Group items matching
in title, tags, annotations or urlArab Public Opinion about the Israeli War on Gaza - 0 views
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a sample of 8000 respondents (men and women) from 16 Arab countries
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97% of respondents expressing psychological stress (to varying degrees) as a result of the war on Gaza. 84% expressed a sense of great psychological stress.
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54% of respondents relied on television, compared to 43% who relied on the internet
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AI Causes Real Harm. Let's Focus on That over the End-of-Humanity Hype - Scientific American - 0 views
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Wrongful arrests, an expanding surveillance dragnet, defamation and deep-fake pornography are all actually existing dangers of so-called “artificial intelligence” tools currently on the market. That, and not the imagined potential to wipe out humanity, is the real threat from artificial intelligence.
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Beneath the hype from many AI firms, their technology already enables routine discrimination in housing, criminal justice and health care, as well as the spread of hate speech and misinformation in non-English languages. Already, algorithmic management programs subject workers to run-of-the-mill wage theft, and these programs are becoming more prevalent.
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Corporate AI labs justify this posturing with pseudoscientific research reports that misdirect regulatory attention to such imaginary scenarios using fear-mongering terminology, such as “existential risk.”
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Jordan: Alarm raised over 'vague and repressive' cybercrime draft law | Middle East Eye - 0 views
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“Internet users will no longer be able to know if their online conduct will be considered a crime or not, resulting in even more online censorship.”
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he law is paving the way to further issues, such as webpage admins being held responsible for comments posted by others. “The scope of the text is so broad it can be applied to admins of WhatsApp groups too, making normal users potential censors of free speech.”
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Around a dozen rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, have urged the Jordanian government to withdraw the bill. “The draft legislation will jeopardise digital rights, including freedom of expression and the right to information, and will ultimately fail in achieving the Jordanian government’s stated goals of tackling 'disinformation', 'hate speech' and 'online defamation',” their joint statement said
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Statement of Support for Art Professor Fired from Hamline University - Muslim Public Affairs Council - 0 views
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Even if it is the case that many Muslims feel uncomfortable with such depictions, Dr. Prater was trying to emphasize a key principle of religious literacy: religions are not monolithic in nature, but rather, internally diverse. This principle should be appreciated in order to combat Islamophobia, which is often premised on flattening out Islam and viewing the Islamic tradition in an essentialist and reductionist manner.
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In a time of rampant Islamophobia, highly offensive and racialized images of the Prophet Muḥammad abound on the internet and on social media. We consider these images to be inappropriate and not dissimilar to “black face” or Anti-Semitic cartoons; even if such images and their makers are protected by law, social opprobrium is due to them by all those who are reasonable and decent.
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misusing the label “Islamophobia” has the negative effect of watering down the term and rendering it less effective in calling out actual acts of bigotry.
Concern rises as new Turkish media law squeezes dissent - Al-Monitor: Independent, trusted coverage of the Middle East - 1 views
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"Being more careful, trying as much as possible not to be a target is the main concern of many journalists in Turkey today, including the most free ones."
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Most Turkish newspapers and television channels run by allies toe the government line, but social networks and internet-based media remained largely free -- to the dismay of Erdogan
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Digital rights expert Yaman Akdeniz said the law provides "broad and uncircumscribed discretion to authorities" in its potential widespread use ahead of the election."It is therefore no surprise that the first person to be investigated for this crime is the leader of the main opposition party,"
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Reporting on Iran's unrest and crackdown from afar - The Washington Post - 2 views
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With foreign press virtually absent inside Iran — where authorities are arresting local journalists, restricting internet access and allegedly spreading misinformation online — distant correspondents such as Esfandiari face a deluge of challenges in getting accurate news about Iran to the rest of the world.
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“These people are really risking everything to send us videos of the protests,” Esfandiari said. “And they come speak to us because they trust us, and they know the state media are never going to give them a platform.”
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Western news organizations have been almost entirely shut out of the country by state restrictions and security concerns. Meanwhile, the government has arrested more than 60 Iranian journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Niloofar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi, among the reporters who helped break the story of Amini’s death, were charged with acting as CIA spies, an offense punishable by the death penalty.
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Prominent Turkish literary figures slam controversial media law in joint statement - Turkish Minute - 0 views
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More than 200 members of the Turkish literary world have released a joint statement to raise their voices against a recently approved law regulating the media that makes “spreading false information” a criminal offense, saying, “We will not be silenced,” the Gazete Duvar news website reported on Wednesday.
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Approved by the Turkish parliament on Oct. 13, the new law consists of 40 articles that amend several laws, including the Internet Law, the Press Law and the Turkish Penal Code (TCK).
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As an overwhelming majority of the country’s mainstream media has come under government control over the last decade, Turks have taken to social media and smaller online news outlets for critical voices and independent news. Turks are already heavily policed on social media, and many have been charged with insulting President Erdoğan or his ministers, or criticism related to foreign military incursions and the handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Turkey was classified as “not free” by Freedom House in its “Freedom in the World 2022” index. More than 90 percent of Turkey’s media networks “depend on public tenders and are owned by large businesses with close personal ties to President Erdoğan,” according to a Freedom House report released in February.
RTL Today - Turkey introduces jail terms for 'fake news' - 0 views
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Turkey's parliament on Thursday approved a tough pre-election law that could see reporters and social media users jailed for up to three years for spreading "fake news".
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cement the government's already-firm grip on the media eight months before a general election that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan enters trailing in the polls.
