scholarly journals In the Limelight? Interpreters’ Visibility in Transborder Interpreting

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-54
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Nuč ◽  
Sonja Pöllabauer
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Communication Barriers ◽  
Specific Field ◽  
Social Visibility ◽  
Mass Displacement ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Oriented Approach

This paper explores photographs that were taken along the Austrian and Slovene border between 2015 and 2018 as ethnographic records of a specific field of interpreting. The photographs show interpreters who helped bridge communication barriers in situations when the mass displacement of refugees from the Middle East resulted in an increased demand for interpreters for a range of languages that had previously not been as sought after. The photographs come from a corpus of pictures and accompanying texts that were compiled through a picture search in digital media. Drawing on the constructs of (in)visibility and bodily semiotics, a set of chosen examples is analysed qualitatively, using a visually oriented approach to examine interpreters’ positionality and agency in transborder humanitarian interpreting. The results suggest a high degree of interactional agency and visibility, but less social visibility.

The Prequel: Setting the Analytic Stage

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-73
Author(s):  
Madeline C. Zilfi
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Smart Phone ◽  
Reality Tv ◽  
Transnational Politics ◽  
Television Programming ◽  
University Of Maryland ◽  
Politics And Culture ◽  
Historical Dramas ◽  
Conference Papers

AbstractOutside the disciplines of communication and cultural studies, scholarly interest in television programming, especially scripted entertainment, has been overshadowed by attention to digital media, reality TV, and smart phone connectivity. A 2017 University of Maryland conference offered a reconsideration of popular Middle East-produced television dramas and their surprising impacts on national and transnational politics and culture. As conference papers showed, social and historical themes resonated in unexpected ways inside and outside national borders, with state authorities responding, not just with the usual censoring, but with investment in social and historical dramas of their own.

1. International Relations Theory and the Middle East

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-38
Author(s):  
Fred H. Lawson
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Structural Realism ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
English School ◽  
Alternative Perspective ◽  
The Many ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Neoliberal Institutionalism

This chapter discusses the different theories and approaches that characterize the study of international relations. Mainstream theories focus on the ways that states interact with one another in circumstances where no overarching authority governs their behavior — in other words, under conditions of anarchy. These theories include structural realism, neoliberal institutionalism, and the scholarship on relational contracting. An important alternative perspective — the English School — argues that, even under anarchic conditions, there is a high degree of orderliness in world affairs. Meanwhile, proponents of constructivism assert that states take shape in specific historical contexts, and that the conditions under which states coalesce and become socialized to one another play a crucial role in determining how they conceive of themselves and formulate their basic interests. Scholars of the Middle East have so far addressed only a fraction of the many theoretical debates and controversies that energize the field of international relations.

scholarly journals Digital use and mistrust in the aftermath of the Arab Spring: beyond narratives of liberation and disillusionment

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (8) ◽  
pp. 1125-1141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Moreno-Almeida ◽  
Shakuntala Banaji
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Young People ◽  
New Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Arab Spring

Through the prism of the uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East in 2010–2011, new media has been presented as diametrically opposed to the top-down and mistrusted. Asking the question, ‘In what ways do trust, privacy and surveillance concerns intersect and inflect the individual and collective practices of young people in networks of participation, and their sense of civic connection through old and new media?’, this article presents a nuanced understanding of the relationship between digital media and mistrust. Through the study of original case studies in Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and the UAE, we examine attitudes towards and usage of digital media in creating and maintaining political, civic, cultural and artistic networks among communities. We analyse our abundant qualitative interviews, observations and ethnographic data collected to reveal the continuity of media mistrust as people move into the digital arena. As new tools continue to be launched many young people in the region remain alert to the ways in which these tools can serve or hinder individual and group aims. Beyond narratives of liberation, disillusionment or democratisation, ‘new’ media poses both mundane and surprising challenges in encouraging and engaging networks of participation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

scholarly journals Structure and oligomerization state of the C-terminal region of the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus nucleoprotein

2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thi Hong Van Nguyen ◽  
Julie Lichière ◽  
Bruno Canard ◽  
Nicolas Papageorgiou ◽  
Sarah Attoumani ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Structural Information ◽  
Respiratory Illness ◽  
Middle East Respiratory Syndrome ◽  
X Ray Diffraction ◽  
X Ray ◽  
X Ray Scattering ◽  
Nucleoprotein N ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Genome Encapsidation

Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is a human pathogen responsible for a severe respiratory illness that emerged in 2012. Structural information about the proteins that constitute the viral particle is scarce. In order to contribute to a better understanding of the nucleoprotein (N) in charge of RNA genome encapsidation, the structure of the C-terminal domain of N from MERS-CoV obtained using single-crystal X-ray diffraction is reported here at 1.97 Å resolution. The molecule is present as a dimer in the crystal structure and this oligomerization state is confirmed in solution, as measured by additional methods including small-angle X-ray scattering measurements. Comparisons with the structures of the C-terminal domains of N from other coronaviruses reveals a high degree of structural conservation despite low sequence conservation, and differences in electrostatic potential at the surface of the protein.

scholarly journals Affordance is Power: Contradictions Between Communicational and Technical Dimensions of WhatsApp’s End-to-End Encryption

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 205630511879587 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcelo Santos ◽  
Antoine Faure
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
User Privacy ◽  
Privacy And Security ◽  
End To End ◽  
Oriented Approach ◽  
Roll Out

