This interdisciplinary project investigates the extents and limits of alternative news translation in the era of globalization and virtualization and is guided by the insights drawn from actor-network theory, material semiotics, ethnomethodology, anthropology, news sociology, and the philosophy of translation. It visually represents the semiotic, sociological and material components of news translation as well as describes the patterned and concerted actions of human and non-human actors that go into making news stories in the context of IPS, a global news agency. A contribution is made to both theoretical knowledge and the development of the conceptual research method, which is given scarce attention in translation studies as compared to prevailing empirical research. A meta-semiotic concept of sociological translation that I formulate helps bridge the gap between tackling ‘translation’ in terms ofJakobson’s triadic classification as either an intralingual, interlingual or intersemiotic phenomenon, and the recurrent metaphorical usage of ‘translation’ in the humanities, social sciences and beyond. The concept is informed by the networked ontology of actor-network theory and embodies the idea that meanings and translation are created by means of social interactions rather than by language alone. It is suggested that sociological translation stands for any linguistic, material-semiotic transformations and social articulations, which are all enmeshed with IPS journalistic and interlingual translation practices. On the other hand, in view of the absence of methodological tools for studying nonlanguage-based translation in translation studies, I have assembled my own methodology drawing on the traditions of the wider humanities and the social sciences. My case study adopts Law’s ideas on method assemblage and Latour’s elaborations on infra-reflexivity which are well-suited for conveying the serendipity and messiness of ‘real-life’ research. It incorporates traditional ethnography, virtual ethnography and digital methods. Visualizing a network of sociological translations at different junctures as well outlining a holistic map of the concept allows one to observe the practices of journalist-editor-translators from both micro- and macro-perspectives. Finally, the studied phenomenon reflects modern conditions of life: non-stopping globalization and virtualization and is transdisciplinary in nature. Delineating and comparing the articulations of sociological translation in a wider connected and virtual context illuminates the concept’s mechanisms and contributes to the scholarly awareness of the complexity of news translation in a digital age. In conclusion, the thesis offers a new conceptual space within TS—translational sociology—which would strike up a conversation between TS and other disciplines in the social sciences with the goal of cross-fertilization of knowledge and finding better-informed interdisciplinary solutions to the shared problems including their linguistic, discursive and cultural aspects.

This study focuses on the factors shaping innovation in online newsrooms in three nations of the Arab World, with particular interest in the adoption of multimedia news innovations. Applying theoretical perspectives from the social shaping of technology and the diffusion of innovation literature, this study sought to identify the key factors shaping the innovation process. Field studies were based in three Arabic newsrooms: Aljazeera Net in Qatar, Almasry Alyoum in Egypt, and Almassae in Morocco. The case studies are grounded in two weeks of participant-observation field research within each online newsroom, along with over 100 in-depth interviews with those involved in the production of online news, and online archival reviews of the three news portals since their inception. Field research began with participant observation at Aljazeera in 2010, prior to the uprisings of the Arab Spring, and continued through early 2013. The political context of each newsroom during the field research became a major aspect of the innovation process of each case study. The thesis reinforces a wide range of social, economic, and organizational factors in the adoption and adaptation of multimedia technologies in the newsrooms studied, supporting earlier research on newsroom innovation across other regions of the world. For example, conceptions about ‘ideal’ industry multimedia models for the modern newsroom were important in each case. However, in the political context of events related to the Arab Spring, the overriding importance of the larger political context emerged in each case. The significance of this observation suggests that research on news organizations cannot take the political context for granted and should more explicitly embed it in discussion of the social shaping of innovation, even under more stable and liberal political conditions. There is a relative lack of systematic empirical research on Arabic newsrooms among studies of news innovation. Looking at the political context of emergent or weak democracies and their influence on modern multimedia newsrooms especially during crisis events, therefore, can contribute to the development of theory and research in Western democracies; and reintroduce politics into theories of innovation within modern newsrooms. This study suggests that future scholarship brings politics into the study of the social shaping of newsroom innovation without losing the many significant advances of existing research in more liberal democratic Western contexts of the multimedia newsroom.