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The Council of Europe said the measure's vague definition of "disinformation" and accompanying threat of jail could have a "chilling effect and increased self-censorship, not least in view of the upcoming elections in June 2023".
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An Uncertain Future for Jordanian Youth - POMED - 2 views
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Jordan’s strategic relationships and regional importance continue to win it unmatched financial support from the international community. And as a result, the government has felt little urgency or pressure to undertake real reform or respond to the legitimate demands of its youth. With trust between the youth and the regime low and the perception of corruption high, however, remaining complacent carries grave risks for the country’s stability.
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“Economic optimism is scant, particularly among the youth,” the Arab Barometer found, adding that the economic crisis was “leading many to consider migration despite global travel restrictions.”
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the rate of suicide in Jordan has also increased over the past few years amid the dire economic conditions. In 2020, the rate was the highest in 10 years and 45 percent higher than the year before, with one suicide on average every other day. After university graduates threatened earlier this year to commit mass suicide over widespread unemployment, Jordan’s parliament passed legislation criminalizing suicide and attempts to commit suicide in a public place, doubling the fine if it is a mass suicide attempt.
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African Podcasting: Challenges and Chances - The Cairo Review of Global Affairs - 0 views
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Although podcasting is growing in Africa, radio, a close cousin that has been around since the days of colonization, remains prevalent.
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The largest podcasting markets in Africa include Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya
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the African podcasts that get exposure typically sound familiar with commercial appeal in terms of format, content, and tone
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Oman's national unity racks up high cultural costs as local languages fall silent - Al-Monitor: The Pulse of the Middle East - 0 views
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In Oman, the Gulf Cooperation Council country with the greatest linguistic diversity, eight of the country’s 10 languages are threatened or dying
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the minority languages in Oman belong to three families: the Indo-Iranian Kumzari, Lawati (also known as Khojki), Zadjali and Balochi; the Modern South Arabian Harsusi, Bathari, Hobyot, Mehri and Jabbali; and the Bantu language Swahili. Only Balochi and Swahili have enough world speakers to be considered safe from extinction.
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Some of the risks these languages face are due to the structural reforms — mainly in the field of education — instigated by Sultan Qaboos bin Said for the last five decades to promote national unity over a constellation of identities scattered across the state, with an emphasis on language. Ever since a coup orchestrated by British intelligence in July 1970 overthrew Sultan Qaboos’s father, Sultan Said bin Taimur, the state's official language, Arabic, has been a key element of this newly crafted Omani identity.
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Exposure to news grows less fragmented with an increase in mobile access | PNAS - 0 views
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the increase in mobile access to news actually leads to higher exposure to diverse content and that ideological self-selection explains only a small percentage of co-exposure to news
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more than half of Internet users in the United States do not use online news
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the increasing divide between informed citizens and news avoiders
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Coronavirus: Pandemic unites Maghreb leaders in crackdown on dissent | Middle East Eye - 0 views
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Before the pandemic spread, a number of countries in the Middle East and North Africa had been experiencing a wave of public protests for more democratic and accountable rule akin to the so-called Arab Spring of 2011. "The crackdown started several months before the pandemic, but has been exacerbated by the emergency laws and extrajudicial tools regimes are employing under the guise of the pandemic," Sarah Yerkes, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace Middle East Program.
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"Regimes across North Africa are exploiting the pandemic to crackdown on activists, journalists, and anyone critical of the regime, particularly those using social media."
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In Algeria, with the popular anti-government protest movement known as the Hirak put on hold for safety reasons since March, the repressive climate, arguably the worst in North Africa, has worsened with the continued arrests of journalists and activists, which has been a maintained pattern since President Abdelmadjid Tebboune took office in December.
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Erdoğan's Turkey and the Problem of the 30 Million - War on the Rocks - 0 views
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Erdoğan’s brand is waning in the cities, the coasts, and among young people. Neither the new Erdoğan-shaped presidential system, nor his expansionist foreign policy are popular in these parts. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, chronic unemployment and inflation extinguished any hope of him bouncing back in the polls. Despite his total control over the state, mainstream media, and major capital groups, the president is unlikely to ever get much more than half of the popular vote.
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The Erdoğan government now faced a question that all successful populist regimes must solve: What to do with the minority? They certainly can’t be granted free and fair elections, lest they attain the means to exact revenge. Nor can they be deprived of all their rights of representation, lest they be driven to revolt or treason. So how does a very slim majority of a country suppress the other half indefinitely? How does it rest easy, knowing that its hegemony is locked in?
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The Erdoğan government surely knows that an attempt to “nationalize” all of the 30 million would be unrealistic. Rather, it seeks to separate the leftists and Kurds among them and brand them as terrorists, then turn around and securely pull the center opposition into the nationalist opposition.
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Calls in Egypt for censored social media after arrests of TikTok star, belly dancer - Reuters - 0 views
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Egyptian lawmakers have called for stricter surveillance of women on video sharing apps after the arrests of a popular social media influencer and a well-known belly dancer on charges of debauchery and inciting immorality.
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Instagram and TikTok influencer Haneen Hossam, 20, is under 15 days detention for a post encouraging women to broadcast videos in exchange for money, while dancer Sama el-Masry faces 15 days detention for posting “indecent” photos and videos.
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“Because of a lack of surveillance some people are exploiting these apps in a manner that violates public morals and Egypt’s customs and traditions,”
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