NU-Q Annual Media Study Will Be Presented at U.S. Conference

NU-Q faculty, staff, and a student are presenting a series of research projects at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) conference, which is held annually in the U.S.

“As the largest and most prestigious organization for journalism and mass communication scholars, the AEJMC provides NU-Q with an opportunity to present the work being done by our faculty, staff, and students to a global audience,” said Everette E. Dennis, dean and CEO. “Each year, we also have the opportunity to present our annual study on the use of media in the Middle East.”

Dennis will address a session at the conference on “The Life and Legacy of Melvin L. DeFleur,” discussing his longtime collaboration with DeFleur, a renowned media scholar. Dennis and DeFleur co-authored a leading text titled Understanding Mass Communication for more than 30 years.

This year’s session on the media study - Five Years of Media Use & Public Opinion in the Arab Region: Findings and Reflections from a Multinational Longitudinal Survey – will be moderated by NU-Q’s Senior Associate Dean Klaus Schoenbach and will feature NU-Q Professor Justin D. Martin and Marium Saeed, research study coordinator.

The study, which will be released in September, examines media use patterns, content preferences, and attitudes toward issues such as censorship, freedom of speech, and cultural preservation across the region. Over the years, the studies have achieved widespread recognition for providing quantitative data on the economically and socially important subject of media use in the region and for providing insight on issues surrounding this subject.

Also presenting at the conference will be, Ibrahim Abusharif, associate professor at NU-Q, who will discuss his paper on Digital Media Disruption and Islamic Religious Authority: Case Study of Online Contestations Over the Mawlid.   

Also contributing to the AEJMC will be NU-Q Professor Christina Paschyn, who will moderate and present on the Teaching Media in the Middle East: Negotiating Gendered Expectations and Differences panel; Amy Kristin Sanders, associate professor, will present her findings on The Protection of Privacy in the Middle East – A Complicated Landscape, as part of the Law & Policy Division session. Also, George Anghelcev, who will join NU-Q this year, will host a session of the organization’s advertising division.

Northwestern’s Qatar campus was established in 2008 to educate the next generation of professional communicators and journalists in the region, and to equip them with the theoretical and practical knowledge to report and tell their stories to the world. Its faculty and students frequently present their research at conferences around the world, such as the AEJMC, which will take place in Chicago this month and will feature sessions on teaching, research, and public service, covering various issues in journalism and mass communication.