The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East (Global Handbooks in Media and Communication Research) [1 ed.] 0005375155, 9781119637066, 9781119637103, 9781119637080, 0005375156, 1119637066

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The Handbook of Media and  Culture in the Middle East

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Global Handbooks in Media and Communication Research

Series Editors: Janet Wasko (University of Oregon, USA) and Karin Wilkins (University of Miami, USA) The Global Handbooks in Media and Communication Research series is co-­published by Wiley Blackwell and the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR). The series offers definitive, state-­of-­the-­art handbooks that bring a global perspective to their subjects. These volumes are designed to define an intellectual terrain: its historic emergence; its key theoretical paradigms; its transnational evolution; key empirical research and case study exemplars; and possible future directions. The Handbook of Media Education Research, edited by Divina Frau-­Meigs, Sirkku Kotilainen, Manisha Pathak-­Shelat, Michael Hoechsmann, and Stuart R. Poyntz The Handbook of Diasporas, Media, and Culture, edited by Jessica Retis and Roza Tsagarousianou The Handbook of Political Economy of Communications, edited by Janet Wasko, Graham Murdock, and Helena Sousa The Handbook of Global Media and Communication Policy, edited by Robin Mansell and Marc Raboy The Handbook of Media Audiences, edited by Virginia Nightingale The Handbook of Development Communication and Social Change, edited by Karin Gwinn Wilkins, Thomas Tufte, and Rafael Obregon The Handbook of Conflict and Peace Communication, edited by Sudeshna Roy About the IAMCR The International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) (http://iamcr.org) was established in Paris in 1957. It is an accredited NGO attached to UNESCO. It is a truly international association, with a membership representing over 90 countries around the world and conferences held in different regions that address the most pressing issues in media and communication research. Its members promote global inclusiveness and excellence within the best traditions of critical research in the field. The current president of the IAMCR is Janet Wasko.

IAMCR Global Handbooks in Media and Communication Research Editorial Advisory Board Divina Frau-­Meigs, France Cees Hamelink, Netherlands Tawana Kupe, South Africa Guillermo Mastrini, Argentina Richard Maxwell, USA Aimeé Vega Montiel, Mexico

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Graham Murdock, UK Vinod Pavarala, India Jack Qiu, Singapore Jessica Retis, USA Helena Sousa, Portugal Thomas Tufte, UK

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The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East Edited by

Joe F. Khalil

Northwestern University Qatar Doha, Qatar

Gholam Khiabany Goldsmiths University of London London, UK

Tourya Guaaybess Université de Lorraine Nancy, France

Bilge Yesil

City University of New York New York, NY

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This edition first published 2023 © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. Published simultaneously in Canada. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 750-4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permission. Trademarks: Wiley and the Wiley logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic formats. For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com. Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Khalil, Joe F, editor. | Khiabany, Gholam, editor. | Guaaybess,   Tourya, editor. Title: The handbook of media and culture in the Middle East / edited by Joe   F Khalil, Northwestern University in Doha, Qatar, Gholam Khiabany,   Goldsmiths University of London, UK, Tourya Guaaybess, Université de   Lorraine Nancy, France, Bilge Yesil, City University of New York, New   York, NY. Description: First Edition. | New York, NY : Wiley, 2023. | Series: Global   handbooks in media and communication research | Includes bibliographical   references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022037787 (print) | LCCN 2022037788 (ebook) | ISBN   9781119637066 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119637103 (adobe pdf ) | ISBN   9781119637080 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Mass media–Middle East. Classification: LCC P92.M5 H36 2023 (print) | LCC P92.M5 (ebook) | DDC  302.23/0956–dc23/eng/20221020 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022037787 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022037788 Cover Design: Wiley Cover Image: © Helga Tawil-Souri Set in 11/13pt Dante by Straive, Pondicherry, India

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Contents

Notes on Contributors ix Series Editors’ Preface xvii Acknowledgmentsxix Media and Culture in the Middle East: An Introduction

1

Part I  Theories, Ideologies, and Problematics

13

1  Orientalism and Culture Annabelle Sreberny

15

2  Muslims, Art, and Invisible Modernities Nabil Echchaibi

23

3  Development and Modernization in the Middle East Karin Gwinn Wilkins

30

4  Hybridity as Dazzlement: Rethinking Fusion Through Joseph Tonda’s Postcolonial Imperialism Marwan M. Kraidy

37

5  “Arab” Cultural Studies: Phenomenology Being Digital, and Other Notes Tarik Sabry

45

Part II  Politics, Gender, Minorities, and Class

53

6  Intellectuals, Modernities, and the Emerging Public Sphere Gholam Khiabany

55

7  Feminisms and Feminist Movements in the Middle East Gül Aldıkaçtı Marshall

65

8  The State, the Media, and the Revival of Labor Activism in the Middle East Anne Alexander

73

9  The Meaning and Purpose of “Minority Media” in the Middle East and North Africa Elizabeth Monier

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vi Contents Part III  Media Industries, Markets, and Technologies

91

10  Media Policy in the MENA: The Political Impact of Media Confluence Tourya Guaaybess

93

11 Journalism in MENA: Triumph and Tragedy in the Struggle to Speak Truth to Power107 Lawrence Pintak 12 Purposes and Practices of MENA Television: Components of an Ever-­evolving Medium Naomi Sakr

122

13 Digital MENA: An Overview of Digital Infrastructure, Policies, and Media Practices in the Middle East and North Africa Carola Richter

134

14 Documents, Archives, Absence: Current Challenges and Insights from Media Research in the Middle East and Beyond Hatim El-­Hibri and Kaveh Askari

147

Part IV  (Mass) Media, Cultures, and Contexts

163

15 Freedom of Expression and Media Challenges in the Mena Region: A Legal and Regulatory Perspective Joan Barata

165

16  Arabic News Channels in the Middle East: Development and Transformation Yushi Chiba

178

17 MENA Independent Media: Negotiating the Logics of Media Development Programs191 Yazan Badran 18 Divergence or Convergence between Mainstream and Independent Journalism in Turkey?: The Coverage of Operation Peace Spring Ozan As¸ık

205

19  Kurdish Cinema: Politics, Aesthetics, and Transnational Pathways Suncem Kocer

219

20  Aesthetic Arabism: The Syrian Musalsal Beyond Borders Christa Salamandra

231

21  The Dynamics of Advertising in MENA: An Empirical Model Ilhem Allagui

245

22 Reconfigurations of Religiopolitical Traditions and Identities: Mediated Religion in the Arab Countries Ehab Galal

261

23  Constructing a New Identity: Women’s Work in the Iranian Broadcast Media 275 Asemeh Ghasemi

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Contents

vii

24  Mediations of Political Identities in Arab Animation Omar Sayfo

286

25 Breaking Barriers: The Emergence of a Video Game Culture and Industry in the Arab World Vít Šisler, Lars de Wildt, and Samer Abbas

300

Part V  Alternative, Independent, and Social Media

313

26  Taking Revolution Seriously: A Keywords Approach to Middle East Studies Omar Al-­Ghazzi

315

27  Alternative and Citizen Journalism(s) in the Middle East Marianna Ghiglia

326

28 A Revolution of Smiles?: The Function of Humor in Algerian Media During the 2019–2020 Protests Ali Sonay

340

29 Creating Emotional Echo-­Chambers: Activism and Self-­Expression on Social Media Hande Eslen-­Ziya

352

30 Mnemotechnics: Digital Epistemologies and the Techno-­Politics of Archiving a Revolution Anthony Downey

363

31  Media Technologies and Politics in Iran Mehdi Semati 32 Reframing Jihadism: Deciphering the Identity, Politics, and Agenda of Hay’at Tahrir al-­Sham in Northwest Syria Ines Khalifa Barnard and Charlie Winter

382

396

33  Beyond the Arab Uprisings: Politics of Rap in the Middle East Stefano Barone

414

34  Egyptian Graffiti: Collective Action and Institutionalization Mohammad Abdel Hamid

427

35 Quiet Queer Activism in Repressive Contexts in the Middle East Through the Stories of Three Egyptian Women Shaimaa Magued 36  Social Media and Fourth Wave Feminism in Morocco Naziha Houki, Alka Kurian, and Kenza Oumlil 37 The Kurdish Media in the Middle East and Diaspora: Alternative Public and Participatory Spaces for a Non-­State Nation Jiyar Aghapouri 38  Arab American Media William Lafi Youmans

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440 453

468 479

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viii Contents 39  Contemporary Arab Media and Cultural Landscape in Istanbul Franck Mermier

492

Part VI  Perspectives

503

40  Cultural Politics of the Diaspora Orit Ouaknine-­Yekutieli and Yigal Nizri

505

41  Dialectics of Resistance: Youth in the Middle East Joe F. Khalil

513

42 Borders Helga Tawil-­Souri

520

43  Activism and Surveillance in the Middle East Bilge Yesil

526

Index535

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Notes on Contributors

Samer Abbas is a games market analyst, marketer, and business developer focused on the Arab world. He has played various roles in the regional games industry including cofounding a regional game publisher (Play 3arabi), and creating a long running pan-­ regional game jam (Game Zanga). He is currently advising multinational game companies to expand and grow their business in the region, and is involved in games ecosystem building projects in the Gulf region. Anne Alexander is director of learning at Cambridge Digital Humanities. Her research interests include ethics of big data, activist media in the Middle East, and the political economy of the internet. She is a member of the Data Ethics Group and the Humanities and Data Science Special Interest Group at the Alan Turing Institute. She has written widely on the labor movement in the Middle East. Ilhem  Allagui is a professor at Northwestern University in Qatar. She authored Advertising in MENA Goes Digital (Routledge, 2019). Dr. Allagui’s research focuses on strategic communication on the one hand, and new media adoption and social transformations on the other hand. She serves as the president of the International Media  Management Academic Association (IMMAA) and is an editorial board ­member of the International Journal of Communication (ijoc.org) and Internet Histories (Taylor & Francis). Mohammad Abdel Hamid has a PhD in information and communication sciences from the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle and is a member of the CIM (Communication, Information, Media). A semiotician with a pragmatic approach, he teaches semiology and political discourse analysis at the Université Catholique de l’Ouest. Working in ­particular on the socio-­digital mediation of street artivism, his research focuses on the political actions of activist discourses embedding artistic objects and their peregrinations within urban and digital public spaces. Jiyar Aghapouri is an assistant professor of International Studies at the American University of Kurdistan, and a visiting fellow at London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) where he conducts research and consultancy on migration and displacement. He obtained his PhD from the University of Auckland; his dissertation is a comprehensive ethnographic analysis of Kurdish nationalism and diaspora on social media.

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x

About the Authors

Omar Al-­Ghazzi is associate professor in the Media and Communications Department at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His work focuses on questions around the global power asymmetries in the reporting and representation of conflict. He researches digital journalism, the politics of time and memory, and the geopolitics of popular culture, with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa. Ozan Aşık received his PhD in sociology from the University of Cambridge. His PhD research focused on the representation of Kurds and Arabs in the process of television news production in Turkey. He is currently working on the impact of neoliberal authoritarianism on Turkish journalists. His research appears in Journalism; Media Culture & Society; Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication; Social Compass; and the Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies. Kaveh Askari is associate professor and director of the Film Studies Program at Michigan State University. He is the author of Making Movies into Art: Picture Craft from the Magic Lantern to Early Hollywood (British Film Institute Publishing, 2014) and Relaying Cinema in Midcentury Iran: Material Cultures in Transit (University of California Press, 2022). Yazan Badran is a visiting professor at the Department of Communication Sciences and a postdoctoral researcher at the Echo and imec-­SMIT research centers at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. He was a PhD fellow of the Research Foundation—­ Flanders (FWO) between 2016 and 2020. His research interests lie at the intersection of new journalism and political activism and the journalistic practices of emerging media organizations in the post-­2011 MENA region. Joan Barata is a Senior Legal Fellow. Future of Free Speech. Justitia (Denmark/USA). He works on freedom of expression and media regulation and teaches at various universities in the world. He has published many articles and books on these subjects. He is regularly involved in projects with international organizations such as UNESCO, the Council of Europe, the Organization of American States, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, where he was the principal adviser. Stefano Barone is a sociology lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire, UK. His research focuses on youth cultures and popular music in the Middle East, the fragility of youth culture–based social forms in the region, and how they relate to the local political, cultural, and social dynamics. Stefano is the author of Metal, Rap, and Electro in Post-­ Revolutionary Tunisia: A Fragile Underground (2019) and has published articles the Journal of Youth Studies, the British Journal for Middle Eastern Studies, and Politique Africaine. Yushi Chiba is associate professor at the Faculty of Intercultural Communication, Komatsu University. His areas of research include Middle Eastern politics, the history of media, and the representation of Arabs and Muslims in Japanese media. He has ­published articles on broadcasting in the Arab world in both English and Japanese. Lars de Wildt studies media and culture at KU Leuven’s Institute for Media Studies. He  has been a visiting scholar at the universities of Tampere, Montréal, and Deakin (in Melbourne). He studies how media and culture change each other, including how video games changed religion in a post-­secular age; and how online platforms changed ­conspiracy theory in a post-­truth age. For more, see larsdewildt.eu.

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About the Authors

xi

Anthony Downey is Professor of Visual Culture in the Middle East and North Africa (Birmingham City University). He sits on the editorial boards of Third Text, Digital War, and Memory, Mind & Media, respectively, and is the series editor for Research/Practice (Sternberg Press, 2019–ongoing). Recent and upcoming publications include Decolonising Vision: Algorithmic Anxieties and the Post-Digital Image (forthcoming, MIT: 2024); Trevor Paglen: Adversarially Evolved Hallucinations (Sternberg Press: 2024); and Nida Sinnokrot: Palestine is Not a Garden (Sternberg Press & MIT: 2023). Nabil Echchaibi is associate professor of media studies and director of the Center for Media, Religion and Culture at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research focuses on the politics and poetics of Muslim visibility. His work has appeared in various journals and in many book volumes and his opinion columns have been published in The Guardian, Forbes, Al-­Jazeera, and Salon. Nabil is currently writing his book, Unmosquing Islam: Media and Fugitive Muslimness. He is the co-­editor-­in-­chief of the journal Cultural Studies. Hatim El-­Hibri is associate professor of Film and Media Studies at George Mason University. He is the author of Visions of Beirut: The Urban Life of Media Infrastructure (Duke University Press, 2021). Hande Eslen-­Ziya is a professor of sociology and director of the Populism, Anti-­Gender and Democracy Research Group at the University of Stavanger. Her research interests are in gender and social inequalities, transnational organizations, and social activism. She is the coeditor of Populism and Science in Europe (2022) which provides a systematic and comparative analysis of the intersections of populism and science in Europe, from the perspective of political sociology. Ehab Galal is an associate professor at the Department of Cross Cultural and Regional Studies, Copenhagen University, Denmark. His research focuses on Arab media, Arab audiences, mediatized religion and politics, and Arab diaspora. Since 2018, he has been leading the collaborative research project “Mediatized Diaspora,” which investigates transnational media use and contentious politics among Arab diaspora in Europe. Asemeh Ghasemi is assistant professor at the Department of Sociology in the Faculty of Literature, Humanities and Social Science at the Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University in Tehran, Iran. She holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Nottingham. Her writings have appeared in journals such as Feminist Media Studies (2013), Women’s Studies International Forum (2015), Social Issues (2020), and the edited volume Women and Media in the Middle East: From Veiling to Blogging (2016). Marianna Ghiglia is a social historian, specializing in contemporary Egypt. A research engineer at the French National Center for Scientific Research, she is currently a member of EGYLandscape project, hosted by the Institute of Research and Study on the Arab and Islamic Worlds (IREMAM). She has been doing research on the Egyptian i­ndependent press and the history of journalists and their craft for the past 10 years.

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xii

About the Authors

Tourya Guaaybess is a professor at the European University Centre at the University of Lorraine University. She is the author and editor of numerous books and publications on the political economy of media and journalism in the Arab world, including The Media in Arab Countries: From Development Theories to Cooperation Policies (Wiley, 2021). Naziha Houki obtained her BA in communication studies from Al Akhawayn University (AUI) in 2008. She was granted a Fulbright Scholarship in 2010 for her MSc in integrated marketing communication at Northwestern University. After six years working in the marketing industry, she joined AUI and still is a communication studies lecturer. During her career at AUI, Houki founded a national short film festival, cochaired anti-­violence services, was director of communication, and is a member of the academic council. Inès Khalifa Barnard is a consultant at The Global Strategy Network (TGSN) for ­multiple strategic communication projects in conflict-­affected countries. Specializing in countering violent extremism in the Middle East and Africa, she recently received a dual master’s degree in international security & intelligence at Sciences Po, Paris, and King’s College, London. Joe F. Khalil is an associate professor at Northwestern University in Qatar. His research probes media industries, production studies, social movements, and digital cultures. He is the author and co-­author of Arab Satellite Entertainment Television and Public Diplomacy (2009), Arab Television Industries (2010), and The Digital Double Bind (2023). He is also the coeditor of Culture, Time and Publics in the Arab World (2019). Gholam Khiabany is reader in Media and Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK. His academic career has focused on the relationship between citizenship, political activism, and media and cultural practices. He is the author of Iranian Media: The Paradox of Modernity and the coauthor of Blogistan, and Media, Democracy and Social Change. He is also coeditor of Liberalism in Neoliberal Times: Dimensions, Contradictions, Limits and After Charlie Hebdo: Terror, Racism and Free Speech. Suncem Koçer received her dual PhD in anthropology and communication & culture at Indiana University in 2012. Currently a member of the Department of Media and Visual Arts at Koç University in Istanbul, Dr. Koçer works on transnational media, politics and identity, documentary and news media, and digital information regimes. She has published her research in such journals as the American Ethnologist; International Journal of the Middle East’ New Media and Society; and the International Journal of Communication. Marwan M. Kraidy is the dean and CEO of Northwestern University in Qatar. He founded the Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South and is also a professor of Communication and the Anthony Shadid Chair in Global Media, Politics and Culture at Northwestern. He has authored multiple award-­winning books including The Naked Blogger of Cairo: Creative Insurgency in the Arab World, Reality Television and Arab Politics, and Hybridity, or The Cultural Logic of Globalization.

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About the Authors

xiii

Alka Kurian is an associate teaching professor at the University of Washington Bothell and a recipient of the 2020–2021 Fulbright US Scholar award to Morocco. She is the author of Narratives of Gendered Dissent in South Asian Cinemas (2014) and a co-­editor of New Feminisms in South Asia: Disrupting the Discourse Through Social Media, Film and Literature (2017). and Transnational Fourth Wave Feminisms: A Postcolonial Backlash (2023). She is the founder/coeditor of the peer-­reviewed journal Studies in South Asian Film and Media, director of the Tasveer South Asian Literary Festival, and host of the podcast South Asian Films & Books. Shaimaa Magued is an Ernest Mach fellow at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (OIIP) and an assistant professor at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University. She holds a PhD and a master’s degree in international relations from SciencesPo, Aix, and SciencesPo, Paris, respectively. She is a former Fulbright scholar (2018–2019) and Carnegie fellow (2015) at the University of Minnesota. Her work focuses on international relations of the Middle East, foreign policy analysis, Turkish foreign policy, Turkish-­Arab relations, and transnational advocacy. Gül Aldıkaçtı Marshall is a professor in the Department of Sociology at University of Louisville. Her research interests are in the areas of gender, social movements, politics, and the media. She is the author of Shaping Gender Policy in Turkey: Grassroots Women Activists, the European Union, and the Turkish State (SUNY Press). Franck Mermier is an anthropologist and a senior researcher at the CNRS (IRIS, Paris). His research focuses on urban societies and cultural production in the Arab world. He was the director of the French Center for Yemeni Studies in Sana’a from 1991 to 1997 and the director for Contemporary Studies at IFPO (French Institute for the Near East, Beirut) from 2005 to 2009. He also served as a researcher at IFEA (French Institute of Anatolian Studies) in Istanbul from 2019 to 2021. Elizabeth Monier is a researcher in Middle East Studies at the University of Cambridge. She holds a PhD in politics and international studies and works on the contemporary politics and history of the Middle East. She is currently researching state-­society ­relations and minorities in Egypt, Iraq, and the Arab Gulf States. Yigal S. Nizri  is an associate teaching professor at the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. His academic interests lie in the cultures and histories of Jews of the Arabic-­speaking lands and Mizrahi history and culture in Israel. Nizri received his PhD from New York University and BFA from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. Orit Ouaknine-­Yekutieli is a lecturer at the Department of Middle East Studies at the Ben-­Gurion University of the Negev, where she chairs the Chaim Herzog Center for Middle East Studies and Diplomacy and the BGU’s fund for the research of North African Jewry. Her scholarship focuses on colonialism, qaidship, labor history, and the Vichy period in Morocco. Her studies on the history and historiographies of Moroccan Jews revolve around memory, text, ritual, and cultural production.

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xiv

About the Authors

Kenza Oumlil is an associate professor in communication at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane (AUI), Morocco. Oumlil holds a PhD in communication from Concordia University in Montréal, Canada. She has published widely on representation, gender, and media including articles in the Journal of North African Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Islamophobia Studies Journal, and Al-­Jazeera English. Oumlil is the author of North American Muslim Women Artists Talk Back: Assertions of Unintelligibility (2022). Lawrence Pintak is a former CBS News Middle East correspondent, and the author of five books at the intersection of media, religion, democracy, and international relations. Pintak served as dean of the Graduate School of Media and Communications at the Aga Khan University in East Africa, founding dean of the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University, helped establish Pakistan’s Centre for Excellence in Journalism as a consultant to the US State Department, and directed the Arab world’s leading media training center in the years leading up to the Arab Spring. Carola Richter is professor of international communication at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. In her research, she focuses on media systems and communication cultures in the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa), media and migration, foreign news coverage, and public diplomacy. She is the cofounder of AREACORE, the Arab-­European Association of Media and Communication Researchers, and director of the Center for Media and Information Literacy (CeMIL) at Freie Universität Berlin. Tarik Sabry is a member of the Communication and Media Research Institute at the University of Westminster (UK) where he teaches media and cultural studies. He has authored and edited several books on media, culture, and society in the Arab region. He is also cofounder and coeditor of the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication. Naomi Sakr is professor of Media Policy in the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) at the University of Westminster, UK, where she researches media ownership and control, human rights, journalism, and cultural production in the Arab world. She has written four books (including one as coauthor), edited two and coedited two, and has been commissioned to write reports for international bodies such as UNESCO, the UN Development Programme, the Anna Lindh Foundation, and the European Parliament. Christa Salamandra is professor of anthropology at Lehman College and the Graduate Center, The City University of New  York. Her work explores visual, mediated, and urban culture in the Arab world. She is the author of A New Old Damascus: Authenticity and Distinction in Urban Syria (2004), coeditor of Syria from Reform to Revolt (2015), and coeditor of Middle Eastern Drama: Politics, Aesthetics, Practices (2022). Omar Sayfo is a researcher at Utrecht University (The Netherlands) and Avicenna Institute of Middle Eastern Studies (Hungary). He has published extensively in edited volumes and such journals as The Journal of Popular Culture; Die Welt Des Islams; and the International Journal of Communication. His first monograph, Arab Animation: Images of Identity, was published in 2021 by Edinburgh University Press.

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About the Authors

xv

Mehdi Semati is a professor in the Department of Communication at Northern Illinois University. His teaching and research address media studies, international communication, and Iranian media and culture. His research has been published in various scholarly journals and books. His books include the edited volume Media, Culture and Society in Iran: Living with Globalization and the Islamic State (2008). He most recently co-­authored the book, Iran in the American Media (2021). Vít Šisler is a new media scholar, currently based at Charles University, Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Social Sciences. His research addresses critical approaches to the intersection of culture and digital media; namely the internet, social media, video games, the networked public sphere, and online communities. He is a lead game designer at Charles Games for the serious games Attentat 1942 and Svoboda 1945: Liberation. Ali Sonay is assistant lecturer at the University of Bern’s Institute for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Societies. His research focuses on media, ideologies, and social movements in the Middle East. He was a post-­doctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge and worked on the Al-­Jazeera Media Project researching contemporary media in Turkey, Tunisia, and Morocco. His research has been published in The Journal of North African Studies and Middle East Critique. Annabelle Sreberny (1949–2022) was emeritus professor, Centre for Global Media and Communications, SOAS University of London, where she was also the first director of the Centre for Iranian Studies. She was president of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) from 2008 to 2012. Her academic research was in the broad field of international communication and globalization with strong foci on international news, diasporas, and feminism. Her work on the contemporary history, politics, and cultural environment of Iran includes books on the 1979 ­revolution (Small Media, Big Revolution); on the Persian blogosphere (Blogistan); and on issues of cultural creativity and repression (Cultural Revolution in Iran). Her photographic archive of the Iranian Revolution can be found at myrevolutionaryyear.com. Helga Tawil-­Souri is an associate professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication and the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at NYU. Helga’s work deals with spatiality, technology, and politics in the Middle East, with a particular focus on contemporary Palestine-­Israel. Karin Gwinn Wilkins is dean of the School of Communication at the University of Miami. Previously, she was associate dean with the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin. She has won awards for her research, teaching, and service, creating academic programs in global studies, Middle East studies, and leadership. Wilkins is a recognized fellow of  the International Communication Association (ICA) and former editor-­in-­chief of Communication Theory. Charlie Winter is director of research of ExTrac, a conflict analytics system that uses AI and access to hard-­to-­reach data to track and anticipate extremist violence. He is an associate fellow at the International Centre for Counter Terrorism in  The Hague  and a member of the Washington, DC–based  RESOLVE Network’s Research Advisory Council. His doctoral research, which was funded by Facebook, explored how and why influence operations function in the context of insurgency.

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About the Authors

Bilge Yesil is associate professor of media culture at the College of Staten Island and doctoral faculty of Middle Eastern studies at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She is the author of Video Surveillance: Power and Privacy in Everyday Life (2009) and Media in New Turkey: The Origins of an Authoritarian Neoliberal State (2016). William Lafi Youmans is an associate professor at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs. He is the director of GWU’s Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication. Youmans’s book, Unlikely Audience: Al Jazeera’s Struggle in America (2017), examined the Qatari news network’s fraught efforts to gain a share of the news market in the United States, 2006–2016.

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Series Editors’ Preface

Welcome to the Global Handbooks in Media and Communication Research series. The project was initiated by former President of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), Annabelle Sreberny, as a series of state-­of-­the-­art reference works that would be truly international. The IAMCR, with a membership from over 90 countries, is uniquely positioned to offer such a series that covers the central concerns of media and communications theory in a global arena. Each of these substantial books contains newly written essays commissioned from a range of international authors, showcasing the best critical scholarship in the field. Each is pedagogical in the best sense, accessible to students and clear in its approach and presentation. Chapters addressing theory map the terrain of an area both historically and conceptually, providing incisive overviews of arguments in the field. The examples of empirical work are drawn from many different countries and regions, so that each volume offers rich material for comparative analysis. These handbooks are international in scope, authorship, and perspective. They explore a range of approaches and issues across different political and cultural regions, reflecting the global reach of IAMCR. The aim is to offer scholarship that moves away from simply reproducing Western-­centric models and assumptions. The series formulates new models and asks questions that bring communication scholarship into a more comprehensive global conversation. IAMCR was established in Paris in 1957, as an accredited non-­governmental organization attached to UNESCO, and is a truly international association devoted to the most pressing issues in media and communication research, with regionally diverse membership and conference sites. IAMCR promotes global inclusiveness and academic excellence through the best traditions of critical research in the field. We are pleased to be guiding this series in support of those goals. Janet Wasko and Karin Gwinn Wilkins Series Editors

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To Professor Annabelle Sreberny (1949–2022)

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Acknowledgments

As editors of this handbook, we would like to express our sincere appreciation to the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR). Without the association’s enthusiastic support and unwavering commitment, this project would not have been possible. First and foremost, we would like to extend our deepest gratitude to our outstanding contributors. Their exceptional expertise, dedication, and patience throughout the entire process have been invaluable in shaping this handbook into a comprehensive and informative resource. At IAMCR, we are also immensely grateful to the series editors, Janet Wasko and Karin Wilkins, for their trust in us and their invaluable support. Their guidance and mentorship have been instrumental in chaperoning this project to its completion. We extend our heartfelt thanks to the team at Wiley for their instrumental assistance and guidance throughout this project. We would like to give special recognition to the editors who helped usher the project to its final stages, including Todd Green, Andrew Minton, and Angela Cohen. We also want to express our sincere appreciation to Nicole Allen, Ashwani Veejai Raj, and their colleagues at Wiley for their positive and proactive support. A special acknowledgment goes to Donna J. Weinson for her outstanding copyediting support. Her keen eye and constructive feedback helped to improve the contributions. Lastly, we want to thank our partners and children for their loving support and encouragement throughout the preparation and writing of this volume. We are grateful for their patience, understanding, and sacrifices during this busy and challenging time.

