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Academia and students discuss outcomes of UNESCO study on media development in Jordan
鈥淭his is a must read for every media student in Jordan鈥 said Dr. Ezzat Hijab, Professor at the Faculty for Communication at the Middle East University, at the end of a session on UNESCO鈥檚 Report on Media Development in Jordan organized in Amman last week. 鈥淲e will discuss within our faculty how to best integrate it into the syllabus of the media curricula鈥, he added.
The UNESCO 鈥淪upport to Media in Jordan鈥 project team has recently initiated a dialogue with universities in Jordan to engage academia and students in on the outcomes of the assessment which was done using UNESCO鈥檚 Media Development Indicators (MDIs).
The MDIs are an internationally recognised research tool endorsed by the Member States of UNESCO鈥檚 International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC).
The dialogue with Jordanian universities on the MDI study aims to explore the use of the study as a reference resource in media faculties.
Besides the engagement with the Middle East University (MEU), the research team of the study and the project team earlier visited Yarmouk University in the city of Irbid.
During each of the 2-hour sessions, students, professors and the MDI research team exchanged ideas on the way forward in light of the recent developments in the media sector in Jordan.
Students and professors at Yarmouk University were eager to know the researchers鈥 opinion on the implications on media freedom in times of regional turmoil, while the discussion at MEU focused more on recent regulations concerning news websites.
With its media department established in 1980, Yarmouk University was the first university to offer an undergraduate programme journalism in Jordan, and it remains the only public university teaching journalism (at BA and MA level). MEU鈥檚 media department was launched in 2005 and MEU was the first Jordanian university to offer journalism at post-graduate level.
The MDI study for Jordan was published in September 2015 as part of the first phase of the EU-funded 鈥淪upport to Media in Jordan鈥 project. The full report and more information on the project can be accessed here: .
