Intellect

Authors:  Noureddine Miladi 
DOI: 10.1386/jammr.1.3.245_1

Keywords
War reporting, War on Iraq, Arab Audiences, Identity and the Media, Media and Social Change, Security

Abstract
This article examines television audiences' perceptions of the ‘war on terrorism’ and the war on Iraq coverage by western as well as Arab media. It looks at how bilingual North African viewers in the United Kingdom perceive news reporting and what issues they raise vis-à-vis the repercussions of mediating the war on their everyday existence, hence on social change in this country. Informed by sixteen interviews and family discussions among North African families in London, and the influential theoretical discussion offered by Edward Said's ‘Orientalism’, Fukuyama's ‘end of history’ and others, this work seeks to find out the extent to which the media can be seen as agents of social control or social change? To what extent can media messages play a role in social stability or instability? What role can the news coverage audiences get on their television screens via satellite or terrestrial services contribute to their integration or alienation in the society they live in? This study reveals that there is a changing perception of people's identity, which has been the result of a perceived biased coverage of their causes and the British government's unjust foreign policy in various parts of the Arab and Muslim world. Meanings of Britishness and the notion of belonging have become to be questioned among some of the respondents. Even those holding British citizenship feel they are becoming more and more second-class citizens, excluded and segregated against. Also, the lack of trust and perception of bias vis-à-vis western media highlights my respondents' changing loyalty towards Arab satellite TV. Arab television channels headed by Al-Jazeera have been seen as sources of more ‘accurate’ information with which Arab audiences wish to identify. This article also argues that the issues raised here by the media's war coverage will have long-term negative repercussions on this North African minority, as well as British society at large. Social change will be characterized by the possible exclusion of Arab and Muslim communities instead of including them in the wider British society. The sense of security, which is salient in people's discussions, will probably dominate the feature of British public debates for years to come.