scholarly journals Internet Censorship in Arab Countries: Religious and Moral Aspects

Religions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 358
Author(s):  
Alisa Shishkina ◽  
Leonid Issaev

Internet censorship remains one of the most common methods of state control over the media. Reasons for filtering cyberspace include ensuring the security of the current regime, attempts to limit all kinds of opposition movements, and the protection of the religious and moral norms of society. In Arab countries, where religion plays a major role in the sociopolitical sphere, the latter is particularly important. Since, in Islamic law, there is no direct reference to censorship in practice, governments cause many resources to be filtered under various pretexts. At the same time, as the example of Egypt during the Arab spring shows, moral and religious reasons for filtering the Internet have more grounds than, say, the persecution of opposition leaders.

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walid Al-Saqaf

Studies have shown that authoritarian regimes tend to censor the media to limit potential threats to the status quo. While such censorship practices were traditionally aimed at broadcast and print media, the emergence of the Internet and social media in particular, prompted some authoritarian regimes, such as the Assad regime in Syria, to try and exert a similar level of censorship on the Internet as well. During the Arab Spring, the Syrian regime blocked hundreds of websites that provided social networking, news, and other services. Taking Syria as a case study, this paper examines whether Internet censorship succeeded in preventing Internet users from reaching censored online content during 2010−2012. By analyzing the use of Alkasir, a censorship circumvention tool created by the author, the paper provides empirical evidence demonstrating that users were in fact able to bypass censorship and access blocked websites. The findings demonstrate that censorship circumvention tools constituted a threat to the information control systems of authoritarian regimes, highlighting the potential of such tools to promote online freedom of expression in countries where Internet censorship is prevalent.


Author(s):  
Inmaculada Szmolka ◽  
Marién Durán

This chapter analyses the MENA countries that have experienced negative changes following the Arab Spring: a process of autocratisation in Turkey, authoritarian progressions in Kuwait and Bahrain, and the fragmentation of state authority in Syria and Iraq. Turkey has transited from being a defective democracy to authoritarianism (due to a concentration of power in the hands of president Erdoğan), which has been a more pronounced tendency since the attempted coup d’état in July 2016. Kuwait, one of the ‘less authoritarian’ Arab countries before 2011, has undergone an authoritarian progression as a consequence of the emir’s attempts to control parliament and approve restrictive laws regarding rights and liberties. Likewise, authoritarian progression in Bahrain has been the consequence of a decline in political competition - as a result of the withdrawal of opposition movements from parliament and state repression against any type of opposition. The democratic regime established in 2005 in Iraq currently faces enormous concerns: disabling sectarism, weak governance, and the occupation of much of northwestern Iraq by IS. Violence directed by al-Assad’s regime against protesters provoked a civil war on several fronts and a breakdown of state authority in Syria. The chapter shows that these conflicts in the Middle East, as well as in Yemen, have made the region unstable and represent an enormous international challenge.


Author(s):  
Aleksey Vasiliev ◽  
Natalia Zherlitsina

The subject of the study in this article is the changes that occur in the media and related information and communication technologies in the countries of North Africa after the crisis of the Arab Spring. The media played the vital role in political revolutions and transformations, they informed people of opinions of the activists, criticism of the power, contributed to establishing communication between the activists and ordinary citizens, united protests at the local level to turn them into a strong national movement. The revolutionary changes in the Arab world that began in 2011 brought hope for a more open public sphere. Yet, after 6 years, the results of this process do not seem to be unambiguous. On the way of development of traditional media there are still many obstacles. Among them in most Arab countries, there are numerous social and political taboos, propaganda serving the political power, self-censorship of journalists, their prosecution from the authorities. Theoretical and methodological basis for the article were such methods as comparative method, which allows on the basis of comparison of the situation in different countries of North Africa to identify the typological features of the Arab model of the information society; critical discourse analysis, with the help of which it becomes possible to comprehend information policy in different Arab countries. The relevance and novelty of this research is due to the important role played by the media in modern international politics. The author concludes that the Arab countries have yet to find a balance between the state information policy and the democratic potential of free media.


