Arab TV-Audiences

The volume examines Arab audiences and religion in today's Arab media. Religion is a topic in more than 1300 Arab mainstream and religious satellite TV channels as well as in popular culture. The case studies explore how Arab audiences make use of mediated religion in negotiations of identity and belonging in different national contexts.

Today the relations between Arab audiences and Arab media are characterised by pluralism and fragmentation. More than a thousand Arab satellite TV channels alongside other new media platforms are offering all kinds of programming. Religion has also found a vital place as a topic in mainstream media or in one of the approximately 135 religious satellite channels that broadcast guidance and entertainment with an Islamic frame of reference. How do Arab audiences make use of mediated religion in negotiations of identity and belonging? The empirical based case studies in this interdisciplinary volume explore audience-media relations with a focus on religious identity in different countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Great Britain, Germany, Denmark, and the United States.

Autorentext

Ehab Galal is Assistant Professor in Media and Society in the Middle East at the Department of Cross Cultural and Regional Studies at the University of Copenhagen (Denmark). He has specialised in Arab and Islamic media in local and global contexts.

Inhalt
Contents: Ehab Galal: Where has the authority gone? New imperatives and audience research Ehab Galal: Audience responses to Islamic TV: Between resistance and piety Khalil Rinnawi: Cyber religious-national community? The case of Arab community in Germany Ratiba Hadj-Moussa: Maghrebi audiences: Mapping the divide between Arab sentiment, Islamic belonging and political praxis Noha Mellor: Religious media as a cultural discourse: The views of the Arab diaspora in London Vivian Ibrahim: Watching the history of the «present»: Religion and national identity in the Egyptian diaspora Lise Paulsen Gala: Minority religion mediated: Contesting representation.