Posts Tagged ‘Jordan’
May 1st, 2013
Preliminary research from a survey of nearly 10,000 Arab respondents has found that while most support the right to free expression online, they are apt to believe that the internet should be regulated, according to the researchers.
The survey — a joint effort between researchers at the Qatar campus of the US-based Northwestern University and the World Internet Project — explored media usage in the Arab world. Participants were drawn from eight Arab nations: Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates.
The survey questioned participants’ perceptions of the news media, finding that 61 per cent thought the “quality of news reporting in the Arab world has improved over the past two years.” Media credibility declined in countries that experienced revolutions during the Arab Spring. The Saudi Arabian respondents gave their media outlets high marks with 71 [per cent agreeing with the statement, “The media in your country can report the news independently without interference from officials”.
Overall, the survey found high Facebook penetration among respondents who used social media. Ninety-four percent of the social media users had Facebook accounts, 47 per cent used Twitter and 40 per cent used Facebook. Among the Bahrain social media users, 92 per cent had a Facebook account, while just 29 per cent of the Egyptian respondents did.
The survey aimed to assess the use of media — TV, radio, newspapers, books, web — and levels of trust respondents had toward the sources. It also sought to guage how the respondents used the internet to communicate and conduct transactions like banking or purchases.
The results can be accessed at Arab Media Use Study.
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Tags: Tags: Bahrain, Egypt, freedom of expression, internet, Jordan, Lebanon, Middle East, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates,
April 5th, 2012
Police
beat 30 demonstrators whilst they were detained at a police station in
Jordan on 31 March. The demonstrators were arrested after gathering near the Prime Minister’s office in Amman, protesting the detention of seven activists from Tafila who were arrested mid-March. The 100 strong group of protesters were warned by police after some began chanting “if the people are scorned, the regime will fall.” The crowd were violently dispersed and beaten with truncheons by the police, and 30 participants were arrested. After being taken to the Central Amman Police station, officers continued to kick, punch and beat those who had been arrested.
February 23rd, 2012
A young
Jordanian blogger is recovering in hospital after
being stabbed on Sunday evening. Enas Musallam, 21, was stabbed in the stomach by a hooded man at around 7pm in Darat Al Funun. The man then held the knife to the blogger’s throat and said “next time it will be your neck if you do not stop.” Her colleague told local media he believed the attack related to a recently written blog post criticising Jordanian Prince Hassan. Musallam underwent surgery on Monday, but is said to be in a stable condition.
June 21st, 2011
On Saturday the Agence France-Presse bureau in
Amman was attacked. The office was reportedly stormed by a dozen men armed with clubs who smashed furniture and telephones and threw files to the ground. Two days before the attack, editor in chief Randa Habib was threatened by an anonymous caller after the
agency reported that stones and bottles had been thrown at
King Abdallah’s motorcade during a visit to a settlement 200km north of the capital. Jordan’s Minister of State for Communications and Media Affairs, Taher Adwan, said that reports of violence by some media agencies were
groundless.
June 2nd, 2011
Jordanian journalist, Alaa Fazza, was released from prison Wednesday,
on the orders of King Abdullah II yesterday (1 June), the country’s independence day. Fazza was been detained 14 days by a military court on
charges that he had accused the government of corruption without submitting evidence to the Attorney General. In a
letter to Prime Minister Marouf Bakhit, King Abdullah cautioned about the “danger of the behavior of some who take the denunciation of corruption as an excuse for the character assassination of individuals and institutions.”
April 21st, 2011
Six men raided the office of a news website, Al-Muharrir, in Amman on 19 April. Unidentified men
broke into the personal office of editor-in-chief Jihad Abu Baidar and threatened to kill him if he did not withdraw a report criticising the country’s Anti-Corruption Commission. Baidar subsequently filed a police complaint. A number of journalists staged a sit-in at the
Jordan Press Association premises to
protest the incident.
February 9th, 2011
Jordan’s most visited news website, Ammonnews, was frozen by
hackers for several hours on Monday. The cyber attack came a day after the website had published a statement critical of the government by representatives of 36 major tribes. The website’s chief editor Basel Okoor
blamed state intelligence services for the disruption saying, “Only the Jordanian security services have the technical capacity to do this”. Government officials
dismissed the charges and maintained that they had no hand in disabling the website.
March 17th, 2010
A
media ban on a corruption trial involving several leading Jordanian figures and the former Minister of Finance has been issued by a military court in Amman. The case, involving the
Jordan Petroleum Refinery Company, first came to light after revelations in the media. Now only reports personally approved by Attorney General Yousef Faouri may be published, in order, court officers claimed, to allow the judicial authorities to work calmly on the case.