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Media and Culture in the Middle East An Introduction

The Middle East and North Africa (used interchangeably with the Middle East) remain at the crossroads of competing histories and interests, a site for encountering political, economic, and social experiments, and a place for making sense of global debates. The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East features contributions from various disciplines that assess the past, present, and the struggle for the future of media and cultural resources, analyze forms of media organizations and expressions, as well as examine producers, audiences, and users in the region. It offers fresh insights into old debates about Orientalism, development, religion, and culture. It also opens new vistas for emerging questions on the roles of intellectuals, artists, movements, minorities, women, and youth. The Handbook pays specific attention to some of the drastic transformations that took place in the Middle East since the beginning of the twenty-­first century, which nonetheless had implications for the rest of the world. Among these are the “War on Terror” and the US-­led invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the rise of Gulf countries as new centers of cultural and media power, and evolving interregional rivalries and alliances. Other critical junctures include the Arab uprisings (2010–), the permanent state of conflict, and the ensuing humanitarian crises, which irrevocably changed the sociopolitical landscape and created ripple effects across the region and beyond. Changes and continuities in media and culture are at the forefront of the analyses presented in the Handbook. The transformation of media systems (from state monopoly to clientelist commercialization) is interwoven with the political-­economic changes in other sectors that have swept the region since the 1980s. Moreover, the explosion onto the scene of satellite television, followed by public access to the internet, has been heralded as the most unambiguous indication of the forces of globalization, renewed faith in the role of communications for social change, and the prospects for democratization through media. Such transformation has not only paved the way for new business and cultural avenues but also created new sources of social and political authorities that rival The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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and subvert established hegemonies to certain degrees. The regionally and internationally recognized media “brands” from the Middle East have been an essential topic in global communications since the beginning of the twenty-­f irst century. Moreover, the advent of a digital Middle East has complicated the media landscape, multiplying venues for information and entertainment and empowering independent content creators. The expansion of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) markets and the push toward what has been dubbed a “knowledge-­based” economy are likely to transform the region further, simultaneously increasing precarity and ushering in entrepreneurial and innovative opportunities. Despite these changes, however, the Middle East continues to suffer from the persistence of authoritarian politics, the resurgence of conservative forces, and enduring corruption and cronyism. There is now burgeoning literature that engages with the transformations in news and information systems across the region, particularly emphasizing citizen journalism and alternative media. Scholarly analyses of journalistic practices have multiplied in light of the involvement of regional and international actors in a great power game in Syria, the emergence of ISIS and the fight against it, and the rise of (semi-­) autonomous Kurdish regions in northern Syria. In the field of entertainment, the salience of Egypt and Syria as hubs of cultural production has been diminished due to the Arab uprisings, and eclipsed by the multiplying centers of cultural production. At the same time, Turkey emerged as a leading exporter of television series. Turkish shows have presented international audiences with particular expressions of secular and Muslim, Westernized and traditional modernity, first in the Middle East and then expanding to Latin America, the Balkans, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Last but not least, new technologies and platforms have brought a vast catalog of film, television, and music from the Middle East to the attention of international audiences. Netflix, for example, has a steady stream of Arabic, Turkish, and Farsi content with collections such as “Celebrating Arab Cinema” and “Made in Turkey.” Given the developments in communication technologies and changing distribution and consumption patterns, media from the Middle East are no longer limited to diasporic audiences or accessible only via unauthorized websites. The Middle East is also in the throes of sociocultural and political changes. The constantly reinvigorated revolutionary fervor in Iran (2009–), the Arab region (2010–), and Turkey (2013) reveals the region’s sociocultural, political, and economic disjunctures. Social movements in Iran, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Lebanon, Algeria, and Turkey, to mention just a few, have spotlighted the contentious politics across the region. Minorities, women, LGBTQI+, and the youth all play an essential role in these mobilizations and demand political, economic, and social change, often entering into alliances with international solidarity networks. Since the turn of the century, momentous changes in the Middle East’s politics, economy, technology, and culture generated opportunities and risks for media and cultural producers, activists, and marginalized groups. It is not surprising that interest in Middle East media and culture has moved beyond the confines of area studies to become integral in core curricula and at academic conferences about politics, globalization, and international relations. This Handbook is an essential guide to understanding these changes in light of the global social mutations and the region’s cultural transformations. It expands the common understanding of Middle East media to include mass media,

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Introduction 3

digital/social media, alternative media, visual culture, and the arts. It provides conceptual and empirical analyses through the lens of media, culture, and history. As much as possible, our contributors include established and emerging academic voices whose work has not been widely circulated in Anglo-­Saxon academic spheres.

Defining the Middle East Among the legacies of the Middle East’s popular uprisings are the changing perceptions about the region being in the grip of an authoritarian spell that had slowed down the flow of time. The myth of authoritarian survival in the region is so deep and intense that the uprisings came as a shock to the West. One colorful description of the uprisings was “Arab Awakening,” which, considering the long struggle for democracy in the region, raises the question of who was actually sleeping. The failure of Arab uprisings is now equated with the “Islamic failure to democratize,” and the myth of “Islamic” exceptionalism keeps marching on. Needless to say, this presumed inability of a significantly large world population to embrace democracy and, consequently, change is hardly “exceptional.” Nevertheless, what if we begin to move away from methodological nationalism and think about capitalism as a global system – or, to be precise, as imperialism – and consider the majority of capitalist states and reconsider the region as not in isolation but as an essential link in the chain of what has invariably been called the world system? In that case, it is easy to see capitalism not as a Siamese twin of democracy but as a system of political coercion and economic destitution. The power of capital (domestic and international) in the Middle East comes out of the barrel of a gun. The old polarity of the Cold War and the assertion that democracy is essentially capitalist raises an uncomfortable question about the relationship between capitalist development and democracy in general, particularly in the Middle East. We can trace the analytical problem about the relationship between capitalism and democracy to the broader issue of the origin and expansion of capitalism. In particular, what Martin has labeled as “the specific line of causality and sequence of capitalist socioeconomic and political development” (2012, 38). This specific line of causality is central in a particular evolutionary view of history as a sequence of steps and progress towards greater freedom. It is one of the reasons that the Middle East has been regarded as exceptional and has some kind of transgression of the “law of history.” A specific line of causality and sequence of capitalist socioeconomic and political development also informed the modernization school. Its proponents saw the development of capitalism in what is now indiscriminately labeled as “the Global South” as unproblematic and mechanical, changing societies from static, agricultural, and primitive to dynamic, industrialized, urbanized, and rational nation-­states. Yet, in most cases, particularly in Lerner’s The Passing of Traditional Society (1975, 45), political participation was never a priority. As Peter Golding has pointed out, Lerner was careful to place “institutions of participation” (e.g. voting) at the end of causal chain—­nothing being worse than unready electorate. The “development,” of course, did take place. Now the region and its mediascape are totally unrecognizable from what they were in the early

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Media and Culture in the Middle East

twentieth century. Yet, democracy is as elusive as ever despite a media explosion in quantity, quality, and political terms. What is labeled as the Middle East is a geographically leaky term. The term is a construct, a strategic concept by the British Empire. As Sreberny (2001, 102) has argued, the region is “a highly differentiated region, along many different kinds of social variables.” Even the Arab World, in which there is a strong and real feeling of collective identity, is highly differentiated and can be divided into three groups: the rentier states (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Libya, Iraq, and Algeria), the strategic states (Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen, and Morocco), and the peripheral states, which are actually peripheries within the periphery (Sudan, Mauritania, Western Sahara, Somalia, Djibouti, and Comoros islands). The periphery states do not play a significant political role in the region, and it is no accident that they remained “immune” from the revolutionary fervor of the “Arab Spring” in 2011. To be sure, even these groupings can be a little misleading, for in each some variations and diversities cannot be ignored. For example, Egypt is the most populous country in the Arab Middle East, and more than 22% of the region’s people live there. Compare this with Lebanon, another country in the “strategic states” group with only a 1% share of the region’s population. Egypt has been under authoritarian rule, while Lebanon has a sectarian power-­sharing structure of governance. The two countries have played a significant political and cultural role in the region. Despite their differences, both countries have been essential media and cultural production hubs. Above all, it is no exaggeration to suggest that the countries in the “strategic states” group remain the weakest link in the region. This is where the heart of Arab revolts did beat the strongest. Of particular importance in recent decades has been the emergence and “formation of large capital-­groups that dominate the respective economies of the new regional block” (Hanieh 2010, 23). The members of the small Arab states gathered under the umbrella of the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) with a total population of 59.4 million, according to the latest data by the World Bank, of which almost half are migrant workers, have a combined economic output of over $1.3 trillion. It is important to remember that some of these GCC countries’ gross per capita domestic product is much higher than the average of OECD member countries. Notably, the Gulf capitals have also been central to regional media’s rise, development, and expansion regionally and globally. One of the striking features of the region is the wide variation among countries in terms of their population, literacy rates, expenditures on health and education, and gross national product (GNP) per capita. There is a close correlation between the wealth of countries and access to means of communication and investment in cultural preservation. A crucial and related factor in the apparent disconnect between capitalism and democracy in the region is the role of arms manufacturers (alongside oil companies). Their profit depends on particular political arrangements in the region. For some writers (Harris 2016), militarization has been the overriding factor determining the region’s trajectory. According to Harris, since the 1970s, the region has been in almost a permanent state of war, including national-­expansionist projects with US support: Israel in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and the Sinai; Iraq into Iran (1980s); Saudis in Yemen; and Iranian expansionism in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen. Imperialist interventions, rather than acting as a catalyst for democracy, have delayed the fall of dictatorships. Pushing

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Introduction 5

the economic and political leadership of the region toward the Gulf monarchies has been one significant outcome of this permanent state of tension. As a result, military expenditure in the region remains among the highest in the developing world, with only a few countries matching this level of military spending. What is idiosyncratic about the Middle East is precisely related to such figures, which stem from its peculiar colonial legacy. In Henry’s view (2003), the region’s most important and distinctive characteristic is neither religion, language, nor culture, but a colonial legacy that has continued to paralyze it. As Timothy Mitchell (2011) has argued, the existence of “Western democracy” has depended on the undemocratic Middle East.

Cultures of the Middle East There is much debate over the meanings and characteristics of culture in the Middle East and North Africa. Scholarship in the humanities tends to celebrate the region as a cultural mosaic where communities come together to represent a variety of ways of life, including the arts, beliefs, customs, rituals, religion, and arts. At the same time, literature in the social sciences considers such diversity as one source for the region’s political, economic, and sociocultural predicaments, often characterized by resistance to change. Still, news reporting and popular media tend to represent the region as one where cultures are in perpetual conflict. Informed reporting blames a constellation of factors – colonialism, authoritarianism, religious interpretations, economic disparities, and sociocultural norms – which, they argue, turned the region into a breeding ground for radicalized groups. However, recent Western reporting, particularly over the last two decades, characterized the Middle East as a site of (positive) rage and rebellion where youth demographics play a significant role in the region’s political and sociocultural movements. In much of the framing of the Middle East and North Africa, persistent tropes continue to dominate how regional cultures are described, from eighteenth-­ century European travelers’ and artists’ works to twenty-­f irst-­century digital media content (e.g. film, animation, video games, and others). The mosaic framework of ethnicities, languages, and cultures is anchored in Orientalist scholarship that describes the Middle East at the crossroads of civilizations, where East meets West. Herein lies the epistemological and ontological distinctions that characterize Orientalism (see Chapter 1). Historically, the region has been home to various religious sects, including Eastern and Western Christianity; Shia, Sunni, and Sufi Islam; Druze; Judaism, and others. The Middle East is also multiethnic, with Arabs, Persians, Turks, Kurds, Imazighen, Assyrians, Circassians, Jews, and others living in cosmopolitan cities like Casablanca, Istanbul, Beirut, Cairo, Tehran, and in the modern metropoles of the Arabian Gulf. Echoing the region’s ethnic and geographic diversity is a multiplicity of Semitic, Indo-­European, and Turkic languages. While Arabic is the most dominant, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish, and Kurdish languages and community vernaculars exist (such as Coptic and Tamazight). The diversities, including religious identities, in the region as a whole and in each country are nothing new, and the cultural plurality was such that it would have stretched the limits of the imaginations of the

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Media and Culture in the Middle East

most passionate postmodernists. The data from Ervand Abrahamian (1982) of Iran in the nineteenth century is very illuminating. For example, the city of Kerman, with a population of only 49,000, contained separate districts for Twelvers, Karimkhanis, Shaykhis, Sufis, Jews, and Zoroastrians. However, the vision of cultures peacefully coexisting and prospering seems to mask political and economic realities that underscore a different interpretation (see Chapters 9, 42). The cultures of the Middle East are shaped by both exogenous and endogenous social, political, and economic forces. At the core, a cultural mosaic’s image reveals unity and division. As a political reality, Middle East cultures represent several independent states constantly reasserting their differences and distinctive identities. The volatility of politics in the Middle East reflects a long and complex history of competing forces and shifting alliances of different and often opposing political-­economic ideologies. Particularly noteworthy is the region’s association with images of conflict and rebellion, which dates back to the age of the Greek, Roman, Islamic, Persian, and Ottoman empires. The age of British, French, and Italian colonialism cultivated internal conflicts while succeeding in partitioning the region into local and international areas of influence. By the end of the Second World War, the Middle East and North Africa became associated with independence and liberation movements fueled by the rise of nationalist ideologies, the politicization of ethnic and religious identities, and ongoing international proxy wars. These twentieth-­century conflicts coincided with the emergence and widespread use of mass media to promote nation-­states internally and externally. With the press, radio, and television widely accessible, mass media increasingly became central to the processes of acculturation and socialization across the region. By the first decade of the twenty-­f irst century, the region was further marked with conflicts, particularly the US-­led “War on Terror” framed as a response to the attacks of 9/11 and promoted through media campaigns to “win the hearts and minds.” In contrast to the “Middle East terrorism” frame, the second decade of the twenty-­f irst century offered the image of freedom-­ yearning rebellious youth driving political change from Lebanon’s 2005 Cedar Revolution to the Iranian protests of 2022. The region’s cultures emerge as a process of contingency and contradiction shaped by unstable internal and external power relations. The Middle East is a place of vibrant cultural practices where complex and competing histories, economies, politics, and identities exist. This starting point reflects several factors, including the massive displacement of people that began at the opening of the twentieth century and is still ongoing, and the parallel increase in transnational migration (within and from the region). In addition, economic liberalization, the introduction of new technologies, and the development of different business models became the basis for the emergence of hybrid cultural, social, and religious practices (see ­Chapters 2, 4). Similarly, the development of the modern Middle East was not just among certain political, intellectual, and economic classes but also the region’s communities in their e­ veryday life (see Chapters 5, 6, 7). As a result, there is a need to revise the conventional conception of Middle East cultures in two crucial ways. First, rather than focusing exclusively on romantically celebratory or naively pessimistic visions of Middle East cultures, it would be helpful to highlight complex, often contradictory

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Introduction 7

material, intellectual, spiritual, and affective features that characterize them. Second, there is a need to recognize that Middle East cultures, like all cultures, are not static. It is essential to interject into contemporary debates about the region’s resistance to change that Middle East cultures are constantly changing. Just consider the last two decades characterized by the emergence and growth of various processes of creating and consuming cultural artifacts. From reality television to social media, various cultural forms and genres have introduced different standards of behavior and challenged existing sociocultural norms (see Chapters 11, 12, 13).

Media Dynamics and Trajectories Today’s Middle East media of different types (print, radio, television, digital) are globally integrated, more diverse, and numerous, and their audiences/users are  active and empowered. The complexity and diversity of media in the Middle East are such that they are not a subject anymore but a discipline on their own. In the twenty-­f irst century, media in the Middle East is a core topic in global communication, international relations, anthropology, sociology, political science, and emerging fields such as digital humanities. The complex Middle East media scene, with its multiple flows and trajectories, multilayered levels of influence, and often conflicting outcomes, is a manifestation of media confluence. This interrelation of different media and the involvement of media users completely reconfigures the public space by making visible news, actors, and discourses previously hidden. The Middle East’s historical development, diversities, and commonalities situate the region’s mainstream (traditional or legacy) and alternative (activist and ­independent) media infrastructure, practices, and content. For the first part of the twentieth century, the region’s mediascape seemed less puzzling to the observer. After their independence, each state was a master of its media territory, and citizens were tributaries of the national media. The only exception to this rule was radio, a transnational medium that maintained its propaganda mission. Following Western and Soviet modernization models, states focused on broadcast and print media as vectors of progress and social development. For example, large-­scale media projects started in the 1970s and culminated in the launch of ArabSat (1985), Türksat (1994), and Iran’s Omid (2009). The 1990s liberalization of economies radically transformed the media landscape across the region. Adhering to the recommendation of the World Bank and the IMF translated into a top-­down “liberalization process” characterized by “state capitalism” in which the media is a central target. For example, the locus of media power transitioned from a regional media economy formerly led by Cairo and Beirut to a transnational ultraliberal market dominated by the Gulf countries. Alongside these actors, other Middle Eastern players are also involved: Turkey and Iran entered this Arabic-­speaking market through entertainment and/or news channels. Such reconfigurations are consolidated with new transnational media and advertising players, and the emergence of regional media production centers in Dubai, Doha, and Istanbul.

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Media and Culture in the Middle East

The current media landscape is characterized by three interdependent territorialities: the national, the regional, and the global. Nationally, media have become increasingly polarized and focused on the local market. More than ever, regional media have expanded beyond the inter-­Arab market even when Iranian and Turkish content distribution is subject to political constraints. Despite the growth and sophistication of regional and national media, the region’s audiences continue to be the target of public diplomacy efforts at the international level. From the US-­sponsored Al Hurra Television to China Global Television Network (CGTN), international state broadcasting channels continue to be the pillar of public diplomacy towards the region. At the same time, its emerging markets remain attractive to foreign media conglomerates. Except for Iran, the major trends that shape the media in the world are also present in Middle Eastern countries: ­franchised channels (e.g. CNN Turk and Arabic) and publications (e.g. Time Out) to ­format television shows (e.g. “The Voice”) and streaming services (e.g. Spotify). In brief, the region has become increasingly integrated into the global media market over the last 20 years. With the introduction of the internet in the 1990s, traditional media, particularly print and television, began their digital transformation, coinciding with the rise of online forums for transnational communication among different publics. By the 2000s, the introduction of blogging ushered a movement towards citizen journalism, culminating in a plethora of independent online news portals (e.g. Nawaat and Mada Masr). Together with social media platforms, particularly Twitter and Facebook, they developed new forms of citizenry (see Chapters 13, 18). But the adoption of digital tools was not restricted to advancing political objectives. New kinds of entertainment production, distribution, and advertising, from YouTube and Twitch to Instagram and TikTok, are introducing different types of consumption and new monetization avenues (e.g. social media marketing and influencers). What started as a gradual digital transformation has been expedited during the Covid-­19 pandemic with the consolidation of homegrown music and video-­streaming services (e.g. Anghami, Shahid, and others) as significant media players in the digital media economy. The various social movements and international public attention brought a range of underground forms of self-­expression to light. Broadly defined, these alternative media are those communicative practices and artifacts that fall outside the mainstream state or corporate communication. Across the Middle East, individuals and communities have resorted to various forms of cultural production using multiple media. For example, the ideologues of revolutionary, liberation, and independence movements of the twentieth century have used primarily avant-­garde art (e.g. poetry and music), low-­tech tools (e.g. fliers, cassette tapes), and any accessible broadcast or print media (e.g. offshore radio and television) to recruit and mobilize local, regional, and international support. In the 1990s, the gradual liberalization of state-­owned media coupled with slow and uneven democratization processes contributed to the emergence and development of independent information platforms. Citizen and activist journalists and public intellectuals, together with dissident political figures, came to define the 2000s’ alternative media. The series of social movements of the last two decades were characteristic of alternative media’s growth and diversity, widespread use of digital affordances, and regional and international support and networking.

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Introduction 9

The Middle East media’s structure, growth, and influence are ushering in a period of flux. For instance, regional commercial mainstream media seem to increasingly focus on national audiences following the interests of their owners (e.g. MBC and Saudi Arabia). Similarly, Western, state-­supported media seem to have lost interest in the region’s shifting geopolitical alliances while Russia, China, and Turkey are growing their media and cultural spheres of influence. Within traditional media’s highly partisan landscape, alternative media focus on local news and information that echo the needs of marginalized groups and minorities. At the same time, social media platforms, local and regional streaming services, and e-­games platforms offer new venues for (dis)information, user-­ generated content, and entertainment. These various media have entailed changes in production, distribution, and exhibition, and in the process, they also multiplied the venues for political and cultural expressions. Coupled with the massive presence of educated and connected youth, disenfranchisement from traditional politics has given rise to movements of emancipation from the state and the established socioeconomic order throughout the region. Although the shifts in Middle East media are qualitatively and quantitatively significant, some of its research remains attached to cultural or technological determinism. For example, Islam remains the vital and, in many cases, essential bête noire for the region’s cultural and media controversies. From this angle, religion has remained a central and defining characteristic of an “Islamic world” and the region’s media. This supposedly essentialist perspective would demonstrate, without a doubt, the incompatibility of Islam and Muslims with modernity (see Chapter 2). In this scenario, Islam is given an independent life, its content considered uniform regardless of history, broader material and demographic changes, or the nature of the state, politics, and geography. How ironic, then, that something that causes so much change (Islam) should be conveniently unchanging. Despite the exaggerated claim of the decline of the state and the actively continuous neglect of its role by globalization theories, states in the region have unexceptionally remained contradictory entities and sites of struggle for many competing interests. They are also the most prominent media proprietors, and continue not only to censor and oppress but to facilitate, regulate, and expand the media infrastructure (see Chapter 10). In addition to a research thread primarily focused on Islam, there is a seemingly technologically deterministic approach to some of the research on Middle East media. This research examines the sociocultural impact of media technologies, practices, and content, from printing presses and cassette tapes to satellite television and streaming platforms. It focuses on the tension between the modern (technology) and tradition, the global (mainly Western) and the local. But by and large, Middle East media research contributed to analyses of the links between infrastructure, content, and society and has offered comparative cross-­national studies, industry-­specific research, and increasingly user-­specific explorations. Understanding the region’s culture, society, politics, and economy requires recognizing these diverse and complex media scenes with their ongoing mutations, contradictions, and continuities. The multigenerational research, largely represented in this Handbook, undoubtedly contributes to de-­Westernizing Arab media studies and enriching its theoretical and methodological approaches.

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Media and Culture in the Middle East

About This Volume In this volume, we adopt a holistic approach to the questions of the Middle East by integrating both media-­centered and culture-­focused approaches and by drawing on the humanities, arts, and social sciences as theoretical and empirical tools of analysis and explanation. With its 43 contributions, the Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East aims to: ●●

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Challenge and deconstruct the monolithic perception of the Middle East as a ‘one big’ geopolitical, cultural, and even media entity. Capture the vibrant dynamics between the region’s countries (notably the Arab states, Turkey, and Iran) and between these countries and the world (mainly focusing on the links with Europe and the United States). Stress the commonalities of a Middle East culture and acknowledge the existence of dynamic, historically diverse cultures. Expand the common understanding of Middle East media to include mass media, digital/social media, alternative media, and the arts.

We are aware that our goals are reasonably inclusive and ambitious. As will be evident from the contributors’ brief biographies, we have invited established and emerging scholars from media, communication, cultural studies, and journalism, as well as the arts, anthropology, sociology, political science, and so forth. These distinct regional interest areas present a fertile mix that can stimulate classroom discussions and future research. Curious readers are invited to initiate comparisons across the Middle East’s subregions, countries, and communities and consider theoretical approaches, methods, disciplines, and subfields. Reflecting on the selection process for contributors, we must acknowledge our limitations in soliciting contributors and ensuring equal representation of the region’s lively and diverse media and cultural scenes, despite our varied national backgrounds, academic affiliations, disciplinary approaches, and research foci. We implemented a rigorous selection and review process for which we should thank the broad community of Middle Eastern scholars for their support of the project and our authors for their willingness to contribute, then revise their chapters as requested. Unlike traditional handbooks, we have included two types of contributions. While essays in Sections 1, 2, and 6 cover the most prominent conceptual topics and serve as a theoretical umbrella of meta-­narratives, the chapters in Sections 3, 4, and 5 serve as exemplars, case studies, or illustrations of culture and media in the Middle East. The diversity of Middle East media and culture organically emerges as scholars bring their own interests, knowledge, experience, and context to their research. Together these essays and chapters provide multiple entry points and pathways for the reader to explore the plurality and diversity as well as the complexity and vibrancy of the region’s media and culture. The authors are experts and participants in the cultures they describe and are engaged in research in media and the many cultural practices included in this volume.

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The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East is organized into six sections. Together, they suggest how contemporary media and culture in the Middle East matter on conceptual, structural, and material levels. It highlights how everyday life intertwines cultural, artistic, and media contexts, texts, and practices. The introduction is intended to delineate current ways of thinking about media and culture in the Middle East. The first section, Theories, Ideologies, and Problematics, addresses some salient problematics reflected in the Middle East’s study of culture and media. Five short essays address how the region has been a laboratory for cultural, political, and economic experimentation and how, in the process, various forms and interpretations have emerged in regional contexts. In this section, the authors examine Orientalism, modernity and modernization, hybridity, and cultural studies as critical theories of media and culture, their meanings, and their implications in/for the Middle East context. The second section, Politics, Gender, Minorities, and Class, features short essays that delve into some of the region’s most contentious debates on culture and media. These discussions are crucial undertakings in an era marked by rapid transformations. The definition of political agency, gender roles, minority rights, and class struggles are fundamentally reconfigured and marked by stark differences in various places within the region—­sections one and two offer conceptual frameworks and contextual anchors that bind culture and media. Contributors offer entry points for the more empirical work presented later and set the tone for the reader to explore mainstream and alternative media in the region as sociocultural, political, and economic sites. In the third section, titled Media Industries, Markets, and Technologies, contributors identify and interpret current media configurations, their development, and historical, political, sociocultural, and economic significance. The chapters address the trans-­ regional connections related to the emergence of media industries that are national (locally based) but have reached outside their immediate borders, regionally and globally. This section offers a macro view covering media policies, the press, television and streaming, film and archives, and the digital Middle East. Building on these overviews, section four offers case studies of traditional or legacy media institutions, while section five explores vibrant alternative or independent media scenes. In section four, (Mass) Media, Cultures, and Contexts, the contributors address the links between text and cultural practices in multiple regional contexts. Authors analyze texts and flows, ideologies, representations, formats, and spectacles, including censorship laws and news practices, film and television productions, funding and advertising models, and religious, gender, political, and cultural media content. Drawing on a wide range of fresh insights from fieldwork research, contributors reveal links between media content, context, and everyday life in multiple communities across the Middle East. Section five, Alternative, Independent, and Social Media, recognizes a range of media and cultural practices often associated with activism and self-­expression. From independent online news publishers to minority media and digital images to street art, these forms have become the self-­expressive tools of marginalized, underrepresented, or underserved groups across the region. At the same time, these alternative media have challenged existing mainstream, often state-­controlled and market-­driven, traditional media.

