Doctoral Dissertation Research: Islamic Satellite Channels and the Ethics of Entertainment

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New York University doctoral student Yasmin Moll, under the supervision of Dr. Michael Gilsenan, will undertake research on transnational Islamic media. The goal is to better undersand the role of televisual media in contemporary religious understandings and practices. The research will be focused on the production of Islamic satellite television in Egypt. The first privately-funded Islamic television channel, Iqraa, was established in Egypt in 1998. Since then, the Egyptian satellite scene has seen the rise of several other Islamic "televangelical" channels boasting a regional viewership numbering in the tens of millions. The researcher will collect data on two Islamic satellite channels headquartered in Egypt. She will use participant-observation, interviews, life-history collection, focus groups and textual analysis to compile information on how program producers understand, produce and circulate what they call "Islamically-correct entertainment," and how they imagine a transnational audience of pious Muslims. This research is important because by examining the micro-practices of broadcast production by devout Muslim media-makers, it will illuminate the relationship between such media and a variety of domains, both religious and non-religious. This will help to develop social scientific understanding of the variety of roles played by transnational media. It also may contribute to public policy debates on contemporary Islam. Funding this research also supports the education of a social scientist.