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Copyright of Journal of The Arab Center for Research & Studies in Library & Information Sciences is the property of Journal of the Arab Center for Research & Studies in Library & Information Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article sheds light on the origins and long-term progress of the Arabic Service of the BBC. It is therefore closely concerned with the BBC’s coverage of the particularly sensitive politics of the Middle East since the 1930s and thereby the delicate relationship between the BBC and the British government. The article also shows how the BBC managed to make its Arabic Service an integral part of modern Arab culture and how with the help of skilful broadcasters recruited among the Arab diaspora the Service’s programming testifies to a remarkable history of cultural interchange.

The aim of the present paper is two-fold. First, it tries to propose a comprehensive and large-scale classification of modality expressions in Arabic by analyzing a great amount of data. Second, it uses the proposed classification to test the hypothesis that translated news from English into Arabic tends to use deontic modality expressions more frequently than originally Arabic one does. For the second objective, news from two leading Arab-world-wide news satellite channels, namely BBC Arabic and Al-Arabiya were analyzed. It came out clearly that BBC Arabic channel uses deontic modality expressions more frequently than Al-Arabiya. The latter channel draws more on assertions and on epistemic modality expressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of French Journal of British Studies / Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique is the property of Centre de Recherches et d'Etudes en Civilisation Britannique and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article compares Al Jazeera Arabic's and BBC Arabic's news coverage of the 2011 Libyan uprising and the ensuing NATO intervention in the country. Through this comparative analysis, the article evaluates the impact of these two channels' political contexts on their coverage, especially considering that these two channels are part of broader transnational news networks that are based in countries that were active participants in the NATO intervention in Libya. The sample involves a period of roughly four weeks of coverage, and considers aspects such as the birth of the February 17 movement in Libya, the development of the opposition, the beginning and end of the 2011 NATO mission and the death of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The sample was analysed by means of a framing analysis, whereby framing refers to the way a news story is packaged, and is an especially appropriate method when considering the influence of political power on coverage. The comparative analysis ultimately found that both channels' coverage was primarily affected by their political contexts, and aligned with national and foreign policy interests of their home countries. This alignment was evident through the coverage that was supportive of the opposition and its advances, and the intervention and its gains. However, BBC Arabic's coverage was more balanced, especially with regard to the progression of the opposition on the ground, as it did not play up opposition gains or gloss over opposition losses, as Al Jazeera Arabic tended to do. BBC Arabic also displayed a more analytical stance when covering the death of the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The language used by Al Jazeera Arabic was also far more emotive and sensationalistic than that of BBC Arabic, which displayed a far more tempered stance when covering the Libyan uprising. Thus, this article also considers how each of these channels used the Arabic language when reporting, and how these stylistic differences might have affected their coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guided by framing theory, a quantitative content analysis was conducted on news programming from five transnational satellite news channels that broadcast to/from the Arab world—Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera English, Al Arabiya, Alhurra, and BBC Arabic. The project examined if differences exist between the networks, and between two dimensions of a network taxonomy—western and liberal commercial—in how Arab Spring news selection and content was visually framed. A systematic comparative analysis was conducted on visual coverage of the civil unrest in Tunisia, Algeria, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, and Syria. Three entire newscasts from each network airing between December, 2010 and June, 2011, were analyzed. The data from 1,951 shots reveal both similarities and differences in how the networks utilized the human interest and political frames in their Arab Spring coverage. Results revealed no difference in the application of the human interest frame between western and liberal networks. However, the comparison between the individual networks revealed that Alhurra invoked the political frame more often than Al Jazeera and BBC Arabic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines an innovative experiment in democratizing international broadcasting through embracing a participatory model of production. In spring 2010, a political debate television series was co-created by BBC Arabic and citizen producers, using social media tools. Based around interviews with prominent political and controversial public figures, the programme (G710) was broadcast weekly on satellite TV across the Middle East and the Arabic-speaking world. Combining collaborative ethnography with corporate ‘big data’ analysis, the research team followed the experiment from conception to premature closure. The article argues that the kinds of digital tools deployed in producing the programme, and used by BBC audience research to monitor user practices in real time, have become essential to corporate processes of BBC World Service governance and management procedures, business strategy, accountability measures, marketing practices and editorial decision-making. They act as change agents, presenting methodological problems and opportunities for the BBC’s audience researchers and academic researchers, as well as symbolizing the contradictory logic of empowerment and surveillance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article looks closely at the issue of unionization among a sample of Arab journalists working in transnational media. Although divided geographically, these media share the same trait of addressing Arab audiences all over the Arab region and indeed the whole world. The main question addressed in this article is how those journalists perceive the role of unions and whether there are differences among those who work in Europe, particularly London, vis-a-vis those in the Gulf. The article is based on interviews with 25 journalists from such outlets, who were asked about their membership and views of journalism unions in their local or host countries. I argue that journalists who work in London and who have joined the British National Union of Journalists (NUJ) see the NUJ as part of the British political scene and consider it to be a powerful potential tool in defending journalists' rights when reporting inside the Arab region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article’s rationale is that the Arabic Service of the BBC holds a special position in the development of British public diplomacy and that such a position has its roots in the 1937 negotiations between the BBC and the Foreign Office that led to its creation in 1938. These discussions resulted in the BBC’s willingness to handle the task of British projection responsibly, that is to say resorting to the omission of news which in the view of the Foreign Office would be inadvisable in times of crisis. The article seeks to show that this non-written agreement prevailed in the following six decades and is still valid up to the present day. The paper investigates the coverage of three moments of crisis in the history of British foreign policies in the Middle East. The first moment concerns the controversial news bulletin of 4 January 1938, the very first BBC broadcast in a foreign language. The other two moments relate to the Suez crisis and the first Gulf war. The article’s main line of inquiry therefore is to offer specific insights into the notion of soft power mediated by diasporic Arab broadcasters in circumstances when the stakes were high for Britain in the Middle East. The aim is to assess both the resilience and the ambiguities of John Reith’s vision of British projection through a model of broadcasting of his own making in a sensitive and complex region for the country’s formal diplomacy.