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This edited volume examines the current challenges to media freedom and democratisation in the Middle East. The book revisits the relationship between media consumption and activism in the region, providing thorough analyses on the appropriation of social media for political engagement. Since the outburst and spread of what was known as the ‘Arab Uprisings’ in 2010, the political and media landscapes in the Middle East region have dramatically changed. The initial hope for democratic change and governance quality improvements has faded, as several regimes in the Middle East have strengthened their repressive tactics toward voices deemed critical of governments’ practices, including journalists, bloggers, and activists. The crumbling Arab media scene has also reached an abysmal low, with little to no independence, and public perception of basic freedoms in the region has significantly dropped, as has trust in media and government institutions. This book examines current challenges to media freedom, political participation, and democratisation in the region while reassessing the dynamic relationship between media use and political engagement, amidst a complex political environment accompanied by a rapidly changing digital media landscape. This book’s relevance will appeal to varied audiences, such as scholars and students of journalism, communication, political science, and Middle Eastern studies. It will also prove to be an invaluable resource for organisations dedicated to the research of political communication, media freedom, and use patterns of nontraditional, or new, media.
A comprehensive assessment of the origins and staying power of Middle East autocracies, as well as a sober account of the struggles of state reformers and opposition forces to promote civil liberties, competitive elections and a pluralistic vision of Islam. Drawing on the insights of some 25 leading Western and Middle Eastern scholars, the book highlights the dualistic and often contradictory nature of political liberalization. Yemen suggest, political liberalization - as managed by the state - not only opens new spaces for debate and criticism, but is also used as a deliberate tactic to avoid genuine democratization. In several chapters on Iran, the authors analyze the benefits and costs of limited reform. There, the electoral successes of President Mohammad Khatami and his reformist allies inspired a new generation but have not as yet undermined the clerical establishment's power. By contrast, in Turkey a party with Islamist roots is moving a discredited system beyond decades of conflict and paralysis, following a stunning election victory in 2002. force for change. While acknowledging the enduring attraction of radical Islam throughout the Arab world, the concluding chapters carefully assess the recent efforts of Muslim civil society activists and intellectuals to promote a liberal Islamic alternative. Their struggles to affirm the compatibility of Islam and pluralistic democracy face daunting challenges, not least of which is the persistent efforts of many Arab rulers to limit the influence of all advocates of democracy, secular or religious.
In order to better understand how the world viewed the US 2016 presidential election, the issues that mattered around the world, and how nations made sense of how their media systems constructed presentations of the presidential election, Robert S. Hinck, Skye C. Cooley, and Randolph Kluver examine global news narratives during the campaign and immediately afterwards. Analyzing 1,578 news stories from 62 sources within three regional media ecologies in China, Russia, and the Middle East, Hinck, Cooley, and Kluver demonstrate how the US election was incorporated into narrative constructions of the global order. They establish that the narratives told about the US election through national and regional media provide insights into how foreign nations construct US democracy, and reflect local understandings regarding the issues, and impacts, of US policy towards those nations. Avoiding jargon-laden prose, Global Media and Strategic Narratives of Contested Democracy is as accessible as it is wide-ranging. Its empirical detail will expand readers’ understanding of soft power as narrative articulations of foreign nation’s policies, values, and beliefs within localized media systems. Communication/media studies students, as well as political scientists whose studies includes media and global politics, will welcome its publication.
By using an analytical and comparative approach, this book explicitly shows how the censorial culture grew as the media developed in this region. This book also shows the possibility for emerging models of media in the Middle East that highlight a direction toward democracy and the application of laws and regulations.
This book argues that Internet diffusion and use in the Middle East enables meaningful micro-changes in citizens' lives, even in states where no Arab Spring revolution occurred. Using ethnographic evidence and taking a comparative perspective, it presents a grass roots look at how new media use fits into the practice of everyday life. It explores why citizens use social media to digitally route around state and other forms of power at work in their lives. This increase in citizen civic engagement, supported by new media use, offers the possibility of a new order of things, from redefining patriarchal power relations at home, to reconfigurations of citizens' relationships with the state, broadly defined. The author argues that new media channels offer pathways to empowerment widely and cheaply in the Middle East.
Media, War and Terrorism analyses, for the first time, responses to the events of 9/11 and it's repercussions from the point of view of Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Perhaps controversially, the contributors argue that while the US, and to an extent European, media seems largely unified in their coverage and silence in public debate of the events surrounding the attacks on the World Trade Centre, there exists open, critical debate in other parts of the world. By examining the use of media as an instrument of warfare and analyzing the construction of public opinion in mediated electronic warfare, this book clearly shows the difference in perspectives between public opinion in the US and the rest of the world. Moving away from popular assumptions that societies in the West are democratic and progressive and those in the Middle East and Asia are either authoritarian or under-developed, this examination of the media in those countries suggests the exact opposite. In combining an examination of the general, theoretical issues concerning the use of the media as an instrument of warfare with rich, geographically diverse case studies, the editors are able to provide a diverse and intriguing analysis of the impact and inter-connectedness of national and global medias. Bringing together contributions from academics, journalists and media practioners from all over the world, Media, War and Terrorism is an essential read for all of those seeking an informed, non-Western perspective on the events following 9/11.
