 I'm just going to, first of all, introduce myself. I'm Dina Matar. I'm a reader in Arab media and political communication at the Center for Global Media and Communication at SOAS. And I'm really looking forward to talking to you about the global media and digital cultures online, which I will be convening. So basically, how we're going to do this is I'm going to do a presentation, which is hopefully not going to be too long. So do bear with me as we go through the presentation. And then I would suggest that we have a question and answer session afterwards, where people raise their hands or put in a question in the chat box on the kind of the right hand corner of your screen. So is that OK with everyone who is attending? Yes, thank you. All right, thank you so much. I really appreciate you coming. So welcome and really looking forward to this discussion. Sorry, if you could put your, you know, there is a chat box where you could put some questions if you cannot hear me or anything like that. I can see some names that I can recognize. Hello, Lara. Nice to see you there. And how are you? So it's good to see that you are attending this session. And so you could learn what we're talking about. So my discussion is going to be kind of an introduction to the degree and also trying to make you think about the topics that we might be talking about and why they are relevant today and why we need to kind of talk about media in a global context and trying to think about it in terms of global media and digital cultures together. So that's me. And so the introduction to the slides will be I'll talk about the MA program and then what you will do and when. And the presentation then we'll talk about the core module, global media and digital cultures. And then we'll have the question and answer session. So in a sense, just going through the structure of the degree as well as the main topics that we will be talking about throughout the degree and associated topics that might come up as we go along. Remember that, in a sense, the syllabus is already set. But we'll try and change the weekly topics according to contemporary issues. So what is happening and what is happening in the world? How do we react to that? How do we understand media's involvement of what is happening in the world? And we come from the perspective that media are central to everything that we do. I mean, obviously all of you use media and social media in different ways. But how are we going to understand this centrality? Because we are not going to take it for granted. So we all take for granted that media are central. But how are we going to look at it through the course and as we go along? So I'll go over to the third slide, which is why do you want or why do we want to study media online? Well, first of all, because online gives you the opportunity to do something else while you are also learning and increasing, kind of enhancing your knowledge. And also it might help you in your work, help you in your career, because one of the main things that we do across, so as particularly at the postgraduate and the master's level, is we try and help students develop critical thinking. And critical thinking is quite relevant to anything that anyone can do in any job or in any situation that they are in. So what is it that we are doing? And how do we look at it? So we look at it as an interdisciplinary, because media studies is not really a discipline of itself. It's kind of emerged out of the sociology and social sciences, and it became a field within the social sciences that has grown and becomes very important, particularly with the expansion of digital media over the past 10 years in particular. So we look at media as interdisciplinary, it's transnational, it's across nations, it's group. And so we try and understand what these means to how can we understand global media and digital cultures by looking at theoretical, methodological and pedagogical debate. I think it should be within the study of media in the context of Asian, African and Middle East studies. And we look at that through publications, conferences, workshops and teaching. And there's going to be a lot of interaction through online platforms to try and understand how we can use, for example, Facebook as a form of teaching, but also as a platform that we can critique and we can look at critically by looking at what it means for politics, what it means for cultures, what it means for social engagement and participation. And so we have innovative learning spaces, lectures, tutorials and e-forums. We have small, regular activities and these are responses, at the beginning, they'd be responses to the reading list. And then we will be looking at how we can respond to many essays. We will also be trying to involve all our distance learning or online students in our events. We have annual lectures, we have panels, we have student events. And the way that the distance learning works is that we pay 3,000 pounds per module. So why study global media now? Okay, we are COVID-19. What has COVID-19 made us think about media? One of the things that is quite important is that COVID-19 is one of the crisis or global crisis that we all face today. But we have faced other crisis, like a crisis of climate change over population, depletion of natural resources, the global political order and much else. But how do we know about these crisis? And this is the key question because the media tell us, sorry, we don't know what's happening in other parts of the world because we don't necessarily visit them but we know about them via the media. So everything we want the world to know about us is via the media and everything that the world wants to know about it or other parts of the world is via the media. So within this course, we ask questions in particular, okay, so what are the drivers and the choices behind media coverage? Why do they choose a particular story over the other? In recent weeks, we've had the concentration on the Black Lives Matter and rightly so. But what does it mean? What is media's role in them? What is the language that is used? What are the images that we see? And also we need to think beyond that and think, okay, so normally when we think about media, it's the coverage of the negative. It's always about the preferably unexpected. So crisis obviously comes at the top of the news agenda and everything else gets forgotten. And of course there are other crisis that are happening in other parts of the world. I know for instance about the Middle East, conflicts that are going on, but they become secondary to what is the main story. So why is this happening? And also we need to question the need of the mass and social media to attract audiences to thrive. So it is a business after. So how do we look at the politically, what we call the political economy of media? Who owns it? Who drives it? Who controls it? Doesn't mean that we believe in a kind of conspiracy theories that media are conniving with business to promote particular viewpoints, but we need to look into that and we need to try and assess it critically. We also ask about the terms that media use to designate major misfortunes. So in a way, what is the language? One of the things that was quite interesting for me in looking at the reporting of the Black Lives Matter is the kind of the idea that it's about anger. It's about almost link to the language of immob. How do we look at that? So in a sense, it brings back the language that media sometimes uses to talk about something in a negative way with a negative connotation. But of course, it brings back other previous narratives that have talked about events similar to Black Lives Matter in a way that seems to assign labels to particular groups. So how does that happen? What is the role of language? What is the role of narrative? And what do images tell us about what is going on? Because it matters, because particular words and languages, they become so normalized that we use them without understanding the meanings. But of course, there is something else, particularly with digital media coming into our lives in almost intrusive ways. It's really embedded in everything we do. So is the medium