Shaping Public Opinion from the Sahara to the Caucasus (16th-21st Centuries): Introduction: Words, Actions and Images for Shaping Public Opinion

Yet, whatever the character or technical sophistication of the communicational tool and its impact zones within a given community, it is irrefutable that communicational vectors linked to public opinion are constitutive components of human society before the advent of the modern era with its plethor...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inArchiv orientální Vol. 80; no. 2; p. 125
Main Authors Deguilhem, Randi, Claudot-Hawad, Hélène
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Prague Oriental Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic 01.05.2012
Subjects
Arabic language
Centuries
Communication
Muslims
News media
Orthographic symbols
Pilgrimages
Politics
Public opinion
Society
Studies
Wolton, Dominique
Middle East
United States > US
Russia
Caucasus
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Summary:Yet, whatever the character or technical sophistication of the communicational tool and its impact zones within a given community, it is irrefutable that communicational vectors linked to public opinion are constitutive components of human society before the advent of the modern era with its plethora of written, oral, visual and electronic systems and networks.1 Engaging with research that has defined the booming field of communication studies and public opinion with particular attention given to analyses which link the appearance of public opinion with the emergence of a Western-style modern democratic system,2 the work published in this issue of Archiv orientálni goes beyond these traditional paradigms. In keeping with this large vision of the question with respect to the culturally diverse and widespread region as well as the long period under study in these contributions which begins with the pre-modern European fascination with the Holy Land and ends with an analysis of U.S. Muslim public opinion polls regarding the September 11 attacks, the papers presented here underline several dimensions in the relationship between communicational tools and public opinion, bringing to the fore, both the elasticity in this link and the importance of societal networks as well as questions related to gender. The aim of studying widely varied situations consequently allows the authors to reflect upon the larger notion of public opinion in terms of the formulation of a message and its content, the channels chosen to transmit it, the targeted audience and the impact of that message ranging from a scholarly and intellectual environment (for example, within the medical milieu in late Ottoman Palestine) to a more popular situation (local dance in Cairo as public art and thus, a way of influencing public opinion). [...]diacritical marks on consonants have not been indicated, however, they have been used for long vowels for Arabic.
ISSN:0044-8699