Table Of ContentEDITED BY
Nele Lenze, Charlotte Schriwer, and Zubaidah Abdul Jalil
Media in the
Middle East
Activism, Politics, and Culture
Media in the Middle East
Nele Lenze · Charlotte Schriwer
Zubaidah Abdul Jalil
Editors
Media in the Middle
East
Activism, Politics, and Culture
Editors
Nele Lenze Zubaidah Abdul Jalil
Middle East Institute Middle East Institute
National University of Singapore National University of Singapore
Singapore, Singapore Singapore, Singapore
Charlotte Schriwer
Middle East Institute
National University of Singapore
Singapore, Singapore
ISBN 978-3-319-65770-7 ISBN 978-3-319-65771-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-65771-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017951532
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C
ontents
Part I On Media Activism and Political Involvement
1 Revisiting Cyberactivism Six Years after the Arab Spring:
Potentials, Limitations and Future Prospects 3
Sahar Khamis
2 Constructing an Alternative Public Sphere: The Cultural
Significance of Social Media in Iran 21
Gi Yeon Koo
3 You’ve Come A Long Way Baby: Women’s New Media
Practices, Empowerment, and Everyday Life in Kuwait
and the Middle East 45
Deborah L. Wheeler
Part II On Governmental and Non-Governmental Media
Organisations
4 Location, Regulation, and Media Production
in the Arab World: A Case Study of Media Cities 71
Yushi Chiba
v
vi CONTENTS
5 Preventing a Mobilization from Spreading:
Assad and the Electronic War 89
Matthieu Rey
6 Spectacles of Terror: Media and the Cultural Production
of Terrorism 107
Suzi Mirgani
Part III Media, Culture and Language in the Middle East
7 Winning Hearts and Minds through Soft Power:
The Case of Turkish Soap Operas in the Middle East 145
Jana Jabbour
8 Locating Emirati Filmmaking within Globalizing
Media Ecologies 165
Dale Hudson
9 Protest Poetry On- and Offline: Trans-regional
Interactions in the Arabian Gulf: An Example
from Bahrain 203
Nele Lenze
10 Arabic in a Time of Revolution: Sociolinguistic
Notes from Egypt 223
Ivan Panovic
Index 257
e C
ditors and ontributors
About the Editors
Nele Lenze is a Visiting Assistant Professor a GUST and a Senior
Research Fellow at National University of Singapore. She holds a PhD in
Middle East Studies and Media Studies from the University of Oslo where
she lectured on the Arab online sphere. She obtained her master’s in
Arabic literature from Freie University Berlin. Lenze co-edited Converging
Regions: Global Perspectives on Asia and the Middle East (2014) with
Charlotte Schriwer as well as The Arab Uprisings: Catalysts, Dynamics, and
Trajectories (2014) with Fahed Al-Sumait and Michael Hudson. Her first
monograph Politics and Digital Literature in the Middle East. Perspectives
on Online Text and Context is forthcoming in 2018.
Charlotte Schriwer is a researcher who has focused mainly on the his-
tory of the Levant, (Jordan, Syria, Lebanon), in particular on its agri-
cultural history from the twelfth century to the 1800s. She has also
explored the question of ethnic identity in the Ottoman architecture of
the Levant. Since joining Middle East Institute in 2011, she has started a
project documenting the history of protest art in the Arab world, with a
focus on the Arab Uprisings. She holds a Ph.D. in History and an M.A.
in Middle East Studies from the University of St Andrews, Scotland, and
an M.A. in Islamic Art and Archaeology from the School of Oriental and
African Studies in London. Charlotte Schriwer co-edited Converging
vii
viii EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS
Regions: Global Perspectives on Asia and the Middle East (2014) with
Nele Lenze.
Zubaidah Abdul Jalil graduated with a Bachelor’s in Business
Management (BBM) from Singapore Management University. She lived
in the Middle East for an extended period of time, having studied in
Amman, Jordan and at the Sultan Qaboos College in Oman. She cur-
rently works as Publications Executive at the NUS Middle East Institute.
Contributors
Lina Ben Mhenni is an activist, author of the popular blog “A Tunisian
Girl,” and a Teaching Assistant in Linguistics at the Faculty of Human
and Social Sciences, Tunis University. After unrest began in Tunisia in
December 2010, she travelled across the country to take photos and
video footage of the protests and of people who were attacked in the
ensuing government crackdowns. She also reported for many websites
and news TV channels (Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera English, France24) when
foreign journalists could not access the country. Her book, Tunisian girl,
la bloggeuse de la révolution, has been translated into several languages.
Yushi Chiba is a Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the
Promotion of Science. He holds a Ph.D. in Area Studies from
Kyoto University. He is the author of Contemporary Arab Media:
From Transnational Radio to Satellite TV (2014, Japanese); “The
Geographical Transformation of Arab Media: The Decline of Offshore
Media and the Rise of the Media City,” Asian and African Studies Vol.
12 No. 1 (2012); and “A Comparative Study on the Pan-Arab Media
Strategies: The Cases of Egypt and Saudi Arabia,” Kyoto Bulletin of
Islamic Area Studies Vol. 5 No. 1 (2012).
