"Journalists in Egypt and the UAE have been differently challenged by the COVID-19 situation at multiple levels, (1) individual (2) work/routines and (3) media/organizational while covering COVID-19. Using the hierarchy of influences model, we analyze the differentiated journalists’ role conceptio
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ns, perceived performance, and challenges they faced in covering COVID-19, and how that affect their performance, as Global South-based journalists. Applying a mixed method approach, we conducted in-depth interviews with 20 journalists who reported COVID-19, representing different media platforms, as a part of the Global Risk Journalism Hub project. We also surveyed journalists (n= 102) from both countries, as a part of the Journalistic Role Performance project. Findings revealed that media-organizational level challenges influenced journalists more than other levels. Journalists also shifted from the Civic Role Conception to performing the Loyal-Facilitator Role followed by the Interventionist Role during the pandemic." (Abstract)
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"Rather than viewing the Middle East as a monolithic culture, this Handbook examines the diverse and multi-local characteristics of the region’s knowledge production, dynamic media, and rich cultures. It addresses a wide range of topics, including the evolving mainstream and alternative media, com
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peting histories in the region, and pressing socio-economic and media debates. Additionally, the Handbook explores the impact of regional and international politics on Middle Eastern cultures and media." (Publisher description)
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"Who owns the media and communications in Africa today and with what implications? The book elegantly answers this urgent question by unpacking multiple dimensions of media ownership through rare and authoritative perspectives, including both historical and contemporary digital developments. It trac
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es the evolving forms of ownership of media and communications in specific African contexts, showing how they interact with broader changes in and outside the continent. The book also shows how Big Techs, such as Meta (formerly known as Facebook), are involved in a scramble for Africa’s digital ecosystem and how their advance brings both opportunities and concerns about ownership and control. The chapters analyse evolving forms of ownership and their implications on media concentration and democracy across Africa. The book offers a nuanced account of how media ownership structures are in some instances captured with an ever-growing and complex ecosystem that also has new opportunities for public interest media. Offering a significant representation of the trends and diversity of existing media systems, the book goes beyond the postcolonial geographical divisions of North and Sub-Saharan Africa to highlight common patterns and significant similarities and differences of communications ownerships between and within African countries. The contributors expose media and communications ownership patterns in Africa that are centralised and yet decentralising and in some cases, battling, resurging and globalising." (Publisher description)
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"The purpose of this study is to investigate the extent of digital surveillance by Arab authorities, which face risks and threats of surveillance, and how journalists seek to press freedom by using tools and techniques to communicate securely. Design/methodology/approach: The study used focus group
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discussions with 14 journalists from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Yemen, Oman, Jordan and Egypt. While in Egypt, questionnaires were distributed to 199 journalists from both independent and semi-governmental outlets to investigate how Egyptian journalists interpret the new data protection law and its implications for press freedom. Findings: The study indicated that journalists from these countries revealed severe censorship by their respective governments, an element inconsistent with the Arab Constitution. The recommendation of the study encourages media organisations to play a more active role in setting policies that make it easier for journalists to adopt and use digital security tools, while Egyptian journalists see the law as a barrier to media independence because it allows the government to exercise greater information control through digital policy and imposes regulatory rules on journalists. Practical implications: The study identifies practical and theoretical issues in Arab legislation and may reveal practices of interest to scientists researching the balance between data protection, the right of access to information and media research as an example of contemporary government indirect or ‘‘soft’’ censorship methods. Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first research contributions to analyse the relationships between Arab authoritarians who used surveillance to restrict freedom of the press after the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011 to keep themselves in power as long as they could. In addition, Egypt’s use of surveillance under new laws allowed the regimes to install software on the journalists’ phones that enabled them to read the files and emails and track their locations; accordingly, journalists can be targeted by the cyberattack and can be arrested." (Abstract)
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"Bringing together 14 journalism scholars from around the world, this edited collection addresses the deficit of coverage of violence against women in the Global South by examining the role of the legacy press and social media that report on and highlight ways to improve reporting. Authors investiga
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te the ontological limitations which present structural and systemic challenges for journalists who report on the normalization of violence against women in country cases in Argentina; Brazil; Mexico; Indonesia; Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa; Egypt; Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Challenges include patriarchal forces; gender imbalance in newsrooms; propaganda and censorship strategies by repressive, hyper-masculine, and populist political regimes; economic and digital inequities; and civil and transnational wars. Presenting diverse conceptual, methodological, and empirical chapters, the collection offers a revision of existing frameworks and guidelines and aims to promote more gender-sensitive, trauma-informed, solutions-driven, and victim or survivor centered reporting in the region." (Publisher description)
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"Adjusting the focus to the time and research of the present, this chapter analyzes two case studies that occurred before and after the revitalization of the global #MeToo movement in 2017. The selected cases investigate how women have used social media platforms to combat VAW. The first case is Daf
