Diasporas in the New Media Age: Identity, Politics, and Community

15 "Cybernaut" Diaspora

265 15 “Cybernaut” Diaspora Arab Diaspora in Germany khalil rinnawi The proliferation of satellite broadcasting and new transnational media technologies has become accessible to the Arab diaspora, allowing diasporans to reintegrate into their homeland’s life and society.1 This situation raises the important questions of how these new media work and what their implications are for the relationship between the homeland and the diaspora (Morley and Robins 1995).v isits to refugee (Azulheim) buildings in Berlin during the early 1990srevealed that one of the most important and essential pieces of electronic equipment owned by refugees was a decoder connected to a satellite dish outside the window of their respective rooms. The refugees told me about this equipment, and how television connected them to their homelands. Despite the low socioeconomic status of most of the refugees, a significant percentage of them owned this electronic equipment. As the refugees moved from the Azulheim, they took this equipment with them as a continuous link to their original homelands. Similar to voluntary migrants, refugee populations (e.g., asylum seekers) desire to maintain links with their countries of origin. Transnational networks play an essential role for both groups of migrants. Nevertheless, this information and its implications are largely ignored by the academic literature (Breidenbach 2001).Since the mid-1980s,transnational Arab media 266 d i a s p o r a s i n t h e n e w m e d i a a g e have played a principal role in allowing Arabs in the diaspora (and also Arabs in the Arab world) to engage in a new multidirectional hiwar (dialogue ) with the Arab world, through cultural, political, news, and current affairs issues.2 Transnational Arab media have been more complexly imaginative and effective than the rest of the Arab world in “reengaging” Arabs in the diaspora due to the technical expertise, ideas, and human resources of diaspora Arabs. Particularly since the beginning of the 1990s,Western-based Arab transnational television has become an integral part of Arab life, inside the Arab world and in the diaspora. One of the most fascinating results of Arab transnational media, and particularly t v, is the extent to which it has allowed for the reintegration of Arab immigrants into Arab life and society (Alterman 1998;J. Anderson 1997). It has the ability to reunite communities scattered by war, exile, and labor migration, while also tapping into the talent they offer. There exists a “virtual” t v community of Arabs based all over the world, receiving, engaging with, and reacting to the same information simultaneously. arab satellite tv’s emergence In 1990, the Middle East Broadcasting Centre (mbc) (privately owned by Saudi Arabia) created the first Arab satellite broadcasting network (Graieb and Mansour 2000). In October 1993, the creation of two additional privately owned Arab satellite television broadcasting systems, art and Orbit t v, then both broadcasting from Italy, dramatically accelerated the spread of Arab satellite t v broadcasting. Arab satellite television entered a new phase after 1996, marked by the arrival of the new players from Lebanon: the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International (l bci), Future t v, mt v, and New t v as private stations, and al-Manar, a television station owned by the Lebanese Shia party Hezbollah. In 1996, the al-Jazeera Satellite channel also set a new record, as the first Arab all-news and public affairs satellite channel (Rinnawi 2006; Mellor 2005). At that time in the North African countries of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, national television stations started to broadcast via satellite in order to expedite communication between expatriate labor in Europe and the home country. By the end of 2000 every Arab state in Asia, the Persian Gulf, and North Africa had its own satellite television station. Presently, there are approximately 370 Arab satellite t v stations. Major channels are directed at national markets such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf State, as well as the rest of the Arab world (Arab Advisors Group 2007). Beyond them, there are many subnational and ethnic-language channels t h e a r a b d i a s p o r a i n g e r m a n y 267 aimed at specific Arab communities transplanted from their original location to sites across the Arab world or in the diaspora (Rinnawi 2006). Some Pan-Arab satellite channels have specialized in business, entertainment, film, news, religion, educational...