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Journalist Eman Akour gives a lecture at the University of Petra

4/16/2015

 

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Eman Akour, the Media Advisor to the Organization “Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty” headquartered in Vienna, gave a lecture in front of students of the National Education and Contemporary Issues class entitled: “The role of media in highlighting the dangers of terrorism on youth”. In the lecture, Akour demonstrated that the media is the weapon that we use to confront terrorism and its various and complex repercussions under affected citizen, providing of multiple sources of information, pointing out that the media plays a vital role in the news analysis in the region. It has exceeded its role to convey the reality and the facts only to become an analyst and critic of the situation that require presentation of facts with no exaggeration and distortion and that the media be treated, to counter terrorist ideology logical and rational, objective in a thoughtful and planned manner and a far cry from passions.
 
Moreover, Akour demonstrated that in these days and after the world diminished and the means of communication for all provided, we have followed on political crimes as soon as they occur, which unfortunately increase by numbers day by day. The means of news transport are diverse with high proportion of skepticism and deception.
 
In lecture, Akour said that the number of internet users in the world in 1997 was around 70 million users, around 1.7% of the world’s population. Based on the International Telecommunication Union, the number increased to 1.9 million individuals in 2009. Now in 2015, it is reaching 3 million individuals, representing 40% of the world’s population, who are 135 million internet users in the Arab world. In light of that, the last years have seen a remarkable upsurge for terrorist user on the internet. Thus, the number of internet sites that promotes extremist ideology and terrorism has increased from 12 internet sites worldwide in 1998, which brings the number currently to 5800 internet sites, according to the European Union. This number varies almost continuously due to the majority of Arab countries blocking Internet sites of terrorist groups. However, these sites were soon overcoming the blocking, and back again broadcast toxins.
 
Akour explained that in our Arab world, the number of channels has reached around 1320 Arab TV Channels, representing a big increase compared with year 2011 where its number has reached 696 satellite channels, according to a report by the Union of Arab radio stations. The number of newspapers in the Arab world reached 5050 newspapers, including 300 newspapers published daily, 508 newspapers weekly and 3758 newspapers and magazines published monthly. Beside that, the number of media websites in the Arab world has reached 4000 websites, including 2700 websites in Arabic and the remaining in English and other languages. This is unlike other governmental websites, marketing and other from non-media websites, which amounted to approximately 200 thousand websites, including 30370 sites in Saudi Arabia, 28913 in Egypt, 19784 sites in Morocco and 15180 sites in the UAE.
 
At the end of the lecture attended by some professors from the Educational Sciences Department at the university and presented by Dr. Nermin Ghawanmeh, she showed that the fight against terrorism is not military as much as social and cultural. The work permit is needed to promote the cultural, civilized and religious dialogue, in the values of mutual respect, in an era when the journalists have become «Units» armies of the system.