bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Pedotransfer functions for estimating soil water retention properties of northern China agricultural soils: Development and needs*
Authors: Xu Xu , Li Huawei , Sun Chen , Ramos Tiago B. , Darouich Hanaa , Xiong Yunwu , Qu Zhongyi , Huang Guanhua 
Published: February 2021

AbstractMany agro‐environmental studies focusing on the efficient management of soils and water resources make use of soil water simulation models. Reliable soil hydraulic properties are critical for ensuring the accuracy of model simulations. However, soil hydraulic parameters in northern China are generally derived using external pedotransfer functions (PTFs) that do not take into account the specificities of local edaphoclimatic conditions due to the lack of a better alternative. Therefore, the main objective of this paper was to develop PTFs for estimating the soil water retention curve (SWRC) in northern China agricultural soils (named PTF‐ANC). A total of 440 soil horizons were collected from the existing literature. A flexible soil‐textural conversion program was first developed to harmonize soil particle‐size data into the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) classification system. The SWRC parameters of the van Genuchten model were also generated by curve fitting. Then, the PTF‐ANC were developed using artificial neural networks, with soil texture and bulk density being used as input data and with a basic three‐layer back‐propagation neural network. The PTF‐ANC showed an acceptable accuracy when predicting the SWRC, indicating a strong application potential for northern China soils. Comparison of estimates with two widely used external PTFs also showed that these were not suitable for characterizing the SWRC of northern China agricultural soils. This is due to the fact that the main soil textures (silt and silty loam textures) found in northern China soils were misrepresented in those external soil databases. Overall, this paper presented the absolute necessity of developing specific PTFs for northern China agricultural soils.
Disseminating On‐line Reproductive Health Information in Arabic: Results from a Survey of Users of an Emergency Contraception Website
Authors: Foster Angel M. , Wynn Lisa , Rouhana Aida , Polis Chelsea , Trussell James 
Published: February 2021

AbstractIn May 2003, Ibis Reproductive Health and the Office of Population Research at Princeton University launched the first Arabic-language website dedicated to emergency contraception. During the first 19 months of the website's operation, 212 individuals completed an on-line Arabic-language survey dedicated to visitor demographics, website quality, and priorities for additional health information and venues for dissemination. This paper presents the results of this survey. The responses suggest that readers are not only eager to obtain accurate information about emergency contraception but that there is also considerable enthusiasm for the development of on-line Arabic-language resources dedicated to additional aspects of sexuality and reproductive health.
Transnational Civil Society, Institution‐Building, and IT: Reflections from the Middle East
Authors: Anderson Jon W. 
Published: February 2021

AbstractThe important connectives of information technology will come with institutions that successfully merge IT, transnationalism, and ‘civil’ society such that each conveys its properties to the other. How to conceptualize and understand these properties is a compelling need for social theory. Comparative study of the Internet in the Middle East, including its supporting and related technologies, points to the crucial role of alliance-building and coalitions that create new institutions. Some of the less-evident ones are the more transnational and ‘civil,’ providing points of comparison - even suggesting potential future directions - to others not so apparently transnational or civil. Some elements so far not brought into analysis include engineering cultures and the more general practices of thought they privilege, alumni networks that link these cultures with more material resources but also importantly with social capital, and how those pull or are pulled together in projects that are expanding the envelope for IT generally and for its most prominent proxy and gathering point in the region, the Internet.
The Islam‐Online Crisis: A Battle of Wasatiyya vs. Salafi Ideologies?
Authors: Abdel-Fadil Mona 
Published: February 2021

AbstractIslam Online has been one of the most prominent and stable Islamic websites since it was founded in 1997. However, in March 2010 Islam Online suffered a major crisis, which has come to be known as ‘the IOL-Crisis’. This is a suitable case for exploring whether multiple layers of authority are at play in online religious communities(Campbell 2007). At the time of the crisis, I was conducting fieldwork with the social team of IOL-Arabic. This article provides rich ethnographic detail about the time before, during, and after the crisis — as experienced by the social team. I outline how the social team made sense of the crisis through producing crisis-narratives that draw on Islam Online's institutional narrative. Moreover, I illustrate how narratives about the crisis gradually shift to alternate explanations, in tact with new developments of the crisis. I conclude with reflections on what types of authority were drawn on during the IOL-Crisis.
Beyond the Traditional‐Modern Binary: Faith and Identity in Muslim Women's Online Matchmaking Profiles
Authors: Piela Anna 
Published: February 2021

