"This report evaluates the risks and vulnerabilities of mobile phone services and apps in 12 specified countries: the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Republic of Belarus, the People’s Republic of China, the Arab Republic of Egypt, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Libya, the Sultanate of Oman, the Kingdom
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of Saudi Arabia, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Tunisian Republic, the Republic of Uzbekistan, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Rather than focus on a single innovation, this study analyzes multiple mobile technologies – including operating systems, applications and mobile protocols – to determine their capacity to protect security and privacy and to combat censorship and surveillance. Throughout this study the protection of mobile phone users was of paramount importance." (Executive summary)
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"This publication seeks to identify the relationship between freedom of expression and Internet privacy, assessing where they support or compete with each other in different circumstances. The publication maps out the issues in the current regulatory landscape of Internet privacy from the viewpoint
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of freedom of expression. It provides an overview of legal protection, self-regulatory guidelines, normative challenges, and case studies relating to the topic." (Foreword, page 5)
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"GISWatch 2012 explores how the internet is being used to ensure transparency and accountability, the challenges that civil society activists face in fighting corruption, and when the internet fails as an enabler of a transparent and fair society. The eight thematic reports and 48 country reports pu
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blished ask provocative questions such as: Is a surveillance society necessarily a bad thing if it fights corruption? And how successful have e-government programmes been in fighting corruption? They explore options for activism by youth and musicians online, as well as the art of using visual evidence to expose delusions of power. By focusing on individual cases or stories of corruption, the country reports take a practical look at the role of the internet in combating corruption at all levels." (Back cover)
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"The age-old Coptic balancing act of proving that they are patriotic Egyptians while retaining a strong attachment to their religious and cultural identity has become harder in the globalization era, when specific individuals and groups based on another continent can affect the domestic political en
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vironment. While it is important not to overestimate the power of the Coptic diaspora lobby, both in the host and homeland societies, it is clear that in the twenty-first century it is one further factor to consider when addressing communal relations in Egypt. Yet this use of technology has not been one-way. The Coptic Orthodox Church has used the same aspects of globalization in its aim to maintain its predominant position in Church-State relations in Egypt. Hence, both groups are using the new media to reach out to the other constituency in a contest that has the long-term potential not only to cause divisions within the Coptic community but also to further heighten tension between the Egyptian state, Muslim public and their Christian compatriots." (Conclusion, page 97)
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"This article investigates what the news says about inequity-driven civil wars and economic underdevelopment. Dewey argued that the lack of causal knowledge that distinguishes between symptoms and root causes would limit potential effective and transformative public action. Political scientists have
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demonstrated that increases in just the number of news stories about a foreign country in both US print and TV news in one year produced a clearly significant relationship to increases in commitments of US foreign aid the following year. This study of reporting on a 2003-2005 African crisis by ten news organizations over 26 months found few articles predominantly focused on causes against conditions on the ground or remedies. It raises questions about the conditions under which news organizations might be expected to provide causal knowledge and when such information can lead to more enlightened long term aid for national transformation." (Abstract)
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"The Arab Media Outlook is the most comprehensive publication on the Arab Media Industry and represents one of the key knowledge development initiatives of the Dubai Press Club. The report serves as a reference point of the media industry in the region highlighting media trends across 17 markets and
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providing both breadth and depth of coverage for the benefit of various industry stakeholders." (www.med-media.eu, October 26, 2015)
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"The purpose of the study was to investigate patterns of major local and non-local news suppliers operating across a range of media – broadcast and print – and relationships between Libyan undergraduate students’ consumption of different news media platforms. A survey was administered to a sam
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ple of 400 students at Al-Fateh University using a stratified random sampling approach with sampling strata set by demographic groups. The new TV news services played an important role in attracting young Libyans with information they desire. The spread of new news media sources (TV, radio and print) in Libya has created a new type of news product that transcends national boundaries. The findings indicated that there were distinct news consumption-related population sub-groups defined in part by news platform (TV versus radio versus print) and in part by type of news supplier (local versus international TV news operations). These findings indicated the emergence of new niche markets in news in Libya." (Abstract)
