The Arab Media Centre conducts, promotes and disseminates high
quality scholarly research on Arab media and culture. It was
launched in 2006 as part of the Communication and Media Research
Institute (CAMRI) at the University of Westminster, following a
series of initiatives that had established CAMRI as the UK's
leading academic centre for Arab media research. CAMRI has since
gained support for two further events on Arab media under Round 3
of the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF). It has also
won funding from the Research Councils - UK (RCUK) for a five-year
postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Arab Media Policy. This post
was taken up in
mid-November 2007.
Through conferences,
workshops, guest lectures and the input of its own research staff
and students, the Centre nurtures an international network of
specialists on Arab media. It provides a forum for media scholars,
practitioners, policy-makers and advocates to connect with each
other across the Arab world and outside it.
Background to the Arab Media
Centre
Thanks to a successful
bid to the Research Seminars programme of the UK's Economic and
Social Research Council, CAMRI held a series of six international
one-day seminars on Arab media between December 2003 and June 2005.
Entitled 'Towards an Arab Public Sphere? The Impact of New Media
Technologies on Public Life in the Arab World', the seminar series
attracted more than 30 speakers in addition to an audience of some
35 specialists. It resulted in publication of an edited collection
entitled
Arab Media and Political Renewal: Community, Legitimacy and Public
Life (I B Tauris, London: 2007).
Recent Activities
Since its inception in mid-2006, the Arab
Media Centre has taken initiatives in several research areas. In
December 2006, prompted by concerns that short-term pressures to
gather data on Arab media risk sidelining important methodological
problems and issues, it held a workshop entitled 'Researching Arab Media, Culture and Society:
Confronting Methodological Challenges'. Another research area
being pursued is the teaching of media studies and cultural studies
in Arab higher education, which was the focus of a conference held
in September 2007 under the title 'Media Studies and Cultural Studies in Arab
Higher Education: Mapping the Field'.
A conference titled: 'Journalism Testing Legal Boundaries: Media
Laws and the Reporting of Arab News' took
place in June 2008. The conference examined the
mutual impacts of changes in journalism in Arab countries and
changes in media law. The papers and transcriptions proceedings of
the conference are published on this site. For more on these
conferences, click the heading on the left hand menu.
The most recent conference centered on media
audiences in a conference under the title 'African
and Arab Media Audiences: Shared Agendas for
Research' which took place in London on 30-31 March 2009.
It was organised jointly by the Arab Media Centre, the
African Media Series and the Audiences Group, which are all
research groups within the Communication and Media Research
Institute (CAMRI).
The Arab Media Centre also hosts guest
lectures on diverse topics. Three guest lectures took place between
February and May 2008 and six events took place in
2007; including four lectures, a documentary screening and a
postgraduate seminar on Al-Jazeera English. Information about
the events is given on the Events & Lectures page.
Current and Forthcoming
Activities
- Proceedings of conference 'Journalism Testing Legal
Boundaries: Media Laws and the Reporting of Arab News',
published here on this site.
- Follow-up to December 2006 Research Methods Workshop