Bamblog

Achtung - das Bamblog wird seit Mitte Oktober 2007 nicht mehr aktualisiert. Bitte besuchen Sie mein neues Weblog unter http://www.schmidtmitdete.de. Danke! - Please note that this blog is no longer active. You can find my new blog at http://www.schmidtmitdete.de. Thanks for visiting!

True conference blogging here - I’m sitting in the back row of the large hall at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute (right next to Don Alphonso btw, who has spent the last days doing travel blogging), and listening to the panel discussion, the final event of the first conference day. All the presentations I have listened today have been quite interesting - starting with Sabine Schiffer (Institute for media responsibility) who spoke about framing and stereotyping Muslims in german media, arguing that these processes are not bad or negative per se (put sociologically, they are strategies to reduce contingency), but that it depends on the context such stereotypes are used. She showed a couple of examples from german newspapers and magazines where images of terrorists are most frequently mixed with muslim religious symbols.

Sabine was followed by Daoud Kuttab who gave some interesting examples of the ways western media has influence on the arab region - less with regards to political issues, but more in terms of popular culture: think soap operas, movies, etc. Apparently, the huge majority of childrens’ program aired in arab countries comes from the US and Japan - but is dubbed in classic arabic (rather than the contemporary local versions), which must be a somewhat weird combination… imagine the Pokemon characters speaking crisp Shakespearian English: “Nay, do not pause, for I did kill King Pikachu – but ’twas thy beauty that provoked me.”

During the breaks, I had the chance to shortly talk to Amitai Sandy (who is a comic artist, comic publisher, and blogger - and I just learned by googling him that he’s the guy who initiated the Isreali anti-semitic cartoon contest [german]) and to Ronen Eidelman (one of the conference organizers) about the blogosphere in Isreal - hopefully I can continue the conversation over dinner, because I’d really like to learn more about popularity and practices of blogging here.

More about the conference tomorrow; my presentation on “Mainstream Media and Weblogs - competing or complementary publics?” will be at 11.00 am; I’m going to publish the slides here afterwards.