Suchergebnisse

Introduction -- The Qatar-Al-Jazeera nexus. Qatar invents the most effective contemporary state-sponsored broadcasting -- Qatar's soft power: a macro perspective -- Qatar operates Al-Jazeera as a smart power tool in its relationship with Saudi Arabia -- Al-Jazeera's role in Qatar's race to become a "core state" in the Muslim world during the Arab Spring -- Al-Jazeera's obsession with the clash of civilizations theory and its contribution to Qatar's core state ambition -- Al-Jazeera's soft power strategies in the West. Al-Jazeera in the US -- Al-Jazeera's soft power and Israel -- Putting it all together: the Al-Jazeera effect and what it means for international and intercultural studies

Al-Jazeera and the media globalization argument -- al-Jazeera re-shuffles the global information order -- Anti-hegemonic images in US war reporting -- Is Al-Jazeera a legitimate network? -- Disregarding the pain of others : the war in Afghanistan -- The enemy's voice -- The war in Iraq -- The darling of the alternative media web sites -- Al-Jazeera English in the US -- Conclusions

The use of international broadcasting, a tool of public diplomacy since World War I, can be divided into two chronological periods. The first, which began during World War I and declined in the post–Cold War era, was characterized by international government-sponsored radio broadcasters. The second began with the emergence of privately owned global news networks (e.g., CNN, Sky News, and MSNBC) in the 1980s and 1990s, which were deemed more credible than government-sponsored stations. Based on an 8-year study of Al-Jazeera's coverage of Saudi affairs throughout the Qatari–Saudi conflict, which revealed a strong correlation between Al-Jazeera Arabic's tone toward Saudi affairs and the development of the Qatari–Saudi conflict, the article argues that Qatar invented a new model of public diplomacy by operating Al-Jazeera as a hybrid state-sponsored/private network, effectively transforming the network into a highly potent public diplomacy tool. Accordingly, the article discusses the interplay among news networks, ownership, and use of public diplomacy tactics in contemporary international broadcasting.

AbstractIn 2019–2020, Israel went through three consecutive elections in less than a year on grounds of alleged corruption by Prime Minister Netanyahu, and his lack of ability to form a coalition. This study aims to contribute to analyses of the media mobilization/malaise effect by examining the impact of such a prolonged period of campaigning on citizens' political behavior. Thus, we conducted six online surveys using a longitudinal sample of Israeli society before and after each election. The analysis found that, despite participants' testimonies that they were increasingly "tired of dealing with elections," there was a significant increase in participants' reported certainty in their vote, news consumption, participation in online political discussions, and level of political efficacy between the elections. Next, a multivariate analysis aiming to explain variations in voters' political efficacy found that political trust, participants' reported certainty about their vote, and political interest all explained high levels of political efficacy. The analysis provides one of the strongest reinforcements to date regarding the validity of political mobilization theory, demonstrating its relevance under challenging conditions. We discuss further implications and generalizability of our findings.

Summary
The Arabic-language Facebook page of the Israeli Defense Forces' spokesperson has attracted a massive following in the Arab world and serves as an interesting and unique case study towards understanding the effect of a military public diplomacy initiative. Content analysis of the Facebook page reveals a mixture of power and deterrence messages, with posts designed to emphasize shared values. Analysis of audience engagement with those messages — measured by 'likes', 'shares', comments and negative feedback — surprisingly reveals that shared values' messages generated a similar level of engagement to other messages, which may show that the content does not play a significant role in users' engagement. In addition, the analysis reveals that during periods of heightened intensity in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, followers' engagement and negative feedback rose dramatically. This study provides a unique perspective of the relevance and effectiveness of military public diplomacy in the era of online social networks.

Sport fanship is immeasurable and represents one of society's most universal leisure activities. The current collection of research on the fanship phenomena is truly global: 25 scholars from 4 continents (including North and south America, UK, Australia, Norway, Netherland, and Israel) looked closely at various dimensions of sport fanship. The ongoing COVID pandemic presents both spectators on and off the field with various challenges side to unique opportunity to rethink the way sport fans consume and interact. Thus, the aim of this double special issue with 13 papers was to assemble both applied or theoretical research from experts within fields of psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, political science, economy, media, and gender studies.

This study examines the case of basketball superstar LeBron James, who openly identifies as a liberal. Our analysis of LeBron James' Twitter profile revealed normal distribution between liberals and conservatives following his account. We then compared James' followers' distribution to those of the singer Lady Gaga and liberal-tilting sport network ESPN and found that James' followers' distribution represented the most diverse distribution of the three accounts. We further found that James was the only liberal source in most of his conservative followers' profiles. The findings highlight the potency of celebrity athletes to narrow the trend of political polarization.

The impact of political events on media's conflict coverage prism is widely established. To assess the role of mounting tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims in Europe in 2013–2014 on German media's coverage prism of Muslim-related conflicts, this article compares coverage of the 2008 and 2014 Israeli military operations in Gaza by three major German newspapers. The empirical analysis indicates a dramatic rise in the use of religious terms in 2014, most notably in conservative newspaper Die Welt, and offers evidence of a shift from politics-centered framing of the 2008 Gaza operation to a more religious-centered framing of the 2014 Gaza War. We discuss wider implications of the findings, including their support for the relevance of the clash-of-civilizations theory to contemporary media's conflict coverage modus operandi.