What is the Arabic term for 'homepage', 'cloud computing' and 'Arabizi? How would you say 'blogging', 'podcasting', 'social networking' and 'tagging'? Could you recognise the phrase 'report spam'? Or 'printer-friendly version'? This vocabulary gives you ready-made lists of key terms in Internet Arabic for translating both from and into Arabic, grouped together in the way you'll use them. Divided into 11 key areas: general terminology, web browsing, written online communication (emails and online forms; blogging; collaborative writing), audio-visual online communication, searching for Information on the web, e-learning, online social networking, netiquette, online security, internet services and my digital identity.
Tackling the issue in a systematic, scientific manner, this book also examines Islamic online communications, online censorship, and Internet use by the civic society as an alternative channel for its mostly oppressed voices.
Your Author decided to write this book based on his extensive Middle East travels augmented by the Internet View of what is happening in the Arabic countries during the first part of the 21st Century. There are chapters covering Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel (with emphasis on its interactions with Arabic countries), Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan (including background information on the war in that country). There is an additional Appendix which covers an Insider's View of the Arabic World. Included are some of the author's observations while working in Iran during the time of the Shah and before the ruthless people now dictating government in Iran became leaders. I recall the many highly intelligent and well educated people I knew while in Iran. Dr. Jon Schiller has authored 2 other books about the Middle East: "Masada never again", a fictionalized history of how Israel developed nuclear weapons "IBEX", a fictionalized history of an electronic surveillance system installed in northern Iran during the Cold War to spy on the Soviets.
New media scholars and human rights activists have argued that the Internet, as a new medium, should enjoy at least the same freedom of expression afforded to other media. Some have even argued that the Internet, by definition of its structure, is a more democratic medium by nature and therefore should afford people even more freedom of expression than traditional media outlets. However, freedom of expression has always been a heated topic in the Middle East and the Arab world. While most governments, if not all, claim to support and promote the principle of freedom of expression, in reality government actions sometimes contradict these claims. Furthermore, in certain areas of the Arab world it seems that the indigenous people themselves are against certain aspects of freedom of expression, especially if it touches upon sensitive areas such as religions, traditions or moral values. The question then becomes where the line is between freedom of expression and obscenity or profanity, and who gets to draw this line. Should drawing the line be an individual decision, since this delineation may very well vary from one person to another, or should an entity such as a government or a ministry or a religious authority draw the line for its people? And if the latter is the case, who in that authority decides where the line will be and what are the standards that should be used to draw that line? These are not easy questions to answer with regards to exposure to content through any medium, but they are particularly difficult to answer when the Internet is the medium in question. The reasons behind this fact have to do with the nature of the Internet as a media outlet that, to a large extent, amalgamates the personal with the mass, and affords anybody the chance to be a publisher. These factors are also used as arguments by those who advocate some kind of regulation or monitoring of the Internet for fear some sectors of society would be exposed to material that contradicts the general moral, social, cultural or religious traditions. However, quite often political factors also come into the equation and the monitoring or regulation of the Internet is then used to isolate or block people or entities with opposing political agendas or opinions to the mainstream governing voices, thus creating an obvious obstacle to democracy and a serious threat to freedom of expression.
This volume constitutes the refereed proceedings of the following 9 international workshops: OTM Academy, OTM Industry Case Studies Program, Cloud and Trusted Computing, C&TC, Enterprise Integration, Interoperability, and Networking, EI2N, Industrial and Business Applications of Semantic Web Technologies, INBAST, Information Systems, om Distributed Environment, ISDE, Methods, Evaluation, Tools and Applications for the Creation and Consumption of Structured Data for the e-Society, META4eS, Mobile and Social Computing for collaborative interactions, MSC, and Ontology Content, OnToContent 2014. These workshops were held as associated events at OTM 2014, the federated conferences "On The Move Towards Meaningful Internet Systems and Ubiquitous Computing", in Amantea, Italy, in October 2014. The 56 full papers presented together with 8 short papers, 6 posters and 5 keynotes were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 96 submissions. The focus of the workshops were on the following subjects models for interoperable infrastructures, applications, privacy and access control, reliability and performance, cloud and configuration management, interoperability in (System-of-)Systems, distributed information systems applications, architecture and process in distributed information system, distributed information system development and operational environment, ontology is use for eSociety, knowledge management and applications for eSociety, social networks and social services, social and mobile intelligence, and multimodal interaction and collaboration.
With its emphasis on the primacy of change, this study arrives at a particularly auspicious moment, as the Middle East continues to be convulsed by the greatest upheavals in generations, which have come to be known as the Arab Spring. Originally prepared as the tenth-anniversary volume of the UNDP's Arab Human Development Report, Arab Human Development in the Twenty-first Century places empowerment at the center of human development in the Arab world, viewing it not only from the vantage point of a more equitable distribution of economic resources but also of fundamental legal, educational, and political reform. The ten chapters in this book follow closely this political economy framework. They look back at what Arab countries have achieved since the early 2000s and forward to what remains to be done to reach full development. Supported by a wealth of statistical material, they cover the rule of law, the evolution of media, the persistence of corruption, the draining of resources through armed conflict, the dominance and increase of poverty, the environment, and religious education. The concluding chapter attempts an inventory of the world literature and different experiences on democratic transition to explore where the region could be heading. This critical and timely study is indispensable reading to development specialists and to Middle East scholars and students alike, as well as to anyone with an interest in the future trajectory of the region.
This book examines the discursive construction of social identity of Arab-American groups on the World Wide Web, showing that ethnic identity can be interpolated in discernable ways through the mediative of internet technology.
This book provides a clear and authoritative introduction to the emerging Arab media industries in the context of globalization and its impacts, with a focus on publishing, press, broadcasting, cinema and new media. Through detailed discussions of the regulation and economics of these industries, the authors argue that the political, technological and cultural changes on the global media scene have resulted in the reorganization of the Arab media field. They provide striking examples of this through the particular effects on media policies, media technology and the content and genres developed for the new generation of media consumers. As part of the book's overview of the contemporary characteristics of Arab media, the authors outline the development of the role of modern Arab media from a tool of mobilizing the public to a tool of commercial and symbolic profit. Overall, the volume illustrates how the Arab region represents a unique case where the commercialization and liberalization of selected media industries has gone hand in hand with continuous state intervention and an increasing self censorship. Written for students without prior knowledge of the topic, Arab Media will be essential reading for all interested in the contemporary global media industries.
This book presents original contributions on the theories and practices of emerging Internet, Data and Web technologies and their applications in businesses, engineering and academia. As a key feature, it addresses advances in the life-cycle exploitation of data generated by digital ecosystem technologies. The Internet has become the most proliferative platform for emerging large-scale computing paradigms. Among these, Data and Web technologies are two of the most prominent paradigms, manifesting in a variety of forms such as Data Centers, Cloud Computing, Mobile Cloud, Mobile Web Services, and so on. These technologies altogether create a digital ecosystem whose cornerstone is the data cycle, from capturing to processing, analysis and visualization. The need to investigate various research and development issues in this digital ecosystem has been made even more pressing by the ever-increasing demands of real-life applications, which are based on storing and processing large amounts of data. Given its scope, the book offers a valuable asset for all researchers, software developers, practitioners and students interested in the field of Data and Web technologies.