AbstractFinding a suitable partner in both diasporic and non-diasporic settings proves increasingly challenging for young Muslims, especially those unable or not wanting to search within their kinship networks. At the same time, religious matchmaking websites are becoming increasingly common especially among Muslim women. As studies of Muslim matchmaking sites tend to focus on the ever-popular topic of the headscarf and its associations in the matchmaking context, a much more comprehensive study of the specificity of the online religious identities and self-representation is required. This paper examines a number of profiles of young Muslim women using online matchmaking sites and discusses broad themes of faith, ethnicity and identity that emerge in the analysis.
e‐Islam: the Spanish Public Virtual Sphere
Authors: Guerrero Enterría Arturo 
Published: February 2021

AbstractThe increasing presence of Islamic content in cyberspace has made it possible for an ever-expanding Muslim public space to be established. This process is connected to the phenomenon of globalisation, which in turn has generated a process of growing glocalisation, wherein content in cyberspace has not only been globalised — making it accessible from any Internet platform around the world — but opening a channel for the expression of local issues. In Spain, institutionalised Islam has found new routes for communication, information and visibilisation with these new technologies. However, as this paper will show, its strategy is based on traditional mass media models of communication, namely the one-way and one-to-many communication models. This leaves room for other types of actors to use strategies based on different communication models: two-way and many-to-many, taking better advantage of the potential in new information and communication technologies to more easily find a niche in Spanish Muslim cyberspace.
Islamic Shura, Democracy, and Online Fatwas
Authors: Kutscher Jens 
Published: February 2021

AbstractPublications on the Islamic shura concept – Arabic and English – usually include a comparison with present-day liberal democracy. This paper addresses the issue of shura and democracy from the perspective of Muslim communities residing in non-Islamic countries. How do muftis in their online fatwas respond to questions whether Islam and democracy can be reconciled? How do they address the issue of shura? This paper argues that one might well expect the shura concept to serve as a justification for the reconciliation of Islam and democracy or at least find the shura concept to be a distinctly Islamic understanding of democracy. The online fatwas considered for this survey (from AskImam.org, IslamiCity. com, IslamOnline.net, and IslamQA.com) reveal a number of distinct understandings of shura, which are nevertheless linked with each other – be they elections as an expression of shura, shura as a constitutional principle and perfect form of government, or shura in cases of hardship or the political participation of women. While muftis from all websites are unanimous in their defense of shura, their conclusions regarding the centrality and implications of this concept reflect the different streams of thought and currents they represent.
Al Jazeera's Framing of Social Media During the Arab Spring
Authors: Campbell Heidi A. , Hawk Diana 
Published: February 2021

AbstractThis study investigates how Al Jazeera framed social media in relation to the revolutions and protests of the “Arab Spring” within its broadcast media coverage. A content analysis of Arabic language broadcasts appearing from January 25th through February 18th 2011, covering the protests in Tahrir Square, was conducted using the Broadcast Monitoring System (BMS) and Arab Spring Archive. Through this analysis we see a number of common narratives being used by Al Jazeera to frame social media and make claims about the influence they had on the protests and related social movements. By noting the frequency of social communications technologies referenced, ways in which these technologies were characterized and interpreting supporting themes with which they were identified helps illuminate the assumptions promoted by Al Jazeera regarding the role and impact of social communications technology on these events.
Beyond the Soapbox: Facebook and the Public Sphere in Egypt
Authors: Root Anton 
Published: February 2021

AbstractThe question of the internet as a forum for political debate is continuously contested. My research grows out of such scholarship but focuses specifically on Facebook as a virtual public sphere in Egypt. Based on an analysis of a note posted by Wael Ghonim during the January 25 uprising on the Facebook group ‘We are all Khaled Said,’ I discuss the structural and technological benefits of the platform, as well as user behavior and interaction with one another. Using Jürgen Habermas’ The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and Yochai Benkler's The Wealth of Networks as the theoretical groundwork for my study, I make observations about the internet's ability to allow considered opinion, not just to record popular sentiment. I argue that while Facebook's structure has both drawbacks and advantages for promoting discussion, the new medium's biggest limitation in helping to produce a virtual public sphere is user inexperience with the platform.
Online and Offline Continuities, Community and Agency on the Internet
Authors: Anderson Jon W. 
Published: February 2021

AbstractHow the Internet spawns community and gets its features into offline life is a recurring problem met in searches for “impacts” of its successive iterations in the Middle East and arises particularly in assessing equivocal findings most recently about social media in the Arab Spring uprisings. But the problem is more methodological than ontological: it lies in viewing the Internet through a media lens on communication as message-passing and “influence” as the outcome to be identified. The Internet and its current embodiment for new users as social media have a richer – and, I argue, normal – sociology in a more extended habitus explored here through comparison of longer-term, intermediate-term, and immediate processes highlighted by recent research that give better pictures of the Internet as networking and as cultural performance, and of appropriate methodologies that will retrieve their features.
“I Wanna Be a Dark‐Skinned Pork Roast” – and other stories about how ‘dark’ Danish rappers negotiate otherness in their marketing and music productions
Authors: Ringsager Kristine 
Published: February 2021

