Countering cultural hegemony: Audience research in the Arab world

Abstract

Countering cultural hegemony: audience research in the arab world abstraCtThe article provides a critical review of Arab scholarship on audience studies, focusing on the themes and different traditions adopted by Arab scholars, such as positivism versus cultural studies. Drawing on several examples of audience studies in the Arab world, I argue that this type of research has been influenced by the call to document and counter western cultural hegemony. While the majority of these studies quantitatively measure media consumption in terms of time used on these media and type of programmes watched, the underpinning assumption is the need to counter the negative impact of imported cultural programmes on Arab audiences, particularly youth. I argue that Arab researchers here are situated as experts detached from the audiences, thereby positioning themselves in a knowledge hierarchy above the subjects of their research. The review shows the implied view of Arab audiences as passive receivers of information, and potential victims of the recent technological innovation of communication.

The end of pan-Arab media? National, transnational media and identity in Morocco, Tunisia and Jordan after 2011

“…This variety of national results does not point towards a new possible trend in the whole MENA region, but rather towards national differences reflectingand at the same time shapingthe post-2011 changes on several levels. We started from the hypothesis of a 'resurgence' of national media in the MENA area and of a decline in popularity of the pan-Arab channels following the 2011 Uprisings (Guaaybess, 2013;Kraidy, 2014;Lynch, 2015;Mellor, 2013;Sarnelli and Kobibi, 2017). To test this hypothesis, we compared the data on trust in state, private and international television channels in each country.…”

National, regional, global TV in Algeria: University students and television audience after the 2012 Algerian media law

“…A recurrent factor highlighted by several studies in the Arab media field is the gender divide in television consumption ‘amongst female consumers who are likely to follow entertainment genres, whilst men prefer the news genre’ (Mellor, 2013: 209). The preferences indicated by the university students in Mostaganem partially confirm this difference, with more females choosing film and drama and entertainment series, along with music and dance programmes, and males indicating a preference for news and sport.…”

“…This shift in transnational audiovisual flows still has to be investigated in terms of its impact on audiences. In Arab media research, as noticed by Noha Mellor (2013), ‘despite the technological advances of communication, the audience theories have been rather stable, constructing the audience as [a] passive target of western communication propaganda’ (p. 202). Similarly, other scholars, such as Walter Armbrust (2012), had previously concluded that the field of Arab media studies ‘is dominated by a form of technological determinism’, with most investigations focusing on the impact of news, from television or the Internet (p. 48).…”

“…Analogous conclusions were also drawn by Marwan Kraidy (2009) on the tendency of recent scholarship to focus on a deterministic role of media, rather than adopting a broader cultural perspective, when looking at how media content was received by audiences. Moreover, as shown by Mellor (2013: 207), among the Arab media studies investigations developed since the beginning of the satellite era, only a small number of studies have adopted a qualitative approach. Among these few exceptions, there is the ethnographic study conducted by Tarik Sabry (2004, 2005) on young Moroccans, showing how long-term consumption of global Western media texts, combined with other factors, played a role in altering young Moroccans’ structures of feeling (Sabry, 2005: 3).…”

“…Since 2003, much has changed in the landscape of satellite television, in the region and in Algeria. One general phenomenon, as framed by Mellor (2013), is that ‘Arab audiences seem to grow more attentive to their distinct local identities, despite the proliferation of pan-Arab transnational media’ (p. 212). Marwan Kraidy (2014) also defined the phenomenon as ‘a renaissance of national broadcasting’ (p. 18).…”