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tar Hekayat El Mudawana, a blog that was created to expose sexual harassment and rape crimes—such as the #Fairmont_crime, which involved the gang rape of a young woman in 2014. The blog acted as a safe space for female survivors to tell their stories without exposing their identities. The second case focuses on Bassam Ahmed Zaki, who was exposed through social media in 2020 and later charged and incarcerated for serial rape." (Abstract)
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"This study examines the boundaries and limitations of the diffusion of “development journalism” among both the editorial body and the journalist body in the Egyptian newsrooms after the 2011 Arab Spring. Newsrooms under study represent different perspectives including state-owned, private-indep
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endent, and opposition newspapers. Through in-depth interviews with thirty-seven editors in chief and journalists, the authors studied how the editors and journalists at each newspaper define development journalism, whether the diffusion of development journalism follows a top-down or bottom-up approach, and if development journalism could influence the setting of the news agenda. Results show that the differences are not only apparent in the way development journalism is defined inside the different news organizations, but also between managers and journalists within each. Organizational structures and technological developments are as well factors that affect the way development journalism is diffused inside newsrooms." (Abstract)
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"The Palgrave Handbook of Gender, Media and Communication in the Middle East and North Africa stands as an authoritative and up-to-date resource on the critical debates, research methods and ongoing reflections on how gender and communication intersect with the economic, social, political, and cultu
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ral fabrics of the countries in the MENA region. The handbook comprises thirty chapters written by both established and rising scholars of gender, media, and digital technologies, and will rely on fresh data which seeks to capture the dynamic and complex realities of MENA societies, as well as the tensions and contradictions in the politics of gender and uses of communication technologies. The Handbook is split into six sections: Gender, Identities and Sexualities; The Gender of Politics; Gender and Activism; Gender-Based Violence; Gender and Entrepreneurship; and Gender in Expressive Cultures." (Publisher description)
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"Drawing on cases from across the continent, contributors explore the form and nature of social media and government censorship, often via antisocial media laws, or less overt tactics such as state cybersurveillance, spyware attacks on social media activists, or the artful deployment of the rhetoric
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of "fake news" as a smokescreen to muzzle critical voices. The book also reflects on the Chinese influence in African governments’ clampdown on social media and the role of Israeli NSO Group Technologies, as well as the tactics and technologies which activists and users are deploying to resist or circumvent social media censorship." (Publisher description)
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"This book offers a ten-year perspective on ongoing and evolving practices of digital activism across the Middle East and North Africa, drawing on interviews and ethnographic evidence collected between 2012 and 2022. It examines the shifting narrative around digital activism in the region, from the
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wake of the 2011 uprisings to the 2019 series of protests coined 'the second wave of the Arab Spring'. It considers how media activists navigate the transition from the emergent to the mainstream in a climate of contentious politics, following the civil mobilisations of the pro-revolutionary youths in Tunisia, Egypt, and Lebanon. It outlines the particularities of these three different political contexts and media environments, featuring case studies of the Tunisian blogosphere, online campaigning in the Egyptian elections and interviews with social media activists. In light of this empirical evidence, the book offers a critique of the increasing prevalence of a security perspective through which online activism has been viewed and its deleterious effect on digital political engagement in the region." (Publisher description)
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"Africa is a diverse and complex continent, consisting of 54 countries, 5 regions and about 2,000 languages. This report identifies what influences African youths' attitudes and decisions. It is based on a survey of 4,500 people, aged 18–35, in nine African countries: Egypt, Morocco, Ghana, Ivory
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Coast, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, South Africa and Zimbabwe. These nine countries act as proxy for the continent and provide evidence of a wide range of attitudes to the issues raised." (Page 2)
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"The Global Handbook of Media Accountability brings together leading scholars to 'de-Westernize' the academic debate on media accountability and discuss different models of media self-regulation and newsroom transparency around the globe. With examination of the status quo of media accountability in
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forty-four countries worldwide, it offers a theoretically informed, comparative analysis of accountability regimes of different varieties. As such, it constitutes the first interdisciplinary academic framework comparing structures of media accountability across all continents and represents an invaluable basis for further research and policy-making. It will therefore appeal to scholars and students of media studies and journalism, mass communication, sociology and political science, as well as policy-makers and practitioners." (Publisher description)
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"The online harassment of journalists is a phenomenon which has been on the rise in Europe over the last decade and it affects journalists' working lives. As an expression of mob censorship, online harassment raises questions about how media organisations react to online aggressions targeting their
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journalists, the consequences on the victims’ well-being and on the role of journalism in society. Yet, previous research has shown the lack of support mechanisms provided by journalists’ employers. In this article, we explore the hypothesis that the lack of organisational support towards targeted journalists is partly due to the challenges faced by media managers when trying to make sense of the phenomenon. This article offers a unique viewpoint on how 22 Belgian media managers from five media organisations struggle to define what online harassment is and how to respond to it. In turn, it shows that the vague understanding of what online harassment is seems to favour case-by-case organisational responses. Missing words and unstructured actions related to online harassment impede media managers from addressing online harassment as a collective issue in journalism and its consequences on the democratic debate." (Abstract)
