The Media Department at the Umm Al-Qura University organized a workshop to discuss the  tendentious media campaigns against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the exerted efforts to address them as a scientific activity for the master’s students of Batch 3 in the Department, under the supervision of Dr. Faisal Al-Shemary and the presence of Dr. Mohamed Hendiah and a number of teaching staff members and students. 

The workshop tackled some media campaigns that include false information and rumors that aim at distorting the mental image about the Kingdom in the external media and discussing their motivations and objectives, in addition to the role implemented by the media to address them and provide the real image about the Kingdom. 

It also discussed the role of the media and its effective presence in the international events and conferences and the thoughtful address that reflects a lot of facts, in addition to the big role in outlining the stereotype image about the Kingdom and the Saudi people through the offered content on the the different media platforms. This is besides the hoped-for role of the Contact Governmental Center that was established lately to develop the media discourse of the governmental institutions and improve the coordination between them. 

The workshop also tackled the role of King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue (KAICIID) and its importance in clarifying a lot of mistaken information and discussing them with different religions and cultures which  speaks to the effective elites and opinion leaders. 

Finally, it discussed a peace project which was launched by the King Abdulaziz Center for National Dialogue as a smart initiative aims at supporting the effective youth in different media platforms and making use of their potentials to offer meaningful content that reflects the real image of the Kingdom and its people, in addition to coordinating the individual efforts between them in an organized complementary way. 

The discussion was concluded by focusing on the importance of the individual role in providing a positive image about the Kingdom abroad through the exchange students and travelers who represent their country by their behavior and way of dealing that draw or promote the stereotype image in others’ minds. This is in addition to the importance of raising the awareness of the people about the dangerous of dealing with the different media platforms and social media in a negative way that would affect the security of the Kingdom directly or indirectly and distort its image in the international community. 

Then, Dr. Mohamed Hendiah, the Head of the Media Department, thanked the organizers of the workshop for this prestigious scientific argument and the important topic that express the national spirit, belonging and loyalty to this great country.