Abderrahim Chalfaouat
Assistant professor at Hassan II University of Casablanca. Dr. in advertising and communication, MA in Moroccan American Studies. Researching media and communications, especially in Morocco
Location Morocco
Activity
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@MartinScott To a large extent yes, but to varying degrees of success. Online media capture tends to be more nuanced, and amenable to countering dominant narratives as a result.
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Abderrahim Chalfaouat made a comment
If we want to compare Paulo Freire's concept of 'problem-posing dialogue' to Jurgen Habermas' public sphere, I think they both advocate for giving due importance to public debate and rational, critical exchange in promoting public good, defending the public interest and enhancing democratisation. In his theorisation, Freire sounds even more inclusive than...
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@MartinScott Apparently, there is self-determination, without which keeping up would be too hard and unbearable. That self-determination is amenable to focusing on the process rather than the outcome. Little by little, photographs attract more local interest and global attention, as Brian confirms. I think if we extend the meaning of dialogue a bit to include...
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Abderrahim Chalfaouat made a comment
The experience of SlumTV seems interesting and inspiring for providing counter-narratives on slums and involving training and capacity-building. Certainly, quality matters if they want to ensure sustainable credibility and put a leg in a highly-competitive, media-saturated community, I expect. However, the videos on SlumTV and Pamoja FM do not mention their...
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Though 'community media' tends to refer mainly to radio, in the Moroccan experience it is more of community news websites and Facebook pages. Due to ubiquitous access to the internet, many local journalists, activists, NGO members, common citizens, etc, have launched local outlets online, especially as a backlash of media capture (Marius Dragomir, 2020) in the...
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@LuděkStavinoha Thanks for sharing your work. Interesting to see the ways in which refugee voices in 'third spaces' can help reshape the discussion on their predicament and frozen temporality. Of similar anthropological and ontological importance would be to widen grounded data to include questions on more precarious and insecure 'third spaces' like migration...
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Abderrahim Chalfaouat made a comment
Two ideas to point out here. First, certain governments create and their media construct negative conceptualisations and representations of immigrants for cultural-political ends. As Maya Goodfellow (2020) explains, immigrants, long before the recent post-Arab Spring 'crisis', have been scapegoated in hostile environments, with few possibilities for making...
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Abderrahim Chalfaouat made a comment
I guess of equal importance to Afro-pessimism/optimism is to consider the context in which each mode of representation rises. Today, the rising 'rest' (Alice H. Amsden, 2001; Fareed Zakaria, 2008) is more visible in African markets and public spheres, which puts considerable pressure on Global North political, economic and cultural policies. The role of...
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@LuděkStavinoha Thank you very much for the link
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Abderrahim Chalfaouat made a comment
Media matter for development, as they matter for social change, deliberation, public negotiation or marginalisation, because they form a whole (fourth) estate. They form a social institution by themselves, sometimes much more powerful than the other three estates. The importance of media has increased exponentially in the (media-saturated) digital age. With...
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Abderrahim Chalfaouat made a comment
Thank you for the course, the links and the sharing spirit
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Very interesting categorisation. If we have to prioritise the four ways, I guess 'media development' should be the starting point. It would be hard to expect media to promote development, help overcome obstacles to development, spread fair and healthy portrayals of development, and provide space for negotiating development, if journalists, or media workers...
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Abderrahim Chalfaouat made a comment
Back then in the pre-globalised world, it was possible to exercise mediated otherness in ways that would be too pleasing or too shocking to the eyes in the global North. Noteworthy is the zooming in on the calamity per se, as if it existed in a vacuum, with no mention of the root causes that may involve politicians, business dealers, clergy or warmongers from...
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What I understand from the concept of scalable sociality is that social interaction is today both large and narrow. It is large in the sense that it manifests in different ways, using diverse tools on different platforms for different purposes. It is narrow in the sense that we can categorize interaction and study behavior as it differs from one platform to...
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In addition to the above-listed ones, Youtube is worth mentioning and studying. Users of other platforms upload their videos on Youtube before sharing. In fact, during the Arab Spring, Youtube seemed the most important, since Facebook served principally to organize events, share street activism best practices and push different publics to join or to...
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Abderrahim Chalfaouat made a comment
Given the highly personalized nature of social media and that interactivity is one of their key features, they exemplify economic, cultural, intellectual and political differences as they interact in a globalized contact zone. This also means social media will keep creating new modes of social change and mutual influence. For researchers, social media allow...
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Abderrahim Chalfaouat made a comment
Hello everyone. Late is better than never. Swamped in PhD work, but I'll do my best to catch up soon
