Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- DEDICATION
- Introduction
- 1 Media: The Bridge to Globalization
- 2 The Arab Journalistic Field
- 3 Journalism as a Beacon for Democracy
- 4 The Dichotomy of the Public/Private Sphere
- 5 Global Media, Global Public Sphere?
- 6 Truth Martyrs
- 7 Arab Journalism as an Academic Discipline
- Conclusion
- Notes
- References
- Index
2 - The Arab Journalistic Field
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- DEDICATION
- Introduction
- 1 Media: The Bridge to Globalization
- 2 The Arab Journalistic Field
- 3 Journalism as a Beacon for Democracy
- 4 The Dichotomy of the Public/Private Sphere
- 5 Global Media, Global Public Sphere?
- 6 Truth Martyrs
- 7 Arab Journalism as an Academic Discipline
- Conclusion
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
Notwithstanding several recent publications about Arab (news) media, there is still a knowledge vacuum about the Arab journalism field: for example, access to the field; reasons for its popularity; how Arab journalists, particularly in the so-called pan-Arab media, perceive their role and how can this be related to changes in Arab media. Most of the recent studies, on the other hand, have focused on what is seen as the “phenomenon” of Arab satellite channels (notably al-Jazeera), which are immediately considered to be a new communication challenge to American media hegemony, and a modern anti-Western mouthpiece. Whilst attempts have been made to survey some of these changes, they only presented a general (quantitative) overview of the educational and social background of samples of Arab journalists, merely analyzed the profession in terms of the degrees the journalists held. What was needed, however, was to unravel how journalists construct their occupation - for instance, an investigation of their habitus or the dispositions that give these journalists a “practical sense” of the field in which they work. Also needed is an analysis of how the proportion of the cultural capital possessed by a specific professional group of journalists can be transacted into other fields, for instance, politics.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Modern Arab JournalismProblems and Prospects, pp. 42 - 72Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2007