AbstractThis article explores processes of experienced otherness as it is represented in stories told by Danish rappers with Middle Eastern background. Referring to stories about ‘being stopped’ the article illustrates how these rap artists, because of their visible otherness, are forced to navigate in a discursive landscape that affects their becoming of subjects as well as rap artists. The article discusses how otherness experienced in everyday encounters seems to generate habits of thought and expression, which also influence the rappers’ choices regarding their music production and marketing. I propose and discuss three different ways of how this is done: (1) A strategy where rappers play along with stigmatising stories about the criminal and dangerous ‘other’ or ‘stranger,’ hereby constituting a brand as a dangerous ‘perker;’ (2) a strategy where rap artists remove the danger from the stranger, hereby enabling themselves to pass as inoffensive exotic foreigners; and (3) a strategy where rappers confront the stigmatising stereotypes, creating alternative and possibly instructive stories about ‘dark’ Danes.
Women and Media: Libyan Female Journalists from Gaddafi Media to Post‐ revolution: Case Study
Authors: El Issawi Fatima 
Published: February 2021

Abstracthis article examines the representation of women in Libyan national traditional media before, during and after the February 2011 revolution that led to the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime. What roles did female journalists assume within national traditional newsrooms and how did these roles evolve from activism in the defense of women's causes and the official revolutionary ideals of the former regime to spreading the message of the revolutionaries during the uprising? This article further reflects on changes in the nature of female journalists’ roles in the new post-revolution media landscape. The opening of the media market to private ownership for the first time in Libya's history is accompanied by an expansion of women's presence in Libyan newsrooms, where this increased visibility is to be viewed primarily as a mean of attracting audiences. In the shaky media landscape that characterizes the post-revolutionary period, this expansion reflects the clash between the conservative values of Libyan society and the liberal values of the open market. I argue that the growing number of women in national Libyan media post-revolution is not reflective of a general trend towards women's empowerment in a country struggling with the spread of violence and the legacy of the past. Rather, the thorny process of restructuring national media post-revolution and the need for new media outlets capable of catering for large audiences are empowering the presence of women in newsrooms as a strong marketing asset.
The Introduction of Telephone into Turkish Houses: Private Space, Borders of the Neighborhoods and Solidarity
Authors: Altıntaş Gülengül 
Published: February 2021

AbstractThis essay is based on the data collected in a two-year research project (between 2010–2012), under the title Telephony And Turkish Modernization: Social History of Telephone Since The Ottoman Era (1881–2010), which was primarily concerned with the social history of telephone in Turkey during its peculiarly long history of implementation and dispersal. The project was conducted as oral history and archive research, and a comparative approach was adopted to identify and analyze the divergent nature of their findings. According to the findings of the researched archive materials (newspapers, comic and popular magazines), the implementation of telephone into the Turkish houses created complex feelings, which found its expression as both “emulation” and “intimidation” attached to the experience of telephone in a double system of representation. Whereas the oral history research findings are discordant in the sense that telephone is remembered as a symbol of “solidarity” and “sharing” in the narratives of telephone memories, and was accommodated into the traditional everyday life of the neighborhood.Through the case of telephone technology, this essay aims at pointing out the gap between the discursive construction of the elements of the experience of modernity and the actual experience of the historical subjects; and argues that this gap should be disclosed with more ethnographic studies for it also points a feeling of ‘lack’ that pervasively infuses itself into our present and finds its expression in the self-narratives of the oral history as a nostalgia for the past.
The Telephone and the Social Struggles in Turkey: An Overview of a Social History of a Communication Technology
Authors: Çelik Burçe 
Published: February 2021

AbstractThis essay presents an overview of social history of telephone technology in Turkey, by taking the user-perspective to its center. As part of the set of essays in this special issue dealing with the history of telephony in the non-west, this essay seeks to explore how the telephone has become part of social practices of people, how it has integrated into the social struggles of people and how it has been appropriated to convey the users’ struggle to alter their positions in the social structure, assert their agencies and participate in the making of the modern throughout the history of modern Turkey. Rather than offering a detailed categorization, periodization and related narration of the life of the telephone technology in Turkey/Ottoman Empire, this article specifically focuses on some moments where the meanings and the uses of telephone in daily life practices and imaginations of people reflected and contributed to the mobilization of the social struggle in the form of class and/or ethnic and gender struggle.
Mobile Revolution: Toward a History of Technology, Telephony and Political Activism in Egypt
Authors: Allmann Kira C. 
Published: February 2021