2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Ahmed Akgunduz

AbstractIslamic Law is one of the broadest and most comprehensive systems of legislation in the world. It was applied, through various schools of thought, from one end of the Muslim world to the other. It also had a great impact on other nations and cultures. We will focus in this article on values and norms in Islamic law. The value system of Islam is immutable and does not tolerate change over time for the simple fact that human nature does not change. The basic values and needs (which can be called maṣlaḥa) are classified hierarchically into three levels: (1) necessities (Ḍarūriyyāt), (2) convenience (Ḥājiyyāt), and (3) refinements (Kamāliyyāt=Taḥsīniyyāt). In Islamic legal theory (Uṣūl al‐fiqh) the general aim of legislation is to realize values through protecting and guaranteeing their necessities (al-Ḍarūriyyāt) as well as stressing their importance (al‐ Ḥājiyyāt) and their refinements (taḥsīniyyāt).In the second part of this article we will draw attention to Islamic norms. Islam has paid great attention to norms that protect basic values. We cannot explain all the Islamic norms that relate to basic values, but we will classify them categorically. We will focus on four kinds of norms: 1) norms (rules) concerned with belief (I’tiqādiyyāt), 2) norms (rules) concerned with law (ʿAmaliyyāt); 3) general legal norms (Qawā‘id al‐ Kulliyya al‐Fiqhiyya); 4) norms (rules) concerned with ethics (Wijdāniyyāt = Aḵlāqiyyāt = Ādāb = social and moral norms).


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 551-557
Author(s):  
Muhammad zaky ramadhan ◽  
Kemas Muslim Lhaksmana

Hadith has several levels of authenticity, among which are weak (dhaif), and fabricated (maudhu) hadith that may not originate from the prophet Muhammad PBUH, and thus should not be considered in concluding an Islamic law (sharia). However, many such hadiths have been commonly confused as authentic hadiths among ordinary Muslims. To easily distinguish such hadiths, this paper proposes a method to check the authenticity of a hadith by comparing them with a collection of fabricated hadiths in Indonesian. The proposed method applies the vector space model and also performs spelling correction using symspell to check whether the use of spelling check can improve the accuracy of hadith retrieval, because it has never been done in previous works and typos are common on Indonesian-translated hadiths on the Web and social media raw text. The experiment result shows that the use of spell checking improves the mean average precision and recall to become 81% (from 73%) and 89% (from 80%), respectively. Therefore, the improvement in accuracy by implementing spelling correction make the hadith retrieval system more feasible and encouraged to be implemented in future works because it can correct typos that are common in the raw text on the Internet.


Author(s):  
Anna Udelkina

This article is devoted to the study of the multimedia environment of the polemic discourse in German media with its diverse formats of impact on the audience and the actively developing internal dynamics of texts. If at the end of the XXth century the specifics of German media were the use of the Internet site as one of the possibilities to present copies of newspapers and magazines in electronic form, today we can speak of modified, hybrid Internet versions of printed publications that do not just create websites on the Internet that duplicate their main activity, but also combines the features of the traditional press and features of the functioning of texts on the Internet. The transition from linear, monomedia broadcasting platforms to discrete, multimedia ones has a significant impact on the process of creating, designing and placing modern polemics. Texts of articles and user comments are considered in the article as tmaterialization of the polemic discourse in the media. Polemic texts are formed on the basis of intertextual structures and have a hypertext nature. The use of multimedia tools (a variety of fonts, graphics, animation, photo, video and sound) in the text of the article allows the author not only to expand the amount of information provided, but also to qualitatively supplement its content through inline inclusions tn the text, to express the meaning of information by referring to verbal and non-verbal means; to provide a visual and figurative presentation of information (graphs, charts, tables), to attract attention and influence the audience, as well as to provide readers with the opportunity to participate in information exchange.


Author(s):  
Alexandra Makarova

The religious communication is the most ancient of human communication types. The pragmatic linguistics as well as rhetoric shows a special attitude to this special type of discourse. Today the Internet text with its unlimited abilities is being in the focus of linguists’ attention. That is why the orthodox journalists are covering not only print media but also the Internet that helps to widen the sphere of influence on the people’s minds and souls. The analyses show that the media context of the Orthodox sites (such as The Orthodox people laugh and etc.) includes humorous publications that prove the necessity of studying peculiarities of religious communication and humorous texts in orthodox sites. The integrative approach including content analyses, discourse and linguistic cultural methods helps the author to come to a conclusion that orthodox media texts are distinguished by intertextuality, hypertextuality, creolism, and the authors want to influence the addressee in the most effective way. To define the communicative task, the missionary function should be taken into account which is peculiar to the religious discourse.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariya Yatsymirska ◽  

