THE MINISTRY OF TOURISM AND ANTIQUITIES (MoTA). Audiovisual Efforts to Promote Egypt's Civilization in the Post-Lockdown Era

Blessed with its rich cultural heritage but cursed with its rich history of terrorist attacks, Egypt has witnessed a decline in tourism revenue, which is vital for the country's economic development. Tourism suffered due to Egypt's revolution on January 25th, 2011, and the imposed travel restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic. Throughout the pandemic, Egypt's former Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, Dr. Khaled El-Anany, initiated numerous promotional campaigns to revive tourism. As the world experienced a continuous lockdown, the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (MoTA) encouraged people to explore Egypt online through their website and social media platforms. Accordingly, this article examines the MoTA's recent efforts to promote Egypt's civilization by utilising virtual tours, events, and videos to encourage cultural tourism and the traditional sun-and-beach holidays to local and international markets. In addition, three interviews were conducted with leading Egyptologists to gain their opinion about the Ministry's efforts in promoting tourism to Egypt. According to these interviews, the future is bright for Egypt's tourism. However, the country faces different challenges than in the past, such as problems in the hospitability industry and harassment, which can affect tourists' revisit intentions. © 2022 Vita e Pensiero / Pubblicazioni dell'Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

THE NEW PIRATE TV: Examining the Remediation and Online Narrowcasting of Justin.tv in a New Media Environment

This article examines the rise of online narrowcasting and the battle over the right to remediate ephemeral televisual content through the case study of Justin.tv. The platform became wildly popular, garnering forty-five million monthly users at its height, because it allowed anyone with a stable Internet connection to become a distributor of content. The platform quickly transitioned from a place for "life-casting" to one where users were narrowcasting a wide array of content, including original media, copyrighted live television and sports programs, and taped archives of television shows. This platform-shifted retransmission of televisual content caught the attention of traditional broadcasters and the US Congress. Justin.tv's narrowcasts followed the traditional linear model of broadcasting but also included the interactivity and open-source usage rules of Web 2.0. This led to a conflict in which the copyright holders attempted to redefine the retransmission of the content--which had originally been intended to be temporary--as stealing. Considering the explosive growth of live-streaming platforms such as Twitch (Justin.tv's successor) during the COVID-19 pandemic, reexamining the antecedents of narrowcasting and contested sites of remediation through Justin.tv provides important context for understanding the current media ecosystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Velvet Light Trap: A Critical Journal of Film & Television is the property of University of Texas Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Television as a source of COVID-19 information: a qualitative inquiry into the experiences of the deaf during the pandemic

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) came as a rude shock to all. Its emergence was sudden and its attendant effects on psychosocial adjustment of all citizens especially among the Deaf were traumatic. Thus, the need to access the required information about the virus became necessary. While information about COVID-19 came from various media sources, television as an audio-visual material remains one of the most reliable sources of COVID-19 to the deaf. However, issues of quality assurance and comprehensibility of televised COVID-19 related information remain a concern among the deaf during the pandemic. Thus, as there is scarcity of research reports on such circumstances among the deaf, this study explores the perceived quality of and comprehensibility of televised sign language interpreted COVID-19 briefing by the Nigerian deaf. The motor theory of sign language perception was used as a theoretical lens in this study. An individualised semi-structured interview was used to gather data that was used to achieve an answer to the research objectives. Thematic content analysis was employed for data analysis. The following themes resulted from the analysis: visibility, incomplete interpretation, Camera handlers’/Television stations’ inadequate knowledge of deafness and deaf communication processes and partial comprehension of interpreted COVID-19 briefings. Camera handlers and technical crew must ensure adequately illuminated interpreters space and a contrasting backdrop of picture-in-picture is ensured. Also, SLIs should endeavour to use a transparent face shield or adopt the 1.5m–2.5m physical distancing rule

The Ramayana and its Retellings: Deconstructing the Myth

In what can be seen as the climax of the long-running Hindutva project promised by Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, the ground-breaking ceremony of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya took place on 5 August 2020. A highly controversial move, especially given the background of the collapsing Indian economy and the larger spectre of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the Ram Mandir and the Ramayana have a longer history of being used as political and ideological tools for the Hindutva narrative. For instance, the immensely popular 1987 Hindi television serial, Ramanand Sagar's Ramayana, was telecast again after the announcement of the Coronavirus lockdown in India. In the late 1980s, many scholars and intellectuals had raised concerns about this televised version becoming the dominant narrative, and thus eclipsing other, diverse, contradictory tellings of the myth. With eerie accuracy, historian Romila Thapar questioned the long-term political and ideological motives at work. Thapar argued that such representations were part of the state's nationalistic project to create a homogenised, uniform culture which was easy to control and identify with. Thus, Rama and his mythology have increasingly come to be the face of a militant form of Hinduism.

Religion and the COVID-19 pandemic: mediating presence and distance

This introduction opens a collection of seven articles which investigate how religious communities negotiate demands for physical distance induced by governmental responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in accord with their religious and spiritual aspirations to establish presence and togetherness. Grounded in ethnography and media analysis, our contributors offer studies on Pentecostal healing, Mormon eschatology, Hindu diasporic rituals, Chinese spirit mediums, the virtual Burning Man festival, Sufi sonic meditations, and televised Shia Muslim mourning. These studies collectively demonstrate that in pandemic rituals (1) Media are reflexive and enchanted;(2) The religious sensorium is sticky and lingers in embodied and mnemonic ways even under new circumstances of mediation;(3) Space and time emerge as modular, transposable, condensed, yet expanding. Ritual innovations can provoke new kinds of mediations, sensory engagements, and temporal-spatial arrangements, while revealing continuities with pre-pandemic cosmologies, theologies, liturgies, and social hierarchies, and relying on memories of previous ritual sensory experiences.

Students’ Satisfaction with Technology-Assisted Learning: An Empirical Analysis of Female University Students in Saudi Arabia Using Telecourse Evaluation Questionnaire

Technology-assisted learning (TAL) is one of the key factors to realize the goals of sustainable development, being exemplified in the form of smart cities in urban areas. Student satisfaction is an important predictor of success and achievement in all modes of education including TAL. In the unique circumstances created by COVID-19 pandemic, online education became the new normal. However, remote online education was already being used in educational institutions in some countries, including Saudi Arabia, for imparting education to female students by male instructors. The current study, based in Saudi Arabia, aims to measure the perception of female students about the interactive televised classes (ITV), a type of TAL. The survey was conducted using the standard scale called the telecourse evaluation questionnaire (TEQ). This instrument measures students’ satisfaction with ITV classes on three main dimensions namely;instructor, technology and course management. A total number of 108 valid responses were received. The results show that the students perceive the quality of such classes to be just above average on each item as well as in total. The findings of this study should offer better insights into the pedagogical research dealing with TAL. Further, each stakeholder engaged in education would find the results of this study useful in improving the quality of TAL that became a new normal, and is set to persist in future especially in the context of smart cities. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.