AbstractThis article examines the use of everyday mobile technologies, and mobile telephony in particular, in political activism and protest during the 2011 Egyptian uprisings and throughout its continuing aftermath. The Arab revolutions have their own, now familiar, nomenclature, derived from the semantics of revolution and the digital age. Much of the language used to describe and analyze events in the Middle East has emphasized the “newness” of the technologies of protest and coordination and the uniquely 2.0 characteristics of these political movements. This article confronts this narrative, exploring the role of mobile telephony in Egypt during an ongoing period of political upheaval by moving away from the question of what is “new” or “revolutionary” toward what is ordinary put toward revolutionary ends. The article argues that the Arab Spring presents a crucial opportunity to interrogate and deconstruct the hybrid ecology of people and technological tools. By exploring several specific ways in which mobile telephony has played a role in the Egyptian revolution, this article demonstrates how a fixation on newness not only tells an incomplete story of this technologically mediated revolution but also undermines the ongoing practices of historicizing it.
Islamophobia in Online Arab Media
Authors: Tsuria Ruth 
Published: February 2021

AbstractWhat is Islamophobia? A popular term among many newspapers articles, politicians’ speeches and scholarly texts, it is rarely clearly defined. Although the concept of ‘Islamophobia’ is difficult to define it has been a source of heated discussion in academic work, public diplomacy, government policy and news media. Governments, social think tanks and various scholars have attempted to define Islamophobia in order to counter incidents of physical, legal or verbal abuse of Muslims, Islamic artifacts and symbols, etc. Those attempts tend to present Islamophobia as a global phenomenon, similar in all its occurrences and definable as a concrete observable fact. This article supports a move from Islamophobia singular to Islamophobia(s) plural by exploring notions of Islamophobia in Arab and Muslim online media. It is suggested that multiple, localized “Islamophobias” exist and that varying uses and understanding of the term may occur in that media. Furthermore, the article problematizes the emergence of the term and its sometimes over-simplified uses, stepping away from an ‘Us’ against ‘Them’ dichotomies. Through careful and thematic analysis of the sources, the political and religious apparatuses of “Islamophobias” are crystalized.
Arab Iranians and Their Social Media Use
Authors: Al-Rawi Ahmed , Groshek Jacob 
Published: February 2021

AbstractArab Iranians have a special status in Iran and the Middle East. Due to their Arab origins, they are sometimes viewed as the “other” for being different from ethnic Persians, while many Arab countries regard them as the “other” as well perceiving them as being Iranians more than Arabs. This study investigates the media landscape and conflict that is linked to the Ahwazi Arabs with special attention given to social media use. The study argues that Iranian Arabs are used as pawns by two of the regional players in the Middle East - Iran and Saudi Arabia. Within such an analogy, Ahwaz is regarded as a chessboard where geopolitics is continuously played with the systematic and well-planned use of media channels. The examination of social media outlets that are related to Arab Iranians shows that they are either pro-Sunni or pro-Shiite. The resultsindicate that there are very few followers and fans from Iran especially for the Arab Iranians’ anti-government channels, while Shiite SNS outlets—particularly those originating from Iran—garner more followers from inside Iran.
Middle Eastern Women's ‘Glocal’: Journeying between the Online and Public Spheres
Authors: Hosni Dina 
Published: February 2021

AbstractDespite the fact that the Arab Spring did not necessarily materialize with the political effects anticipated by some of its activists, it has brought into the spotlight the significance of the role of women in direct connection to the online space. In this respect, the article addresses the online world as Middle Eastern women subcultural capital in their traversal to the public sphere, which is otherwise rigorously enforced particularly on women. The hybridity of the private and the public exemplified in the online world in effect plays a pivotal role in rendering the visibility of Middle Eastern women in the political public sphere possible, where new media provides an effective vehicle for those women to establish social and political networks and organizations. Though the goals for those women activists might vary based on the nature of their countries, they have shown to have aptly journeyed between the online and public spheres in order to voice their glocal experiences.
Science and Islam Videos: Creating a Methodology to Find “All” Unique Internet Videos
Authors: Gardner Vika , Hameed Salman 
Published: February 2021

AbstractThis methodology article explores the process through which we sought to catalogue videos addressing natural science and Islam on the Internet comprehensively. This data was then used to select videos for inclusion in the Center for the Study of Science in Muslim Societies? Science and Islam Video Portal (www.scienceandislamvideos. com), which evaluates the videos based on their representations of science, Islam and history. As a growing body of research is demonstrating, Internet videos provide a window into the lives of both celebrity and ordinary Muslims and their critics worldwide. The article describes the methodological decisions of what to include and exclude from the study, framing them in a discussion of some of the key terms. We then step through the process of searching for videos and cleaning the data, providing flow charts with details. In the last section of the article, we discuss the results and their ramifications on our continuing research.