Dale Hudson is an Associate Teaching Professor of Film and New
Media and Curator of Film and New Media at New York University Abu
Dhabi (NYUAD). He has a M.A. from New York University, and earned
his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). With Patricia
R. Zimmermann, he co-authored Thinking through Digital Media:
Transnational Environments and Locative Places (London: Palgrave,
2015). As a digital curator for the Finger Lakes Environmental Film
Festival (FLEFF), he curated “Viral Dissonance” in 2014. Hudson was
EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS ix
also a member of the pre-selection committee for the 2014 Abu Dhabi
Film Festival (ADFF).
Jana Jabbour is a Ph.D. in Political Science and International Relations
(Sciences Po Paris). She is a lecturer at Sciences Po Paris, and a research
associate at Centre de Recherches Internationales (CERI) and Institut de
Recherches sur le Moyen-Orient (IREMMO), where her research and
publications mostly focus on the MENA region’s political economy and
international relations. She is also a co-founder of a research group on
“Rising powers in the international system” whose aim is to examine the
role of the BRICS and other rising middle powers in world governance.
Sahar Khamis is Associate Professor at the University of Maryland. She
is an expert on Arab and Muslim media, and the former Head of the
Mass Communication and Information Science Department in Qatar
University. She is a former Mellon Islamic Studies Initiative Visiting
Professor at the University of Chicago. She is the co-author of the
books: Islam Dot Com: Contemporary Islamic Discourses in Cyberspace
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and Egyptian Revolution 2.0:
Political Blogging, Civic Engagement and Citizen Journalism (London:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Additionally, she authored and co-authored
numerous book chapters, journal articles and conference papers, region-
ally and internationally, in both English and Arabic. Khamis is a media
commentator and analyst, a public speaker, a human rights commis-
sioner, and a radio host.
Gi Yeon Koo is a researcher at the Institute of Cross Cultural Studies
in Seoul National University and a post-doctoral fellow of Hanyang
University in South Korea. She is also teaching at Yonsei University.
She received her Ph.D. degree in Cultural Anthropology from Seoul
National University. She recently published an article entitled, “Women
as Subject of Defiance and Everyday Politics of Hijab as Dress Code in
Modern Iran,” Asian Women, Vol. 30 No. 4 (2014).
Suzi Mirgani is Manager and Editor for Publications at the Center for
International and Regional Studies, Georgetown University School of
Foreign Service in Qatar. She received a Ph.D. in Communication and
Media Studies from Eastern Mediterranean University. She co-edited
Food Security in the Middle East (2014), and Bullets and Bulletins: Media
and Politics in the Wake of the Arab Uprisings (forthcoming). Mirgani is
x EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS
also an independent filmmaker, and writer and director of several short
films, including “Hind’s Dream,” which was selected for the Short Film
Corner at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.
Ivan Panovic is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Linguistics
and Multilingual Studies at Nanyang Technological University. He has
an M.A. in Sociology & Anthropology from the American University
in Cairo, and a D.Phil. in Oriental Studies from the University of
Oxford. He co-authored Working with Written Discourse (2014) with
Deborah Cameron. Panovic also presented “Fresh History, Stale Hopes:
an Anthropological Reading of Early Literary Engagements with the
Egyptian Revolution,” and “Another Word on the Wall: Graffiti in Cairo
in the Service of the Revolution,” at the 2013 and 2012 Middle East
Studies Association Annual Meetings, respectively.
Matthieu Rey is an Assistant Professor in Collège de France (Paris-
France). He holds a Ph.D. in History from the École des hautes
études en sciences sociales (EHESS, Paris). His recent publications are
“‘Fighting Colonialism’ versus ‘Non-Alignment’: Two Arab Points of
View on the Bandung Conference,” in The Non-Aligned Movement and
the Cold War eds. Natasa Miskovic et al. (2014) and “Une dècennie de
silence: les Kurdes à l’heure de l’absence de rébellion (1946–1958),”
(A Decade of Silence: the Kurds During the Absence of Rebellious
Movements (1946–1958)), in Enjeux identitaires en mutation: Europe
et bassin méditerranéen (Identity Issues in Transition: Europe and the
Mediterranean Region), eds. John Tolan et al. (2014). He also intends
to publish a book on the parliamentary system in Iraq and Syria between
1946 and 1963.
Deborah L. Wheeler is an Associate Professor of Political Science at
the United States Naval Academy. She holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in
Political Science from the University of Chicago. Her Senior Fulbright
research grant to Kuwait allowed her to publish The Internet in the
Middle East: Global Expectations and Local Imaginations in Kuwait
(2005) and also a series of articles. She co-authored a chapter with
Lauren Mintz, entitled “Girls Just Want to Have Fun? Internet Leisure
and Women’s Empowerment in Jordan,” in Handbook on the Economics
of Leisure, ed. Samuel Cameron (2011). She also contributed a chapter,
“Does the Internet Empower? A Look at the Internet and International
Development,” in Handbook of Internet Studies (2011).