the message? We go back to that very important question of critical media studies. Is the medium the message? Is it because I have a smartphone that I can do or I can say whatever I can? And what is the consequence of that? So in a sense, the social responsibility of engaging with media is also an important aspect of what we are hoping to help you understand. Next slide. So what we will study, again, is almost like repeating myself, but the central role of media in global concerns and lives. We look at populism, misinformation, prejudice, bias, surveillance, as well as grassroots, activism and participation. I mean, we cannot ignore the fact that marginalized groups have actually used media in very effective ways. But how does that translate into actual practices and does it really remove disadvantages and inequalities, et cetera, et cetera? I think we have the example of the Arab Spring and the post-Arab Spring. We had people going on the streets in 2011. Across many countries in the Arab world, we have other examples. But again, if you look at the ways that kind of other Italian regimes or people like Donald Trump in America, how they use media in a particular way, it is very problematic. So we need to think of what drives media and who uses it. We look at the role of language, image and symbols, representation, voice and participation. We look at the transnational connections, migration and diasporas. We look at media and conflict, media and war, media and activism and protest. And one of the things that I have to say here is that we do not really take for granted that media are powerful. And because we try and understand where that power lies and with whom and how it translates into actual life. So this is really central to how we approach it. And also other thing is we try and understand the ways that the theories of media have come from the Western context. They emerge, most theories and concepts around media studies have emerged from the West. So how, you know, is that something that we can just take and transport to other countries? And this is where we so as comes in, which is the understanding of the region from the perspective regions, from the perspectives of the regions themselves. So how do we critique these Western-centric media theories and concepts? Because they have dominated how we imagine the world. And should we or should we not accept them as a given? So these are questions that we can ask. We do not really just throw them out of the window, just like that. We try and think through them and also link it to wider concepts. We also want to understand the rise of global media as part of capitalist structures and globalization processes. And we like to think about the expansion in digital platforms and technologies within social, political and economic structures. Media do not operate on their own. They are part of social and political systems. They are part of cultures. So they are not entities on their own. And this is when people say, oh, we blame the media. Well, of course we do, but then how do we link that to other structures around them? And also we address the relationship between politics and media, media power, media effects, media and nations, media and diverse cultures. We look into questions of access and control and their impact on lives. One of the things that I have been trying to look at recently is the question of misinformation. And if we look at it and the kind of the dominance of conspiracy theories coming from everywhere, including Trump. So particularly Trump, of course, in relation to COVID-19, if you think about this idea of the injection of a data or something to try and get rid of the virus. So in a sense, where do these conspiracy theories come from and who is spreading them? And as I was looking at the out-of-world in particular, it's really interesting to see that despite the fact that people do have smartphones, they use their smartphones and mobile phones to communicate whatever they hear from their friends or from whatever. But the internet penetration is still very low. And so what we call as digital literacy is actually still a problem because there is something called as digital divide that remains important. So these are questions that also apply to Africa and other parts of the world as well. And then address the role of media in normalizing inequalities and differentiations along gendered racial, ethnic and religious lines. So these become hopefully topics that we can discuss in the course and in the different modules that you would take. So how is the course structured? So as you can see on the website, it is, you've got a core course which is called Global Media and Digital Cultures. It's a 16-week course and we have two entry points, one in October 2020 and one in April 2020. And then we repeat that in the following years. And we have a research and mini module for eight weeks that we try and kind of build around the topics that we are learning every week. We have compulsory modules, one is called digital diplomacy. And that word we inherited because we ran it as a module in the diplomacy program, that online degree that has been running for a while. But it's basically a media course. And it's a course that I have actually designed and it is around my expertise in international political communication. So it looks at the relationship between politics and communication. So we look at propaganda, international relations. We look at media and foreign policy. We look at media and conflict, media and war. We look at public opinion and we look at the main theory in media which is called the public sphere. And we try and think about it from the understanding which kind of underpins everything else that we are teaching in that course. That communication is constitutive of politics. Politics is about it being communicated. It's not about only institutions and systems of governments. It's about how it is communicated. It's a discourse, it's a language, it's a narrative. So it's un-passionate about that. And it is something that I keep talking until students get so fed up. And then the other compulsory module is the transnational communities, diasporas and networking. This is a very successful course that we run on campus. But the reason that it is interesting is that it's about migration. It's about mass movement. It's about transnational communities. How do they connect? So in a sense, it is about global media but it's also about connecting with the local. So it's about the relationship between the local and the global very much so. And it becomes important because of the activism that diasporas, transnational communities can get engaged in, solidarity networks and so on. And these become quite relevant as we go along in the course. And then we do have the optional modules. We have an option called media and development. She looks at the critique of development but looking at it from the media perspective. And again, it's about the fact that you cannot understand development without understanding how ideas of development are communicated. The gender and security in Africa is a module that runs in the Center for Gender Studies but it is open to us. Contemporary themes in media and religion is a course that we run from the media department. And I think this one is quite interesting because it really is about, again, it's about contemporary problems and issues related to media and religion. And the instrumentalization of religion as a way of othering, as a way of talking about people as being different. It kind of links to the idea of how do we understand race and media and so on. Gender and social inequality is a module that is coming out of Center for Gender Studies. Contemporary global issues in media and gender. This is a new module that we have designed and which will be running from the media. And again, it looks at the relationship between the two. Global diplomacy, Muslim minorities and the state, Muslim minorities in global context, cultural diplomacy, diplomacy and power. These last one, two, three, four, five ones, they are coming from the MA in global diplomacy. And finally, the last slide. Either send me a question via chat or email me.