Ighrāq and tamyīʿ (sinking and diluting): Urban electronic newspapers from celebrating freedom into designing chaos

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to understand the journalism practice enacted by Moroccan Urban Electronic Newspapers' (UENs) journalists and news media practitioners. This study, therefore, takes representative UENs' reporters, journalism intellectuals, and the editorial managers' perspectives on the contribution of these platforms to explore the transformative era of electronic journalism in Morocco. The participants' views regard that the digital era has widened the creation and multiplication of UENs, which has interestingly celebrated freedom of content circulation and audience outreach but engendered chaos through sinking and diluting. Hence, this has led several journalists to demand structural state intervention. As a result, journalism scholars and practitioners warn against deteriorating journalism conditions facilitated to increase practitioners” call for rigid and paternalistic supervision of the field.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban electronic newspapers (UENs)
• Journalism
• Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
• chaos
• grounded theory
• alternative media
• conceptualised

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the anonymous participants who took their time to share their experiences. We are forever grateful for your willingness to help us understand. In addition, the authors would like to thank the reviewers at APSA and at the Journal of North African Studies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded thanks to an American of Political Science Association Alumni grant (APSA) and a Graduate School for research award at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. The authors would like to thank these entities for supporting the travels to conduct the field research and making this research possible.