This book examines the evolution of national Arab media and its interplay with political change, particularly in emerging democracies in the context of the Arab uprisings. Investigated from a journalistic perspective, this research addresses the role played by traditional national media in consolidating emerging democracies or in exacerbating their fragility within new political contexts. Also analyzed are the ways journalists report about politics and transformations of these media industries, drawing on the international experiences of media in transitional societies. This study builds on a field investigation led by the author and conducted within the project “Arab Revolutions: Media Revolutions,” covering Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt.
The latest edition of this renowned textbook explores the states and regimes of the Middle East and North Africa. Presenting heavily revised, fully updated chapters contributed by the world’s leading experts, it analyzes the historical trajectory, political institutions, economic development, and foreign policies of the region’s nearly two dozen countries. The volume can be used in conjunction with its sister volume, The Societies of the Middle East and North Africa, for a comprehensive overview of the region. Chapters are organized and structured identically, giving insightful windows into the nuances of each country’s domestic politics and foreign relations. Data tables and extensive annotated bibliographies orient readers towards further research. Whether used in conjunction with its sister volume or on its own, this book provides the most comprehensive and detailed overview of the region’s varied politics. Five new experts cover the critical country cases of Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. All chapters cover the latest events, including trends that have remarkably changed in just a few years like the gradual end of the Syrian civil war. As such, this textbook is invaluable to students of Middle Eastern politics.. The ninth edition brings substantial changes. All chapters also have a uniform, streamlined structure that explores the historical context, social and economic environment, political institutions, regime dynamics, and foreign policy of each country. Fact boxes and political maps are now far more extensive, and photographs and images also help illustrate key points. Annotated bibliographies are vastly expanded, providing nothing short of the best list of research references for each country.
Al Jazeera and Democratization analyses the increasing role of the media in political transformations with a special emphasis on the Arab world. Taking the Al Jazeera media network as a case study, the author explains how engaging the public and providing platforms for open debate and free expression contributed to the emergence of a new vibrant Arab public sphere. The launch of Al Jazeera in 1996 was a significant event that led to subsequent changes both in Arab media and politics. Among these changes, the Arab spring is certainly the most remarkable. This unprecedented phenomenon has already resulted in political change in a number of countries and is expected to generate a democratizing wave and reshape the face of the region. The Arab spring provides us with a telling empirical example where the interplay between media and politics is manifest. The public sphere that has emerged out of this newly communicative environment has undoubtedly played its role in the current political transformations. In this context, Arab democratization is no longer an abstract, it is rather a developing process that needs our attention and requires concerted scholarly efforts. Highly topical, this book provides a fresh theoretical perspective on Arab democratization in light of the Arab Spring, and is essential reading for researchers and students of Middle East Politics, Media Studies and Democratization.
Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Politics - Region: Near East, Near Orient, grade: 1,7, University of Freiburg (Seminar für Wissenschaftliche Politik), language: English, abstract: The Arab world is considered to be currently undergoing a great change. A new generation of leaders (for example Bashar al-Asad in Syria, Absallah II. in Jordan, Hamad bin Isa in Bahrain) has to face the urgency of social, political and economic reforms, which have been retarded for a long time. Yet despite a perceivable higher degree of tolerance towards discussion and dissent in some Arab countries, despite the aspired renewal and modernisation of economy and politics in their countries, the young leaders did and do not intend any far reaching change of the political system. Nevertheless a public sphere is awakening in the countries of the Middle East, expressing discontent with the present political situation and claiming more political participation and economic freedom. The kifaya movement in Egypt might be a good example for this course of events, which actually is taking place throughout the Arab world. Strict media laws have hindered the formation of a vital civil society in the past decades. The rise of private-owned satellite television channels in the past 10 years has raised the hope that these new media will contribute to the evolving democratisation process, which is perceivably taking place throughout the Arab world. Considering the vital role of mass media in consolidated democracies, the question arises, what contribution mass media, especially television channels, can make to the democratisation process in the countries of the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA States). Television is considered as a very capacious instrument in this process, because illiteracy is still very widespread, thus audiovisual media embody the most accessible source of information for large parts of the population. Precise and capacious data about viewing habits is hardly available and the few statistics that exist cannot claim full validity and aren’t sufficient to confirm a comprehensive theory. As Kai HAFEZ, an expert in Arab media, put this problem: “Whereof is the function of the New Media in the context of political transformation to be measured?” Are there links between television programming and democratisation? What impact does satellite television in particular have on this process? To what extent and under what conditions can satellite television channels contribute to the democratisation process? Are media freedoms necessary prerequisites for a democratic transition or do these freedoms evolve during the democratisation process?