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"This briefing document provides an overview of key developments in digital authoritarianism in 11 countries and explains the theoretical framework and methodology behind The Unfreedom Monitor project. The document also provides a basis for expanding this research to other countries to deepen our un
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derstanding of digital authoritarianism globally, as well as its crucial implications for the future. The preliminary sample of 11 countries was chosen to reflect a range of factors: system of government, approach to human rights (including rankings in indexes), and corporate relations. The countries are: Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Morocco, Myanmar, Russia, Sudan, Tanzania, Turkey, and Zimbabwe." (Publisher description)
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"According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), half of the media in the country is owned by the government or affiliated with the intelligence services. The rest are owned by pro-government businessmen. The few independent press websites that are still open have been blocked. Their owners and editor
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s were arrested and then released shortly after, as happened to Mada Masr and Al-Manassa. More than 500 websites have been blocked in Egypt, and more than 100 journalists have been arrested since 2014. The adoption of new regulations like the anti-terrorism law and cyber crime law and the creation of the Supreme Council for Media Regulation suppressed the freedom of expression and shut down the way to a free press. These new laws and regulations have affected the work of journalists who are at risk of charges such as belonging to a terrorist group or spreading false news. To the international community, Egypt denies imprisoning journalists for their work, which is true to some extent because Egyptian security is trying and imprisoning journalists on charges such as belonging to terrorist groups, without directly linking it to their journalistic work. The Airtable analysis undertaken in this project attempts to reflect the situation around monitoring technology through online content over the past few years. We can see a repeated goal of restricting the freedom of online spaces and banning any narrative parallel to the official one. This can be seen in the Attorney General's orders to establish a unit to monitor and monitor social media platforms and activities, contrary to constitutional articles that protect people's privacy and their right to freedom of expression." (https://advox.globalvoices.org)
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"[…] The studies presented here […] seek to explore two questions: how have Arab diasporic communities in Europe used Arab media in transnational political action formation since 2011? And how does the use of different media platforms stimulate or confine particular diasporic action, and what do
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es this mean for our understanding of mediatized diaspora? The project conducts a comparative study between the use and users of Syrian, Tunisian, Bahraini, and Egyptian regime-critical and politically mobilized media. The four Arab countries have been selected because they represent different patterns of immigration that are formed by colonial connections and current conflicts." (Introduction, page 2)
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"The purpose of this study is to investigate the extent to which Arab Governments limited freedom of expression and access to information for journalists while they reported on COVID-19-related issues. Design/methodology/approach: Focus group discussions were conducted with 20 journalists from Egypt
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, Jordan, Libya and Tunisia. Findings: The results of the study indicated that journalists in these countries experience violence in many forms as follows: torture, imprisonment, closure of their websites and censorship of content. In the four countries investigated, the results revealed that there is severe censorship (self-censoring and the governments) of the content presented to the public, an element that is inconsistent with the Arab Constitution, as well as international law, thus violating human rights laws. In addition, governments publish COVID-19 misinformation and at the same time, do little to support an independent media environment. Practical implications: Arab societies are in dire need of freedom of expression and the right to access information to give journalists an opportunity to cover the news during the pandemic. Originality/value: This study is important because it investigates the political changes that occurred after the Arab Spring revolutions in three countries, Egypt, Tunisia and Libya and the freedom of expression and rights is still restricted. In the same way, Jordan is a royal government that is trying to achieve democracy under a dictatorial regime. This study attempts to suggest practical solutions for journalists through various stakeholders by highlighting the importance of access to information and freedom of expression, particularly during the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. These freedoms are critical for journalists to provide health officials with information, improve the efficacy of public health interventions through feedback and prevent the spread of misinformation." (Abstract)
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"This report provides an in-depth overview of the current state and trends of data protection regulation of seven North African countries – namely Algeria, Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco, Libya, Sudan, and Tunisia. The st udy tackles regulatory approaches, key principles, and selected instruments. Fro
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m the outset, the analysis was limited to a textual analysis of the respective data protection laws, including constitutional law (i.e., the “law in the books”). In detail, the study engages with the development and status of regional and sub-regional data protection frameworks in Africa. Political as well as international influences on the development (or the lack of) of data protection laws in North Africa were considered. In addition, for countries with a comprehensive data protection laws (i.e. Algeria, Egypt, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia), the comparative assessment also looked into the scope of alignment and of divergence with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)." (Back cover)
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