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In section six, Perspectives, contributors focus on current and future directions in studying culture and media in the Middle East. What are some of the pressing questions? What challenges (conceptual, methodological, or practical) face looking at culture and media in the Middle East? What are some of the emerging phenomena or trends? These questions outline the various contributions to this section. By placing this section at the end, we hope it presents pedagogical and research choices to continue exploring media and culture in the Middle East. Departing from the assumption that the Middle East has a single culture and produces totalistic media narratives, and therefore that the region’s people, civilizations, and their current media activities are mutually complementary rather than clashing, we offer a handbook that maps out active links between the various cultures and media in the region and beyond. The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East is written primarily for scholars and teachers in the humanities and social sciences. It is designed to include perspectives and experiences from around the region without limiting any discussion necessarily to a single national, ethnic, religious, or other defined scope. The Handbook examines the dimensions of culture and media in the Middle East relevant to the twenty-­first-­century debates and challenges while at the same time anchoring the analyses in historical and geopolitical contexts. It is principally positioned as the foundation for the next era of research on media and culture in the Middle East. References Abrahamian, E. 1982. Iran Between Two Revolutions. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Golding, P. 1974. “Media Role in National Development.” Journal of Communication 24, no. 3: 39–53. Hanieh, A. 2010. Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States. New York: Palgrave Macmillan: 23. Harris, K. 2016. “Making and Unmaking of the Greater Middle East.” New Left Review 101, Sept./ Oct.: 5–36. Henry, C. 2003. “The Clash of Globalizations in the Middle East.” Review of Middle East Economics and Finance 1, no. 1: 3–16. Lerner, D. 1958. The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East. New York: Free Press. Martin, K. 2012. “Democracy Without Capitalism: Retheorizing Iran’s Constitutional Revolution.” Middle East Critique 21, no. 1: 37–56. Mitchell, T. 2011. Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. London: Verso. Sreberny, A. 2001. “Mediated Culture in the Middle East: Diffusion, Democracy, Difficulties.” Gazette 63, no. 2-­3: 101–119.

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Part I

Theories, Ideologies, and Problematics

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Orientalism and Culture Annabelle Sreberny

There is little doubt that Edward Said’s Orientalism is one of the most influential scholarly works of the past few decades. —­Vivek Chibber (2013, 37) There is probably no more popular paradigm for thinking about issues of representation and history of the Middle East (itself a problematic construct) than Said’s notion of “orientalism.” First fully fleshed out in the monumental book Orientalism published in 1978, Said’s critical concept describes the West’s common contemptuous depiction and portrayal of “The East,” i.e. the Orient. Later, in “Orientalism Reconsidered,” a piece published in Cultural Critique in 1985, he described Orientalism as referring to several overlapping domains: The changing historical and cultural relationship between Europe and Asia; the scientific discipline in the West that specialised in the study of various oriental cultures and traditions  …  and the ideological suppositions, images and fantasies about the Orient  …  a ­currently important and politically urgent region of the world. (Said 1985, 90)

Here we see a slippage between what is sometimes called large-­scale Orientalism that includes all of Asia, and a smaller Orientalism that becomes synonymous with the Middle East. Indeed, it could be said that Said’s work helped to re-­orient (!) a focus on the Middle East as the key “other” to the West. Thus the historically more heterogeneous geography of early European Orientalist writing that looked as far as Japan and China came, through Said, to be firmly situated in a gaze upon the Middle East and helped to define that region. It is this latter, smaller scale that concerns us here. Central to Said’s writing is that premise that “the Orient and the Occident are facts produced by human beings  … so there could be no Orientalism without, on the one The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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hand, the Orientalists, and on the other, the Orientals” (1985, 90). That encounter, sometimes embodied but often imagined, was a productive dynamic in Said’s Foucauldian approach, but came to be seen by subsequent scholars as an ontological chasm between Occidental and Oriental, a fixed divide not intended by Said.1 Said himself was never a Middle East studies scholar but rather based in the Department of Literature at Columbia University (Bulliet n.d.), which helps account for his emphasis on the cultural dynamics of the encounter in representations and misrepresentations, rather than on detailed historic contextualization or political analysis. Hence Said has been accused of ignoring the realpolitik and power dynamics of the ­relations between Western powers and the region, as we will discuss. “Orientalism” after and beyond Said has been extensively utilized as a conceptual framework and has spawned three central foci, each with implications for culture: 1. How the West sees the region. This is at the heart of Said’s analysis. 2. How the West sees itself. Orientalism always told us more about “ourselves” than about the “other.” 3. How the Middle East region represents itself. Given the theme of this volume, this chapter will concentrate most on this third element. First, Said’s analysis of “Orientalism” as a Western mode of defining and understanding the region remains a dominant paradigm, perhaps even more in evidence since 9/11. Prevalent Western images of the Middle East – itself a Western construct delineated in the aftermath of World War One – include oil wells and veiled women as well as sand and camels, frequently imagining the region as stuck in a different epoch from the West. Indeed, in October 2019, when President Trump unilaterally withdrew US troops from Syria, prompting a military attack by Turkey and responses from Presidents Assad and Putin, he abjured any complexity, simply saying, “So there’s a lot of sand there that they can play with.” To the contrary, the Middle East is “a highly differentiated region, along many d­ ifferent kinds of social variables” (Sreberny 2001, 102). The region is the ancient home of three world religions, includes a diversity of peoples, languages, and ethnicities and a mix of traditional and modern social and cultural practices. It is highly disparate in terms of wealth, with oil-­rich countries like Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE that enjoy some of the world’s highest GNPs and some of the poorest countries, such as Yemen, crippled ­f urther by current war, and devastated Lebanon. The visual culture of Orientalism, which came to dominate much of its conceptual development, included artists who had never visited the region, such as Ingres and Gérôme, who were intoxicated by the exotic mysteries of the haram. Although there were also iconoclasts like Leighton who, so enamored of the aesthetic he discovered, brought many artifacts home to London and built Leighton House using Syrian and Egyptian design, furniture, and tiling. A 2019 exhibition at the British Museum, entitled

 Ironically, the 2003 “laudatio” by Ashwani Saith to Said comes perilously close to hagiography that reinforces this very binary.

1

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“Inspired by the East: How the Islamic World Influenced Western Art” made much play of the material practices and designs that were adopted and adapted by Western artists – but rather omitted to analyze the limited fantasies about the region that held and still hold sway (Greenwood and de Guise 2019). The many critiques of Western representations of the Middle East have been developed in relation to photography (Behdad and Gartlan 2013); to film by Shaheen (2001); on television by Chevaldonne (1987) and in relation to news imagery by Poole (2010). The debates regarding gender and orientalism are another fascinating offshoot (Lewis 1996; Abu-­Lughod 2001). The 2021 release of Dune, directed by Denis Villeneuve, based on the book by Frank Herbert, reawakened the question of how Arabs, Muslims, and Islam are represented in Hollywood. Hamid Dabashi writes acerbically that “Hollywood” as an abstraction is in the business of misrepresenting everyone. It has no commitment to truth. It has made a lucrative business of deluding the world. Native Americans, African-­Americans, Arabs, Asians, Latinx, Muslims, Africans  – everyone on planet Earth is misrepresented for the simple reason that at the epicentre of Hollywood as an industry stands a factual, virtual, or fictive white narrator telling the world he is the measure of truth and wisdom, joy and entertainment. (Dabashi 2021)

Dabashi reminds us of the argument he made in his 2009 book Post-­Orientalism: Knowledge & Power (2021) that Said has a fictive white interlocutor sitting inside his mind whom he was trying to convince, especially about Palestine. Dabashi’s (2021) response is that “we” have changed that interlocutor and don’t talk to that particular person any longer: The frontier fictions separating East and West, Hollywood and Bollywood, have dissolved into cyberspace. They are meaningless in a reality in which how a white saviour’s fantasy may tickle the fancies of its white audience is of little relevance to the rest of humanity at large. They need their white saviours. It is a psychotic disposition. We can only wish them a speedy recovery.

Second, Orientalism also made a significant contribution to the question of how the West sees itself. In many ways, Orientalism – in looking at Western projections and their limitations – always told us more about “ourselves” than about the “other,” a profound cultural framing that is just now coming into public contestation. The focus is returning home and back to empire, where the slave roots of the American constitution, the black erasure of French republicanism, and the colonial stories embedded in British architecture and public space and history education are finally being examined in a public way that goes way beyond the towers of academe where Orientalism is usually performed. Many current (2022) debates in the United States, the UK, and elsewhere show a renewed concern about the master narratives of their respective national histories, the embodiment of such histories in statuary and named buildings and about the racial subjugation involved, importantly mobilized by Black Lives Matter. There is a parallel demand to “decolonize the curriculum” at different levels of education. A spate of new books on the British Empire explores the dynamics of race and class that have structured modern Britain (Sanghera 2021; Olusoga 2021; Todd 2021).

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Contemporary poststructuralist and postcolonial debates owe a huge legacy to Orientalism, with many ongoing discussions (Chibber 2003; Achar 2013). In 2022, this broad reconsideration of “our” Western histories is a powerful cultural moment and one of the liveliest strands of intellectual debate that Orientalism has helped to spawn. The third focus is on how the region represents itself. This summons up issues of cultural change and resistance within the Middle East. If, historically, the prevailing European view of Orientals is that “they have to be represented, they cannot represent themselves,” that has been changing from the 1970s on. It is useful to differentiate a number of different dynamics, often contradictory, that are all occurring across the region. One dynamic in the region, often seen through the rubric of countering cultural imperialism and spurred by the Iranian revolution of 1979, has been to search for an authentic, often Islamic, pure culture to counter the emergence of a modernizing, consumerist Western culture. A kind of nativist Islamism can be found in the rhetoric of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and lies behind the emergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and ISIS/Daesh in Syria and Iraq and their brands of a severe and foundational Islam (which are returned back “home” to the UK in the form of the threat of “terrorism” and governmental “Prevent” strategies). However, the current period reveals pockets of nostalgia, tradition, and ressentiment occurring in many parts of the world (see Chapters 22, 32, 39). Putin’s drive into Ukraine follows such a pattern. Increasingly, such rhetoric can be found in white, right-­wing fascist movements in the West, often seen as a response to neoliberalism, austerity, and negative globalization since the crash of 2008 (Bhambra et al. 2020) and currently manifest in many anti-­vax movements in Western countries. These offer an interesting example of how different theoretical lenses are used to explain somewhat similar phenomena in the Middle East and in the West. Too often, there is a sense of non-­synchronicity (Bloch 1977; Khiabany 2022), as if the region is somehow stuck in a past epoch while the West bustles ahead with its new modernity, whereas neo-­globalization has produced immense economic and sociocultural contradictions everywhere. The Middle East reveals its own internal contradictions in the second dynamic with the development of powerful media organizations in Iran, in Turkey, but especially in the Arab Middle East. MBC, and ­Rotana compete for audience and market share in Saudi Arabia; OSN is a joint Saudi-­Kuwaiti venture; while Al Jazeera, perhaps the best-­ known channel, which is enjoying a growing audience outside the region, is based in Qatar (see Khiabany 2017; Sakr et al. 2015; Zayani 2005). These new television industries produce a range of content from news to comedies to religious programming (Kraidy and Khalil 2009). These are fascinating nodal points where capital and state power come together and reinforce each other, as many of the companies present a “private” face to the world while being funded and controlled by their respective state polities (see Chapter 12). There are complicated outcomes at work as regional content reaches ­globalized audiences. Saudi Arabia has now sanctioned cinema. Turkish television series that found a sizable audience inside Iran now appear on Netflix, as do Iranian and Palestinian films. At the start of 2022, a Netflix-­produced movie Perfect Strangers about Arab sex lives triggered a predictable online debate. In a global environment where “soft power” is an increasingly important arm of political intervention, Iranian external

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broadcasting in many languages including English and even Hebrew counterbalances the decades of similar activities by the BBC, Deutsche Welle, and France 24 (Sreberny and Torfeh 2018). Such developments challenge simplistic “cultural imperialism” (Herbert Schiller) and “media imperialism” arguments, producing new reconsiderations (Boyd-­Barrett and Mirrlees 2020), even as they enlarge the sphere of international relations. The February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine is clearly being played out across the broadcasting airwaves and online platforms, with information and disinformation both a crucial part of modern warfare. Furthermore, the region has witnessed new and powerful popular movements that have implications for both forms of “representation,” the cultural and the political. These movements started most obviously with the Iranian revolution of 1978–1979, reverberated across the region in the Arab Springs of 2010, and remain in patchy yet present form, smoldering in many places, including Tunisia and Egypt. In these movements, Arab and Muslim groups are finding their own voices, building their own (social) media, and representing themselves. Such contemporary modes of homegrown visual and aural representations include street art (Leila Ajjawi; Yazan Halwani; Ghalamdar); women photographers (Tanya Habjouqa); and a diversity of musical styles (Shadia Mansour and Tamer Nafar who are rappers; Siilawy; Emi Hetari, etc.). Eight Arab films were submitted for the 2022 Oscars. Not all the battles over cultural expression within the region are to do with the “West” directly but are often around modernizing sets of ideas, which become configured as struggles between publics and states in cultural politics, as noted earlier. The geographically dispersed Iranian diaspora often finds itself at loggerheads with Tehran over free political and cultural expression, free movement, and women’s rights. Diasporic media and social media platforms are used as spaces of confrontation. The autumn 2022 popular mobilization in Iran was triggered by the death in custody of a young women arrested by the Morality Police for ‘bad hijab’. Despite regime crackdowns, social media have been filled with still and moving images from around the country, while the global solidarity has been unprecedented. Musical anthems and v­ isual memes have been shared around the world, albeit that digital communication functions much faster than actual political change.

Beyond Orientalism? It is not often noted that Said’s Orientalism was published in the same year that witnessed the Iranian Revolution and an Islamic uprising against the left-­wing dictatorship in Afghanistan. Achar (2008) is one of the few analysts who has noted that the late 1970s saw a “major ideological counter-­offensive” to Marxism, which these moments embodied. One powerful counter-response was what al-­Azm called “orientalism in reverse” (­al-­Azm 1981), which reproduced the essential Orientalist dichotomy but this time with the Orient or “Arab mind” deemed as superior – not inferior – to the West. But al-­Azm added another aspect, that the Orient cannot be apprehended through the lens of

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Western social analysis, including Marxism, and that the religio-­cultural practices of Islam could drive a progressive political agenda in the Middle East. “Orientalism in reverse” became quite pervasive after 1978–1979, particularly but not only among French scholars, and produced a naïve Third Worldism and support for Islamism that mimicked Orientalism itself. As al-­Azm argued, “Ontological Orientalism in Reverse is, in the end, no less reactionary, mystifying, ahistorical and anti-­human than Ontological Orientalism proper” (1981). But by far the strongest critique of Orientalism is its perceived overemphasis on cultural dynamics while ignoring the structural dynamics of imperialism. Both Orientalism and Subaltern Studies have generated much innovative thinking. But, as Levine (2020) powerfully argues, after providing a lengthy discussion of imperialism in the region, there was a conceptual flaw in both postcolonial and subaltern studies, and that was the lack of a broader understanding of the coloniality of power, which for half a millennium has been the core dynamic or generative order of modern political systems and apparatuses. Indeed, it explains why “coloniality” so often continues both in the metropole and in former colonies long after colonialism has formally ended, making any transition to a democratic, or at least more just and equitable, political economy well-­nigh impossible in the postcolony and, as neoliberal policies—­the lineal descendent of the liberalism of the era of 19th and early 20th centuries’ “high imperialism”—­took hold in the West, in the post-­and/or neo-­imperial countries as well. And so, the situation that persists today is one where most states, regardless of their global position, are inherently both colonial and criminal in their aims, practices, and/or discourses of governance toward their citizens, all the more so when, rather than being the agents of colonialism (that is, European states), they are its creation (that is, the postcolonial states of the Global South). Indeed, this dynamic helps explain why, like the two partners in a long-­term abusive relationship, it seems equally hard for former colonial/imperial powers to behave as such vis-­à-­vis their former colonies or spheres of influence and for postcolonial states to stop behaving as if they are still colonized. (2020, 8–9)

To press the point home, the ongoing impact of neo-­imperialism in the region is appallingly evident. The Iraq war of Bush and Blair ruined much of that country, while Asad’s pyrrhic struggle in Syria has utterly devastated that country too. A refugee population of millions barely survives in tents on the Syrian-­Turkish border and in Lebanon. These people are usually forgotten by the world’s news media until climate change tropes of massive snowfalls and freezing temperatures in the region during winter 2021– 2022 meant images of people in flipflops sweeping snow from flimsy structures suddenly became breaking news. A massive flow of refugees from these conflict zones desperately trying to enter Europe triggered anti-­refugee sentiment and right-­wing attitudes in much of Europe, and resulted in uncounted tragedies at sea and on land, many living in a limbo that is really a hell on the Belarus-­Polish border (while the very different response toward white European refugees from Ukraine in March 2022 is important to note). The conflict in Yemen remains a Western proxy war, as well as a remarkable cash cow for weaponry sold to the Saudis. Much of Afghanistan is living in poverty under the Taliban, cruelly abandoned by Western powers. And as if we needed more examples, there was Trump’s egregious “peace” project with Israel and Bahrain. Energy is an obvious

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political pawn in global realpolitik: Germany is unable to cut off Russian gas supplies even as it moves to rearm after the invasion of Ukraine; Saudi disdain for human rights – with the execution of 81 people on a single day in March 2022 – doesn’t prevent the British prime minster going cap in hand to ask them to increase petrol production; and so far the release of Anglo-­Britons held in Iranian jails has not helped the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action ( JCPOA) negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program. So, are we, or should we be, “beyond Orientalism”? Dabashi says yes, to forget about Western cultural production and systemic bias and look to the region’s own contemporary culture. Levine says coloniality and criminality endure in a mixed-­up manner and are not so readily disentangled. Said’s work has been hugely significant, reminding us that culture is always political in some ways, including as part of knowledge construction. But he might well now say that he wasn’t an “Orientalist.” Said’s own voice, from his 2003 speech (2004, 878) is a good place to end: [C]ritical thought does not submit to state power or to commands to join in the ranks marching against one or another approved enemy. Rather than the manufactured clash of civilizations, we need to concentrate on the slow working together of cultures that ­overlap, borrow from each other, and live together in far more interesting ways than any abridged or inauthentic mode of understanding can allow. But for that kind of wider perception, we need time, patient and sceptical inquiry, supported by faith in communities of interpretation that are difficult to sustain in a world demanding instant action and reaction.

Perhaps the maintenance of skeptical inquiry is the most enduring element of Said’s legacy. In the prevailing cultural climate, with progressive ideas under threat from many directions, we have to work hard to ensure that our universities, our schools, our publishers, and ­certainly our media, continue to allow that to happen. This is a minor contribution. References Abu Lughod, L. 2001. “Orientalism and Middle East Feminist Studies.” Feminist Studies 27, 1 (Spring): 101–113. Abu-­Manneh, Bashir (Ed.). 2018. After Said. Cambridge University Press. Achar, G. 2008. “Orientalism in Reverse.” Radical Philosophy 151, Sept./Oct.: 20–30. Achar, Gilbert. 2013. Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism. Saqi Books. Al-­Azm, S. J. 1981. “Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse.” Matzpen, https://bit.ly/3sag3hU Behdad, Ali, and Gartlan, Luke. 2013. Photography’s Orientalism. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute. Bhambra, Gurminder K., Medien, Kathryn, and Tilley, Lisa. 2020. “Theory for a Global Age: From Nativism to Neoliberalism and Beyond.” Current Sociology 68, 2: 137–148. Bloch, Ernst. 1977. “Nonsynchronism and the Obligation to Its Dialectics.” (Mark Ritter, trans.). New German Critique 11: 22–38. Bulliet, Richard. n.d. “Marshall Hodgson and Edward Said.” unpublished, in author’s hands. Chevaldonne, Francois. 1987. “Globalization and Orientalism: The Case of TV Serials.” Media, Culture and Society 9, 2: 137–148.

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Chibber, Vivek. 2013. Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital. London: Verso. Chibber, Vivek. 2018. “The Dual Legacy of Orientalism.” In B. Abu-­Manneh (Ed.), After Said (pp. 37–52). Cambridge University Press. Dabashi, H. 2021. “Hollywood Orientalism Is Not About the Arab World  – It Is About the American World.” Al Jazeera Opinion, 10 November. https://bit.ly/34d7mvh Greenwood, William, and de Guise, Lucien (Eds.). 2019. Inspired by the East: How the Islamic World Influenced Western Art. The British Museum Press. Hage, G. 2020–2021. “Orientalism Between the Desire to Harm and the Desire for Knowledge,” in special issue on “What’s in a Name? After Orientalism.” Journal of the Society for Asian Humanities 52: 114–120. Khiabany, Gholam. 2022. “The Future and the ‘Poetry of the Past.’” In Joanna Zylinska with Goldsmiths Media (Eds.), The Future of Media (pp. 7–22). London: Goldsmiths Press. Khiabany, Gholam. 2017. “The Middle East.” In Benjamin Birkinbine, Rodrigo Gomez and Janet Wasko (Eds.), Global Media Giant (pp. 273–286). Routledge. Kraidy, Marwan, and Khalil, Joe. 2009. Arab Television Industries. BFI/Palgrave Macmillan. LeVine, Mark. 2020. “Colonialism in the Region: Foundations, Legacies, and Continuities.” In Armando Salvatore, Sari Hanafi, and Kieko Obuse, (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of the Middle East (pp.1–31). Oxford. See Oxford Handbooks Online, www. oxfordhandbooks.com Lewis, Raina. 1996. Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity and Representation. London: Routledge. Olusoga, David. 2021. Black and British: A Forgotten History. Picador. Poole, Elizabeth, and Richardson, J. E. 2010. Muslims in the News Media. London: Bloomsbury. Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. London: Routledge Keegan Paul. Said, Edward. Autumn 1985. “Orientalism Reconsidered.” Cultural Critique 1: 89–107. Said, Edward. 2003. “Orientalism Once More.” Lecture delivered on the occasion of the awarding of the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa at the Academic Ceremony on the 50th Anniversary of the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands, 21 May 2003. Reprinted 2004 in Development and Change 35, 5: 869–879. Saith, Ashwani. 2003. “Word and Reed as Weapon and Shield: A Laudatio for Edward Said.” Academic Ceremony on the 50th Anniversary of the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands, 21 May 2003. Sakr, Naomi, Skovgaard-­Petersen, Jakob, and Della Ratta, Donatella (Eds.). 2015. Arab Media Moguls. Bloomsbury. Sanghera, Sathnam. 2021. Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain. Penguin. Shaheen, Jack. 2001. Reel Bad Arabs. New York: Olive Branch Press. Sreberny, A. 2001. “Mediated Culture in the Middle East: Diffusion, Democracy, Difficulties.” Gazette 63, 2/3: 101–119. Sreberny, Annabelle, and Torfeh, Massoumeh. 2018. Persian Service: The BBC and British Interests in Iran. I.B. Tauris. Todd, Selina. 2021. Snakes and Ladders: The Great British Social Mobility Myth. Chatto and Windus. Zayani, Mohamed (Ed.). 2005. The Al Jazeera Phenomenon. Pluto Press.

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Muslims, Art, and Invisible Modernities Nabil Echchaibi

How often should I make a schedule, that this should be on repeat every five ­minutes. . . . So today I forgot to condemn Al Qaeda, so here is the Al Qaeda one. Today, I forgot to ­condemn FGM (female genital mutilation), so here it goes. Today, I forgot to condemn Hamas. . . . I am quite disgusted, really to be honest, that as Muslim legislators we are constantly being asked to waste our time speaking to issues that other people are not asked to speak to because the assumption is that, somehow, we support . . . something so a­ bhorrent, so offensive, so evil, so vile. —­US Representative Ilhan Omar, 2019 The frustration US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar voices in the epigraph signals a refusal to consent to a dominant narrative on Islam that forces Muslims to perform a rite of condemnation as a condition of speech and a prerequisite for their appearance. Omar is responding to an audience question at the end of a panel discussion at the Muslim Caucus Education Collective’s 2019 Conference urging her and other Muslim public officials to denounce female genital mutilation. By admonishing the accusatory tone in the question, Omar is reclaiming her right not to perform this interpellation of Muslimness as a category of presumed suspicion that must be first revealed and then purged publicly. Here, a Muslim American legislator whose identity is reduced to the visibility of her veil, her place of birth (Somalia), and her name disrupts an all-­too-­ common encounter by objecting to its alienating terms of recognition and unmasking its politics of visibility. This relentless discourse on Muslims continues to produce a naïve portrait of individuals desperately locked in an immutable swirl of traditions and rigid doctrines. Rarely are we allowed to see other facets of Muslims that this expedient and ahistorical myopia effectively conceals (see Chapters 22, 23, 24). This chapter explores emerging geographies of invisible modernities and the reimagination of a Muslim subjectivity based on a creative tension between religious particularism and universalism in the Middle East and North Africa. It seeks to go beyond the The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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reductive question of whether Islam is compatible with modernity and explore the new languages, experiences, and iconographies of modern Muslim identities. It asks how Muslims today attempt to reclaim their historical agency in a world still defined by ideological anxieties about a modern West versus a defiant Islam and a false binary between Islamism and secularism as the only viable options for identification. The aim here is not simply to describe mediated forms and narratives of Muslim modernities, nor is it to praise some sort of a popular Islamic awakening. Rather, the central argument of this chapter probes the very question of whether and how these forms and narratives are indicative of a larger and more enduring project in the construction of the modern Muslim self. As such, it complicates a view of contemporary Muslim identity as an open-­ended process with complex ideological moorings in religious doctrine and fluid connections to global capital, democracy, and neoliberal individualism. Drawing on the work of Moroccan artist Mounir Fatmi, I analyze how deep struggles of meaning erupt out of inevitable cultural and historical encounters to complicate our view of contemporary Muslim subjectivities. Fatmi’s art complicates what it means to be Muslim and it is this necessary layer of opacity and fugitivity that I seek to reclaim at a time when Muslims are reduced to mere avatars of their faith. Much like Omar’s refusal, Fatmi’s work resists the imposed ascriptions of a transactional relationality with Islam understood primarily as an adherence to the ideals of (Western) modernity and a repeated repudiation of those facets of the faith deemed incompatible with the modern. My argument opens to us another way to think about Muslim subjectivity by visibilizing Muslim socialities effectively absented via a discourse of Islam as a religion and a culture in need of control and submission to a geopolitical order. What about Muslims who reject this mode of subjecthood and this positioning of necessary riposte? What complexity of Muslim social life do we gloss over because we demand from Muslims a kind of stabilizing performativity that decimates their singularity and tames their difference? What of those Muslims who refuse to perform according to these terms of participation and conditions of visibility? And what about the right of Muslims to be, to create, and to act without the injunction to represent, to speak for the collective, and to stand in for the group or for an entire religion? The events of 9/11 and the war on terror have normalized a view of Muslims and their identity as something that is ultimately resolved and headed for a scripted and fixed  unfolding. Much of what is visible, or hypervisible, about Islam, Muslims, and their societies in the past couple of decades is consistently associated with a series of polemicized events that affirm these routinized narratives: veil/burqa bans, Prophet ­cartoons, Charlie Hebdo attacks, “Ground Zero Mosque” in New  York, Trump’s Muslim travel ban, the refugee crisis in Europe, and the terrorist attacks in Western cities (attacks in Muslim majority countries are often treated differently). These events always already appear as spectacles of difference and demonization and their mediation follows a familiar script whereby Muslims are collectively charged with threatening the core cultural and philosophical fabric of the West. Muslims are then summoned in highly publicized debates to prove they are not the enemy within and demonstrate their compatibility with the secular norms of Western culture. This hypervisibility of Islam around questions mediated as cultural and existential panics forces all Muslims to