WhatsApp’s implementation of end-to-end encryption has been celebrated by many. Intriguingly, though, the invisible affordance was made visible with an individual message to each conversation. In this research, we “properly scrutinize” the roll-out of the affordance in historical perspective inspired by the “platform biography” approach, critically comparing corporate and media documentation with an analysis of the attributes and affordances that refer to the realm of privacy and security with focus on the end-to-end encryption. After pointing the contradictions with evidences found, we conclude that the implementation should be interpreted neither as a plain idealistic saga for user privacy and security by the App’s founders nor as simply a market-oriented approach—though both are clearly components of the company’s motives—but as a strategic move inserted in a: (1) Public Relations guerrilla strategy from WhatsApp Inc. facing national States and respective intelligence agencies or law enforcement institutions, in which context the development and implementation of affordances reveals a (2) power move by corporate digital media to avoid political conflict against vigilante state power and therefore the App’s subsistent vulnerabilities in terms of privacy and security should be read as (3) a tradeoff between commercial massiveness at the expense of technological utopia.

scholarly journals Creating opportunities for digital engagement and participation

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (68) ◽  
pp. 025-041
Author(s):  
Maja Nordtug
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Interpersonal Communication ◽  
Information Sources ◽  
Hpv Vaccination ◽  
Health Related ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Digital Engagement ◽  
High Degree

Worldwide, digital media are used by laypersons for health-related purposes. Laypersons’ engagement and participation on the subject of health is the focus of this article, in which I explore how digital media create opportunities for laypersons to engage with information and participate on a health topic which has been subjected to controversy, namely HPV vaccination. The analysis is based on an inductive multidisciplinary literature review of research on digital media and HPV vaccination. In the analysis, I apply Corner’s (2011) understanding of engagement and Kelty and colleagues’ (2015) seven dimensions of participation. I find two kinds of engagement, namely using digital media as information sources and interpersonal communication, that both only satisfi es few dimensions of participation. I argue that broader participation might be unachievable on health subjects such as vaccination and other subjects that require a high degree of expertise to understand. Due to this, laypersons cannot necessarily engage or participate further.

Studying Networked Communication in the Middle East

2018 ◽  
pp. 415-436
Author(s):  
Javier Borge-Holthoefer ◽  
Muzammil M. Hussain ◽  
Ingmar Weber
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Data Science ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Computational Social Science ◽  
Digital Networks ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Civil Unrest ◽  
The Social

Digital infrastructure has been rapidly embraced in the Arab Middle East and North Africa in the last decade, opening a unique window for computational social science and network data science scholars. However, there are currently two coexisting social and economic realities in the region, which result in very different usages and dynamics of networked communication: countries with chronic civil unrest in which digital media have largely served as mobilization tools (e.g., Tunisia, Egypt), and relatively stable and wealthy societies that face social change and economic hyper-development (e.g., Qatar, Kuwait). Given such diversity across the region, how and why should social scientists study digital networks in the Middle East? What can digital networks teach us about the social and political aspects of the modern Middle East? In sum, while claims about digital technologies’ impacts across the region have been critiqued for being speculative and overblown, we suggest that digital technologies have instead broadened our ability to understand ongoing transformations among Arab states and societies.

Reforming universities in the Middle East

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-92
Author(s):  
Daniele Cantini
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Middle East ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Education Sector ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
The Core ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
Political Turmoil ◽  
High Degree

This article addresses the core-periphery nexus by looking at some of the reform packages proposed in the 2000s in these two pivotal countries in the Middle East, Egypt and Jordan, as well as the resistances they generated. These reform packages include internationalisation and privatisation policies, as well as World Bank–sponsored programmes intended to enhance the higher education sector. These programmes are marked by a high degree of isomorphism with global trends: they belong to an unquestioned centre, with peripheries as receiving points of policies elaborated elsewhere. In this article, I examine some of the resistances they were met with in Egypt and Jordan and show how their translations were shaped by the logics of the local contexts so that they were rarely implemented. Looking at post–Arab Spring developments, the article reflects on the continuity of reform packages amidst political turmoil, and the ways in which these reforms are altering or reinforcing processes of peripheralisation.

The Collective Unconscious and the Media Sphere

2022 ◽  
pp. 75-96
Author(s):  
M. Alan Kazlev
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Collective Unconscious ◽  
Human Consciousness ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Working Through ◽  
The Media ◽  
Western Civilisation ◽  
High Degree

A synthesis of Marshall McLuhan's typology of media, Carl Jung's theory of the Collective Unconscious, Teilhard de Chardin's Evolution, and Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy is used to explain the current crisis of Western Civilisation, as well as suggest possible responses. McLuhan described the transition from print to electronic (and now digital) media. Jung explored the collective unconscious and the power of the archetypes. Teilhard posited three evolutionary spheres; here, a further stage is added, the Psychosphere, equated with the Jungian unconscious. And Steiner referred to a threefold polarity of spiritual hierarchies that influence human consciousness and society. Conspiracism and the disinformation crisis comes about through archetypes working through the lower psychecological zones. Orientation to positive epigenetic, imaginal, and divine realities, with their high degree of holism and mythopoetic creativity, offers an alternative to both the paranoia of conspiracism and the reductionism of materialism.

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