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Communication in the Middle East of the 1990s
| Article
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11035 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1986 |
4,887 Words |
| Author
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Joseph Ben-Dak
Joseph Ben-Dak has been a professor of international business.
Formerly president of the Israeli Peace Research Society, he
is currently chairman of the board of the Tri-alpha
International Corporation. This article will appear soon in
the book The Middle East City, edited by Abdulaziz Y. Saqqaf,
to be published by Paragon House. This article is printed with
the permission of the Professors World Peace Academy, which
sponsored the conference on the Middle East City at which this
article was first presented. |
Communication has been part and parcel of the process of urbanization. As Arab nationalism grew--especially in the cities of Cairo, Alexandria, Damascus, and Beirut, it was the printed media that made clarity of the message possible and combined it with tacit or open modernism among intellectuals. On the other hand, it was radio broadcasts that facilitated the growth of urbanization and Arabism among the masses.
In the early fifties, television entered the scene. Television indeed has become the moving communication instrument in such populations as the Jordanian Bedouins, whose nomadic tents had television antennas as early as 1978. Cassette players and transistor radios are ubiquitous throughout the Middle East, and television is quickly becoming ubiquitous, without regard to income bracket.
Egypt has been typical of this trend. In the late 1950s, between 55 percent and 77 percent of rural Egyptians attended to radio and 20 percent read newspapers. In 1960, some studies suggested a moderate growth of newspaper reading. This latter "fact," however, is not borne out by a 1974 study, which reported that 97 percent of Egyptian peasants listen to radio, 76 percent watch television, and 31 percent read newspapers. On the basis of two recent studies reviewing both urban and rural Egypt, it can be stated that in the 1980s between 89 percent and 96 percent listen to radio, between 64 percent and 95 percent watch television, and about 43 percent read newspapers.
When one compares these statistics with the illiteracy rate, the relationship between the urban process and communication is further suggestive. In Jordan in 1976, the illiteracy rate was 29.3 percent (70 percent in 1952), and in Egypt in 1978, the illiteracy rate was 56.5 percent. Small wonder then that governments, aware of the high rate of illiteracy in the rural sector, stress and budget for more electronic media as change agents in agricultural development and health-care planning.
Information is thus assured better dissemination and reception. Radio and television are also the tools of political and cultural integration, bringing to the village and to smaller or larger outlying settlements the value system nurtured in the city. In this sense, the development of electronic media in the Middle East advances a process of empathy and emulation.
The new capacity to transfer sights, physical and spiritual ecology (e.g., Al-Aqsa Mosque), color, focus, recognizable faces,
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