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become spokespeople who inevitably speak for a religion and an undifferentiated ­collective reductively known as the Muslim world. Such a permanence of the Muslim threat, I argue, is evocative of a tenacious Orientalist obsession with outing the Muslim subject and taming their visibility, as in the act of unveiling captured eloquently in Malek Alloula’s book The Colonial Harem (1986), a still resonant analysis of picture postcards of Algerian women French photographers sent back to France during colonialization. Reminiscent of the North African paintings of Orientalists such as Delacroix and Gérôme, Alloula argues that the postcards of veiled and denuded Algerian women were the French photographer’s way to deal with the opaqueness of the veil and the rejection of his voyeuristic desire. The “secrecy” imposed by the white veil and the “mysterious” closure of the private space of Algerian women act as an affront to the photographer’s viewfinder which cannot locate a familiar entry point into the intimacy of its subjects. “The photographer,” Alloula writes, “will respond to this quiet and almost natural challenge by means of a double violation: he will unveil the veiled and give figural representation to the forbidden. This is the summary of his only program or, rather, his symbolic revenge upon a society that continues to deny him access and questions the legitimacy of his desire” (14). Unveiling then takes the form of an “exorcism” designed to soften the “morbid’ nature of the veil. “The entire distorting enterprise of the postcard,” Alloula continues, “is given here in schematic form. It is contained in the gesture of drawing the veil aside-­a gesture executed at the photographer’s command and destined to be followed by others. When she completes them, the algérienne will no longer have anything to hide” (15). The postcards of veiled and nude Algerian women actually reveal much more than even allowed by Alloula’s reading, but they prove one simple reality: like women in the colonial harem, the Muslim subject has to be staged to put an end to their tormenting secrecy and establish their knowability as a familiar visibility. Alloula describes his project as an attempt “to return this immense postcard to its sender,” to repair the wound of forcible acculturation that colonialism left in its wake. His analysis restores, despite its limitations, a perspective of Algeria that is unburdened by the Oriental fantasy of rendering Muslim others accessible and transparent to Western terms of visibility. In a similar corrective intervention, Kamel Daoud, an Algerian journalist and novelist, wrote a long-­awaited retort to Albert Camus’ The Stranger, the iconic philosophical novel in which the killing of an unnamed Arab by the protagonist Meursault is deemed insufficiently significant to warrant a proper treatment in the plot or justice tout court. Daoud’s novel The Meursault Investigation (2015) reimagines an alternative narrative arc that reclaims the humanity of the scapegoated and unnamed Arab first by naming him (Musa) and then by demystifying his history and culture. It was imperative for Daoud to rescue Musa from being a mere philosophical prop in a European narrative. In his analysis of Daoud’s riposte, Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan writes that “.  .  .just by virtue of having unilaterally and gratuitously given himself “permission to narrate,” a phrase developed brilliantly by Edward Said, the fictional persona of Eurocentric fiction acquires worldliness and authors an entire philosophy of life, whereas the real Arab in the same fiction is jeopardized and sacrificed twice over (see Chapter 1). The abjection

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of the Arab is twice told: both a nameless Arab in someone else’s story and an Arab incapable of ­narrating his own story in his own land” (2017, 445). But as much as these interventions are critically important, they are still tethered to an imperative of writing back to the Western gaze which relentlessly determines the frames and possibilities of this discourse of riposte. In her work on Muslim visibilities, Nilüfer Göle insists on showing how modern Muslims in Europe and in Muslim-­majority countries reclaim a higher presence for the symbols of their faith by introducing new “aesthetic forms, dress codes, or architectural genres” (Göle 2011, 387) in public spaces. Writing about the minaret and mosque construction controversy in Europe, Göle describes how this kind of Muslim appearance is perceived as an eruption in the European landscape and a “source of cultural dissonance” in political discourse. Mosques, Göle argues, have lost their innocence as mere places of worship under a paradigm of fear and security and their visibility acquires a heavily-­politicized salience that must be adjudicated in public. She writes, “Can we have a mosque that would not be identifiable as such? Should we separate, as the Swiss seem to wish, the minarets from the mosques? Can we replace the word ‘mosque,’ a word that some seem to fear, with terms such as ‘Islamic community centers’ and ‘cultural institutes’?” (386). Göle’s sociology of the emerging public visibility of Islam is important in highlighting the presence of what she calls “extra modernities,” forbidden forms of Muslim publicness that disrupt the normative values of Western modernity and recenter faith in the shaping of Muslim subjectivities (2015). The entry of this kind of performative Islam in public through new Muslim practices, aesthetics, sonorities, and tastes, Göle argues, must be explored critically to avoid reproducing clichéd analyses of Islam as a religion and culture in irreparable crisis. Such an attempt to visibilize Muslims as transgressive modern subjects is indeed necessary to reclaim their place in a larger process of multiple modernities that defies the singularity and linearity of Western modernity. But the focus on faith and publicness as the dominant vector of Muslim life remains heavily inscribed in an impulse to redeem Muslims as subjects who must be inserted into the narrative and project of modernity in order to acquire relevance and meaning for their existence. This impulse is also experienced as a compulsion to adhere to standards and social and aesthetic imaginaries that constrain the potentialities of Muslim subjecthood and eclipse the freedom of Muslim sociality. Muslimness, I argue, is then reduced to a condition that must be fixed, repaired, and constantly reinterpreted in response to an injunction to be figured out and rendered safely visible again. My argument, which is also a plea, is to liberate the categories of Islam and Muslims from this coercion to ­perform submission to the interpellative modalities and arrangements imposed both by secular modernity and an excessive ascription of faith as the prime feature of Muslim ontology. In other words, what would the vast world of Muslims and their complex biographies look like when we free them from the auto-­prompt to explain them and when we accept their right to narrate their own lives, as Homi Bhabha writes, “an enunciative right, the dialogic right to address and be addressed, to signify and be interpreted, to speak and be heard, to make a sign and to know that it will receive respectful attention” (2014). This clamor for self-­narration with a demand to be heard differently is key to understanding the multiplicity of the Muslim lived experience and recognizing its natural fugitivity and instability.

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Muslim Blur, Fugitivity, and Mounir Fatmi’s Art I borrow the title and argument of this section from cultural theorist and poet Fred Moten’s book Black and Blur (2017), in which he seeks to retrieve blackness in terms of its fugitivity and blurry lines in a world that has constrained it to the logic and language of white ontology. With a riotous tone and vocabulary, Moten asks what would Black study reveal if it were freed from the structural demands of individuation and performativity, from a politics and aesthetics of recognition that narrates the story blackness only in obsessive, and often reductive, terms of trauma, violence, and terror? Moten does not wish to escape the suffering embedded in the experience of blackness, but he seeks ­liberation in the errant possibilities of a blurred sense of blackness that combines the pessimism and optimism of Black life. Black and Blur is the first book in a trilogy Moten entitled, following the work of Martinican poet and philosopher of relation Édouard Glissant, consent not to be a single being. The fugitivity of blackness, for both Glissant and Moten, rests on a generative poetics of endless relation that refuses to be pinned down to a pure singularity and regulated by the disciplining power of racialized modalities of difference. “So what I’m interested in,” Moten writes, “. . . is to imagine something on the other side either of the freedom to perform or not to perform (or even to be or not to be), which might open up the possibility of another kind of examination of the metaphysics of ‘behavior’ and ‘decision’” (2018, 250). It is precisely this kind of instability of the meaning of blackness and its performativity that I invoke here in my analysis of Muslimness as a capacious category of inherent difference that is not necessarily attached to an imaginary where Islam and Muslims exist only as a problem (Echchaibi Forthcoming). Muslim fugitivity is then an act of insurrection against this imperial imaginary which continues to flatten the complexity of Muslim life and deny its own capacity of critical futurity. It is also an act of disobedience against those attempts from within which seek to retrieve a stable past or renew with a rigid culture of origin. My brief nod to Moroccan artist Mounir Fatmi here is an attempt to show how life as Muslim is not a mere reflection of an unchanged ontology, nor is it reducible to a pathology in the political and social spectrum of modern subjectivity. Fatmi is a prolific artist who works at the intersection of technology, language, and architecture. His installations, photography, drawings, videos, and sculptures raise haunting questions about the relationship between dogma and knowledge, machine and language, consumerism and authenticity, and belief and censorship. Fatmi does not shy away from the controversial issues of his time, particularly those involving religious extremism and cultural fundamentalism. The specter of 9/11 and religious violence pervades his work not only as an artist’s caustic reprimand of his own society or its conservative interpretation of religion, but also as a commentary on the risks of absolute truths and the limits of comfort of belief in any society. His video Mixology, part of an exhibition series entitled The Day of the Awakening (2020), features a DJ spinning on two tables and using a mixer to produce muddled sounds. The vinyl records on the tables reveal sacred inscriptions in Arabic calligraphy. Drawing on the hacking function of a mixing table, Mounir fuses texts, sounds, and images to “create chaos” in meaning and

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“question everything” in an urgent plea to set thinking free in an age of rising nationalism and lethal fear of the other (2020). Part of the same exhibition, The Blind Man is a series of black-­and-­white photographs of Fatmi holding various historical artifacts from Morocco at eye level as if they were binoculars. These portraits are designed to show the disappearance of the subject behind the mask of mimicry and representation. Fatmi writes, “If cultural markers play a part in founding one’s identity, they also represent an almost endless source of social and cultural stereotypes that prevent the subject from being fully himself. They prevent him from being perceived as full-­fledged individual, free to make his own choices, as something else than the simple reflection or product of his environment” (2020, 24). In Survival Signs (2017), Fatmi uses old media such as antenna cables, VHS tapes, and typewriters and other cultural signs to comment on political apathy, the fragility of cultural encounters, and the dangers of history repeating itself. In History Is Not Mine, a man is filmed from the back using two hammers to strike the keys of a typewriter. The video highlights the “collision of the written sentence’s beauty and the violence and difficulty of its creation” (2017, 56–57), urging the viewer to also accept the inherent illegibility of the written word. In the same series, Inside the Fire Circle displays typewriters on a high table connected to blank sheets of paper on the floor through jumper cables. The back-­and-­forth transfer of information between the machine and the paper through the shocking effect of jumper cables symbolizes the need to awaken people from their apathy and complicity in repeating the ills of history. Consistent with the theme of dogma and unthinking belief, Alif is a photographic display of the first letter in the Arabic alphabet where the slender shape of the calligraphic letter is held with a clenched fist in different positions as an elegant pen or a terrifying dagger. This frightening play on the beauty and violence of language evokes Fatmi’s insistence throughout his work on the suspect nature of language and its manipulation under the pressure of convention, ­ideology, and extremism. Mounir Fatmi resists a fixed ontology of being a Muslim, a North African, an Arab, or a French-­Arab in Paris where he lives. His work reveals a form of opacity that frustrates knowledge not by way of deception but by way of multiplying meaning. I read his interventions as strategies of visibility clamoring for a decolonized, disruptive narrative of being Muslim today. Fatmi’s art is both deliberately revealing and obscuring in the sense that he questions the stability of meaning of the subject positions he’s associated with based on religion, race, and location. He is both centrally and peripherally Muslim and his work addresses a fundamental need to narrate Muslim life beyond easy legibility and immediate comprehensibility. Fatmi is not a Muslim on duty, ready to denounce religious violence on request so security is reestablished and fear of “Muslim violence” is removed. By foregrounding the work of artists like him, I think through forms of Muslim creativity where the urge is not to explain or defend, or live based on some expedient arithmetic of someone else’s security, but rather to express creatively and announce emphatically that Muslim life is alive and livable in movement, in memory, in possibility, in failure, in the imminence of threat, and in aspiration. This might be a banal statement to make, but in an imaginary where Muslims are poorly translated and made absent, this is the most pressing statement to make.

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References Alloula, M. 1986. The Colonial Harem. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bhabha, H. 2014. “The Right to Narrate.” Harvard Design Magazine 38. http://www. harvarddesignmagazine.org/issues/38/the-­right-­to-­narrate (accessed 11/5/2020). Daoud, K. 2015. The Meursault Investigation: A Novel, New York: Other Press. Echchaibi, N. 2022. “Muslims Between the Blackmail of Transparency and the Right to Opacity.” In R. Rozehnal (Ed.), Cyber Muslims. London: Bloomsbury. Fatmi, M. 2020. The Day of the Awakening. Paris: SFpublishing. _______ 2017. Survival Signs. Paris: Studio Fatmi. Göle, N. 2011. “The Public Visibility of Islam and European Politics of Resentment: The Minarets-­ Mosques Debate.” Philosophy & Social Criticism 37, no. 4: 383–392. _______ 2015. Islam and Secularity: The Future of Europe’s Public Sphere. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Moten, F. 2017. Black and Blur. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. _______ 2018. Stolen Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Omar, I. 2019. “Muslim Caucus Education Collective’s 2019 Conference.” https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=TxaBrLbpW7A (accessed 12/19/2020). Radhakrishnan, R. 2017. “The Meursault Investigation: A Contrapuntal Reading.” Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 4, no. 3: 440–456.

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Development and Modernization in the Middle East Karin Gwinn Wilkins1 University of Miami

The 2020 explosion in Beirut triggered existing development agencies into action and inspired contributions from public as well as private agencies and individuals. Along with the usual suspects of bilateral agencies representing the European Union, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, United States, Denmark, and Norway, were two notable additions: bilateral agencies from Qatar and Kuwait offering significant regional collaboration. United Nations (UN) agencies (Peltier 2020) such as UNWFP and UNICEF also stepped up, along with many private humanitarian agencies, such as the Red Cross (British and Lebanese chapters being publicly noted), Humanity and Inclusion (France), International Medical Corps (US), Project Hope (US), and CARE (US), along with several from the UK, including Islamic Relief, Save the Children, and Impact Lebanon (Broster 2020; Peltier 2020). Internal donors from Lebanon also contributed to these humanitarian projects, including Live Love Beirut, Lebanese Food Bank, and Beit el Baraka (Broster 2020). While much of development initiates strategic intervention through proactive approaches, considerable support funds humanitarian aid as well. In cases such as immediate crises, these broader networks of development agencies and agents are activated. In this chapter, I consider current contemporary conditions of development within the region, concluding with a critique of modernization that endures as an approach to social change. Development positions modernization as a framework through the articulation of problems and assertion of their resolutions through strategic intervention. As a global industry, development agencies accumulate wealth and transfer resources across national and cultural boundaries, conventionally understood as flows from North to South, or West to East (Shah and Wilkins  2004). The projected region of the Middle East  Thanks to Hannah Artman for diligent and thoughtful research assistance on this project.

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The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. ©2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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c­ omplicates these global trends, given the vast financial capital juxtaposed against serious poverty and debilitating conflict across neighboring states. In the next section of this chapter, I chart development trends specific to this region, illustrating the strong regional partnerships against the more conventional bilateral programs. Following this chronicle of prevailing and distinctive trends, I explore the articulation of modernization as an enduring framework for development. The themes prevalent in this discourse privilege economic growth over equity, illusory individual participation over collective rights, and digital communication technologies as celebratory champions over their potential to enable surveillance or to amplify hate speech. Modernization then offers more simplistic and narrow guidelines for social change, promoting individualist ideologies not uniformly resonant across cultural contexts. Relying on modernization rather than more dialogic approaches to development underscores the value of financial capital connected with global capitalism, perpetuating problematic inequities. Global inequities surface within the region of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Despite the growth in wealth overall, the GDPs of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) offer a stark contrast against the struggling economies of the West Bank/ Gaza and Yemen, with a wide range of national wealth across the region (World Bank 2020). The political economy of this region is illustrated by the growth of media industries, such as film (e.g. Egyptian and Iranian), television (e.g. Lebanese), and news (e.g. Al Jazeera). One of the areas of rapid growth is the gaming industry, through public competitions and events such as the Girl Gamer Esports festival in Dubai. The regional growth of these media production sites reflects global economic trends, which structure subsequent positioning of donors and their recipients through the development industry. Before engaging in considerations of development, it is worth recognizing explicitly that the very articulation of the “Middle East” is based in historically documented global trade, which itself contributes to how we understand modernization. Culcasi (2010) explains this conceptualization as rooted in British imperialist journeys, marking a naval expedition on course to India, considering Turkey as “near,” and China as “far.” In contrast, some United Nations agencies refer to this region as “Western Asia.”2 The idea that a territory is “East” clearly invites us to view the world from the perspective of a “West,” reinforced through not only trade but also grand-­scale development enterprise. Development as a discourse reinforces problematic categories of global territories positioning those ­writing the histories as observers of others subject to this observation (see Chapters 1, 4, 9).

Development in the Middle East Development as a framework begins with an articulation of problems solved through strategic allocation of resources, enacted by agencies with relatively more power than those targeted by development within local and global contexts. Geopolitical power in  This agency includes the following territories in Western Asia: Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, the United Arab Amirates, and Yemen.

2

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a  global context allows an assertion of categories that then frame development ­intervention. Shah and Wilkins (2004) illustrate this dynamic referencing a “geometry of development,” whereby categories such as “north” and “south,” “east” and “west,” “first” and “third worlds” are articulated as conventional wisdom. The term “third world” used by wealthier countries positions “them” as requiring development assistance from a privileged “us,” clearly positioning this transaction from the view of wealthier agencies (Escobar 1995). Development as a transnational enterprise has emerged dramatically since World War II, at a time when wealthier nations invested in rebuilding areas devastated through conflict. Following global trends toward concentrations of wealth, in particular nations, agencies, and individuals, development has grown as an industry channeling significant financial resources, aligned with the dominant values of those who have successfully commanded accumulation of global capital. Similar to global trends in the development industry, over time we witness a growth in the number and in the range of agencies engaged in the work of development in the Middle East. Moreover, the emergence of the private sector in public development becomes visible as well as consequential, with private foundations and corporations joined by private individuals, celebrities, and entrepreneurs, aspiring to claim the heroic mantle of saving the world. The development industry in the Middle East is dominated by bilateral agencies, though with increasing contributions from private agencies and individuals and sustained support from multilateral agencies. The total allocation to support Middle East from bilateral agencies has been accelerating, from roughly US$10 billion annually in 2009–2012, to about $17 billion in 2013 and typically exceeding US$20 billion in subsequent years, leading to just over $30 billion in 2018 (OECD 2019.) Recent development activity in the region resonates with global trends toward increasingly active private agencies. Private agencies spending in the region include the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (US$9.7  million), United Postcode Lotteries (US$5.1  million), LEGO Foundation (US$3.8  million), Grameen Crédit Agricole Foundation (US$1.9 million), Bernard van Leer Foundation (US$1.1 million), and others from the United States and northern European countries. Their recipients tend toward the Levant, particularly Jordan, Lebanon and the Syrian Arab Republic. Voluntary contributions documented to the Middle East in 2019 (UN Refugee Agency 2020) demonstrate much more of a global distribution of donors, though mostly derived from individuals in the United States (US$27.5 million) and Canada (US$325,406). Other individual donors reside in the Russian Federation (US$300,000 dedicated to refugee programs), and to a smaller extent the Netherlands, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Egypt (UN Refugee Agency 2020). Organisation for Economic Co-­Operation and Development (OECD) data (2020a, 2020b) inform this next portrait of contemporary donors and recipients in the region. Current trends in bilateral assistance to countries in the Middle East are calculated from recent OECD records of development aid chronicling the year 2018 (2020a, 2020b). It is worth noting that definitions of this region vary across agencies, some including countries across northern Africa as well as Afghanistan. For the purpose of this analysis, we include these countries from as far west as Morocco and across Asia through Afghanistan.

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In order to determine the relative giving trends across bilateral agencies, we initially reviewed donor contributions to the  designated  top  10  recipients  of each donor that allocated at least US$1 million to each recipient (OECD 2020a). We then created total amounts allocated to the region from these summaries. Consequently, these initial calculations excluded development contributions that amounted to less than US$1 million per recipient, and those that fell outside these donors’ top 10 recipients. Similarly, our initial list of recipients was also based on a calculation of aid per donor over that benchmark. These calculations then were able to serve as broad points of comparison, recognizing that approximations of aid differ across sites and given various definitions. Given that these initial analyses integrated several assumptions, for reliability we also reviewed full amounts of contributions to each recipient, not restricted to bilateral donations (OECD 2020b). These two sources of data on development aid to and from the Middle East inform analyses of trends in the region, establishing a range of approximated aid in discussion below. European countries host some of the largest donors to the Middle East, including the European Union (US$ 3.5–4 billion), Germany (US$3–3.7 billion), the United Kingdom (US$1.3–1.5 billion), and France (US$770–836 million). Other European countries contributing less than the donors above but more than US$50  million include Norway, Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, Denmark, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, and Finland. Although many of these European countries contribute a higher proportion of their GDP to international development, the largest bilateral donors in terms of amount continue to highlight the United States (US$3.4–4.5 billion) and Japan (US$850–875 million), followed by Canada (US$400-­551 million) and Korea (US$78–197 million). Distinguishing this region from others is the strength of bilateral assistance within the region. Wealthier countries, such as Saudi Arabia (US$4.2 billion), United Arab Emirates ($3.3–3.8 billion), and Kuwait (US$950–977 million), contribute to development in their neighboring countries. Turkey features in an unusual position as both a strong contributor to regional development work as well as a recipient. Being proximate in geography to European and Middle Eastern neighbors reinforces this dual role as a donor (US$6.8 billion) to the Syrian Arab Republic, Afghanistan, West Bank/Gaza and others, while prominent ­recipient of bilateral funding (US$2.9 billion) from Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, European Union, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, and Bulgaria. The largest development recipients are those nations with clearly identified internal conflict activating humanitarian assistance. These data include funding from the more comprehensive range of donors including bilateral and multilateral agencies (OECD 2020b). In 2018 the Syrian Arab Republic received US$10.5 billion and Yemen about US$4.7 billion. Development assistance appears to concentrate also on Afghanistan (US$4.2 billion), though this consideration depends on which conceptualization is used to determine its status as proximate to or integrated in the Middle East. Other regional countries attracting bilateral aid include Jordan (US$2.7 billion), Iraq (US$2.6 billion), West Bank/Gaza (US$2.4 billion), Egypt (US$1.8 billion), Lebanon (US$1.6 billion), Morocco (US$1.1 billion), Tunisia (US$1 billion), and smaller amounts dedicated to Algeria, Libya, and Iran (under US$1 billion).

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Development and Modernization in the Middle East

Resonant with global trends toward regional collaborations across national governments, multilateral agencies are increasingly involved in development programs. The United Nations (UN) hosts numerous offices actively engaged in the Middle East with a range of missions, from their Peacekeeping Operations (UNDOF, UNIFIL, UNTSO) and Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA) to programs designating their Economic and Social Commission work to that intended for Western Asia (ESCWA) as well as Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). Globally engaged UN agencies, such as their Development Programme (UNDP), Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Population Fund (UNFPA), World Food Programme (WFP), World Health Organization (WHO), and several others also implement projects in this region. Communication is enabled through a Department of Global Communications, networking nine UN information offices in the region, in support of raising awareness of the UN Millennium Development goals and sharing information, as well as attempting to improve the “UN’s image in the Arab world” (United Nations Information Centres 2021), an intriguing explicit goal given emerging imperatives to “look good” in the course of serving as a development donor (Wilkins 2018). UN organizations are not the only multilateral agencies investing in this regional development. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development funds projects in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia, West Bank/Gaza, and Turkey, with this last case managing hundreds of projects mostly in the private sector, within the banking framework of this donor. It is the growth of private capital that facilitates the promotion of modernization as a framework for development. While the significance of regional donors is important in characterizing the distinct nature of development in the Middle East, the alliance of wealth with global capitalist markets signifies a continuity of modernization.

Modernization in Middle East Development Programs In this next section, I explore how modernization structures the work of development in the region. Reviews of dominant bilateral agencies frame this cursory analysis, meant to suggest avenues for additional research that could explore development discourse in a broader community of development agencies (see Chapter 17). Development as a discourse often builds on problematic assumptions that technology and knowledge will transform suffering communities into more modern, democratic nation-­states. Communication comes into play when projected as tools to promote entrepreneurship and to support capitalist markets. Programs to “rebuild” Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, establish media and telecommunication industries that function primarily to serve the political and economic elite of these communities. Modernization posits communication technologies as both a consequence of and a prerequisite for this approach to development. In a classic but dated text guiding US development, Lerner (1958) argues that exposure to media cultivates empathy, which inspires democratic and entrepreneurial participation. The communication system he believes will inspire this transition relies on the more “modern” media, particularly radio

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and film at the time of his research, rather than non-­mediated oral traditions of ­communication, framed as more resonant with “traditional” culture. Discourses of modernization still privilege communication technologies, though contemporary communication practices problematize artificial distinctions between oral and print modes of expression, or even in-­person versus on-­screen modalities. Although discussions of transitions toward modernity tend to highlight democratic reform, economic transitions are assumed to comprise this process toward modernity as well. The benefits of commercializing media industries are more assumed than debated within this literature (see Chapters 10, 11, 12). The potential for commercial media is complex, however, promoting consumption in a way that benefits markets, yet potentially allowing space for political critique. Sakr (2001) explains the connection between strengthening private media and engaging support from dominant development ­agencies, such as USAID and the US Chamber of Commerce. US bilateral programs in the region emphasize the commercial parameters of media and communication industries, as well as the capitalist value of these technologies in strengthening skills and networks to enable market transactions (Wilkins 2004, 2012). Recent collaboration with the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, resulting in the International Finance Corporation (IFC) is worth noting given the dominance of the United States as a bilateral donor. The UK seems to be following suit, also explicitly partnering with the private sector through a “development finance institute” (OECD 2020a). The EU and Germany also highlight their work with private financial agencies in development programs. It is the Syrian refugee crisis that has inspired significant assistance from Germany, as well as increasing the volume of funding received and distributed by Turkey (OECD 2020a). The two dominant bilateral agencies within the region structure their funding in a way that also resonates with a marketing framework. Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE allocate a significant portion of their development as loans, in addition to humanitarian relief (OECD 2020a). While it is worth applauding the significance of strong regional donors, the reliance on global capital and the emergence of private agencies and actors means that the potential problems with modernization prevail. Despite the shifting networks of power, the underlying foundation of modernization as an approach to social change means that inequities are not addressed. And assumptions about the role of communication are limited to entrepreneurial and market values, rather than recognizing potential to mobilize and advocate for social justice, as well as to promote control and surveillance to sustain elite control. Thus, the potential for the goal of development to promote public welfare is challenged.

References Broster, A. 2020, August 10. “9 Organisations Helping in Beirut That Need Donations Now.” Bustle. Retrieved November 12, 2020 from https://www.bustle.com/life/where-­to-­donate­to-­help-­beirut. Culcasi, K. 2010. “Constructing and Naturalizing the Middle East.” Geographical Review, 100, no. 4, 583–597.

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Escobar, A. 1995. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lerner, D. 1958. The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East. Second Printing. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Peltier, E. 2020. “How to Help Lebanon After Beirut Explosion.” Retrieved November 12, 2020 from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/world/how-­to-­help-­lebanon-­beirut.html. Organisation for Economic Co-­Operation and Development (OECD). 2019, February 18. Retrieved October 2, 2020 from GeoBook: Geographical flows to developing countries. https://stats.oecd. org/viewhtml.aspx?datasetcode=DACGEO&lang=en. Organisation for Economic Co-­ Operation and Development (OECD). 2020a. Development ­Co-­operation Profiles. Retrieved November 12, 2020 from https://doi.org/10.1787/5d8de3e1-­en. Organisation for Economic Co-­Operation and Development (OECD). 2020b. Query Wizard for International Development Statistics. Retrieved January 14, 2021 from https://stats.oecd.org/ qwids/#?x=1&y=6,2&f=3:51,4:1,5:3,7:1&q=3:51+4:1+5:3+7:1+1:3,4,5,6,58,7,8,9,10,11, 59,60,12,13,14,61,15,16,17,18,62,19,63,75,20,21,22,23,24,36,209,195,197,169,190,70,204,176, 170,171,172,173,174,175,191,69,67,205,64,76,65,G2,G3+6:2018+2:1,249,2,4,13,54,81,82,83,8 5,91,95,98,118,131,141,147,167,176,177,183,134,191,223,G9. Sakr, N. 2001. “Contested Blueprints for Egypt’s Satellite Channels: Regrouping the options by redefining the debate.” Gazette, 63, no. 2–3: 149–167. Shah, H., and Wilkins, K. 2004. “Reconsidering Geometries of Development.” Perspectives on Global Development and Technology 3, no. 4: 395–416. United Nations (UN) Information Centres. 2021. Arab States. Retrieved January 5, 2021 from https://unic.un.org/aroundworld/unics/en/whereWeWork/arabStates/index.asp? regionCode=5. UN Refugee Agency. 2020. 2019 End-­year report. Retrieved November 12, 2020 from  https:// reporting.unhcr.org/node/36?y=2019. Wilkins, K. 2004. “Communication and Transition in the Middle East: A Critical Analysis of US Intervention and Academic Literature.” Gazette: The International Journal for Communication Studies 66, no. 6: 483–496. Wilkins, K. 2012. “Wearing Shades in the Bright Future of Digital Media: Limitations of Narratives of Media Power in Egyptian Resistance.” MedieKulture 28, no. 52. http://ojs. statsbiblioteket.dk/index.php/mediekultur/article/view/5491. Wilkins, K. 2018. “Communication About Development and the Challenge of Doing Well: Donor Branding in the West Bank.” In F. Enghel & J. Noske-­Turner (Eds.), Communication in International Development: Doing Good or Looking Good? (pp. 76–96). New York: Routledge. The World Bank. 2020. Data. Retrieved October 2, 2020 from https://data.worldbank.org/ indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=ZQ.

