Naomi Sakr

Social media, television talk shows, and political change in Egypt

At least two pivotal moments in Egypt’s 2011 uprising took place on talk shows on the country’s private satellite television channels. In seeking to understand how these shows evolved, under authoritarian rule, to the point where they could host such moments, this article explores the impact of online media on their evolution. Taking account of studies into online–offline media interaction in democratic and nondemocratic settings, the research traces processes behind the rise of oppositional talk on Egyptian television during three consecutive periods. It finds that these had as much to do with particularities of national politics and economics as with transnational digital networks. Indeed, it was the restrictions on mainstream media that pushed political communication online, which validates Kraidy’s theory of hypermedia space, where multiple points of access to digital media are seen to facilitate contestation of the status quo. Yet, unequal offline power relations continue to shape these access points.

Women and Media in Saudi Arabia: Rhetoric, Reductionism and Realities

Contradictions inherent in restrictions on women in Saudi Arabia have been shown to create space for renegotiation of womens personal and political status in the kingdom. The Saudi media offer a window onto this renegotiation process, not because there is any automatic correlation between womens visibility in the media and their status in other areas of public life, but because analysis of media institutions can shed light on the contingent and historically specific nature of legal and social constraints on women. This paper, by examining multiple developments in women-media interaction during the period 2004–06, uncovers an uneven picture, whereby heightened visibility for women in the media was accompanied by rather little change in promotion of female media professionals to decision-making positions. Nevertheless, modest breakthroughs occurred due in part to initiatives driven by the domestic and foreign policy interests of influential elements in the Saudi ruling establishment. Beside these was a parallel process of renegotiation for the status of all citizens, male and female, vis-à-vis government and the state.

Foreign Support for Media Freedom Advocacy in the Arab Mediterranean: Globalization from Above or Below?

Recent structural changes to the Arab audio-visual media scene have encouraged an increasing number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) involved in media freedom advocacy to launch initiatives aimed at making Arab broadcast media more pluralistic and boosting the independence and professionalism of broadcast journalists. Some interventions follow a top-down formula, sidestepping existing institutions that may be undemocratic, whereas others seek to work for change from below and within. This article, while conceptualizing such divergence in terms of Falks distinction between globalization-from-above and globalization-from-below, also follows Wilkin in questioning whether these two categories can plausibly be separated from each other. Using two case studies of organizations that channel foreign grants into media-related activism in countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine, the essay explores how separate these categories may be in practice and assesses the validity of claims that foreign funding of advocacy NGOs depoliticizes and fragments civil society.

News, Transparency and the Effectiveness of Reporting From Inside Arab Dictatorships

Contradictions in Egyptian media laws, whereby draconian emergency censorship powers coexist with apparently lively media output, seriously affect the content of foreign press reporting from Cairo. Taking account of theories about the way news production norms in free societies marginalize insights into the political structures of societies that are not free, this article examines treatment of struggles that took place in Egypt in 2008 over the licensing of news media and journalists. It finds that, because these struggles involved legal processes not marked by obvious crisis, the full extent of repression they reflected was rarely conveyed in foreign news reports.

Diversity and diaspora: Arab communities and satellite communication in Europe

Since the late 1990s, Europes satellite television landscape has been transformed, with European populations of non-European heritage increasingly watching television channels in their own languages. After surveying recent academic work on diasporic communication, multiculturalism and representation, this article examines examples of Euro-Arab interaction over Arabic-language satellite channels in the period 2003—6, exploring the evolving dynamic between symbolic and territorial power.

Freedom of expression, accountability and development in the Arab region

Mechanisms for ensuring government transparency and accountability have yet to become established in the Arab region, where oil rents and security rents have traditionally enabled governments to provide jobs and services without having to rely heavily, if at all, on raising revenue through personal income tax on citizens. Yet various forms of resource mobilization, which will be needed in future, are likely to require a greater degree of accountability from those responsible for such mobilization. This paper considers whether a move in this direction is under way. It reviews government approaches to freedom of expression in the media and among non- governmental organizations. It notes changes that have taken place in this sphere since the start of the 1990s, not all of them positive, and concludes that many more steps remain to be taken if media organizations and non-governmental organizations are to exert pressure for accountability on behalf of citizens, and especially the disadvantaged.

