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History Is in the Cards

Claire Davenport
August 5, 2024

AUC student Lena Boraei teamed up with community initiative Athar Lina to engage kids in local history through cards.

The educational card game Al Foora brings new meaning to the word “monumental.” The game, created by AUC student Boraei, teaches children about important antiquities, highlighting 30 significant landmarks in Cairo’s Al Khalifa neighborhood.

Players compete by placing down the top card in their hand and comparing numerical categories about the monuments on their cards such as “size” and “century.” The player with the highest number in a given category wins that round. Boraei, a history and graphic design junior, spent hours researching each building. She developed the deck as part of an internship with Athar Lina community initiative.

To read the full article, click here.
 

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AUCians Shine at International Journalism Conference

Dalia Al Nimr
August 5, 2024

AUC awardees at the conference include:

Shahira Fahmy '91, '00, professor, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication

"Our research journey began amidst the Gaza war turmoil. The study is based on interviews conducted with 18 Palestinian journalists in Gaza, aiming to unveil the challenges and nuances of reporting on the Israel-Gaza War that began on October 7, 2023. Through our findings, we provide insights into the evolving landscape of war coverage in the digital era, highlighting ethical dilemmas, safety concerns and personal struggles faced by journalists reporting during conflict." – Shahira Fahmy

  • Second place for her paper, "Seeing Differently: Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Visual Narratives Before and After the Abraham Accords in Arab Media," co-authored with Mona Alsaba (Visual Communication Division, AEJMC).
A collage of three people smiling

 

Mohamed Salama (MA '22):, PhD candidate, University of Maryland

  • Second place - Top Paper Award. "Law Enforcement and Lynching in the Press: America’s  Narrative from 1835 to 1950." The award is part of the Commission on Graduate Education at AEMJC.

Menna Elhosary (MA'24), teaching assistant, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication 

  • Second place - Top Paper Award for her research, ,"When and Why do Arabs Verify? Predicting Online News Verification Intention During the 2023 Gaza War," co-authored with Rasha Abdulla '92, '96. The award  is part of the Robert L. Stevenson Open Paper Competition at AEJMC's International Communication Division.
  • First place - Top Research Poster Award for her paper, "Cartooning, Framing, and Virality; Unraveling the Power of Political Cartoons During the 2023-2024 Gaza War," co-authored with graduate student Menna Elkashif (Political Communication Division, AEJMC).
  • First place - Graduate Student Category, Best Teaching Idea for developing an assignment titled AI Mythbusters: Debunking Digital Deceptions. Through the assignment, students fact-check as many news items and user-generated content as possible throughout the semester using fact-checking tools and techniques to spot AI-generated misinformation, which might include deep fake videos as well as AI-generated images, audio or text.  The award is part of the Teaching News Terrifically in the 21st Century competition, co-sponsored by Washington and Lee University in collaboration with AEJMC's Newspaper and Online News Division.

"The ultimate goal of this assignment is to enhance media students' fact-checking skills, especially within the context of AI-generated misinformation. The assignment  focuses on AI-generated misinformation rather than human-generated content, which is an area that is still underexplored." – Menna Elhosary '

A collage of three people smiling

 

Sara Tarek 17, '21, PhD candidate, Universidad de Murcia, the University of Murcia in Spain

  • First place - Guido H. Stempel III Award for Journalism and Mass Communication Research for her paper, "The Instagram Effect: Unveiling the Influence on Young Egyptian Women's Body Image and Self-Objectification." The paper examines the effect of Instagram use on young Egyptian women’s body image and how it relates to self-objectification,  how women get dissatisfied and ashamed of their bodies, how the comments they receive on their Instagram content affect them positively or negatively, and put pressure on them to acquire a better body shape. The award is part of the Commission on Graduate Education division in AEJMC .

"I focused on Instagram because it is still relatively a new tool, and its effects on body image and self-objectification, especially for young women, is still not clear. The findings contribute to our understanding of social media's impact on body image and emphasize the need for awareness and education regarding the effects of Instagram use among female users in Egypt." - Sara Tarek


Omneya Mohamed Nagib (MA '19) , PhD candidate, University of Texas at Austin 

  •  AEJMC-Mass Communication and Society Division Diversity and Inclusion Career Development Fellowship for "outstanding academic accomplishment and potential for continued achievement as scholars and/or media professionals" addressing issues of diversity, equity,m inclusion and accssilbity within the meida industry 

 

 

Presenting research tackling contemporary topics in the field, our faculty, students and alumni are shining at the upcoming Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) conference to be held in Philadelphia from August 8 to 11.



 

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The Psychology of Music and Focus

Em Mills
July 29, 2024

If you’ve ever crammed for a final last minute and put on your favorite playlist to keep you focused, you’re not alone. But does listening to music while you work actually help your performance? Undergraduate students Yasmin Hamoud, Mariam Bourham and Mahmoud Malatawy’s project looked into this question, taking them all the way to Long Beach, California to present their work conducted as part of the Cognitive Psychology class taught by Jacquelyn Berry, assistant professor of psychology.  

Unique in its focus on bilingualism, Hamoud, Bourham’s and Malatawy’s study had three groups: the first listened to mid-tempo then fast-tempo music in Arabic, the second listened to mid-tempo and fast-tempo music in Russian, and the third  had no music at all. The participants, all of whom were Arabic and English speakers, completed both a logic-based task and a visual task while listening, and the students measured their performance and compared it with that of the other groups. They found that music negatively impacted performance irrespective of the type of task, the language, or the speed.

“In the past, there have been similar studies, but by focusing on English and Arabic bilinguals, we were able to contribute to an understudied part of the field,” Bourham says. 

What makes studying bilinguals specific? “Bilinguals have rather different brains,” explains Bourham. “For example, they have more inhibitory powers: If I'm speaking in English, I might have better abilities to inhibit the Arabic side of my brain, and vice versa.”

The students also enjoyed the practical side of their work. ““For me, the most fun part was watching the psychological effects of the experiment, not only whether the participants were able to complete the test, but just examining whether they were agitated, distracted or felt accomplished.”says Hamoud. 

Through their research, the students had the opportunity to present their findings at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research in Long Beach, California, with funding from a grant from the University.

“AUC really gave us the creative and academic freedom to research what we’re passionate about,” says Hamoud. “Being selected for the conference  was a very surreal moment because I have always wanted to be able to present my research abroad.” 

Their focus on bilingualism helped the students build community while at the conference. “Our poster actually gained a lot of traction, especially from bilinguals, which was really interesting,” says Bourham. “Many Arab Americans stopped at our poster, and we connected with a lot of other researchers through that. They really identified with our research, and I felt proud to be conveying an aspect of research that hasn’t really yet been covered.”

Mentoring and networking were also beneficial for the students. “There were a lot of professors at the conference from different disciplines, like architecture or chemistry, who would give us advice about how to continue our research. I felt really proud of the work we had done and demonstrating how interesting psychology can be,” says Hamoud.

Overall, the conference opened doors for the student to grow and develop both personally and professionally. “Through this experience, I got to explore the opportunities that AUC provides to people who want to present their research abroad,” Bourham says. “Afterward, we were invited to seek out additional conferences here in Cairo. Our initial opportunity had a domino effect, which had a huge impact on us.” 

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