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4

Hybridity as Dazzlement Rethinking Fusion Through Joseph Tonda’s Postcolonial Imperialism Marwan M. Kraidy A biological notion, hybridity starred in postcolonial theory and stormed media and ­communication studies as it expanded into the humanities and social sciences. Once useful to describe racial, linguistic, and cultural mixture, hybridity and its variations – creolization, métissage, mestizaje, transculturation, syncretism – became a necessary heuristic to understand a postcolonial world grappling with globalization. A scholarly controversy erupted around the articulation of hybridity and power, with rival interpretations of hybridity as a reactionary manifestation of dominance, or alternatively, as a progressive emblem of resistance (Kraidy 2005). This debate has animated diasporic and global media studies from the quarter century spanning the early 1990s to the mid-­2010s (particularly relevant to hybridity are Darling-­Wolf 2013; Iwabuchi 2002; Lee 1991; Naficy 1993).1 In my own work, I focused on grasping hybridity as the very condition of culture, and as the cultural logic of globalization, and argued that our task as scholars is to capture how shifting material and discursive regime forge various embodiments of hybridity (Kraidy 2005). A couple of decades after its heyday, hybridity is now a largely residual concept whose naturalization in academic discourse has rendered it banal. As I concluded an essay a few years ago, “We now assume, rather than argue over, hybridity” (Kraidy 2017a, 90). Questions continue to arise, therefore, about the usefulness of “hybridity” as both a heuristic concept and an analytical category. More specifically for our purposes here, what is the relevance of “hybridity” for understanding the media, culture, and power in the “Middle East”? To answer this question, I first reiterate an argument I have been making to shift the meta-­conceptual approach of Middle East studies from “locus” to “nexus,” from a context tacitly assumed to have discernible borders that keep “contents”  Latin American scholarship by García-­Canclini (1989, 1995), Martín-­Barbero (1987), and Ortiz (1940/1983) and others, is fundamental to hybridity studies; for a survey of Latin American cultural and media theory, see Rodriguez and Murphy 1997. 1

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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tidily inside – the container view – to one that considers the Middle East as a nexus of history, geography, power, and meaning, connecting various locales from within and outside the region in ever-­shifting relationships.2 A key conclusion here is that the Middle East cannot be understood in isolation from other world contexts and the analytical approaches developed for, and ideally in, these regions. Therefore, though I have previously articulated my interest in South-­to-­South relations in terms of comparative Arab and Spanish Latin American theoretical work (see Kraidy 2018), today I am engaging with important (relatively) recent work that takes Africa as its context and canvas. In L’impérialisme postcolonial: Critique de la société des éblouissements (Paris: Karthala 2015), the Congolese-­Gabonese scholar Joseph Tonda elaborates a notion of postcolonial imperialism centered on the metaphor of dazzlement.3 In his own thesis statement, Tonda casts his book as a critical theorization of “the thresholds” of what he calls “postcolonial imperialism,” focusing on the ensuing “dazzlements” and the openings they create onto “the world of the imaginary,” which is often indiscernible from “the real world” (Tonda 2015, 19). Tonda explains: This reality of the Black colonialism of the White imaginary  .  .  .  [is] the missing element . . . of postcolonial critique. It is . . . to this missing element that I gave the name of postcolonial imperialism. An imperialism indiscernible from the colonialism related to it because both are products of the dazzlements of the thresholds of encounter. (2015, 93–94)

In this chapter I use Tonda’s book as a cornerstone for the articulation of a critique of hybridity with a theory of the image. I will engage with the book very closely for two major reasons. First, Tonda reprises a critique of how “hybridity” has been deployed in postcolonial theory, going as far as arguing that the concept is a manifestation of postcolonial thought’s chief blind spot, in that it is a unidirectional concept, from the colonizer to the colonized, that does not allow for the understanding and theorization of how the colonized also hybridize the colonizer. Though this critique is not new – it goes back all the way to Edward Said’s Orientalism, which was criticized for ignoring subaltern literatures, an oversight that Said rectified in Culture and Imperialism (see Chapter 1 and Kraidy 2005) – Tonda presents it within a postcolonial theory of the image and its relationship to power, which promises to make “hybridity” relevant again, if only as a theoretical prop to understanding relationships between the West and what we now call the Global South. This brings me to the second reason for my sustained engagement with Tonda’s argument: Tonda’s theory centers a relationship between images and power that is particularly relevant to the Middle East and its relationships to the world, particularly the West.  Marwan M. Kraidy, “A Nexus, Not a Locus: Middle Eastern Studies and South-­to-­South Relations,” Keynote Address, The Future of Middle East Studies, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar, February 6, 2022. 3  I am grateful to Clovis Bérgère, who introduced me to Tonda by gifting me his book, and who has been an interlocutor on all things Global South, from the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, to the Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South at Northwestern University-­Qatar, in Doha. 2

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Indeed, Tonda’s notion of postcolonial imperialism can be situated in the lineage of Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle (1962), in which Debord theorized the becoming-­image of all social relations under capitalism. Tonda develops this line of thinking further, arguing that the visual domain is central to this imperialism. In his words, “[I]mages and screens, image-­screens, but also images of images, that at once fascinate, seduce, marvel, possess, obsess, suffocate, oppress, haunt and in the end colonize the imaginary or the unconscious of individuals and groups, not only in Africa, but also in the Euro-­American world and elsewhere” (Tonda 2015, 9–10). These form the basis of the “society of dazzlements,” a clear reference to Debord’s “society of the spectacle.” But before discussing how Tonda’s approach to image and power in his notion of postcolonial imperialism is relevant to the contemporary Middle East, let us first go over Tonda’s critique of hybridity, then discuss his theory of the image, which, as I have argued in the preceding, brings a modified concept of hybridity to the center stage. I will then suggest areas in which Tonda’s ideas are relevant to Middle East media and culture.

Tonda’s Critique of Hybridity Tonda mounts a fundamental critique of the notion of hybridity on the premise that theorists have wielded “hybridity” with a one-­way valence that only sees the colonized as subjected to hybridizing power of imperial culture, rather than recognizing, as Tonda himself centrally advocates, that the mix of power and meaning that is hybridity operates in two directions. As Tonda explains, “one of the blind and blinding spots of this [postcolonial] theory in its highlighting of ‘hybridity,’ is that the “local pagan ‘forces’ or ‘powers’” it integrates in its analysis are “metonymically constructed as black ‘forces’ or ‘powers.’” Tonda discerns that in these “‘reformulations’ . . . contradictory logics participate that are characteristic of hybridity” (Tonda 2015, 25).4 For Tonda, it bears repeating, colonization and the hybridity that ensues work in two directions. As it incorporates the white man in the psyche of Africans, colonization also incorporates, in the Black person in the white Western “unconscious” (Tonda 2015, 26). By focusing on “hybridity” and by rejecting “binary thought,” postcolonial theorists did not cross “the theoretical threshold that would have enabled them to see the invasive, imperialist, and colonizing presence of black spectral power, introduced since the trade through value in the White psychic intimacy” (Tonda 2015, 14, emphasis in original). But this is no sign of equal power. Rather, situating hybridity at the race-­capitalism nexus, Tonda writes that “the spirit of capitalism, of value, in its transfiguration by and in race, is from this point of view, hybrid,” but this hybridity is a racism devoted to the “destruction of the Other in the name of racial purity” (Tonda 2015, 26).

 A religious component is inescapable when one discusses hybridity. After all, religious syncretism is one of the contexts in which fusion of different ideas and practices about the world has historically occurred (see Kraidy, 2005).

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For Tonda, “[I]t is this reality that the soft concept of hybridity does not allow us to see” (Tonda 2015, 31). Tonda caps his critique of hybridity by returning to his central notion of dazzlement. Hybridity is a result of postcolonialists’ dazzlement by the “threshold . . . that constitutes identity’s in between” (Tonda 2015, 74) that leads them to ignore the colonization of the white psyche by Black bodies. Images are at the heart of this mutual colonization of white and Black imaginaries.

Tonda’s Theory of the Image Images are central to Tonda’s postcolonial imperialism, which “manifests itself by the colonizing presence-­absence of visual and auditory images on heterotopic spaces affected by the power of money” (2015, 69). For Tonda, the “initiative dazzlements” of rites of passage and traditional magic in Africa have given way to the “screenic dazzlements” of modern media, with bodies permeating these images. Evoking Raymond Williams’s conceptualization of advertising as a “magic system,” Tonda connects “traditional” magic rituals, which can be both spiritual and medical, to the “modern” magic of screens permeated by bodies and the bodies flung into the public sphere by screens, what he terms alternatively “body-­screens” or “body-­images.”5 In the communicative arsenal of the neoliberal era, television reigns supreme – in Tonda’s own vivid language, postcolonial subjects are “swallowed by a vampire called television” (Tonda 2015, 20).6 Tonda’s theory of images is materialist: for him, all images are transfigured into value, which is then manifested in money, a process that occurs only when bodies sell themselves as commodities. Tonda therefore uses the digestive metaphor of “swallowing” deliberately, to conjure “the register of the reality of imperialist colonialism of value in its perverse complicities with the black power of images or of ‘things’ that we see in solar or screenic dazzlements” (Tonda  2015, 20). Bodies are central to the images disseminated by postcolonial imperialism, and therefore, bodies are vital transhistorical instruments of dazzlement. Bodies articulate violence, sex, and consumerism, and Tonda uses corporeal metaphors throughout his analysis, which he places under the general and determining rubric of capitalism. Though the binary traditional-­modern, magic-­advertising is limiting, it is useful for Tonda’s analysis of two symbolic images, one past, the other contemporary. One old emblem of the society of dazzlements is Mami Wata, a half-­human, half-­animal White woman, who acts through “the violence of the imaginary” (Tonda 2015, 12), defined as follows: The violence of the imaginary is a violence that individuals or groups exert on others or on themselves under the command or the orders of the forces of the unconscious that  Raymond Williams, “Advertising: The Magic System,” in Problems in Materialism and Culture (London: Verso, 1980): 170–195. 6  This contemporary take is a reminder that in much of the world, television is still a pervasive medium, and an indirect rebuke to those who focus exclusively on digital and social media. 5

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materialize in the screen-­images of top models, of stars, of pornographic bodies-­sexes, of Mercedes Benzes and of wealth in advertising, following the same register of agency of divine or diabolical apparitions, of genies or powers of sorcery and fetishism. The violence of the imaginary is exerted on the rich as on the poor, on White people and on Black people, since its principle is the shared consciousness shared by these and those of the active power of the figures of the imaginary that manage it. (Tonda 2015, 12)7

The historical endurance of the violence of the imaginary, a seduction-­destruction that entangles myth, magic, screens, and capitalism through corporeal images, emerges when we look at a contemporary symptomatic image of postcolonial imperialism: the Black female music/screen star. For Tonda, Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Nicki Minaj are emblematic agents, as “Black-­body sexes,” in “the dazzlements of the screens of neoliberal globalization, and through them “Africa occupies the Western unconscious or imaginary” (Tonda 2015, 33). To repeat, this violence of the imaginary through the screens of dazzlements of postcolonial imperialism acts not only on colonized societies. Rather, since advanced capitalist societies resemble “primitive” societies through the magic of advertising, Tonda argues, postcolonial imperialism conquers the imperialists themselves, through dazzling images of the Black female body-­screen. Tonda focuses on Nicki Minaj as an emblematic “sex-­body” manifest in the music video Anaconda. He elaborates the centrality of body-­screens in postcolonial imperialism’s dazzlement, through the entanglement of sex and violence that melds the body into value. The rise of the revealing bikini swimsuit inspired by atomic tests on the Bikini atoll in the South Pacific, clarifies how the violence-­sex coupling induces dazzlement. The “Western imaginary,” Tonda writes, “is colonized by the dazzling deadly power of the atomic bomb in scheme of an orgasmic explosion of a hypersexualized body” (Tonda 2015, 143). The bomb is “an orgasmic body-­sex of capitalism in the societies of postcolonial modernity” (Tonda 2015, 143).8 Bringing up the notion of woman as “sex bomb” or “femme fatale,” Tonda concludes, with characteristic flourish, that “the specter of radiations generated by the dazzling atomic bomb never stops expanding, to the point that we moved from the bikini to the monokini” (Tonda 2015, 143), hence tightening the bond between violence and sex, bomb, and body. Nicki Minaj’s body is “a merchandise endowed with agency, subjectivity” that “conceals a power of fascination which is value . . . that is transformed or converted into money that transfigures itself into bombs and into cannons.” Value is on display “in the glows, the lights, the luminances, the sparklings, the brilliances, briefly the dazzlings, of Nicki Minaj’s sex-­body” (Tonda  2015, 225). The implication is that value no longer  Mami Wata resonates with the Mexican figure of La Malinche, an indigenous woman who married Cortez and, as a go-­in-­between between the Spanish Conquistadores and indigenous Mexican peoples, was a guardian of a cultural, racial, and imaginary threshold, and therefore, could betray her Aztec kin and help Cortez in his war of conquest. 8  “Orgasmic -­body-­sex” is my own translation of corps-­sexe jouissif – jouissif can also be translated as “fun” or “enjoyable,” but my translation is meant to convey the sexual overtones that I believe Tonda intended. See also next footnote. 7

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resides in labor, but in “life itself ” – the embodied, however screen-­distributed, life of dazzling superstars like Nicki Minaj (Tonda 2015, 226).9

South-­to-­South Hybridities? Middle East Media and Culture in the Society of Dazzlement For Tonda, deployments of hybridity must account for its two directions, in processes that are strategically South-­to-­South and tactically operate through what Nestor García-­ Cancini called “oblique power” (1989). Though not entirely novel, this insight, coupled with Tonda’s theory of the image, can contribute to advance our understanding of media and culture in the Middle East, notably of Arab music videos, Turkish television drama (see Chapter 12). Tonda’s framework would also be useful for grasping the cultural implications of the rise of Gulf city-­states. Arab music videos stand to benefit from Tonda’s analysis of Nicki Minaj’s Anaconda. Rising after a decade of media liberalization, Arab music videos fronted women’s bodies as carriers of value. Fueled by satellite television in the 2000s, the industry peaked during the 2008 recession. Though many studies have focused on sexuality in Arab music videos, and some have tackled politics, Tonda’s thesis enables a double focus on identity and political economy within a decolonial framework. The Turkish television drama phenomenon is another to which Tonda can contribute. If postcolonial imperialism consists of a reciprocal colonization of the mutual imaginaries between the West and the Global South, we can interpret the worldwide success of Turkish drama as a South-­to-­South and South-­to-­North process of imaginary colonization. Viewers from Buenos Aires to Beirut are seduced by the love stories, the lavish décor, and the vivid period costumes, all against the breathtaking backdrop of the Bosphorus – in essence, viewers worldwide are dazzled by a mix of novelty, exoticism, and suspense. Tonda’s work enables a contextualization of the phenomenon within a decolonial framework. Tonda’s work is relevant to violent images. His analysis resonates deeply with my work on Islamic State’s “projectilic images” (Kraidy 2017b). My ongoing work on this pairs theories of affect and pornography to explicate the violence that such images inflict. That impact, which I have theorized in terms of blinding speed, is akin to dazzlement. Tonda’s metaphorical mix of sexuality and violence enables a postcolonial/decolonial approach to violent images. The rise of the Gulf city-­states of Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha and their promise of prosperity have attracted economic migrants from the Middle East and elsewhere. A luxury consumer lifestyle, statement architectural masterpieces, and shiny malls mixed with socially conservative mores defined as Islamic, have made what Miriam Cooke called  Tonda writes that the image of “Nicki Minaj who dances in the jungle in her video clip ‘Anaconda,’ produces a more powerful, more alive, dazzling effect than the one that fascinated Marx in 1851 during the first Universal Exhibition in Hyde Park” (2015, 225).

9

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“tribal modern” (Cooke 2014) a dazzling proposition for millions of people from around the word. As Tonda put it, “The magical power of globalization derives its force from the perverse complicities between, on the one hand, magics culturally anchored in local social traditions, and on the other hand, the magic of globalization, magic of the global images of imperial powers” (2015, 111). The Arab Gulf ’s traditional hypermodernity is important when we account for the political economy of Arabic-­language media, which is under the financial control and the political influence of Gulf states (see Chapters 16, 20, 21). Tonda’s postcolonial imperialism asserts the multi-­directionality of hybridity, the centrality of the imaginary in colonialism and resistance to it, and the pivotal role of images in shaping and sustaining that imaginary through a process of dazzlement. These conceptual contributions rearrange previous theoretical notions in new permutations, and as a result offer a fresh vernacular that combines a critique of hybridity with a theory of the image that reasserts the centrality of power in the making of meaning. These qualities make a critical engagement with Tonda’s ideas by scholars of media and culture in the Middle East worthwhile, as we try to shake our field from the exclusive yoke of “Western” theory without succumbing to the nativist trap of exclusively considering “native” theory. References Cooke, Miriam. 2014. Tribal Modern: Branding New Nations in the Arab Gulf. Berkeley: University of California Press. Darling-­Wolf, Fabienne. 2015. Imagining the Global: Transnational Media and Popular Culture Beyond East and West. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, García-­Canclini, Nestor. 1989. Culturas híbridas: Estrategias para entrar y salir de la modernidad. Mexico City: Grijalbo. García-­ Canclini, Nestor. 1995. Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity (S. López & E. Schiappari, Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Gillespie, Marie. 1995. Television, Ethnicity, and Cultural Change. London and New York: Routledge. Iwabuchi, Koichi. 2002. Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Kraidy, Marwan M. 2005. Hybridity, or the Cultural Logic of Globalization. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Kraidy, Marwan M. 2010. Reality Television and Arab Politics: Contention in Public Life. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kraidy, Marwan M. 2016. The Naked Blogger of Cairo: Creative Insurgency in the Arab World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kraidy, Marwan M. 2017a. “Hybridity.” In L. Ouellette and J. Gray (Eds.), Keywords for Media Studies. New York: New York University Press. Kraidy, Marwan M. 2017b. “The Projectilic Image: Islamic State’s Digital Visual Warfare and Global Networked Affect.” Media, Culture & Society 39, 8: 1194–1209. Kraidy, Marwan M. 2018. “A Tale of Two Modernities.” NACLA Report on the Americas 50, 1: 90–96. Lee, Paul. S. N. 1991. “The Absorption and Indigenization of Foreign Media Cultures: A Study of a Cultural Meeting Point of the East and West: Hong Kong.” Asian Journal of Communication 1, 2: 52–72. Martín-­Barbero, Jesús. 1987. De los medios a las mediaciones. México: Gustavo Gili.

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Martín-­Barbero, Jesús. 1993. Communication, Culture, and Hegemony: From the Media to Mediations (P. Schlesinger, Trans.). London & Newbury Park: Sage. Naficy, Hamid. 1993. The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ortiz, Fernando. 1940/1983. Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar. La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales. Ortiz, Fernando. 1995. Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar (H. de Onís, Trans.). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Rodriguez, Clemencia, and Murphy, Patrick D. 1997. “The Study of Communication and Culture in Latin America: From Laggards and the Oppressed to Resistance and Hybrid Cultures.” Journal of International Communication, 4, 2: 24–45. Tonda, Joseph. 2015. L’impérialisme postcolonial: Critique de la société des éblouissements. Paris: Karthala.

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“Arab” Cultural Studies Phenomenology Being Digital, and Other Notes Tarik Sabry University of Westminster Communication and Media Research Institute

In his novel Tattooed Memory, the Moroccan sociologist Abdelkebir Khatibi, writes: “L’autre soir j’ai rêvé que mon corps était des mots” (1971, 77) which translates as “the other evening, I dreamt that my body was words.” In the novel, Khatibi demonstrates how writing in French entangles two acts: an act of sacrifice and another of rebirth, which amount to an inner estrangement and a symbolic death that promise a perpetual metamorphosis. Death through language holds the potential of reconfiguring the broken connection between the body, desire and language; asserting, “the possibility so diminished in the languages of empire of concrete, polyvalent expression” (McNeece 1993, 26). Khatibi who called for a pensée-­autre (a thought of difference) enunciates the liberation of the linguistic sign as a way of “doing decolonizing,” by rearticulating difference without recourse to what he calls “mad identity,” essentialist absolutes or ideological purity/integrity. The Occident, observes Khatibi in Tattooed Memory, is “part of me, a part that I can only deny insofar as I resist all the Occidents and all the Orients that oppress and disillusion me” (2016, 90). It is this double movement as archaeology that inspired the beginnings of Arab Cultural Studies as a critical project. I argued, in the introduction to Arab Cultural Studies: Mapping the Field (2012), that an articulation of a new kinds of hermeneutics and the new language, upon which a critical Arab cultural studies project could rely in order to interpret social and cultural phenomena, necessitated a double-­critique mechanism; ensuring that both endogenous and exogenous cultural phenomena, forms of knowledge, their interpretation, and the types of conjectural immanence they produce, are always subjected to a distanciated double-­refutation: a double death, to use Khatibi’s phrase. I also argued that this dual critical process had to be accompanied by an ethical-­epistemic inversion; and ethics of difference: “of the The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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in-­itself and the for-­itself (of ‘every man for himself ’) into an ethical self, into a priority of the for-­the-­other” (Levinas, Entre Nous, 1998, 202). The project of Arab cultural studies had come from a distanciated double movement, taking its cue from key philosophical questions that were being enunciated by Arab thinkers and their critique of Arab thought (see Chapters 5, 6, 39). These questions (especially those concerned with the philosophical discourses of Arab modernity) were of paramount importance in delineating the concerns and parameters of Arab cultural studies. From its inception, the question of cultural translation was at the heart of the critical Arab cultural studies project. It was an a priori epistemic task (with which the Arab cultural studies collective1 busied itself from the start), in that it preceded any engagement with the project’s political potential. A key question that we have debated in several encounters, since 2010, was: could British cultural studies be translated as a generalized semiotic system through which to write the contemporary lives of people in the Arab and Middle Eastern regions? How? And, what do we mean by “Arab”? “Cultural translation,” a perpetual process from one constituted, historical context and language; a mother tongue to another, proved to be complex. Translation, remarked Spivak, “is not under the control of the subject who is translating . . . the human subject is something that will have happened. . .” (2000, 14). This made Khatibi’s call for double movement (a shuttling between two languages) the more indispensable, both semiotically and epistemologically, for the project of Arab cultural studies. Just as Khatibi inscribed it within his double-­critique, we drew ourselves ­endlessly towards our origins by moving away from them. It is from stratum to stratum that a deconstitution of knowledge to be criticized and deported toward a thought other than the edifice of an episteme draws itself endlessly towards its origins by moving away from them. (Khatibi 2019, 27)

British cultural studies came as a response to historical events that made it, as a field, dependent on a specific temporal-­language that solidified into a particular interpretation of culture, history, and society (see Sabry and Ftouni 2017). As the field began to internationalize, so did, but in a variety of capacities, the hermeneutics and the language that energized it. To disentangle Arab cultural studies from the language and hermeneutics that anchored British cultural studies, I emphasized the importance of the everyday as the terrain of study, and the need to build bridges between the philosophical ­discourses of Arab modernity and the ways in which people living in the Arab region experience being-­modern, as an ontological reflexivity (see Sabry 2010, 2012, 2017). Using Jean Piaget’s concept of “L’inconscient cognitif,” Jabri argued (1991) that disentangling and reorganizing Arab cultural time, was necessary for the development of an Arab contemporary culture that is temporally conscious of its own time and epistemic presence. Jabri’s proposal, which has been heavily debated and critiqued by the Arab Cultural studies collective, paid little attention to the important question of lived  Over the years, the collective met in London and later in Tunisia, Morocco, and Beirut. Members included: Layal Ftouni, Ramy Aly, Helga Tawil-­Souri, Abdelaziz Boumeshouli, Joe F. Khalil, Dina Matar, Helena Nassif, and Tarik Sabry. The collective also received a research grant from the Arab Council for the Social Sciences in 2014.

1

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experience and the complex temporal processes that are inherent to cultural practices, such as intersectionality, appropriation, reappropriation, and trans-­temporality, and that are well rehearsed in anthropology and cultural studies. It is through the context of everyday life that cultural temporality comes more conspicuously to the fore as a phenomenon. It is for this reason that we, as a collective, were more inclined to favor Khatibi’s strategic submission to non-­linearity, and to the shuttling between different languages and cultural temporalities (see Sabry and Khalil 2019). In this chapter, and by way of extending my reflections on the Arab cultural studies project, I’d like to rehearse some unthoughts in this emerging new field. Taking my cue from Khatibi, I’d like to propose another double movement. What I have in mind is a dialectical phenomenological exercise that lends its attention to: (a) how scholars ­(producers of knowledge) ontologically experience being part of a new field, such as Arab cultural studies, and (b) how both the use and interruption of phenomenology, as a philosophical and methodological approach, can help us to expand the plane of Arab cultural studies. In her On Being Included, Sarah Ahmed invites us “to think specifically about institutional life: not only how institutions acquire a life of their own, but also how we experience institutions or what it is to experience something as institutional” (2012, 22). In my experience as a scholar in the diaspora, to “do” Arab cultural studies from an exilic locale is to “do” cultural translation from a position of “double absence” (Sayad 1999). This ontic double absence may be due to our implication, as Aly put it, “in the political economy of ‘Western’ scholarship on the Arab world and the continuing inaccessibility of an inability to translate our literature for the silent Arab apparition that is both our subject and object, our self and other” (Aly, in Sabry and Ftouni 2017, 35). As area studies scholars, working at the margins of an exnominated field of media and cultural studies in the West, we find ourselves visible, but only in relation to our marginality to the silent and intentionally salient and unnamed: British, US, and European media and cultural s­ tudies. Arab cultural studies, like other area studies in Western academia, is systematically subalterned by the normalized, yet exnominated silent center. Ex-­nomination, I argue, legitimizes the center as the absent presence and, with it, its language, signs, paradigms, semiotics, and hermeneutics. To do Arab cultural studies from this exilic context is, therefore, to be both doubly absent and doubly invisible. Doing cultural studies from this position of alterity has, however, allowed us to engage in “transmutations of [the] world without a return to its entropic foundations” (Khatibi 2019, 44). What kind of hermeneutics will Arab cultural studies utilize in studying cultural phenomena? Will the dominant paradigms within the ideology critique and their totalizing accounts of everyday life and experience do? Must we not submit such hermeneutics to a phenomenological distanciation, as a default position for thinking about the world? Here, I take my cue from the media phenomenologist, Paddy Scannell, who defines phenomenology in his book, Television and the Meaning of Live (2014), as being: “firmly committed to a view that thinking begins by looking outwards not inwards. In an originary sense we are moved (are summoned) to thinking by looking at the world. . .where thinking begins and ends.” (Scannell 2014, 5). Opting for a dialectical phenomenological method (as a way of philosophizing about media, culture, and society), unhinged by teleology or any mad discourse of identity, I argue – based on years of ethnographic

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fieldwork  – can let us into not only visible cultural phenomena (how they appear as such), or how they are experienced by us, but it can also let us into the hidden structures and “interior intensions” that underpin them, allowing us, therefore, to think both inside and outside the reductionist boundary of phenomenology. Anyone who has had a go at doing ethnographic work for a lengthy period will be able to tell you that the real, as Levinas lucidly observed, “must not only be determined in its historical objectivity, but also from interior intensions, from the secrecy that interrupts the continuity of the ­historical time” (Levinas, Totality and Infinity, in Gaston 2006, 5). To think against, rather than with, Paddy Scannell this time, it is both visibility and hiddenness that characterize our world and our being with others. Thinking with, and through, a dialectical, rather than a reductionist phenomenology, allows us to think outside the ideology critique and its hermeneutics of suspicion (by focusing on the world). In the case of Arab cultural studies, this would mean thinking about social and cultural phenomena that are outside the teleologies of becoming and mad identity, as Khatibi put it. Equally important, it also allows us to think outside the “proper boundary of phenomenology” (Smith 2016, 13) and its privileging of presence. Our default position for thinking about the world has to be an “interrupted phenomenology” (Derrida 1999, 8), lest we glibly give in to dogmatic and sectarian thought. Using a dialectical/interrupted phenomenology (as a way of philosophizing) can free Arab cultural studies from the forms of “rightist and leftist” thinking that feel threatened if their truth is questioned. Both positions, Marcio Alves Moreira has observed, suffer from “an absence of doubt” (in Freire 1993, 13).

