phase of television. Exploring these changes, the essays in this collection consider the future of television in the United States and Europe and the scholarship and activism focused on it. With historical, critical, and speculative essays by some of the leading television and media scholars, Television after TV examines both commercial and public service traditions and evaluates their dual (and some say merging) fates in our global, digital culture of convergence. The essays explore a broad range of topics, including contemporary programming and advertising strategies, the use of television and the Internet among diasporic and minority populations, the innovations of new technologies like TiVo, the rise of program forms from reality tv to lifestyle programs, television’s changing role in public places and at home, the Internet’s use as a means of social activism, and television’s role in education and the arts. In dialogue with previous media theorists and historians, the contributors collectively rethink the goals of media scholarship, pointing toward new ways of accounting for television’s past, present, and future. Contributors. William Boddy, Charlotte Brunsdon, John T. Caldwell, Michael Curtin, Julie D’Acci, Anna Everett, Jostein Gripsrud, John Hartley, Anna McCarthy, David Morley, Jan Olsson, Priscilla Peña Ovalle, Lisa Parks, Jeffrey Sconce, Lynn Spigel, William Uricchio

Algeria: Nation, Culture and Transnationalism covers a specific period of time (1988-2015) that has taken on a significantly different socio-political configuration to that of the first 25 years of post-independence Algeria (1962-1987).

"Book Abstract: The sociology of the Middle East has been an expanding field of inquiry since the aftermath of WWII when phenomena as diverse as urbanization, internal and international migration, and peasant societies attracted the attention of scholars working on the region. The Middle East became central in key sociological debates on modernization theory and the critical responses. The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of the Middle East connects this historical trajectory with the emergence of the sociology of Islam, inspired by Max Weber. It explores how within the global community, the Middle East has become a terrain of heightened concern within the post-Cold War context, where the promising rise of civic (and often religiously-inspired) sociopolitical movements in the 1980s and 1990s has been slowly overwhelmed by the affirmation of jihadist networks, authoritarian states, and complex supranational security apparatuses. This foundational volume starts by engaging in a critical examination of the field itself, starting with a historical sociology of the making of the idea itself of the Middle East and linking it with the legacy of colonialism and the evolving dynamics of global power. In repurposing the sociology of the Middle East within a growing interdisciplinary multifield, the Handbook develops the critical argument that the exploration of social dynamics in the Middle East cannot be disjoined from the analysis of culture and politics. By connecting the vexed state-society relations in the region with movements of transformation and the affirmation of rights and creativity in the public arenas, it provides a comprehensive perspective to investigate longstanding regional and new transregional and global dynamics and their impact on the life of people in the region. Keywords: sociology of the Middle East, sociology of Islam, Max Weber, historical sociology, Middle East and North Africa region, MENA"--

Recent events such as ‘Iran’s Green Revolution’ and the ‘Arab Uprisings’ have exploded notions that human rights are irrelevant to Middle Eastern and North African politics. Increasingly seen as a global concern, human rights are at the fulcrum of the region’s on-the-ground politics, transnational intellectual debates, and global political intersections. The Routledge Handbook on Human Rights and the Middle East and North Africa: emphasises the need to consider human rights in all their dimensions, rather than solely focusing on the political dimension, in order to understand the structural reasons behind the persistence of human rights violations; explores the various frameworks in which to consider human rights—conceptual, political and transnational/international; discusses issue areas subject to particularly intense debate—gender, religion, sexuality, transitions and accountability; contains contributions from perspectives that span from global theory to grassroots reflections, emphasising the need for academic work on human rights to seriously engage with the thoughts and practices of those working on the ground. A multidisciplinary approach from scholars with a wide range of expertise allows the book to capture the complex dynamics by which human rights have had, or could have, an impact on Middle Eastern and North African politics. This book will therefore be a key resource for students and scholars of Middle Eastern and North African politics and society, as well as anyone with a concern for Human Rights across the globe.

Owing to increased migration dating from the 1990s, Nordic countries have gone through substantial cultural and social changes, resulting in increased debate surrounding the politics of multiculturalism. One of the central realms of the discussion around multiculturalism in the Nordic region concerns the media, which is considered to be a vital factor in the construction of society's values, as well as an essential tool in the integration process of migrants, providing as it does a symbolic arena for learning about and becoming part of society. This collection draws together the latest research from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden to look at different aspects of the relationship between media and migration in the Nordic region. Exploring the role played by the media in nation building and the power of the media in the definition of who 'belongs' in society, Media in Motion examines the practices of inclusion and exclusion that characterise mainstream media representations. The book also examines the manner in which recent technological changes suggest the emergence of a transnational and cosmopolitan media landscape; a space which blurs the boundaries of the national and transnational, as well as between the public and the private, with significant implications for the ways migrants may take and become part of society. As such, it will be of interest to those working in the fields of media, race and ethnicity, colonialism and postcolonial studies, and migration.