artifact one | artifact two | artifact three

The first artifact for this portfolio is the annotated bibliography that was created for TC 502 in Spring 2008. This assignment allowed me to survey the terrain in search of research topics and to become aware of the current research trends in this field.

This artifact is an example of my ability to critically consume research articles and synthesize articles into a short summary of the main findings from the article.

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El Gody, Ahmed. (2007). New Media, New Audience, New Topics, and New Forms of Censorship in the Middle East.

Ahmed El Gody’s article discusses many of the issues facing Arab society as new media and the age of the Internet becomes prevalent in the Middle East. Beginning with a brief history of adoption of the Internet in the Arab World (AW), El Gody outlines four reasons why Internet use in the AW lags significantly behind the rest of the world: 1) poor telecommunications infrastructure, 2) low economic development, 3) high illiteracy rates, 4) and cultural factors.

With the efforts of Arab governments to increase Internet use, the average growth of users in the AW was roughly 600%, which is the highest growth rate in the world, surpassing Europe and North America. Iran has the largest number of Internet users, topping off at 7.5 million. The United Arab Emirates has the highest Internet penetration at 35%; however, Israel is the regional leader at 45% penetration. El Gody characterizes the media ecology of the AW as authoritarian, which deny free speech, independent media, and encourages self-censorship. He outlines nine methods Arab governments have attempted to limit and censor Internet usage.

The author argues that while most people go online to read the news, the Internet has specifically aided political activists, religious groups, and social change groups the most. Before the Internet, these groups were hard pressed to keep quiet and weren’t able to engage the government controlled media in a manner that helped their cause. With the advent of blogs, websites, social networking, and chat forums, these activists are able to communicate and make their content available to the larger population through these new channels.

This article is very interesting and offers a significant amount of statistics on various governments in the Middle East. The author clearly spent a significant amount of time collecting these statistics into one article. One major failing however, is the lack of citations for critically important statements. While much of the research and information is referenced, several important statements are left open for criticism.

Naveh, Chanan. (2007). The Palestinian-Israeli Web War.

The article written by Chanan Naveh discusses the use of the Internet and new media as a continuation of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict to the online realm, or cyberspaces. The author offers an analysis map in which the horizontal axis goes from a passive (such as accessing a website) to active (such as creating a website or blogging), and along the vertical axis from global actor to an individual actor.

The empirical study consisted of an analysis of websites during a particularly active timeframe, during the Second Intifada beginning in September 2000 through the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in September 2005. The author uses the matrix to map online activities on both sides of the conflict. Three specific incidents were examined: Israel’s Operation Defense Shield (April 2002), boycott of Israeli academics, and the discussion of the construction and legality of the security wall. Official government sites (albeit many of the Palestinian government sites were down), organization and individual sites were examined as a part of the study.

The author found that a majority of the sites examined followed the interactive axis in between the individual actors and global actors (quadrants 2 and 3). Naveh also found that actors who previously were not able to participate in the propaganda discourse, with advent of new digital technologies (blogs, websites, chatting forums) that these new actors suddenly had a stage and the world as an audience.

In general, I found this article lacking any critical analysis, and noticeably lacked any mention of methods of analysis. I found the article as an attempt to objectively study the cyber conflict, when in reality such attempts of objectivity are impossible. Due to this watered-down approach, the article lacked teeth and was nearly entirely absent of thorough analysis. Interestingly, the author suggests conducting content analysis of the same websites in order to better understand the methods and goals of the actors.

Lynch, Marc. (2007). Arab Arguments: Talk Shows and the New Arab Public Sphere.

In the article, Arab Arguments: Talk Shows and the New Arab Public Sphere, author Marc Lynch discusses how satellite television has impacted the move of popular political discourse from the upper echelons of the government and into the public sphere. This paper follows his prior research on Al Jazeera, a popular Arabic-language news station, and analyzing content from the news talk shows on television.

In this paper, Lynch argues that talk shows fill a void in Arab political arena, and discusses whether these shows are fanning sectarian flames in Iraq or furthering anti-American sentiment in the larger Arab world. He continues to argue that the discussion around these talk shows is framed in a way that overemphasizes the type of show and fails to differentiate between “mobilization moments” (on-going news coverage of a major event) and “dialogue moments” (discussions on particular subjects).

Lynch examines what he calls the “Al Jazeera narrative,” for the direction Al Jazeera takes the public political discussion in the Arab world. He examines 1039 episodes, which break down into roughly four broad themes of discussion: Palestine, Iraq, reform, and America. In his analysis, the author examines four popular talk shows and posits that while sensationalism and chaos were aspects of the shows – diplomatic crises in Jordan over comments, guests stomping off the set – the majority of the shows’ discussion consisted of constructive and critical conversation.

Generally, I find Lynch’s scholarship very valuable and trustworthy. State Interests and Public Spheres, and Voices of the New Arab Public are two books written by him that have garnered significant attention. He also keeps a blog that is widely quoted and respected. While his methods of analysis are noticeably absent from the paper; however, content analysis and the type of findings he presents are relatively free from ambiguous interpretation.

Saleh, Ibrahim. The Arab Search for a Global Identity: Breaking out of the Mainstream Media Cocoon.