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"This study examines the Egyptian revolt of January/February 2011 from two discrete perspectives. The first perspective is a contextual marker that takes into account long-term and forecast trends in democracy from 1952 through 2011. The second perspective reports the opinions and viewpoints of Egyp
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tian citizens living in a remote fishing village and resort town through impromptu in-person interviews conducted between 23 and 30 January 2011. The statistical findings evidence that the Internet and mobile phones have helped to facilitate sociopolitical instability and democratic change over time, while the personal interviews paradoxically suggest circumspection in making generalizations about how these events have proceeded across a large population and through a period of tightly suppressed communication when Internet access was shut down. Taken together, characterizing the events in Egypt as having been just a social media revolution therefore appears to misrepresent the evolution of political change in the country through this time period." (Abstract)
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"Audience segmentation is generally associated with strategic communication (such as advertising and public relations), where content is manipulated to suit reader preferences. News has generally been considered truth-telling unvarnished by such concerns. This article compares how news of the same h
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umanitarian crisis [in Darfur, Sudan] was designed by 10 news organizations in seven countries for different market segments. Comparisons showed statistically significant differences in representation, influenced in part by what the audience-market was. Like advertising, news seemed to share an attribute with the strategic design of advertising and public relations. Increasingly carried online, news will be vulnerable to click-based customization of content like advertising is, taking us beyond currently observed geopolitical influences on segmentation to advertiser and market-based differences." (Abstract)
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"The Handbook of Global Health Communication offers a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the role of communication processes in global public health, development and social change. It brings together 32 contributions from well-respected scholars and practitioners in the field, addressing a wid
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e range of communication approaches in current global health programs; offers an integrated view that links communication to the strengthening of health services, the involvement of affected communities in shaping health policies and improving care, and the empowerment of citizens in making decisions about health; ddopts a broad understanding of communication that goes beyond conventional divisions between informational and participatory approaches." (Publisher description)
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"There has been a growing debate about the extent to which the Internet influenced the Arab World’s recent revolutions described as the “Arab Spring”. This belief that the Internet had a contribution is supported by several events and evidences that occurred prior to these revolutions and prov
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ided clear indications about the Internet’s power. This paper investigates the effect of the Internet on shaping politics in Egypt. Research was conducted a few months before the revolution (January 25, 2011) covering the relevant literature, and the news and events that took place. A questionnaire was sent to a sample representing different segments of Internet users in Egypt to recognize their perceptions towards the value of the Internet in politics. Findings indicate a high interest among Egyptians in accessing news online, especially international and privately owned media. In addition, survey participants recognize the Internet’s potential for committing political change. Survey results show that the Internet is perceived in Egypt as a strong tool that political candidates could use to communicate with citizens; however, it is still used primarily for mobilization and information dissemination. Moreover, it was proven that age, gender, education and reading frequency of online news all have varying effects on civic engagement and perception of the role the Internet can play in politics in Egypt." (Abstract)
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"This report is the third in a series of comprehensive studies of internet freedom around the globe and covers developments in 47 countries that occurred between January 2011 and May 2012. Over 50 researchers, nearly all based in the countries they analyzed, contributed to the project by researching
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laws and practices relevant to the internet, testing the accessibility of select websites, and interviewing a wide range of sources. This year's findings indicate that restrictions on internet freedom in many countries have continued to grow, though the methods of control are slowly evolving, becoming more sophisticated and less visible. Brutal attacks against bloggers, politically motivated surveillance, proactive manipulation of web content, and restrictive laws regulating speech online are among the diverse threats to internet freedom emerging over the past two years. Nevertheless, several notable victories have also occurred as a result of greater activism by civil society, technology companies, and independent courts, illustrating that efforts to advance internet freedom can yield results." (www.freedomhouse.org, January 14, 2013)
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