The article investigates functional techniques of extralinguistic expression in multimedia texts; the effectiveness of figurative expressions as a reaction to modern events in Ukraine and their influence on the formation of public opinion is shown. Publications of journalists, broadcasts of media resonators, experts, public figures, politicians, readers are analyzed. The language of the media plays a key role in shaping the worldview of the young political elite in the first place. The essence of each statement is a focused thought that reacts to events in the world or in one’s own country. The most popular platform for mass information and social interaction is, first of all, network journalism, which is characterized by mobility and unlimited time and space. Authors have complete freedom to express their views in direct language, including their own word formation. Phonetic, lexical, phraseological and stylistic means of speech create expression of the text. A figurative word, a good aphorism or proverb, a paraphrased expression, etc. enhance the effectiveness of a multimedia text. This is especially important for headlines that simultaneously inform and influence the views of millions of readers. Given the wide range of issues raised by the Internet as a medium, research in this area is interdisciplinary. The science of information, combining language and social communication, is at the forefront of global interactions. The Internet is an effective source of knowledge and a forum for free thought. Nonlinear texts (hypertexts) – «branching texts or texts that perform actions on request», multimedia texts change the principles of information collection, storage and dissemination, involving billions of readers in the discussion of global issues. Mastering the word is not an easy task if the author of the publication is not well-read, is not deep in the topic, does not know the psychology of the audience for which he writes. Therefore, the study of media broadcasting is an important component of the professional training of future journalists. The functions of the language of the media require the authors to make the right statements and convincing arguments in the text. Journalism education is not only knowledge of imperative and dispositive norms, but also apodictic ones. In practice, this means that there are rules in media creativity that are based on logical necessity. Apodicticity is the first sign of impressive language on the platform of print or electronic media. Social expression is a combination of creative abilities and linguistic competencies that a journalist realizes in his activity. Creative self-expression is realized in a set of many important factors in the media: the choice of topic, convincing arguments, logical presentation of ideas and deep philological education. Linguistic art, in contrast to painting, music, sculpture, accumulates all visual, auditory, tactile and empathic sensations in a universal sign – the word. The choice of the word for the reproduction of sensory and semantic meanings, its competent use in the appropriate context distinguishes the journalist-intellectual from other participants in forums, round tables, analytical or entertainment programs. Expressive speech in the media is a product of the intellect (ability to think) of all those who write on socio-political or economic topics. In the same plane with him – intelligence (awareness, prudence), the first sign of which (according to Ivan Ogienko) is a good knowledge of the language. Intellectual language is an important means of organizing a journalistic text. It, on the one hand, logically conveys the author’s thoughts, and on the other – encourages the reader to reflect and comprehend what is read. The richness of language is accumulated through continuous self-education and interesting communication. Studies of social expression as an important factor influencing the formation of public consciousness should open up new facets of rational and emotional media broadcasting; to trace physical and psychological reactions to communicative mimicry in the media. Speech mimicry as one of the methods of disguise is increasingly becoming a dangerous factor in manipulating the media. Mimicry is an unprincipled adaptation to the surrounding social conditions; one of the most famous examples of an animal characterized by mimicry (change of protective color and shape) is a chameleon. In a figurative sense, chameleons are called adaptive journalists. Observations show that mimicry in politics is to some extent a kind of game that, like every game, is always conditional and artificial.


At- Tarbawi ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-27
Author(s):  
Suratiningsih Suratiningsih

The research aims to describe the puzzling media as a solution to increase the learning motivation of elementary /MI student. This research is library research. It is a method that the data which is needed in completing research comes from library sources i.e. include books, encyclopedias, dictionaries, journals, documents, magazines, etc as well as various sources on the internet. The data collection technique used in this research is documentation. Documentation means looking for data about things in the form of notes, books, papers, articles, journal, and so on. Then, the data analysis technique used in this study is content analysis. In this analysis, the process of selecting, comparing, and combining various meanings will be found to be relevant. The media is an intermediary or introduction. Puzzle media can improve the students’ motivation to keep trying to solve problems. It is fun for students because it can be repeated. The challenges in the puzzle game will give you an addictive effect to always try and try until they are successful.


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