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Professional and academic debates on the role of media accountability instruments (MAIs) have so far largely focused on Western democracies and on solving the issues of transparency and trust through press and media councils, ombudspersons, media criticism fora, and digital forms of media accountability. They have notably ignored the disruptive force of media technologies in the context of the rise of algorithm-driven platforms. This paper draws on Von Krogh [Von Krogh, T. 2012. Understanding Media Accountability Media Accountability in Relation To Media Criticism and Media Governance in Sweden 1940–2010. PhD Diss. Mid Sweden University] amended version of McQuail (2005) and Bardoel and d'Haenens' models (2004. "Media Responsibility and Accountability: New Conceptualizations and Practices." Communications 29: 5–25. doi:10.1515/comm.2004.007) to propose an enhanced model that takes into account the state/media relations in non-democratic societies and the disruptive force of media technologies and algorithm-driven platforms. In-depth semi-structured interviews with 12 prominent media practitioners were conducted. The findings suggest the limits of normative conceptualizations of media accountability when adopted and applied to non-democratic countries. We propose a model that explains the role of media technologies and algorithms-driven platforms as game changers in the debate on media accountability in non-Western countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) services has transformed the media landscape in the television market of Arab Gulf countries. This article adopts Silverstone's domestication theory as a conceptual framework to analyze how users, as individuals and households, incorporate Netflix and engage with its content, how they create their own symbolic meanings and social practices, and how they integrate its algorithmic recommendations and personalization into their temporal-spatial routines. This article relies on qualitative in-depth semi-structured interviews with 18 young urban adults from the six Gulf countries. The computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software package NVivo was used to conduct a series of qualitative analyses. The findings suggest that the users are deliberate in their adoption of Netflix and of the entertainment content they consume, and that Netflix has been incorporated into the users' daily routines and activities to fit with their own personal and cultural needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-censorship, the deliberate suppression of one's own right for expression, has lately become a systematically normalised practice in Moroccan media. Since privatisation of the press in the 1990s, critical reporting on sensitive matters of genuine public interest has not been as conspicuously scarce as it is today. Both content quality and normative social responsibilities of the press have been subverted because of excessive self-censorship. This paper draws on this problem to assess Moroccan journalists' perception of their experience as self-censors. It gauges the personal, institutional, environmental, and discursive considerations that they recall while dealing with sensitive events and critical topics. The assessment draws on the assumption that self-censorship is a highly conscious experience whereby journalists are fully aware of the risks accompanying news reporting in Morocco. Their consciousness accordingly makes them forestall undesirable reactions from authorities and eventually either avoid certain topics completely or implement specific maneuvers when they have to report them. The paper uses a quantitative procedure to survey 120 journalists working in 9 popular newspapers and newsmagazines. The findings confirm the preset hypothesis relating the practice of self-censorship to journalists' state of self-consciousness and absence of professional agency. The findings also underscore important implications like: (a) journalists' socioeconomic profile as a potential predictor of their tendency to self-censor, (b) an extrapolated perception of gatekeepers and impermissible redlines, and (c) organisational culture as primary cultivator of self-censorship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]