The growing impact of new media around the world has been the subject of study by scores of scientists in multidisciplinary fields. Satellite TV and the Internet have been viewed as instruments of social and political change — connecting communities, educating the youth, and creating social networks previously unaccounted for, like virtual groups. However, in the Arab World and the Middle East, such technological developments have been hailed as tools for the empowerment of marginalized communities such as women and the youth, also brought new opportunities that have resulted in the breaking of the communication monopoly by those in power and the creation of a new communication environment. Such environment has — as part of its manifestations — the current social transformations that the region is witnessing. Drawing on examples from social media networks used in Tunisia and Egypt, this article analyzes the extent to which new technologies have changed the rules of the game regarding public opinion construction and the communication flow traditionally monopolized by the hegemonic power structures in Arab society. This study not only reveals the decisiveness of platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube in the Arab Spring countries’ revolutions, but also the extent to which their availability served in a complex manner the democratic transition that Tunisia have been undergoing and the political turmoil that Egypt is witnessing. Furthermore this study argues that such online spheres of communication mark the emergence of the virtual yet vibrant space of political campaigning and social empowerment, especially for the youth and marginalized communities.
This article employs Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) on a sample from British tabloid newspapers to unearth the representation of Islam and Muslims. It attempts to unpack the evolving discursive language and its impact on the reinvention and diffusion of negative stereotypes such as the ‘terrorism’ frame. With a specific focus the study considers the media’s systematic distortion of Islamic conceptions/religious terminologies such as ‘Islamist’, ‘Fatwa’, ‘Sharia’, ‘Jihad’, ‘Hijab’ and ‘Islamic State’, which are founded on what Edward Said calls the ‘ideology of difference’. Findings from this study show that such conceptions have not only lost their original significance as established in the mainstream Islamic literature, but have become on the one hand associated with the War on Terror and its ramifications and on the other have become exclusively signifying specific pejorative connotations. Fear and threat have become the meanings and frames firmly embedded in these Islamic terminologies. In the minds of the public this association is now taken for granted due to the prevailing values being recurrently circulated through the media, political speeches, ‘thinktanks’ literature and policy-making documents.
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