Friend or foe? Dependency theory and women's media activism in the Arab Middle East

The second half of the 1990s saw an upsurge everywhere in women’s activism to improve their access to, and representation in, the media. Intensified activity by women both produced and was mandated by the Beijing Platform for Action, which emerged from the UN-sponsored Fourth World Conference on Women held in China in 1995. The Beijing Platform identified 12 critical areas of concern, including poverty, education, violence against women, the effects of armed conflict on women, and the need to end inequality in power sharing and decision making at all levels. It listed communication systems and the mass media as one critical area. Strategic objectives were to increase women’s participation in media decision making and promote non-stereotypical media portrayal of women. Efforts to achieve these objectives were pursued inside and outside the UN system. Within the United Nations, UNESCO’s Communication Division played a role. Outside it, international non-governmental groups such as the ecumenical World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) and the Association for Progressive Communication (APC) set up programs to promote women’s access to the media in various ways. The APC’s contribution, for example, was to support women’s networking via the Internet. In the Arab Middle East, responses to the Beijing stimulus came relatively slowly, and the driving force for such responses was not always clear. Preparations for the Beijing conference had spurred some local groups in the region to undertake data gathering and advocacy, often with international help. For example, UNESCO was behind Tunisia’s Centre de recherche, documentation et information sur les femmes when it hosted a conference on women and the media in the run-up to Beijing. Outside involvement continued after 1995. The British Council helped the New Woman Research Centre in Egypt to hold a workshop on media monitoring in 1996. The US-based Ford Foundation financed the publication of various women-related studies and conference

Contested Blueprints for Egypt's Satellite Channels Regrouping the Options by Redefining the Debate

With Arab-owned satellite channels of all types now broadcasting in all directions, from inside and outside the Arab world, state-centric approaches are no longer valid for analysing power relations in this field. Combining Susan Stranges theory of structural power with Robert Coxs model of world hegemony, developed from the work of Antonio Gramsci, this article proposes an alternative perspective from which to view the organizational formulae adopted for satellite broadcasting. After showing how labels such as national and public cannot be stretched to fit even Egypts state-owned satellite channels, the article compares competing visions for the future of Egyptian satellite broadcasting on the basis of whether they conform to world hegemonic orthodoxies or challenge them.

Survival or sustainability? Contributions of innovatively managed news ventures to the future of Egyptian journalism

ABSTRACT In the repressive political climate prevailing in Egypt in 2013–15, news ventures aspiring to high standards of reporting were forced to innovate. This paper analyses three Egyptian start-ups that experimented with novel revenue streams and news services during that period, to gain insights into their approaches to managing journalism. In the process, it compares different criteria for assessing sustainability and concludes that, in adverse political environments, narrow economic measures of profitability and survival may give a misleading picture as to the sustainability of the kind of journalism conducive to democratic practice. Operating collaboratively, transparently, and ethically may slow productivity and profitability in the short term while laying stronger foundations for durable relations among media teams, as well as with readers and advertisers, in the long run.

‘We Cannot Let it Loose’: Geopolitics, Security and Reform in Jordanian Broadcasting

What makes structural reform truly structural? Arab broadcasting appeared to undergo major structural shifts with the growth of the pan-Arab satellite market, which forced Arab governments to rethink their national broadcasting policies. The policy Jordan adopted was one that, if expressed in headlines, could potentially be labelled as structural reform. It promised an end to the state monopoly, a licensing system for private terrestrial stations and a revitalized public broadcaster, equipped to face a new era of competition. Such a welcome for reform accorded with Jordan’s reputation as enjoying a more open and responsive political system than the neighbouring dictatorships, whose oppressed populations erupted in anger in 2011. One analyst summarized this reputation in February 2011 by drawing comparisons with Egypt under its recently ousted president Hosni Mubarak. The Jordanian regime can be harsh, he wrote, but does not resort to the ‘daily thuggishness’ of Mubarak’s Egypt. Its establishment press is ‘restrained but not Orwellian’. Its elections have been manipulated and its parliament marginalized, but only up to a point, and its top figures are ‘not as impervious’ as the Egyptian leadership in Mubarak’s final days.1