This article by Ibrahim Saleh discusses Arab identity, new media, and globalization. Saleh begins with a discussion of identity drawing on Social Identity Theory (H. Tajfel and J.C. Turner) and groupthink (Irving Janis). The author draws on the working definition of identity by utilizing the minimal conditions needed to identify with a group. Saleh also describes how groupthink is a major problem in Arab society due to accepting and enforcing a group’s message to a potential dangerous level.

The author goes to great lengths to defend Arab identity and its image in Western media, rejecting claims that Arab culture is monolithic and pinning blame on sensational news coverage. He divides Arabs into two groups: neoliberals who seek Westernization in a copycat manner, and conservatives, who see to block change and a return to historical interpretations of identity. When the copycat method is used, Saleh argues only negative aspects of cultures are integrated, leaving out good values.

With two other researchers, Saleh conducts a study in which he asks five questions sampling 200 university students at the American University of Cairo (prestigious and elite school in the Middle East). From these questions, the author investigates aspects of identity and religion, democracy, methods of identity development, and how this sample identifies each other.

This article begins with a solid theoretical framework, conducts a survey and then responds to the data through the theory and the results of the survey. He correctly argues that there is a need to develop a connection between a dynamic Arab identity and a critical, relatively independent media. The dynamic nature of identity, according the author, is inextricably tied to economic freedom and development, religion, and marriage and family.

While thorough research is conduct and the author is a reputable scholar, I take issue with the survey. The sample used is a small and elite segment of society that would be nearly impossible to correctly transfer to the much larger segment of society who is not wealthy and is significantly less educated. Overall, the author makes a strong claim and provides empirical evidence to back up his claims.

Al-Saggaf, Yeslam. The Online Public Sphere in the Arab World: The War in Iraq on the Al Arabiya Website.

This article analyzes the content and feedback on a TV news channel based in Saudi Arabia. Al Arabiya is a relatively recent competitor to Al Jazeera, but has risen in popularity and in stature very quickly. This article analyzes roughly 10% of articles during two periods of time. Jurgen Habermas’s definition of the public sphere is employed in this study to frame the study. Mainly, it is argued that the Internet is a successful public sphere in that public spaces foster online civic engagement.

The study was conducted during two different time periods, September 2005, and the second study beginning in May 2006. The author selected articles when searching for the keyword “Iraq” and out of a total of 2,720 articles, Al-Saggaf studied 272 articles the comments associated with them. Al-Saggaf divided the articles into four different categories: Iraq; reports of incidents of killings, explosions, and injuries; transcripts of Al Arabiya interviews; and published views of Arab intellectuals. The articles were analyzed for their content, the number of responses they incited, and sorted in a thematic manner.

While the article doesn’t explicitly state the research questions, or goals for the research, the article is laid out in a very structured, quantitative research manner and tackles all relevant issues such as methodology, theoretical framework, results, discussion, limitations, and future work. It is obvious to me that the lack of an explicit research question(s) was a tactic to enable the author to bring several issues of perceived relevance to the forefront of the conversation. The data collected and the discussion section of the article offers some insight into these issues.

The author spends significant time presenting information about how a large majority of comments on articles discussion terrorism strongly condemned the killing of innocent civilians. The article also features some inconsistencies with the methods and the results. It was unclear how the author determined where the respondents were from, but refers to “Iraqi” and “Syrian” comments. While technologically possible to capture this information, it would behoove the author to state exactly how this information was collected, or how this extrapolation occurred.

Muhtaseb, Ahlam, Frey, Lawrence. Arab Americans’ Motives for Using the Internet as a Functional Media Alternative and Their Perceptions of U.S. Public Opinion

Arab Americans’ Motives for Using the Internet as a Functional Media Alternative and Their Perceptions of U.S. Public Opinion is an article that discusses why Arab Americans use the Internet, how they use it, and how their use impacts their perception of public opinion. The authors conduct a survey, which is included in an appendix, that was distributed through three organizations via email listservs. A total of 124 participants chose to complete the survey, all of whom were Arab Americans. The inspiration for this research came from the current scholarly focus on White U.S. college students and a perceived difference in survey populations The researchers used a combination of uses and gratifications theory and spiral of silence theory to answer four main research questions: what are the salient motives for using the Internet, Internet as an alternative to traditional media, how public opinion is perceived, and is there a relationship between Internet usage and public opinion.

The research determined that Arab Americans use the Internet, in order of most importance, to seek out information, convenience, entertainment, pass time, and interpersonal motives. Significantly, the results showed that the Internet was used as an alternative to traditional media outlets, including browsing sites from outside the United States (40%).

This article presents a traditional research paper that allows the user to follow a well-established genre. There are two aspects that were slightly difficult to get past however. First was the relatively shallow questions that were being asked. The research questions were not particularly unique or original, they only applied them to a minority group that hasn’t been fully studied. The questions didn’t lead to interesting findings. The findings were consistent with other groups in the United States, and thus the research appeared flat, and the authors seemed to stretch the conclusions.

Second, the enormous list of citations lends to their credibility, but also severely detracted from the readability of the paper. The first few paragraphs would have a word or two, then five or six lines of sources. This formatting style was nearly un-navigable and forced me to skip past much of this content.