The notion of nation in the centralised media systems and the challenges of new media: Oman’s media system as a case study
Issue Date
2024-04-12Subjects
national identitynew media challenges
Oman
centralisation
media systems
Subject Categories::P300 Media studies
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
To understand the challenges facing the centralised media systems in the current era, this thesis has been conducted to explore the challenges posed by new media on the mainstream media in Oman, which contend with developing solid national identities and minimising the potential risks that new media might cause. The study investigates the notion that in Oman, a strong sense of nationhood is maintained by controlling the mainstream media at the expense of creating greater openness in formulating national identity. This study develops an analytical framework based on theory and research analysing how the mainstream media constructs national identity. The study interviewed 11 media experts who hold different positions in the Omani media field, such as owners of media outlets, publishing houses and press institutions, editors-in-chief of newspapers and magazines, directors of radio channels, journalists in the traditional electronic press, TV directors and famous actors and international news agencies’ representatives in the Sultanate. In addition to these interviews, an online survey has been conducted on 517 randomly selected participants from all over Oman. The survey includes 37 questions to measure the impression of ordinary Omani citizens about the efforts made by the official media system about the concept of the Omani nation. The study explores the importance of mainstream media sources in Oman and their effectiveness in the development of national identity and societal development. Additionally, the extent to which controlling freedom of speech in this type of media system can significantly impact the development of the nationalism notion. The study also focuses on how digital media reproduces the nation’s sense of belonging to the global world. The study concludes by exploring possible avenues for future research in these areas.Citation
Almuqeemi, K.M.S. (2024) The Notion of Nation in the Centralised Media Systems and the Challenges of New Media. Oman’s Media System as a Case Study. PhD thesis. University of BedfordshirePublisher
University of BedfordshireType
Thesis or dissertationLanguage
enDescription
A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.Collections
The following license files are associated with this item:
- Creative Commons
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Writing and unwriting (media) art history: Erkki Kurenniemi in 2048 [book review]Review of 'Writing and Unwriting (Media) Art History: Erkki Kurenniemi in 2048' edited by Joasia Krysa and Jussi Parikka. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, U.S.A., 2015. 368 pp., illus. ISBN: 9780262029582.
-
Representations of Chinese gendered and racialised bodies in contemporary media sitesSocial media are influential sociocultural forces that construct and transmit information about gender, health and bodies to young people in the digital age. In health and physical activity, Chinese people are often represented and positioned differently to other (minority) ethnic groups. For example, Black young people are often understood as having low academic motivations and aspirations but as ‘natural’ athletes; in contrast, Chinese young people, seen as the ‘model minority’ who excel in STEM subjects, are fragile, reserved and disinterested in physical movements. These public forms of representation may sit in opposition to the young people’s embodied identity. When these misrepresentations are internalised, issues such as micro-aggression and racism may have an impact on Chinese young people’s health and wellbeing. This paper aims to examine how Chinese bodies are gendered and racialised in contemporary social media sites (e.g. Google News, LiveJournal, Medium, Wordpress). Drawing on critical discourse analysis and Foucault’s concepts of normalisation and discursive practice, the paper will problematise the often taken-for-granted gendered and racialised stereotypes related to Chinese physicality and health on social media sites. Implications for developing future research and teaching resources in critical media health literacy for young people on issues related to gender and equity will be provided. The results affect how we understand, represent, and discuss Chinese (young) people on social media sites, thereby how Chinese young people engage, construct, and perform their embodied identities in Western, English speaking societies.
-
The UK media-state nexus in the context of post-9/11 terrorism policyFollowing the terrorist attacks on America on 11 September 2001, the New Labour government enacted an unprecedented amount of terrorism legislation in the form of the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, the Terrorism Act 2006, and finally the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008. Whilst the government viewed these terrorism laws as vital to national security, many of the measures contained in these acts, such as control orders and increased detentions, provoked intense debates over civil liberties. Much research on media-state relations in the context of responses to 9/11 have found evidence to support the elite-driven paradigm, whereby the media have been shown to fail in their adversarial ‘watchdog’ role by acting as ‘faithful servants’ (Wolfsfeld, 1997) to the political agenda. This research tested these assumptions by examining the media framing of the UK government’s legislative responses to terrorism post-9/11. In so doing, it analyses the relationship between the media and the New Labour government in the context of the policymaking process. To date, longitudinal studies that map the UK media-state nexus within the context of terrorism policymaking are lacking. This thesis therefore, addresses the lacunae in the scholarship. In terms of its theoretical framework, this thesis tests three competing models of media performance (elite-driven, oppositional and independent) on British press reporting of the parliamentary debates (Robinson et al., 2010). Methodologically, it takes an inductive approach to analysing the framing of the debates, and draws on material gleaned from interviews with four former home secretaries. The findings reveal that of the three meta-frames (national security, civil liberties and party politics), the politics frame dominated across all four case studies. Although government sources dominated the debates, the evidence suggests that they had limited influence over the news agenda, which runs contra to the elite-driven (redefined here as government-driven) hypothesis. Instead, at an aggregate level, the evidence lends greater support for the independent model. There is also evidence that some sections of the press did subject the legislation to more robust scrutiny, and thus, to some degree, fulfilled their role as political watchdogs, which supports the oppositional thesis.
