Arabic Culture

Media plays significant roles in shaping cultural actions, conceptions, behaviors and understandings of many people across the globe. Arab world is among the nations that are culturally rich, complex and diverse, but media technology has greatly influenced them. The rapid media technology and communication advancement has contributed to the increased pace at which people from diverse regions across the globe interact culturally, learn and exchange ideas. The western culture is believed to have been the greatest influence of culture to other nations across the globe including the Arab world. Thus, the rise of media technology, driven by social networking services, Internet, televisions, newsletters and many others has brought  varied promising change not only in cultural aspects but also in participatory governance, civic engagement and new social dynamics. Although media plays significant roles of defining the cultural behaviors, action and understandings of people, it is itself influenced by the culture in which it operates.

The increased media services used in a variety of ways in the Arab region have shaped social relations among diverse communities with shared interest or activities. The social media such as us e of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, televisions, radio, Internet has shaped the ideas of individuals, activities, events and common interests; thus creating a global village. These media services have significantly influenced the cultural actions, behaviors of Arab world and shaped their political understandings. The research conducted about penetration of social media technologies revealed the way media technologies is soaring in the Arab region. The Arab region has many youths who make up one third of the nation, thus with the exponential growth of social media services, many youths have been influenced by western culture.

  The Arab regions have been greatly influenced by the western world because they hold similar principles for generating news with that of the western world. Although, there are slight variations among the western and the Arab world, both Arab and Western news strictly spins around political aspects putting aside human interest anecdotes. However, media in the Arab world embraces the significant of their global outlook with regard to production and presentation. The global orientation for the Arab media focuses on educating the mass, establishing vital aspects of social responsibility as among their cornerstones effective for media values. Unlike the western world, Arab world had the historical or cultural ways of informing and politically funding practitioners and this political power of news have flourished with Arab modern media playing significant roles of governing it. The Arab media presenters emphasize the social and moral responsibility; thus it is significant for them to preserve national unity to avoid religious conflicts.

Arab world is a nation with varied cultural beliefs and religious practices whereby Islamic religion is the leading one; thus media stresses on the significant of enhancing Islam through varied media services. Family and personal reputation is one of the fundamental principles of Arab culture, which is stressed in the media. Historically, the Arab news was to offer instructions for effective governance and improving performance level of the Arab nation; thus the news was not a mass product. However, western world has influenced the Arab nations tremendously; thus rules of Arab nations nowadays spots the powerful roles that media play in the Arab world. The Arab world has press regulations that create a boundary on what should and should not be included in the press. Thus, although western nations have influenced Arab culture in one way or another, the Arab world is one of the nations that are attached to cultural aspects and news in the Arab nations is politically motivated.