Media as Equipment and Being Digital Can an interrupted phenomenological approach help Arab cultural studies to unconceal new questions about media, culture, and society? Can it help to unpack what it means to  be digital in the Arab region today? A phenomenological interpretation of digital practices is perhaps best tackled through what Heidegger thought of as the “relational totality of involvements” (Scannell 2019, 39). To be faithful to an interrupted phenomenological approach, it is important that we first locate digital media within the context of human existence and, therefore, within that of human communication (how humans communicate). In this sense, and by default, being digital is, in the first instance, an ontological phenomenon. It describes the condition of sharedness that comes with our being-­with-­in-­the-­world. The question I pose here is not just concerned with technology or technicity, but also with the kind of multisensorial forms of communication that humans derive from being digital. To further clarify this position: I am concerned with being digital as the outwardness/inwardness that comes to the fore in its shared-­ness, and as a totality of involvements. Here, I am keen to emphasize the usability and functionality of digitality as equipment, which is essentially, as Heidegger observed in Being and Time “something ‘in-­order-­to’. . . A totality of equipment . . . constituted by various ways of the ‘in-­order-­to,’ such as serviceability, conduciveness, usability and manipulability’” (1962, 970). To rethink, and, hopefully, to extend the category “media” in being digital,

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it is important to explore the category “media” in a “non-­media-­centric,” relational way; that is, with and alongside other forms of equipment-­whole (Zeugganzes) and audiences’ involvement-­whole (bewandtnisganzheit). Being digital is a “for-­the-­sake-­of-­which” and an “in-­order-­to” equipment, the uses of which have the functionality of carving out a kind of disclosing and discovering. By borrowing the Heideggerian category “involvement-­ whole,” I am alluding to the complex ontic relations that exist between digital screen media, non-­screen media, (face, voice, talk, muttersprache, affect, experience, structures of feeling, being-­with) and the everyday contexts in which these relations come into being as a totality (Sabry 2021). It is, for example, not entirely clear to me if the anchor to a meme or a WhatsApp message (text) are forms of written language (langue) or, indeed, are extensions of talk (muttersprache/parole) and therefore the kind of sociabilities that we humans derive from talk as a “multisensorial” form of communication. Here I use the concept involvement-­whole to denote the multiple social spaces, trans-­ temporalities, and affective sociabilities that underpin the experience of being digital. The “relational totality” of [being digital]; its equipment-­whole and involvement-­whole including texts, platforms, audiences, affect, technology, everyday experiences, agency, the mnemonic, society, struggle, etc.), is messy, nonlinear, affective and trans-­temporal. Digital media, as I learnt from my most recent ethnographic research, working with Arabic-­speaking children in Morocco, Lebanon, and the UK (Sabry and Mansour 2019), were the equipment through which topographies of being and the imagination were extended. Digital media, as equipment, made it possible, especially for children from poorer working-­class backgrounds, to be part of a more expansive worldliness. Children from very poor families carved out (disclosure and discovery new spatio-­temporal geographies of being and encountering that transcended the alienating confinements of their everyday material lives. Children with whom we worked at the three ethnographic sites did not just speak about the digital media, they spoke through them, as ontological equipment. It was these ethnographic findings surrounding the functionality of digitality as equipment that pushed us to rethink the whatness of media, beyond its conventional definition of broadcasting/digitality/screen/computer, which separates the media text and its audience into distinct entities. Instead, we were invited, my co-­researcher and I, to accommodate a more anthropocentric vision of media uses that considers forms of digital media to be an extended anthropocentric bodily structure, in which bodily organs become extended forms of technicity and where, as we learn from Andre Leroi Gourhan (1964) and Gilbert Simondon (2018), media and technology become extensions of our humanity (Sabry and Mansour 2019). Our opting for an “interrupted” phenomenological method, one that is unhinged by teleology or any discourse of “media effects,” has, by default, allowed us into a methodological position, where invisible phenomena could simply not be ignored. Children’s media uses in the Arab world today cannot be examined solely through a reductionist phenomenological approach (the kind of approach that privileges the care-­structures of the media). A critical phenomenology, one that is ready to engage with both visible and invisible phenomena, was crucial in producing a more contextualized and grounded knowledge of children and the media in the Arab region. While we agree that children’s worldliness is a product of availableness, performativity, and affect, we also acknowledge that underlying this worldliness are invisible historical conditions that also need unconcealing. Arab children’s worldliness is deeply

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implicated in savage, unorganized, neoliberal structures that are continuously and indifferently privatizing different facets of everyday life. These hidden phenomena, we argue, matter a lot to the current and future generations of Arabs, and to delineating a critical approach for studying children and the media in the Arab world. Thinking with, through, and against phenomenology’s default position for thinking about worldly phenomena has made it possible for us, methodologically, to, first, think outside sociology’s hermeneutics, in order for us to then reconnect with it, and here we mean its hermeneutics of suspicion (Sabry and Mansour 2019).

Cultural Studies: Towards Double-­Thrownness as Method In my capacity as co-­editor of the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, I could not help but notice, for at least a good 14 years now, how research or, to be precise, the process of doing research, is seldom reflected upon. When this task is performed, it is often to emphasize the significance of reflexivity, and this is usually done in order to legitimize the soundness of the data, rather than to point to the complex and messy process of doing research. It is as if fieldwork can be dissociated from the very process that has constituted it. The two things are entangled. What we need is “a diffraction apparatus to study these entanglements” (Barad 2007, 31). Working with people, as we learn from Ingold, does not tell us what we want to know. Instead, it interrupts the ­foundations of what we thought we already knew (Ingold 2018, 107). It is through my thrownness into anthropological place, and the face of the sufferer, which I encountered in the outskirts of Burj al Barajneh (a refugee camp in southern Beirut), that a wider relational structure, one that lies between violence, affect and “media,” was unconcealed. I borrow the concept thrownness from Heidegger (Being and Time 1962, 276) in order to depict a double-­ontological condition. Our figuring out/finding out what things are, and how they work, is only possible after such an act of thrownness into the world/field had occurred. That’s when phenomenological work starts. However, ethnographers are not only thrown into the world; they are, I argue, also thrown into the face of the other. Our relation to the face of the other (in the case of this research, those faces of my interlocutors) is part of an ethical event that decenters the purely reductionist phenomenological task as it reorients it towards an ontology that is primarily founded on the “impossible” responsibility towards the other. The Other, as we learn from Levinas, is interminably beyond the horizon of phenomenal presence. The research (which consisted of ethnography undertaken with Syrian refugees in the South of Beirut) serendipitously deployed thrownness as a double phenomenological maneuver: Maneuver 1 was inspired by a Heideggerian phenomenological logic, which prompts the ethnographer to figure things out for themselves (outside prepackaged hermeneutics/ institutionalized semantics); Maneuver 2 subscribed to an interrupted phenomenology, a reading of ontology that is “accomplished not in the triumph of man over his condition, but in the very tension in which that condition is assumed” (Levinas, Entre Nous, 1998, 2). This ontological take was inspired by a Levinasian ethical human

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­inversion: “of the in-­itself and the for-­itself (of ‘every man for himself ’) into an ethical self, into a priority of the for-­the-­other. . . It is in the personal relationship, from me to the other, that the ethical ‘event,’ . . . lead beyond or rise above being” (Levinas 1998, 202). As a phenomenological method of unconcealment, thrownness revealed a ­complex structure within which the affective, the empirical and the ethical collided. Thrownness, in this case, was both traversal and processual. Phenomenologically, thrownness was the process through which the researcher encountered, and was affected by, the world: its joys, suffering, objects, equipment, feelings, (mis)understanding, messiness, serendipity. and it was also partly this process that shaped the gathered ethnographic material. Thrownness, as an interrupted phenomenological method, could not be separated from the ethical events, those that are produced by a collision between the objective world and the affective/ethical regimes that come to the fore through encountering the face of the other.

Conclusion What I have attempted to achieve in this chapter is to negotiate alternative critical spaces in which to engage with media, culture, and society in the Arab region. I proposed “interrupted phenomenology” as a processual method (and way of philosophizing) with which to navigate through/between the (inside-­outside) shuttling processes of cultural translation as a means to decolonize the sign. I also showed how using the phenomenological approach in such a way that it interrupts the boundaries of reductionist phenomenology can be a useful way to ask new questions about the media and digitality, as well as our ontological/ethical vulnerabilities and uncertainties as researchers. References Aly, R. 2017. “Hatha Al-­Shibl min dhak al Asad: Youth Studies and the Revival of Subculture.” In  Sabry, T. and Ftouni, L. (Eds.) Subcultures in the Arab World: Reflections on Theory and Practice (pp. 18–44). London: I.B. Tauris. Barad, K. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. London: Duke University Press. Derrida, J. 1999. “Hospitality, Justice and Responsibility.” In Kearney, R. and Dooley, M. (Eds.), Questioning Ethics: Contemporary Debates in Philosophy. London: Routledge. Freire, P. 2017. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin. Gaston, Sean. 2006. Derrida and Disinterest. London: Continuum Glendinning, S. 2007. In the Name of Phenomenology. Oxon: Routledge. Heidegger, M. 1962. Being and Time. Oxford: Blackwell. Ingold, T. 2018. Anthropology: Why It Matters. Medford: Polity Press. Al-­Jabri, Abed Mohammed. 1991. Naqd al-­’aql al-­’Arabi 1 (The Construction of Arab Reason). Beirut: The Arab Cultural Centre. Khatibi, A. 1971. La Mémoire tatouée: Autobiographie d’un décolonisé. Paris: Denoël. Khatibi, A. 2016. Tattooed Memory, Paris: L’Harmattan. Khatibi, A. 2019. Plural Maghreb: Writing on Postcolonialism. London: Bloomsbury.

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Leroi-­Gourhan, A. 1964. Le geste et la parole, Paris: Éditions Albin Michel Levinas, E. 1998. Entre nous: on thinking of-­the-­other. New York: Columbia University Press. McNeece, L. Stone. 1993. Decolonizing the Sign: “Language and Identity in Abdelkabir Khatibi’s La Mémoire tatouée.” Yale French Studies, Post/Colonial Conditions: Exiles, Migrations, and Nomadisms 2, no. 83: 12–29. Sabry, T., (Ed.) 2012. Arab Cultural Studies: Mapping the Field. London: I.B. Tauris. Sabry T. 2021a. “Ethnography as Thrownness and the Face of the Sufferer.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 24, no. 4: 816–831. Sabry, T. 2021b. “Morocco’s Arab Spring Protests: Transmediality as “Doing-­Publicness’” in Bacon, S (Ed.) (2021) Transmedia Cultures (pp: 181–187). London: Peter Lang. Sabry, T., Ftouni, L. (Eds.) 2017. Subcultures in the Arab World: Reflections on Theory and Practice. London: I.B. Tauris. Sabry, T., and Khalil, J. (Eds.) 2019. Media, Culture and Time in the Arab World. London: Bloomsbury. Sabry, T., and Mansour, N. 2019. Children and Screen Media in a Changing Arab Context: An Ethnographic Perspective. London: Palgrave. Sayad, A. 1999. La double absence. Des illusions de l’émigré aux souffrances de l’immigré. Paris: Seuil. Simondon, G. 2018. On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects. (Translated by Cecile Malsapina and John Rogove). London: Univocal. Scannell, P. 2014. Television and the Meaning of the Live: An Enquiry into the Human Situation. Cambridge: Polity. Scannell, P. 2019. Why Do People Sing? On Voice, Cambridge: Polity Press. Smith, J. 2016. Experiencing Phenomenology: An Introduction. London: Routledge. Spivak, G. Chakravorty. 2000. “Translation as Culture.” Parallax 6, no. 1: 13–24.

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Part II

Politics, Gender, Minorities, and Class

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Intellectuals, Modernities, and the Emerging Public Sphere Gholam Khiabany

Introduction Analysis of intellectual life in the Middle East has a long pedigree. For decades interesting work has been conducted on key individual thinkers and the origins and trajectories of their political philosophies as well as the Middle Eastern intellectual encounter with “modernity.” Considerable attention has been paid to the “religious/secular” divide that is often seen as a key demarcation between thinkers, although almost as often this is taken to be blurred and a false dichotomy. Yet the focus of such analyses has tended to privilege select individual voices and their political philosophies at the expense of a broader sociological and communications-­inflected analysis of who actually gets to speak inside about the region, who gets noticed, and how individuals are recognized as intellectuals – by definition a public process. There is always a danger of paying scant attention to the social processes whereby some people become labeled as “intellectual,” thus glossing over the terrain of debate, taking the “political” as an evident and bounded sphere of focus rather than itself a contested space as well as a space of contestation. The aim of this chapter is to open up the debate about intellectuals, to try to problematize who counts as an “intellectual,” what constitutes intellectual work, where and what are the spaces for intellectual debate, and what the implications of such an approach might be for an understanding of the Middle East.

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Debating Intellectuals and Commitment In a speech made at a cultural studies conference in Illinois in 1990, Stuart Hall famously asked: Against the urgency of people dying in the streets, what in God’s name is the point of cultural studies? . . . At that point, I think anybody who is into cultural studies seriously as an intellectual practice, must feel, on their pulse, its ephemerality, its insubstantiality, how little it registers, how little we’ve been able to change anything or get anybody to do anything. If you don’t feel that as one tension in the work that you are doing, theory has let you off the hook. (2018, 285–286)

The question probably appeared as strange, not least because Hall himself was and is, more than anybody else, associated with the discipline of cultural studies. But the question is pertinent and points at a painful tension that exists in academia in general and our discipline in particular. We need to ask how communication scholars should respond to a situation in which the media are seen as intimately connected to both the emergence of, and solution to, the current capitalist (and communication) crisis. To what extent should academics remain aloof from grassroots movements, or should their research and teaching inform campaigns for social justice? How and why academics are simultaneously urged to “engage” in the social world to achieve “impact” and to retain a scholarly detachment that protects their “neutrality”? Antonio Gramsci had suggested that “all men [sic] are intellectuals . . . but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals” (1971, 9). At a time when genuine critical voices are increasingly marginalized, the role of those who indeed have the function of intellectuals needs urgent evaluation. The question that Hall asked three decades ago, however, has a much longer history. The debate over intellectual political commitment is not novel. We know for a fact that the emergence of cultural studies was marked by its commitment to working class aspirations. The work of key figures such as Raymond Williams, E. P. Thompson, and those that later gathered in and around the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies under Stuart Hall’s directorship was striking for how they concerned themselves with the plights and the struggles of the wretched of Britain and elsewhere. This tradition of critical engagement and involvement of intellectuals in Britain of course had a lot to do with a more powerful tradition of political commitment. That the title of a leading radical publication in the 1950s was Universities and Left Review was no accident; it meant that there was at least some hope universities would play a leading role in influencing social and political choices. Similar trends could be observed in other places when the full force of liberation movements after World War II both in imperial and colonialized countries, including the Middle East, were on display. Remembering this history of a critical intellectual tradition (and its influence on early media and cultural studies research) is crucial when the idea of reasserting the discipline’s capacity to challenge all forms of domination is re-­emerging. But it is also worth remembering that the binary which sets ‘neutrality’ against that of political commitment not only has a much longer history but is also part of movements and moments of history which are much bigger than the intellectuals themselves. For example, Jean-­Paul

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Sartre’s view on committed literature wasn’t universally approved and came under attack not only by those on the right but also by figures such as Adorno (1980). The commitment to political commitment came to be seen as rather “vulgar” and the role of the “public intellectual” emerged as a much weaker substitute for those who might have been encouraged to bring their “academic pose” (Mills 1970) to what Habermas has famously called the “public sphere.” Gramsci’s formulation about everyone being an intellectual firmly locates the debate about intellectuals within a broader set of social relations that is central to his argument about intellectual work, in which he stresses that everyone has an intellect and uses it but not all are intellectuals by their social function. Insisting on the context and the purpose of Gramsci’s concern with culture and politics – especially when many academics in many disciplines, including media and cultural studies, use his analysis of hegemony – is crucial. Lest we forget that Gramsci remained a permanently active “persuader” and organizer and most of his celebrated prison notes were written during his 11-­year imprisonment at the hands of Mussolini’s fascist regime. His thinking about culture was inseparable from the biggest ever revolutions that emerged during and in the aftermath of World War 1 (for example, Ireland in1916, Russia in1917, Germany in 1918, and Hungary in 1919). It is not the insistence on this context that is “vulgar,” “crude,” and “unscholarly,” but rather the glossy attempt to divorce his contribution from any conception of emancipation. Drawing upon Gramsci’s distinction between traditional and organic intellectuals, Edward Said also divided intellectuals into the categories of amateur and professional, collusive and oppositional (see Chapter 1). Said was of course not only a cultural critic (as he is celebrated in academia), but also a Palestinian. His “affiliation” to that origin and the political struggles for the emancipation of Palestine cannot be separated from his analysis of culture. In short, and as Aijaz Ahmad has pointed out: Much that is splendid in his work is connected with the fact that he has tried to do honour to that origin; and he has done so against all odds, to the full extent of his capacity, by stepping outside the boundaries of his academic discipline and original intellectual formation, under no compulsion of profession or fame, in no pursuit of personal gain – in fact, at frightening risk to himself. (1992, 160)

Said insisted that intellectuals should seek to intervene in the social world first by ­recognizing the implications of power and then telling the truth about these implications. For him, speaking truth to power involves “carefully weighing the alternatives, picking the right one, and then intelligently representing it where it can do the most good and cause the right change” (Said  1993b, 8). Intellectual thought, therefore, becomes especially meaningful when it is linked to the “right change.” Of course, there will be huge debates about what constitutes such a change but Said reminds us that intellectual life ought to be based on more than simply participating in or engaging with the outside world. He was unapologetic about the temptation to lead an easy life when the conflicts surrounding us demand a more robust response: Nothing in my view is more reprehensible than those habits of mind in the intellectual that induce avoidance, that characteristic turning away from a difficult and principled position which you know to be the right one, but which you decide not to take. You do not want to

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appear too political; you are afraid of seeming controversial; you need the approval of a boss or an authority figure; you want to keep a reputation for being balanced, objective, moderate; your hope is to be asked back, to consult, to be on a board or prestigious committee, and so, to remain within the responsible mainstream; someday you hope to get an honorary degree, a big prize, perhaps even an ambassadorship. For an intellectual these habits of mind are corrupting par excellence. If anything can denature, neutralise and finally kill a passionate intellectual life, it is those considerations, internalised and so to speak in the driver’s seat. (Said 1993b, 7–8)

Indeed, Said insists that the intellectual’s voice is all the more powerful when it connects to movements for liberation. The academic is most inspired and inspiring when part of an organic chain of events: “One doesn’t climb a mountain or pulpit and declaim from the heights. Obviously, you want to speak your piece where it can be heard best; and also you want it represented in such a way as to affiliate with an ongoing and actual process, for instance the cause of peace and justice” (Said 1993b: 8). Two years before delivering his inspiring lectures on intellectuals, Said had lamented the absence of affiliation by the intellectuals, their surrender to the media agenda during the Gulf War of 1991, and passionately urging for “a return to an old-­fashioned historical, literary and, above all, intellectual scholarship based upon the premise that human beings, men and women, make their own history. And just as things are made, they can be unmade and re-­made” (1991, 16). In raising these concerns, he was not only taking issue with the Middle Eastern scholars he aptly called “scholar-­combatants”  – Fouad Ajami, Daniel Pipes, Bernard Lewis – who in addition to supporting the war had also “engaged in a kind of curriculum-­building,” but also those who should have known better.

Intellectuals Encounter with Modernities Intellectual life in the Middle East, as argued by Keddie (1972) has a long and varied history. However, while she traces this history to the early days of Islam, the debate on intellectuals effectively arrived with the emergence of modern, educated social groups and as part of increasing engagement with global modernity in late nineteenth century. Their development, according to Matin-­Asgari (2007), was “in line with the tradition of French lumières, or Eclaires, i.e., ‘Enlightened thinkers,’ with a mission to broaden the minds of a wider public. This French nomenclature was first translated literally into Arabic as monavvar al-­f ikr, a term that was soon borrowed in Persian.” The concerns of these intellectuals were philosophical rather than political and revolutionary (2007, 138). This was to change in the early twentieth century as revolutions and movements for liberation and independence placed the intellectuals in the forefront of radical politics. For two centuries many intellectuals in the Middle East have internalized the European gaze on the region: that, in contrast to Europe, the Middle East was backward, irrational, and subject to arbitrary rules. The decline of the region and its backwardness were and are (still) attributed to various factors. In the case of Iran, it has not been rare

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for some to blame the Arabs or Islam in general, while others blamed the loss of “self ” and of the authentic national/religious essence. Fetishizing development and progress, and equating “modern” with colonial (Dirlik 2005) happened on the basis of centrality of culture in determining the boundaries of progress and backwardness. The colonial (Europe) stood for all that was modern, and the “colonized” for all the superstitious backwardness that was an obstacle to true salvation. Dabashi makes the same point by suggesting that “the European enlightenment modernity that was meant to liberate Iranians from darkness . . . denied them the very agency by bringing the enlightenment message to them through the gun barrel of colonialism” (2006, 45–46). The Constitutional Revolution of 1905–1911 in Iran, revival of the Ottoman constitution in 1908, and the emergence of the Arab parliamentary regime around the same time (Keddie,  1972) have been regarded as the beginning of the modern era in the region, all of which generated much discussion about progress, developments, and the future. The press of this period played a key role in debating and defining what “modernity” and being “modern” means, with many, in reaction to conservative elements that regarded democracy as alien to Islamic culture, trying to justify and defend the compatibility of what seemed an imported idea. The vibrant public sphere that had emerged was gradually suppressed and many intellectuals, including editors of key publications, were harshly treated and subjected to imprisonment, torture, exile, and some to death. Such debates can be understood in the context of colonialism, universalization of the nation-­state, and of nation-­building in the region. From constitutional revolutions and movements onward, many intellectuals looked up to Europe as a way forward. It is important to remember, however, that the idea of progress and justice had informed the significant circle of intellectuals in the early part of twentieth century, whereas for the next generation, in Turkey, Iran, and Egypt in particular, the central focus was on centralization of state and modernization. The international context and broader international development had a major impact on discussion in the Middle East. Sami Zubaida (1999) has highlighted the diminishing diversities which happened because of formation of modern nation-­states in the Arab World. Touraj Atabaki also makes the point that the very idea of modern state building in Iran, it was assumed, “would require a low degree of cultural diversity and a high degree of ethnic homogeneity” (2005, 30). Long before Iran embarked on its authoritarian modernization, many intellectuals were hinting at the possible directions. Taqizadeh, the editor of Kaveh, believed that salvation from long-­lasting misery was only possible by blind submission to the Western civilization. In the editorial of the first issue of the paper published in 1920, it was argued that “Iran must be westernized outwardly as well as inwardly, physically as well mentally… By absolute submission to Europe, through adaptation and promotion of European civilization, with no reservation or condition one could hope that our country would eventually become prosperous” (Atabaki 2005, 31). The editor of another leading journal, Ayandeh, in the first editorial published in 1925 also claimed: “achieving national unity means that the Persian language must be established throughout the whole country, that regional differences in clothing, customs and such like must disappear, and that moluk al-­tavayef (the local chieftains) must be eliminated. Kurds, Lors, Qashqa’is, Arabs, Turks, Turkmen, etc., shall not differ from one another by wearing different clothes or by speaking different languages. In my opinion, unless national unity

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is achieved in Iran, with regard to customs, clothing, and so forth, there will always be the possibility that our political independence and geographical integrity will be endangered” (Atabaki 2005, 31). The adopted policy of “one country, one nation,” included spreading Farsi, bans on literature/journals in other languages, etc. was all part of this project. In theory it was to bring Iran in line with Europe, by reviving the “glorious” pre-­Islamic civilization, by subordinating religion, by secularizing and modernizing the military, the taxation and education (undermining religious authority). Yet in practice and in reality, it suppressed and marginalized the diversity and the early cosmopolitanism of Iranian culture. Modernization of Turkey went through similarly violent process and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, succeeded in attracting intellectuals to its project. And yet, three decades later and after the CIA-­backed coup against Mosadagh in Iran in 1953, Daniel Lerner lamented the slow pace of modernization (or Americanization) while observing that Iran has never suffered from a shortage of intellectuals; if anything, it has suffered “from the over production of intellectuals” (1958, 363). In the region this was not unique to Iran. But if Gramsci and Said help us theorize the sociopolitical locus of intellectuals, we still need to grapple with the nature of the spaces for intellectual work and better define what kinds of content, and indeed what kinds of people, might be worthy of such a designation given the frequent exclusion of non-­Western voices from the critical canon. For example, in her list of 25 thinkers for the twenty-­first century, Mackenzie Wark (2017) could not think of any possible contributions to the “general intellect” emanating from India, China, Latin America, the Middle East, or Africa. It was in response to such a provincial and narrow “idolizing” of intellectuals which prompted Hamid Dabashi (2015) to provocatively ask “Can Non-­Europeans Think?”

