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This study investigates how the viewers with hearing impairment reacted to the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) subtitles added to some Vernacular Arabic movies during the COVID-19 stay-at-home period. A sample group of 106 deaf participants was asked to watch the MSA subtitled version of the Egyptian vernacular movie, Boushkash , and fill in an 18-item questionnaire of five constructs, namely, (1) movie watching habits, (2) technical aspects, (3) linguistic and paralinguistic information, (4) attitude, and (5) future actions and recommendations. The analysis showed that the intralingual subtitling of vernacular Arabic comedy movies was received positively by the participants. The technical specifications of the subtitles were satisfactory and adequate. The paralinguistic information was helpful as it offers a better understanding of the movie and creates a sense of reality in the movie's scenes. This indicates that intralingual subtitling is a step in the right direction that makes audiovisual materials accessible to people with hearing impairment and enhances their feeling of social inclusion. The study concludes that more governmental care in the Arab countries should be directed towards this minority group by urging national TV channels to add intralingual translation to their various programs.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the most frequent countries and prevalent discourses in the context of homosexuality in the headlines of Arabic-language media outlets.Design/methodology/approachThis study combined both corpus linguistic (CL) quantitative and critical discourse analysis (CDA) qualitative approaches to analyse five thousand two hundred news headlines that were retrieved from the Factiva news database from 2010 to 2019.FindingsThere were six main categories of subjects covered by the media in the context of homosexuality, namely crime, extremist groups, legislation, authority figures and scandals, culture and countries. The analysis showed that the countries whose laws criminalize homosexuals were more frequent than those seen to be supportive of homosexuals. The findings revealed that homosexuals are under-covered in the Arab media, and whenever they are present in the news reports, they are depicted negatively.Research limitations/implicationsThis study examined the representation of homosexuals in Arabic headlines from 2010 to 2019. Future researchers may investigate their construction in the body of the articles in different periods and languages.Practical implicationsThe present research has implications regarding the necessity of objectivity in covering news about minority groups without being influenced by the stock of ideas circulating in the culture where media outlets report.Social implicationsThe social implications include enhancing the principles and values of solidarity and respecting all groups in society.Originality/valueAlthough there is considerable literature on the representation of homosexuals in media outlets, the number of articles that investigated the same concept in the Arab region is relatively limited to the best knowledge of the researchers. Therefore, this study can add great significance to existing knowledge as it tackles a limitedly investigated topic in the Arab world.

Jordan and Lebanon are among the predominantly affected countries by the Syrian civil war that began after the outbreak of the Arab Spring in 2011. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Syrians, including women and children, moved to these two countries. As media plays an integral role in shaping societies and framing the world around us, this study explores the representation of Syrian female refugees in Jordan News Agency (Petra) and Lebanon National News Agency (NNA). It uses a 13-million-word corpus of Arabic news articles from 2012 to 2016. These 5 years represent the peak of the Syrian refugee crisis, and the media coverage of it was extensive and thorough. Adopting a corpus-assisted discourse approach to analyze the data yielded eight main categories that were recurrent in the news of the two agencies, namely, suffering, sexual exploitation, impact on the local female community, awareness-raising, making a living, support, vulnerability, and burden. The findings revealed that the focus in Petra news was mainly on empowering the Syrian female refugees, while NNA highlighted Syrian women’s suffering and efforts of alleviation. The study recommends that the governments of Jordan and Lebanon as well as international organizations provide more support and protection for vulnerable and disadvantaged refugee women. It also stresses the need for psychosocial support, counter-trafficking, protection, and women empowerment programs.

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