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

纽约大学博士生Yasmin Moll将在Michael Gilsenan博士的指导下进行跨国伊斯兰媒体的研究。目标是更好地理解电视媒体在当代宗教理解和实践中的作用。这项研究将集中在埃及伊斯兰卫星电视的生产上。第一个私人资助的伊斯兰电视频道Iqraa于1998年在埃及成立。从那时起，埃及的卫星电视已经看到了其他几个伊斯兰“电视福音派”频道的兴起，这些频道吹嘘其在该地区的收视率达到了数千万。研究人员将收集总部设在埃及的两个伊斯兰卫星频道的数据。她将采用参与者观察、访谈、生活史收集、焦点小组和文本分析的方法，收集节目制作人如何理解、制作和传播他们所谓的“伊斯兰正确的娱乐”的信息，以及他们如何想象虔诚穆斯林的跨国观众。这项研究很重要，因为通过检查虔诚的穆斯林媒体制造者的广播制作的微观实践，它将阐明这些媒体与各种领域之间的关系，包括宗教和非宗教。这将有助于发展对跨国媒体所扮演的各种角色的社会科学理解。它也可能有助于当代伊斯兰教的公共政策辩论。资助这项研究也支持了社会科学家的教育。

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.