Intellectuals and the Emerging Public Sphere The broad shifts in the nature and conceptualization of intellectual work in contemporary modernity is not specific to any particular country. In many countries, there is currently a debate about the changing face of education and the dislocation of intellectuals from their traditional ivory towers. For example, Russell Jacoby (1989) lambasted US academe as bureaucratized and corporatized, while Shlomo Sand (2018) lamented the degradation of a literary elite and the failure of French intellectuals to meet the ideal of the ethical lodestar of France. Clearly there is a general drift of knowledge workers away from educational institutions to new bases in think tanks, government-­supported R&D activities, and to the mass media where information workers produce and disseminate information about matters of public life. A further change has been triggered by the massive rolling-­out of digital information and communication technologies across the world (Castells 2000) and the emergence of arguments about “immaterial labor” in a “knowledge society.” Throughout modern history, the democratic potential of communication technologies, variously “new” in different historical epochs, for the expansion of the public sphere has been trumpeted (Kellner  1995). The printing press revolutionized European intellectual life within 50

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years of its development, and remains an epoch-­defining technology (Eisenstein 1979). Benjamin (1968) clearly saw the revolutionary potential of photography, film, and the mechanical reproduction of works of art to produce new ways of seeing that decentered the dominant tradition of “perspective,” while warning over the loss of “aura.” Brecht argued for the possibility of making radio into something democratic, arguing that this “new” medium was more than an “acoustical department store” but could be turned into a two-­way communication that was “capable not only of transmitting but of receiving, of making the listeners not only hear but also speak, not of isolating him but connecting him” (1979, 25). The relationship between media and intellectuals (traditional as well as organic) indeed goes back to the development of the first printing press and subsequent media. As Mills suggests, these innovations had a serious implication. The independent artist and intellectual are among the few remaining personalities equipped to resist and to fight the stereotyping and consequent death of genuinely living things. Fresh perception now involves the capacity to continually unmask and to smash the stereotypes of vision and intellect with which modern communications swamp us. These worlds of mass-­art and mass-­thought are increasingly geared to the demands of politics. That is why it is in politics that intellectual solidarity and effort must be centred. If the thinker does not relate himself to the value of truth in political struggle, he cannot responsibly cope with the whole of live experience. (Mills 1963, 229)

It was precisely this passage that inspired Said to urge intellectuals to intervene in “disputing the images, official narratives, justifications of power circulated by an increasingly powerful media – and not only media, but whole trends of thought that maintain the status quo, keep things within an acceptable and sanctioned perspective on actuality – by providing what Mills calls unmaskings or alternative versions in which, to the best of one’s ability, the intellectual tries to tell the truth” (Said 1993a, 7–8). That Said’s eloquent presentations were given as part of the BBC’s Reith Lectures was no accident. This not only put the narrative of intellectuals at the center of public debate but also offered a vision of the intellectual role and capacity of media (in this case, of public service broadcasting). As more attention is being paid to the impact of the internet on knowledge production and political activism, it is crucial to point out that there is a large step involved in going from a Gramscian model derived from the practices of factory workers in the neighborhoods of Turin to the practices of workers, activists, and hackers in both face-­ to-­face and online environments. But one of the central points of Gramsci’s argument is that in the invitation to ordinary people to join in “political” discussion, that is, their hailing or “interpellation” as “intellectuals,” is part of the social process of actually producing intellectuals. It is in this context that the debate about an emergent public sphere is inevitably linked with intellectuals. Nicholas Garnham suggests that the “bourgeois public sphere was classically the creation of and ground for intellectuals. The project of the democratic generalization of the public sphere is a project to make everyone an intellectual” (1995, 376). Within such a narrative, the role of communication is central, for it was not only in salons and coffee houses, but more significantly through ever-­ expanding journals and periodicals and printed texts, that the aspirations for social change and collective activities and identities were expressed.

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And this is precisely where some of the most fascinating contradictions in debate about the role of the intellectuals and their function emerges. These contradictions are in fact too stark in the Middle East. One important contradiction is the tension between the struggle for social justice and affiliation with a cause (as highlighted by Said) and elitism of intellectuals. The degree of elitism is as such that has prompted Tarik Sabry to call some Arab intellectuals as being “more aristocratic than aristocracy” (2010, 164). The second tension has to do with the nature and the role of the media in the Middle East. As Chakrovarty and Roy have pointed out: Postcolonial media institutions positioned themselves not as liberal watchdogs that checked the power of the state and ensured the exercise of individual freedom, but rather as developmental guardians that checked the unruly ignorance of the people and worked in concert with the state to advance a common project of social intervention and improvement. In other words, postcolonial media were normatively positioned (and also positioned themselves) as agents, not obstacles, to statist developmentalist intervention. (2017, 4080)

With the exception of alternative media, all national media in the region, and broadcasting in particular, were (still are) appropriated by the state as a tool for “development” and rarely provided space for critical voices (see Chapters 10, 11, 13). In fact, one of the functions of the “national media,” was to demonize and mobilize against intellectuals. In Iran such a role stretched as far as broadcasting the “confession” of political prisoners under the previous and current regimes (Abrahamian, 1999). As Keddie pointed out in the early 1970s, “only in a few periods have intellectuals been free to express all their thoughts openly in print” (1972, 55). Such moments have been even rarer on national radio and television. One of the huge tragedies of the modern Middle East is precisely the fact that the products of intellectuals are often “reviewed” and “assessed” – not in scholarly and literary journals – but in front of firing squads, torture chambers, prison, or in bitterly cold exile. As the brutal repressions of bloggers and online media activists have shown again and again, technological changes and developments haven’t changed this reality. The assassination of Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani in 1972 or the killing of Aljazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022 by Israeli forces clearly shows the immense difficulties and dangers facing intellectual activities and political commitment in the Middle East. In trying to catch history on the wing, however, intellectuals still have an important role to play: to speak truth to power and to demonstrate empathy with the marginalized, demonized, oppressed, and all of those who face the brunt of unequal social relations. Since the chapter began with a quotation from Stuart Hall, let us finish by referring to one of his questions that remain pertinent and crucial: What is the relationship between the mobilisation or performance of racialised and other forms of ethnicity and identity at the local, micro, more ethnographic level and the large thing that brought us into the field at the beginning, namely a racialised

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world .  .  . a world in which material and symbolic resources continue to be deeply ­unequally distributed. Why are you in this field if you are not concerned about that? (cited in Alexander 2009, 474)

References Abrahamian, E. 1999. Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran. University of California Press. Adorno, T. 1980. “Commitment.” In Ronald Taylor (trans. and ed.), Aesthetics and Politics: Ernst Bloch, Georg Lukacs, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno (pp. 177–195). London: Verso. Alexander, C. .2009. “Stuart Hall and ‘Race.’” Cultural Studies 23, no. 4: 457–482. Atabaki, T. 2005. “Ethnic Diversity and Territorial Integrity of Iran: Domestic Harmony and Regional Challenges.” Iranian Studies 38, no. 1: 23–44. Benjamin, W. 1968. Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books. Brecht, B. 1979. “Radio as a Means of Communication: A Talk on the Function of Radio.” Screen 20, no. 3–­4: 24–28. Castells, M. 2000. The Rise of the Network Society, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Chakravartty, P. and Roy, S. 2017. “Mediatized Populisms| Mediatized Populisms: Inter-­Asian Lineages –Introduction.” International Journal of Communication 11, 20: 4073–4092. Dabashi, H. 2006. Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundation of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publisher. Dabashi, H. 2015. Can Non-­Europeans Think? Bloomsbury Publishing. Dirlik, A. 2005. “The End of Colonialism? Colonial Modern in the Making of Global Modernity.” Boundary 2 32, no. 1: 1–31. Eisenstein, E. L. 1980. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Cambridge University Press. Garnham, N. 1995. “The Media and Narratives of the Intellectual.” Media, Culture & Society 17, no. 3: 359–384. Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Hall, S. 2018. “Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies.” In Dave Morely (Ed.), Essential Essays Vol. 1: Foundations of Cultural Studies (pp. 71–99). Duke University Press. Jacoby, R. 1989. The Last Intellectuals. New York: Basic Books. Keddie, N. R. 1972. “Intellectuals in the Modern Middle East: A Brief Historical Consideration.” Daedalus 101, no. 3: 39–57. Kellner, D. 1995. “Intellectuals and New Technologies.” Media, Culture & Society 17, no. 3: 427–448. Lerner, D. 1958. The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East. New York: Free Press. Matin-­Asgari, Afshin. 2007. “Modern Iran’s Ideological Renegades: A Study in Intellectual Accommodation to State Power.” Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 16, no. 2: 137–153. Mills, C. 1963. Power, Politics and the People: The Collected Essays of C. Wright-­Mills (ed. I. Horowitz). New York: Ballantine Books. Sabry, T. 2010. Cultural Encounters in the Arab World: On Media, the Modern and the Everyday. Bloomsbury Publishing. Said, E. 1991. “The Intellectuals and the War.” Middle East Report, no. 171: 15–20. Said, E. 1993a. “Representations of an Intellectual.” Reith Lecture 1: “Representation of Intellectuals,” transmitted June 23, BBC, transcription available from http://downloads. bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/radio4/transcripts/1993_reith1.pdf

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Said, E. 1993b. “Representations of an Intellectual.” Reith Lecture 5: “Speaking Truth to Power,” transmitted, August 9, BBC, transcription available from http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/ rmhttp/radio4/transcripts/1993_reith5.pdf Sand, S. 2018. The End of the French Intellectual: From Zola to Houellebecq. Verso Books. Zubaida, S. 1999. “Cosmopolitanism and the Middle East.” In Roel Meijer (Ed.), Cosmopolitanism, Identity and Authenticity in the Middle East (pp. 15–33). Routledge.

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7

Feminisms and Feminist Movements in the Middle East Gül Aldıkaçtı Marshall

This chapter focuses on feminisms and feminist movements in the Middle East, which is a culturally, politically, economically diverse region. It argues that the development of feminist movements and the issues that feminists have dealt with are closely linked to dynamic political cultures that aim to shape gender identities, statuses, and relations. Within this context, state building and religion are particularly significant. State building  is an ongoing and ever-­changing project that has a considerable effect on the ­emergence of gendered citizenship and gender equality policies while religion is intimately  connected with gendered subjectivities negotiating public and private spheres (see Chapters 3, 23, 36). Together, they are associated with modernization in many countries. In some, they are also ­associated with decolonization.1 Employing multiple strategies and tactics, feminist activists in various countries have been using available  technological tools and discursive and material spaces to bring attention to the ­particularities of women’s gendered ­citizenship and subjectivities.

The Rise of Feminist Movements Some early feminist movements emerged alongside anti-­colonial and nationalist ­movements. During the post-­colonial period, newly developed nation-­states constrained or enabled these movements. In a few of the countries in the region, notably Turkey and Egypt, feminist movements date back to the late nineteenth century. In Turkey, the first-­wave feminist movement developed during Tanzimat, a reform period between 1839 and 1876 during which the declining Ottoman Empire began to embrace Western European values and norms, especially in the military, but also in  See Abu-­Lughod (1998) for a discussion of decolonization.

1

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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governance and education, in order to revive itself and compete against the growing power of Western Europe (Kandiyoti 1991). Göle emphasizes that “Whereas in Western European history the public sphere emerged as a liberal-­bourgeois sphere, with women (and the working class) initially excluded and thus also excluded from the definition of the universal citizen, in the Turkish mode of modernization, women’s visibility and citizenship rights endorsed the existence of the public sphere” (2015, 104). Egypt, following a similar path, was also interested in adopting Western European ways (Ahmad 1982). Some important male rulers and thinkers, such as Mohamad Ali and Qasim Amin, were pivotal in the adaptation process. Both Turkish and Egyptian feminists were women from prominent families because modernization and westernization in their societies allowed them to have knowledge of feminism and feminist movements in Western Europe. In both cases, important reformist-­minded male figures supported women’s demands such as having access to education and removing the veil. Especially in Turkey, the reformist elite called the Young Turks strongly supported emancipation of women because they believed this was an important part of modernization. This eventually led to the passage of the right to vote in local elections in 1930 and national elections in 1934 in the young Turkish Republic before such a right was granted to women in European countries like France and Switzerland. During Tanzimat, a teachers’ college, a school for midwives, and secondary schools for girls opened. In 1917, a Family Law passed, giving more security to women within marriage, but the main changes regarding women’s status happened after the abolition of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the secular Turkish Republic in 1923. Under the Ottoman rule, the first-­wave feminists were active and visible with their demands. They published a journal, Kadınlar Dűnyasi (Women’s World), between 1913 and 1921 where they discussed marriage, polygyny, women’s education, and the veil. After the Turkish Republic was established, women witnessed sweeping secular reforms, including establishment of coeducation schools at every level, right to vote and run for election, and right to work. The new secular civil code of 1926 gave women the same rights as men in marriage, divorce, and child custody (Toska 1998; Demirdirek 1998).2 Even though a group of women established a women’s political party, the newly established secular government quickly dismantled the party by arguing that men and women have been given equal rights under the new regime; thus, there is no need for women’s mobilization. This prevented the further development of a feminist movement until the emergence of the second-­wave feminist movement in late 1970s. As Ahmad (1982) points out, while there were concrete developments in Turkey, there was much religious resistance to reforms regarding improvement of women’s status in Egypt even though the male elite thought modernization and westernization were important. As a result, Ahmad states, Women in Egypt were to be much more actively involved in the fight for their rights than they had been in Turkey: whereas in the latter from the inception of feminist ideas to the  The civil code was revised again in 2001 as part of the European Union membership process. That revision furthered women’s rights and guaranteed gender equality in personal matters (Aldıkaçtı Marshall 2013).

2

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granting of new rights to women had in fact been a remarkably swift process, in Egypt many of the rights granted their Turkish sisters in the 20s were not  – and still have not – been granted. (1982, 159)

In the early twentieth century, Egyptian feminists were protesting in the streets against British rule. They established the Egyptian Feminist Union to call for free education for girls and a campaign for reform in the Islamic Family Law, especially to abolish polygyny. While the Egyptian feminists struggled for reforms, they remained within the confinement of their religious doctrine. As Ahmad (1982) asserts, until a few decades ago, Arabness and Islam has determined feminism for many Arab feminists most of whom have not seriously challenged the Islamic conception of the role of women, but rather, “when all is said and done, of requesting merely (and often deferentially) that injustice be trimmed a little here and there, and oppression perhaps sugared over a little here curbed slightly there” (1982, 161). Beyond the feminist movements that date back to the late nineteenth century in Turkey and Egypt, feminist movements in the rest of the Middle East developed in the twentieth century and most were associated with nationalist movements ( Jayawardena 2016). Yet, a few were autonomous feminist movements, as is the case for the second-­ wave feminist movement in Turkey and the feminist movement in Iran (see Chapter 36). In some countries, such as Iran and Turkey, oppositional forces like Islamist groups often equated feminism and feminist advocacy for women’s rights with westernization and accused women’s rights activists for being puppets of Western forces. In some of the Arab countries in the Middle East, at various times, from the 1970s on, governments supported Islamist women’s organizations, which organized against feminist organizations. In Kuwait, for example, the government crushed a feminist movement in the late 1970s. The movement, which had been flourishing since the 1950s, included organizations like the Arab Women’s Development Society that asked for gender equality and citizenship rights. Then, in the 1980s, the government supported the formation of Islamist women’s groups and organizations so that they would undermine any secular feminist effort. The Federation of Kuwaiti Women’s Organizations collected all these Islamist women’s organizations under its umbrella and was recognized by the government as the sole representative of Kuwaiti women. Since then, wherever a conservative religious-­oriented government came to power, it has used its power to support like-­minded religious women’s organizations and undermine feminist organizations (­ Al-­Mughni 1996). Even in Turkey, where there has been a sizable civil society and a strong feminist movement since the early 1980s, the Justice and Development Party’s government, which came to power in 2002 and consolidated its power in subsequent elections, has increasingly supported Islamist women’s organizations and recognized them as the ­representatives of women in governmental functions and international meetings. Depending on the ethnic and religious sectarian structure of the population, in some countries, the governments have supported one group of women’s rights activists from a particular religious sect or ethnic group. In Bahrain, for example, the Sunni government has used women’s rights to infuse sectarian divisions between the Sunni and the majority Shi’a. While in 2005 both Sunni and Shi’a women’s rights activists marched to codify the family law, the government codified it only for Sunni Bahrainis in 2009 (Hasso 2016).

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Organizing, Issues, and Tactics Where they could flourish, twentieth-­century feminist movements in the region focused on various issues. Many feminist movements picked up similar issues that their Western counterparts did, such as eliminating violence against women, making changes to personal laws, increasing women’s economic independence, and encouraging political representation of women. Except for Turkey, where the civil code has been secular and went under a substantial revision in the early 2000s to strengthen gender equality as part of country’s European Union membership process, most countries in the region have personal status codes that are governed by one or more religious codifications.3 As a result, gender inequality persists in law in various degrees. Religion also determines gender relations in informal ways.4 Furthermore, the nation-­states in the region shape and reshape women’s status to legitimize their political regimes. While the issues that women’s rights activists take up in the countries of the Middle East are similar to those that their Western counterparts deal with, depending on the country, certain issues have become more prominent. In Turkey, violence against women, reproductive rights, women’s economic independence, and increasing women’s numbers as elected officials have been a high priority. In Jordan, honor killings and women’s political representation in the Lower House have received the greatest attention from feminist groups. Along with a struggle toward women’s emancipation, Palestinian feminists have put most of their energy toward pressuring their government to change the personal status code, as have feminists in Syria. Both in Israel and Turkey “personal is political” has been a significant motto of feminist groups which used this motto to make a variety of private issues public and argue for women’s control over their bodies. Feminist movements involved multiple methods of organizing and tactics. The organizations ranged from structured, mostly hierarchal organizations to ad hoc groups. Feminist activists used street protests, campaigns, petitions, publications, and in some countries, lobbying of both state and international bodies like the United Nations in order to drive attention to various issues that they considered pressing in their countries. In the last decade, with the increase in the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and the launching of satellite TV (Gheytanchi and Moghadam 2014), feminist movements have used new methods of activism and expanded their reach beyond the borders of their nation-­states. Virtual campaigns became pivotal in driving local, national, and international issues. For example, when the head of the conservative governing party in Turkey tried to change the abortion law in 2012 by reducing the time  In Lebanon, for example, there are 18 religious personal status laws that are recognized by the state. 4  For example, under the current government in Turkey, the Directorate of Religious Affairs works closely with the Ministry of Family and Social Services that provides counseling services to women abused by their intimate partners. Under the influence of the Directorate, the Ministry, which has been approaching women’s issues as family issues and prioritizing the family, not women, is also using religious teachings in its services. 3

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limit for abortion from ten to four weeks, feminist organizations launched a successful virtual campaign that prevented the change in the law (Eslen-­Ziya 2016). They framed abortion as a human right, a women’s right, and a health issue. They criticized the government for violating women’s rights and controlling women’s bodies (Frank and Çelik 2017). The feminist campaign against government’s attempt to change the law about abortion received strong support from the European Commission. Turkey’s quest to be a member of the European Union and its candidate status has helped feminist groups in multiple ways.5 The ICTs and social media have allowed feminist activism to flourish not only at the collective level as would be expected from social movements, but also at the individual level. Uprisings in numerous countries in the region such as Iran in 2009, Egypt in 2011, and Bahrain in 2011 brought about virtual campaigns, blogging, and citizen journalism that have had considerable impact on shaping the public view. While not all of these have had a feminist orientation, feminist groups and individual activists have had a ­significant presence. Aliaa Magda Elmahdy’s use of cyberspace for nude activism that challenges gendered and sexist patriarchal attitudes in Egypt is a powerful example. Elmahdy’s carefully positioned nude body has brought the question of womanhood, gender equality, and sexuality to the forefront of politics. As Eileraas points out, Elmahdy “deploys her body as ‘erotic capital’ whereby the desired return is not the voyeuristic male gaze but increased social and political capital for women. In the process she challenges the conventional staging of heteronormative, sexual, and nationalist fantasies” (2016, 205). Protesting against the violence against women during the uprisings in Egypt, Elmahdy first uploaded her staged nude photos to Facebook. When the government removed them, she used her blog to criticize the sexual double standard embedded in the dominant culture, to celebrate women’s bodies, and to defend freedom of expression (Eileraas 2016). Like Elmahdy, Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights took up the issue of sexual harassment of women to bring attention to the issue. The Center raised awareness not only in the nation, but also internationally through its global distribution list (Ghaytanchi and Moghadam 2016). In Lebanon, as part of the “you stink” movement, which was against the government’s mismanagement of garbage collection, feminists united in 2015 under the Feminist Bloc to protest along with other groups against corruption within the ­government. They marched in the streets under the banner “Patriarchal Regime Is Lethal” to raise their voices against sectarianism with its patriarchal and racist structure and against the suppression of nonconforming gender and sexual identities (Kaedber  Turkey’s EU membership quest received some opposition from nationalist politicians, who have argued that the EU does not have the right to interfere in Turkey’s internal affairs, but feminist groups have been able to demonstrate that the issues they tackle are not imposed on Turkey from outside. For example, in the early 2000s, there was a successful campaign that the feminists launched during the changes made to the civil code. When the nationalist parliamentarians stood against the proposed acquired property law that entitled women to receive equal share of property gained during marriage and foresaw the equal division of property in the case of divorce, 45  women’s organizations came together and persuaded those parliamentarians. They used ­face-­to-­face communication effectively along with a fax campaign.

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and Naber 2019). The Feminist Bloc continued with its activities after the “you stink” protests. The members organized a women’s march in 2017 using social media to bring together feminist groups and individuals from a variety of places within Lebanon (Makki et al. 2018). In Syria, eight years after the Damascus Spring of 2001, the government set up a commission to make suggestions to revise the personal status code so that the discriminatory laws against women could be eliminated; however, the commission did not suggest any substantial revisions to the existing gender discriminatory articles of the code. In response, the women’s rights activists started a media campaign to protest against the government’s lack of action and to bring national and international attention to the matter (Ferguson 2015). The personal status law was amended in 2019. While there was improvement, these amendments were not enough to bring fundamental changes to women’s status. In Iran, the feminist movement, which was crushed by the Islamist regime after the Iranian revolution, began to flourish again after the one-­million-­signatures campaign of 2007 and played a significant role during the Green Movement of 2009. The Green Movement was a protest against the results of the national election. When the government of Ahmadinejad began to suppress the movement, the members of the movement turned to social media – especially Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube – as citizen journalists. In response, the government severely restricted the access to these sites. Nevertheless, many movement members were able to circumvent these restrictions. Meanwhile, the online Feminist School, which was run by feminist groups, “helped to produce ‘accidental activists’ while also serving as a communication, recruiting, coordinating tool within Iran and across the world. Not Tehran, but in the provinces, too, women’s rights activists used networking sites to stay in touch with their counterparts across the country” (Ghaytanchi and Moghadam 2016, 9). Cyberspace created a safe environment for feminist activists to raise their voices. It allowed them to make connections with Iranians in diaspora (Ghaytanchi and Moghadam 2016). Once again, as it was during both the Shah regime and Islamist regime, the “woman question” and women’s rights were associated with political change and what was envisioned as the ideal political regime in the country. As these examples demonstrate, the virtual space and the ability to reach beyond the local in a very short time through the ICTs have provided new opportunities for feminist activists to organize in new ways. This has been especially important in autocratic countries where circumventing the existing government is necessary to be able to drive public attention to a gender equality problem. At the same time, the use of the ICTs has revealed some differences between younger activists who are comfortable with using social media and those who have been in feminist movements for  a  while. Further research is necessary to reveal the points of convergence and ­difference in younger and older generations’ approaches to feminism, organizing, and mobilizing. This chapter has provided a very brief overview of feminisms and feminist movements in the Middle East. It’s important to note that although the ICTs have presented new opportunities for organizing and advocacy, feminist activists and groups continue to face challenges, one of which is the increasing power of conservative governments that prefer to work closely with and support conservative women’s groups and associations

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that promote the governments’ idea of what the role and status of women should be. Another issue is what Turkish feminists call “the project feminism.” Like everywhere else, the global neoliberalization has been pushing more and more women’s groups into professionalization and bureaucratization, namely NGOization in the Middle East (see Chapter 3). With the growing NGOization, women’s groups have been focusing more on single issues that draw funding from supranational entities and wealthy Western nations than the issues that are important but not the priority of funding sources. Continuing feminist mobilization is important in the region to protect the uneven ­progress made toward gender equality and to improve women’s rights.6 References Abu-­Lughod, Lila. (Ed.). 1998. Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ahmad, Leila. 1982. “Feminism and Feminist Movements in the Middle East: A Preliminary Exploration: Turkey, Egypt, Algeria, People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen.” Women’s Studies International Forum 5, no. 2: 153–168. Aldıkaçtı Marshall, Gül. 2013. Shaping Gender Policy in Turkey: Grassroots Women Activists, the European Union, and the Turkish State. New York: SUNY Press. Al-­Mughni, Haya. 1996. “Women’s Organizations in Kuwait.” Middle East Report, no. 198 ( January-­March): 32–35. Demirdirek, Aynur. 1998. “In Pursuit of Ottoman Women’s Movement.” In Zehra F. Arat (Ed.), Deconstructing Images of “The Turkish Women” (pp. 65–81). New York: St Martin’s Press. Eileraas, Karina. 2016. “Revolution Undressed: The Politics of Rage and Aesthetics in Aliaa Elmahdy’s Body Activism.” In Frances Hasso and Zakia Salime (Eds.), Freedom Without Permission: Bodies and Space in the Arab Revolutions (pp. 196–220). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Eslen-­Ziya, Hande. 2016. “Social Media and Turkish Feminism: New Resources for Social Activism.” In Nahed Eltantawy (Ed.), Women and Media in the Middle East: From Veiling to Blogging (pp. 95–105). New York: Routledge. Ferguson, Susanna. 1995. “Listening to Rights Talk in Damascus: Women’s Rights, Human Rights, and the State in Syria, 2009–11.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 35, no. 3: 557–574. Frank, Ana, and Celik, Ayse Betul. 2017. “Beyond Islamic versus Secular Framing: A Critical Analysis of Reproductive Rights Debates in Turkey.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 195–218. Gheytanchi, Elham, and Moghadam, Vlantine. 2014. “Women, Social Protests, and the New Media Activism in the Middle East and North Africa.” International Review of Modern Sociology 40, no. 1: 1–26. Göle, Nilüfer. 2015. Islam and Secularity: The Future of the Europe’s Public Sphere. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

 The gravity of this issue is demonstrated by Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention in 2021, 10 years after becoming the first country to ratify the treaty. The government argued that the treaty normalizes homosexuality and imperils family values.

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Hasso, Frances. 2016. “The Sect-­Sex-­Police Nexus and Politics in Bahrain’s Pearl Revolution.” In Frances Hasso and Zakia Salime (Eds.), Freedom without Permission: Bodies and Space in the Arab Revolutions (pp. 105–137). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Jayawardena, Kumari, 2016. Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World. London: Verso Books. Kaedber, Deema, and Naber, Nadine. 2019. “Reflections on Feminist Interventions within the 2015 Anticorruption Protests in Lebanon.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 18, no. 2: 457–470. Kandiyoti, Deniz. 1991. Women, Islam & the State. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Makki, May, Mawla, Mira, Khatib, Islam, El Mir, Hanine, and Kaddoura, Sarah. 2018. “Lessons Learned in the Making of a Feminist Bloc.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 14, no. 3: 363–367. Toska, Zehra. 1998. “Cumhuriyet’in Kadın İdeali: Esiği Aşanlar ve Aşamayanlar” (The Republic’s Ideal Woman: Those Who Jump the Threshold and Those Who Do Not). In Ayşe Berktay Hacımirzaoğlu (Ed.), 75 Yılda Kadınlar ve Erkekler (Women and Men in 75 Years) (pp. 71–88). İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yayınları.

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The State, the Media, and the Revival of Labor Activism in the Middle East Anne Alexander This chapter discusses the relationship between two parallel and often intersecting ­processes that have played a crucial role in reshaping the Middle East in recent years. The first of these is the fragmentation of the model of direct state control over the media, which predominated across much of the region from the 1950s onwards, and its partial replacement by alternative modes of state intervention in the media. The second is the revival of independent workers’ organizations and trade unions and the resurgence in strikes and collective action related to workplaces, as distinct from street protests or community-­based campaigns. This second trend could also be framed in a similar fashion to the first: as the partial breakdown of the previously dominant model of state-­run trade union bodies and the emergence of a more hybrid environment, where “old’ official unions are often in competition with “new,” “independent” workers’ organizations. While both of these trends have been discussed separately by a range of authors, the connections between them have rarely been explored, except in the case of Egypt.1 The relationship between the process of state-­building in the post-­colonial era and the creation of state media institutions has often been dominated by the example of Egypt. Voice of the Arabs (Sawt al-­Arab) radio and television services were deeply associated with the challenge posed by Gamal Abdel-­Nasser to the colonial order in the region after he emerged as the leader of the military regime that took power in Egypt in 1952 by overthrowing the British-­backed monarchy. The Egyptian Radio and Television Union (ERTU) building on the Nile Corniche in Maspero, downtown Cairo, also provided a physical embodiment of the Nasserist state’s approach to the management of the media: the Minister of Information’s offices were situated in the top of the ERTU tower, “upstairs” from the newsrooms and studios below, offering literal oversight and frequently very  Alexander and Aouragh, “Arab Revolutions”; “What Is to Be Done.”

