Reporting Iraq's cosmopolitan society in the Australian print media : The case of the Assyrian church bombings

A series of bomb blasts that targeted a number of Assyrian churches in Baghdad and Mosul last year were reported in the Australian media and seemed to hint at the complexity of Iraq’s cosmopolitan society. This paper seeks to compare and contrast the representation of these events in four of Australia’s leading newspapers (The Australian, The Courier-Mail, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald) by using a multi-methodological approach. The analysis reveals that Australian print coverage falls short of detailing the complexities of Iraq’s cosmopolitan society and therefore engenders an Orientalist (Said, 1978) discourse that constructs the Assyrians as powerless and anonymous victims.

Perceived market orientation and church participation

Over the recent years, the concept of market orientation has become an attractive avenue for research in marketing. However, despite an array of theories, a systematic framework investigating the role of market orientation in non-profit organizations remains limited. Through the integration of concepts from church participation and marketing literature, the study put forth a comprehensive model that describes the role of market orientation in church participation phenomenon. The study found support for the positive association between ‘perceived market orientation’ and respondents’ extent of participation in church-related activities.

Sveta Bogorodica (The Church of the Holy Mother), Zavoj, Macedonia : writing about an insignificant vernacular building

Sveta Bogorodica (Church of the Holy Mother), Zavoj, is a small church built in 1934 in a village in the Republic of Macedonia. It presented a quintessential architectural division between a richly ornamented interior and a pure white formal exterior. The paper will examine the question of tradition in relation to architecture. What of the formal Byzantine architectural tradition is inherited in this folk vernacular church building? Secondly, tradition as an inherited liturgical ritual and ceremony. How are these two forms of tradition autonomous or intertwined, and how the question about transcendence in architecture pursued in the 2005 paper on Hagia Sofia might be understood within the parameters offered by this church building, will be explored in the paper .