1

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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74  The State, the Media, and the Revival of Labor Activism in the Middle East active “top-­down” intervention in the media production process. ERTU was only one component of a complex of state media institutions covering print, radio, and terrestrial TV, which between them monopolized the media landscape for much of the last half of the twentieth century. Other states in the region that, like Egypt, were ruled by state capitalist regimes (often espousing a version of “Arab Socialism”), f­requently adopted similar state-­centric approaches to managing the media (see Chapters 11,12, 23). Thus Syria, Algeria, Iraq, the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, and Libya during the Gaddafi era all built up large state-­owned media apparatuses. This approach to managing the media landscape was never uniform across the region – Lebanon’s media remained largely privately owned for example, while in Jordan newspapers were publicly owned corporations with the government retaining a monopoly over TV and radio broadcasting.2 The fragmentation of direct state control was driven by a number of different ­processes including technological changes, such as the rise firstly of satellite broadcasting, which eroded the monopoly power of national TV and radio, and later the emergence of internet-­ based media outlets and social media platforms. The 1990s and early 2000s were notable for the dramatic rise in viewership of satellite TV and the foundation of regional satellite broadcasters in the Gulf such as Saudi-­based MBC and the Qatari ­channel Al-­Jazeera. The latter in particular played an important political role in directly challenging the narratives of the state broadcasters and its protest coverage was highly influential (see Chapter 16).3 The fragmentation of state control of the print media and the rise of online media production (both of a commercial and activist orientation) were also extremely important from the point of view of developments in the labor movement. Journalists in the expanding privately owned print media sector in Egypt, for example, during the 2000s played an important role in disseminating news of workers’ strikes and protests far beyond activist circles, including crucially to workers in other towns and cities. However, the rapid growth of mobile phone ownership (and the relatively wide dissemination of camera phones) fed into a rise in internet access and use of social media platforms by wider layers of the population (see Chapter 13). This made possible new forms of media production by labor movement activists, including the use of Facebook pages by workers’ organizations to meet a range of goals including mobilization for collective action, external communication with employers, state agencies, and wider publics (such as users of public services who might be impacted by strikes). In some circumstances Facebook pages or Facebook groups functioned as platforms for internal communication and discussion as they allowed leaders, activists and “rank-­and-­f ile” union members or striking workers to debate developments such as the outcomes of negotiations or actions by the state.4 It is important not to assume that these forms of media production penetrated the workers’ movement evenly – access to the internet, ownership of smartphones, literacy and technical skills are unevenly distributed across the population of the region (and there is wide variation between countries). The older, poorer, and less well-­educated you are, the less likely you are to have access to the internet, use social media, or own a

 Tweissi, “Jordan: Media’s Sustainability During Hard Times,” 59–60.  Lynch, Voices of the New Arab Public Iraq, Al-­Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today. 4  Alexander and Aouragh, “Arab Revolutions.” 2 3

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smartphone. Unsurprisingly, relatively highly educated workers in public services, including junior doctors, teachers, and civil servants have often led the way in developing an online media presence for emerging labor organizations, while independent unions representing manual workers have often been less likely to rely on social media platforms for communicating and organizing. Teacher union activists Egypt during a major strike in 2011 coordinated mobilization from the provinces to Cairo for protest: “We don’t have a leader. We’ve all organized ourselves on Facebook to come in groups from our home towns,” one participant reported.5 By contrast, Egyptian textile worker activists did not extensively or independently use Facebook to communicate and organize between factories to the same extent, even during extensive waves of strike action.6 A similar pattern can be observed in relation to Sudan since 2016: teachers’ and doctors’ organizations have built up substantial networks of Facebook pages representing local groups, such as the provincial branches of the Sudanese Teachers’ Committee, in addition to large and highly active pages for national organizations, which aggregated and published reports of activities from across the country. The main Facebook page of the Sudanese Teachers’ Committee had over 55,000 likes in February 2022, and the Central Committee of Sudan’s Doctors (CCSD) was liked by 253,500 at the same date.7 Major groups of manual workers who had also taken strike action and engaged with the popular uprising that erupted in 2018, such as workers and employees in the Ports Authority, had also created a presence on social media, but it was more recent and at a lower level of activity and development as an organizational hub for the movement. The Association of Workers and Employees in the Port Authority counted 6,400 likes on its Facebook page at the same date, for example.8 While there are likely to be other factors at play to explain some of these differences – such as different structures of the workplaces concerned, the size of the workforce, and the degree to which the organization engaged activists in the large Sudanese diaspora – social class is highly relevant to considering connectivity. The Freedom on the Net report 2020 noted that “Internet access is prohibitively expensive for many users,” and that a month’s fixed-­line internet service could cost half the average monthly income.9 The pressures leading labor movement activists to experiment with new forms of media production came from a number of directions. Firstly, in a wide number of countries across the region, neoliberal economic reforms led to worsening working conditions, increased job insecurity, and in many cases mass redundancies from state-­owned enterprises (often coupled with hiring freezes in public services). As these reforms were instituted by the state, and were not accompanied by any meaningful opening in a political sense, in most cases the official state-­run trade union bodies were either actively engaged in their implementation, or powerless to resist them. The contradiction between these multipronged assaults on workers’ living standards and working  MENA Solidarity, “Egypt.”  Author’s own observations, private conversations with Egyptian labor journalists and independent trade union activists 2007-­2012 7  Author’s observations, February 2022. 8  Author’s observations, February 2022. 9  Freedom House, “Sudan.” 5 6

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76  The State, the Media, and the Revival of Labor Activism in the Middle East conditions and the lack of an organized response was resolved in a number of different ways – sometimes by a battle inside the official union bodies to wrest control away from the bureaucracy associated with the regime and reorient the unions on defending their members’ interests, and sometimes by the organization of new, independent workers’ organizations outside the control of the state and the ruling party. In Tunisia, activists in the middle layers of the bureaucracy of the Tunisian General Labor Union Union (Générale Tunisienne du Travail, or UGTT) and the federation’s rank and file were successful in breaking the control of the regime in early 2011 with the result that the UGTT played an important role in the popular uprising against Ben Ali, which triggered the regional wave of revolutions that swept through Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, and Libya. In Egypt by contrast, the official trade union body remained firmly under state control, and activists set up independent unions, with the first of these appearing in 2008. The Algerian official trade union federation, the General Union of Algerian Workers (Union Générale des Travailleurs Algériens, or UGTA), faced both internal challenges to the pro-­government bureaucracy and competition from proliferating autonomous unions, which were legalized in the 1990s. In almost every country in the region, these organizational shifts were preceded by waves of workplace-­based collective action, including strikes, workplace occupations, and workers’ protests (including demonstrations, marches, and sit-­ins targeting employers, government leaders, and often the official trade unions supposedly mandated to act on workers’ behalf ).10 In many cases, new forms of workplace-­based organizations, whether strike committees, rank-­and-­file activist networks, independent unions, and federations of unions, to some extent grew out of the organizational activity that powered the collective action itself. This has been well documented in the case of Egypt, where the first independent union to be founded since 1957 was created by activists who led a successful strike by Property Tax Collectors in 2007. In Sudan, the emergence of the Sudanese Professionals Association, an umbrella organization bringing together trade union networks representing journalists, lawyers, doctors, engineers, and other professional groups, in 2018 followed sustained efforts to organize strikes by junior ­doctors and teachers in 2016–2018. Algerian activists have argued that the growth of the autonomous unions from the mid-­2000s onwards was directly related to the upsurge in strikes by public service workers, especially teachers and health workers, around the same period.11 Strikes in the manufacturing sector, such as the major dispute at the ­state-­owned vehicle production factory SNVI in Rouiba in 2016, also appear to have boosted internal challenges to the pro-­regime bureaucracy in the official union federation. The Rouiba branch of the UGTA was one of those backing attempts to unseat

 Alexander, “Ten Years since the Arab Revolutions”; Beinin, Workers and Thieves Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt; Bishara, Contesting Authoritarianism; Larabi, Hamouchene, and Smith, “Trade Unions and the Algerian Uprising”; Yousfi, Trade Unions and Arab Revolutions; Alexander, “Striking for Rights? Workers’ Political Agency and Revolutionary Crisis in the Middle East.” 11  Larabi, Hamouchene, and Smith, “Trade Unions and the Algerian Uprising.” 10

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the UGTA general secretary Sidi Said in April-­May 2019 by calling for a special congress and a vote of no confidence.12 The opportunities and challenges encountered by strike organizers as a result of the combined and interacting changes in both the media environment and the landscape of state-­society relations resulting from the acceleration of neoliberal economic reforms were considerable. In terms of opportunities, growing access to social media platforms and increasing competition between state-­owned and privately owned media outlets made it easier in some cases to publish the strikers’ own demands and amplify their voices to a range of audiences, including state officials, employers, wider publics, and other workers. In some countries, lively activist media networks emerged using a range of tools and platforms from blogging to Twitter and Telegram, some of which were focused specifically on labor solidarity. In addition to reporting on strikes and workers’ protests for local audiences, some of these addressed international audiences, publishing information in English aimed at international trade unions and global media networks. For many labor movement activists, strike organizing provided their first opportunities to engage directly with the media, either as producers of their own content or through speaking directly to journalists. Examples of content produced regularly by or on behalf of striking workers include digital posters, mobilizational videos, video recordings of workers’ actions, statements, lists of demands, digitized copies of correspondence with management and commentary, online polls and surveys (not necessarily conducted using a formal polling function, but rather relying on a rough count of audience interactions such as Facebook “likes”).13 There were huge challenges to overcome, however. Some of these were related to the impact of social class and level of formal education on the likelihood of striking workers themselves having the necessary skills to produce effective media content and disseminate it, or whether they would remain reliant on sympathetic activists or independent-­ minded journalists to get their message across. A more fundamental problem was that the apparent changes in media ownership from state to private hands did not remove the problem of intense surveillance and repression of opposition activists, neither did it in itself provide a counterweight to state propaganda. Rather, surveillance, repression, and the articulation of pro-­government messages were now distributed across a range of media platforms.14 In Egypt for example, the military-­led government that took power in a coup in 2013, adopted a range of tactics for intervention in the media, all of which had significant effects on labor movement activists. These included forms of online v­ igilantism and harassment, introduction of draconian laws policing speech online (and regular prosecutions of social media users for breaching them), direct censorship of media outlets and arrests of journalists, and acquisition of media companies by the ­security services and army.15 The overall result was a dramatic curtailment in the ­opportunities for self-­ expression in any media by people critical of the existing regime. Thus, platforms and  MENA Solidarity, “Rank-­and-­File Revolt Gears up inside Algeria’s UGTA.”  Alexander and Aouragh, “Arab Revolutions.”; author’s observations. 14  Herrera, “Citizenship under Surveillance”; POMEPS, “Digital Activism and Authoritarian Adaptation in the Middle East.” 15  RSF, “Sisification of the Media – a Hostile Takeover.” 12 13

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78  The State, the Media, and the Revival of Labor Activism in the Middle East online spaces that had temporarily become more hospitable to labor activism turned into hostile environments, where the traceability of individual users and their interactions could be weaponized by the state and its agents (see Chapter 43). Over the past decade and a half, the region has witnessed massive protest cycles mobilizing a much wider set of social movements than the labor movement alone. These protest mobilizations have sometimes started with rebellions over socioeconomic issues, such as unemployment (Tunisia in late 2010/early 2011), rises in food prices and shortages of basic necessities such as fuel and cash (Sudan in 2018), or the imposition of new taxes (Lebanon in 2019), or have been triggered by the massive popular response to demands for political change and reform (Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, and Libya in 2011 and Algeria in 2019). In all of these cases, socioeconomic grievances rapidly expanded into a broad agenda for political change, while the converse has also been true: some of these popular uprisings that began with political demands later took on a social character. The importance of the media to these broad, popular mobilizations (hirak in Arabic) has long been recognized, but the exact nature of that role is also sharply debated. In a very wide range of countries, the visible infrastructure of these mass popular movements that have mobilized through street protests (and sometimes shopkeepers’ and workers’ strikes) has frequently taken a mediatized form: through Facebook pages and the events they host or cohost, around hashtags raising specific demands on Twitter, and more recently through Telegram broadcast channels or networks of WhatsApp chats. Unlike the wave of mobilizations contesting globalization during the early 2000s, described by some analysts as a “movement of movements,” the hirak in some contexts has been characterized by the apparent absence of preexisting organizations (or their relative lack of political and organizational influence within it).16 One of the reasons for this is the relatively atrophied nature of associational life under many of the authoritarian regimes challenged by the popular uprisings. In some cases, media forms initially substituted for more traditional forms of social movement organization, or became a stage in the development of more organized movements. A classic example of this process is the 6th April Youth Movement in Egypt, which crystallized out of the Facebook group created by a group of youth activists to mobilize support for a general strike on 6 April 2008 in solidarity with textile workers in the Delta town of al-­Mahalla al-­Kubra who had planned a strike calling for a rise in the national minimum wage. While some of the activists who founded 6th April had preexisting histories in other organizations or networks, the ­project was not a coalition between the representatives of different groups. Moreover, the runaway success of the Facebook group in recruiting tens of thousands of participants and the repressive response of the authorities in response to the strike call, led to layers of new activists becoming involved.17 Another example of activists using transnational social media platforms as part of the scaffolding for countrywide coordination of protests in the absence of social movements

 Cox and Nilsen, “Social Movements Research and the ‘Movement of Movements.’”  Dunn, “Public as Politician? The Improvised Hierarchies of Participatory Influence of the April 6th Youth Movement Facebook Group.”

16 17

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existing at a national level can be found in Syria in 2011.18 Local activist groups coordinated slogans and demands for the regular Friday protests across social media platforms such as Facebook, achieving a relatively high degree of coherence in terms of the messages relayed by the protests at an aggregate level – rather than each town or city mobilizing under its own slogans. Similar processes of coordination and aggregation were at work during the Algerian mass movement that erupted in 2019 and the Sudanese revolution during the same year (see Chapter 28).19 In all of these cases, a tradition of protest on Fridays became established early on in the mass movement, creating a weekly cycle of mobilization and protest operating in each locality. But the visible aggregation of protests, the shared knowledge of the numbers participating and the coordination of slogans and demands between localities was vitally important to activists and participants, particularly in cases where protesters had faced repression by the authorities. During the mass strikes that took place in some cases as part of these broader mobilizations, pages or accounts set up by activists on social media platforms sometimes played a similar scaffolding role. For example, on 28–29 May 2019, the Sudanese Professionals Association called a nationwide general strike in support of a rapid transition to civilian rule. The main SPA Facebook page served a two-­way function with groups of activists organizing the strike in their workplaces and localities: communicating the call for action outwards, then aggregating and disseminating reports of action as it happened, with pictures and videos of different groups of striking workers showing their participation in the strike. Some activists promoted innovative methods for workers to declare their attention to strike in advance and help build momentum for the mobilization, including a virtual “attendance book” to which they could sign up.20 However, reliance on deploying the almost real-­time capacity of social media platforms to aggregate and disseminate information was always vulnerable to disruption. The second major general strike in Sudan in 2019 on June 9–11 took place in the context of a nationwide internet blackout, as the transitional military government attempted to cut activists off from communication networks as it battled to crush the protest movement. Moreover, the relationship between the labor movement and workplace-­based struggles on the one hand, and broader political mobilizations targeting the anciens régimes on the other hand has not always been easy. In Egypt, the massive wave of strikes that erupted following the fall of Mubarak on 11 February 2011 was criticized heavily by some opposition activists as motivated by selfish “sectional” demands for better pay and working conditions, and counterposed to the political goals of the wider movement for change. When demonstrations resumed on Fridays during the spring and summer, there was little coordination between the battles in the workplaces and the reemerging street protest movement. Striking workers were left to rely on their own efforts to publicize their cause and mobilize support for their demands, despite the fact that in many cases strikes were explicitly directed at removing managers associated with the old ruling party and in some cases, such as the major doctors’ and teachers’ strikes in May and September 2011

 Badran, “Syria: A Fragmented Media System.”  Alexander, “Ten Years since the Arab Revolutions.” 20  Alexander. 18 19

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80  The State, the Media, and the Revival of Labor Activism in the Middle East respectively, included broad political goals that could have been integrated into a wider agenda for political reform. Moreover, it is important not to overstate the degree to which successful coordination of general strikes could be achieved simply through using the massive reach of activist pages on social media platforms to substitute for more rooted forms of local organization. This was particularly the case as the mass movements’ antagonists in the state moved from defensive and reactive mode under the shock of the protest wave to the offensive. Kamel Aissat notes the contrast between the organization of the first major general strike in Algeria in March 2019 and the general strike in December the same year that was combined with a boycott of the presidential elections.21 The first strike was called by several of the major autonomous union federations, but took place in the c­ ontext of a huge protest surge and amid clear signs that the regime was under pressure to make concessions. The media infrastructures of the broader movement and the autonomous unions worked in concert to amplify the strike call. The December 2019 strike was only really successful in Bejaia province. There were a range of likely reasons for this, including the greater success by activists there in sustaining networks between different organizations and across different workplaces over a lengthy period of time. The December 2019 strike required a much longer period of preparation than the March 2019 strike and relied to a larger extent on building up support in individual workplaces plus coordination between a range of political groups backing the strike. The preparation for the December 2019 strike in Bejaia also took into account the potential impact of strike action on basic services in a way that the March action did not, with activists making some provision for emergency services and guarantees of food supplies. Coordinating this type of response required discussion and planning in advance rather than simply agitating for a total shutdown. In conclusion, the use of different types of media by labor movement activists needs to be considered as part of a bigger picture that includes consideration of changing behaviors by state institutions and governing parties, the cyclical rise and fall of wider movements of political contestation, and broader shifts in media ownership and the adoption of new technologies (see Chapter 26). Media infrastructures can play significant roles in scaffolding social movement organization, including social movements oriented on the workplaces and mobilizing collective action by workers, but they cannot be meaningfully discussed in isolation from the wider social and political context. References Aissat, Kamel. 2019. “How Grassroots Democracy Powered Béjaia’s General Strike against Algerian Presidential Election.” MENA Solidarity Network (blog), December 31, https:// menasolidaritynetwork.com/2019/12/31/how-­g rassroots-­democracy-­powered-­bejaias-­ general-­strike-­against-­algerias-­presidential-­election/ Alexander, Anne. 2020. “Striking for Rights? Workers’ Political Agency and Revolutionary Crisis in the Middle East.” In Roel Meijer, James N. Sater, and Zahra R. Babar (Eds.), Routledge  Aissat, “How Grassroots Democracy Powered Béjaia’s General Strike Against Algerian Presidential Election.”

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Handbook of Citizenship in the Middle East and North Africa (pp. 215–229). London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429058288. Alexander, Anne. 2021. “Ten Years Since the Arab Revolutions: Voices from a Rebellious Decade.” International Socialism, April 6, http://isj.org.uk/rebellious-­decade Alexander, Anne, and Aouragh, Miriyam. 2014. “Arab Revolutions: Breaking Fear| Egypt’s Unfinished Revolution: The Role of the Media Revisited.” International Journal of Communication 8, 0 (March 17): 26. Badran, Yazan. 2021. “Syria: A Fragmented Media System.” In Carola Richter and Claudia Kozman (Eds.), Arab Media Systems (pp. 19–36) Open Book. Beinin, Joel. 2016. Workers and Thieves Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. Stanford University Press. Bishara, Dina. 2018. Contesting Authoritarianism. Cambridge University Press, https://www. cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-­i nternational-­relations/middle-­e ast­government-­politics-­and-­policy/contesting-­authoritarianism-­labor-­challenges-­state-­egypt and https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-­international-­relations/ middle-­east-­government-­politics-­and-­policy Cox, Laurence, and Nilsen, Alf Gunvald. 2007. “Social Movements Research and the ‘Movement of Movements’: Studying Resistance to Neoliberal Globalisation: Researching the ‘Movement of Movements.’” Sociology Compass 1, 2 (November): 424–442. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1751-­9020.2007.00051.x. Dunn, Alexandra. 2012. “Public as Politician? The Improvised Hierarchies of Participatory Influence of the April 6th Youth Movement Facebook Group.” New Media, Alternative Politics Working Papers. Centre of Governance and Human Rights, https://www. theengineroom.org/wp-­content/uploads/2012/03/NMAP_Dunn_paper_4.pdf Freedom House. 2020. “Sudan: Freedom on the Net 2020 Country Report.” Freedom House, https://freedomhouse.org/country/sudan/freedom-­net/2020 Herrera, Linda. 2015. “Citizenship Under Surveillance: Dealing with the Digital Age.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47, 2: 354–356. Larabi, Samir, Hamouchene, Hamza, and Smith, Shelagh. 2020. “Trade Unions and the Algerian Uprising.” MENA Solidarity Network, May, https://menasolidaritynetwork.com/algerianuprisingreport/ Lynch, Marc. 2009. Voices of the New Arab Public Iraq, Al-­Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today. New York: Columbia University Press. MENA Solidarity. 2011. “Egypt: Teachers Tell Generals ‘Meet Our Demands … or No School This Year.’” MENA Solidarity Network (blog), September 13, https://menasolidaritynetwork. com/2011/09/13/egypt-­teachers-­tell-­generals-­meet-­our-­demands-­or-­no-­school-­this-­year/ MENA Solidarity. 2019. “Rank-­and-­File Revolt Gears Up Inside Algeria’s UGTA.” MENA Solidarity Network (blog), April 16, https://menasolidaritynetwork.com/2019/04/16/rank-­and-­file-­ revolt-­gears-­up-­inside-­algerias-­ugta/ POMEPS. 2021. “Digital Activism and Authoritarian Adaptation in the Middle East.” POMEPS, August, https://pomeps.org/wp-­content/uploads/2021/08/POMEPS_Studies_43_Web.pdf RSF. 2019. “Sisification of the Media – a Hostile Takeover.” RSF, January 25, https://rsf.org/en/ news/sisification-­media-­hostile-­takeover Tweissi, Basim. 2021 “Jordan: Media’s Sustainability During Hard Times.” In Carola Richter and Claudia Kozman (Eds.), Arab Media Systems (pp. 55–72). Open Book. El-­Hamalawy, Hossam (3arabawy). 2012. “What Is to Be Done: The Website as an Organizer #RevSoc,” September 6, https://arabawy.org/38405/what-­is-­to-­be-­done-­the-­website-­as-­an-­ organizer-­revsoc/ Yousfi, Hela. 2018. Trade Unions and Arab Revolutions: The Tunisian Case of UGTT. Routledge.

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The Meaning and Purpose of “Minority Media” in the Middle East and North Africa Elizabeth Monier Introduction Two subjects that have garnered increased interest and attention in scholarship on the Middle East since the Arab uprisings are the role of media and the politics of minorities. The rupture caused by the Arab Spring phenomenon is linked with ideas about representation and recognition. As a result, interest in representation of minorities and the potential of the media to play a role in this have become increasingly important questions (see Chapters 35, 36, 37). The study of minority media in the Middle East also taps into scholarship in media studies that focuses on the role of indigenous media, global media, and the use of media among diaspora communities (see Chapter 40). This chapter contextualizes these trends within the Middle East because it cannot be assumed that all minority media is formed and ­performed for the same purpose or audience. Across the Middle East there is a diversity of languages, ethnicities, and religions that has been obscured by the focus of Middle Eastern media scholarship on pan-­Arabic media spaces (Sreberny 2001; Mellor et al. 2011). This pluralism is becoming increasingly recognized, however, and non-­mainstream media, social media, and diasporic media are all contributing to how these different communities organize themselves and relate to their homelands and to each other (see Chapters 19, 38, 39). At the same time, there are levels of tension within the topic of minority media regarding its content and its goals. This chapter describes this tension as stemming from the negative associations with the term “minority” to ask whether minority media exists at all and what does the media we might label as minority aim to achieve. The empirical and theoretical study of the media as a tool of community identity preservation and the performance of this identity is constantly changing due to developing media technologies and also to the fluid nature of the communities themselves, The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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particularly in a climate of instability and displacement. This chapter then will outline first what we mean by minority media and why it is complicated by being conceptualized as minority media. It will then consider the main purposes of such media. I will suggest that this media fulfills several roles directed both internally to an audience within a ­particular community and externally to out-­g roups in order to represent a ­particular community or interest to others. Finally, the chapter will reflect on the implications of the development of communications technology, the globalization of knowledge and the movement of people and how this affects our understanding of the operationalization of media internationally. I conclude that Stephen Riggins’s (1992) fears about minority media causing assimilation or marginalization are less pertinent in the light of these developments, which enable alternative media to connect into global media (see Chapters 19, 27). Global connectivity establishes links between communities that, if they do not counter the potential ­isolationist aspect of particularistic media, at least balance the risk.

Does Minority Media Exist? The first point that needs to be discussed is the label “minority” as applied to media. Does minority media exist at all, or in other words, what do we really mean by the term “minority media”? Is it defined as minority by its producers, its audience, or its content? What do we actually expect it to do? As with the application of minority to a group of people, perspective is important. Generally, minority media is applied to the media of a community that is considered to be a minority. The label itself can be controversial because it implies more than just a quantitative description; it also implies a category with social implications and poses analytical challenges (Smith 1987). In the modern world, minorities are often categorized as such within the framework of the nation-­state and imply the existence of a majority to which they are “other” ( Jackson-­Preece  2004). Therefore, a sense of marginalization is implied and this can carry with it the sense of disadvantage or disempowerment. For some groups in society, this concept is embraced and leads to advocacy for empowerment based on this minority identity (cf. Berbrier 2004). For others, it is rejected as a categorization that enhances “otherness” within society (Monier 2017). The status of being a minority is either embraced or rejected then, usually within the  context of a nation-­state, in which an individual has multiple affiliations that shape relations between individuals themselves and between individuals and the state (Iskander 2012b). The (de)construction of minority identity is therefore historically contingent and tied to the evolution of nationalist thought (Monier 2017), forming part of national identity discourses produced in both the colonial and postcolonial periods (Dirlik 2002). While the notion of minority identity is constituted in part by its “otherness” to the state, it also contributes to constituting the state by acting as a barometer of what is “legitimate national culture” and what is not national culture (Bourdieu 1994, 8). A minority does not exist without a majority and vice versa. Similarly, minority media implies that there is a majority media, which is expected to represent a space that reflects and affirms the state’s homogenizing force (Bourdieu 1994, 7).

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The purpose of what we would term minority media then is often to act as the space to perform subnational identities to meet the particular needs of a segment of the population that are “othered” by mainstream media and the dominant conceptualization of national culture. Therefore, I would suggest it is not the identity of the producer of the media that necessarily determines its status as “minority” or alternative to mainstream media but a combination of the content, target audience, funding, aims, and perhaps most crucially, positionality vis-­à-­vis the state. How media is located transnationally is also increasingly influential. Although a particular media platform might be “other” in terms of the national public sphere, it may represent the majority in a particular region or be linked into a diasporic community that has global networks and influence that are  re-­shaping the role, influence and purpose of forms of non-­mainstream media (cf. Monier 2017; Westbrook and Saad 2016). In Iraq, Kurdish language (an official language in Iraq) and media dominate in the Kurdish Region so in that context it is the mainstream majority media; however, viewed from the national lens it would be a minority media (see Chapters 19, 37). Furthermore, would a specifically Shi’ite media platform be viewed as minority or majority media? The Shi’ite population makes up the majority of the Iraqi citizens but specifically Shi’ite media is not the same as mainstream Iraqi national media, leading Matthiesen to identify a Shia public sphere consisting of “both media outlets and physical places of public debate” (2016). In this case the audience is the majority but it is particularistic, serving the interests of a group that is constructed as both subnational and transnational at once. A further problem with the label minority as applied to media is when the rejection of the term minority is part of the raison d’être of the media. Included in the underlying narrative produced by Amazigh media across North Africa is an effort to raise awareness that the Amazigh language (Tamazight) and culture actually represent the heritage of a majority, or at least of a substantial proportion of the population (Ihaddudin 1992, 254). The aim of producers is to increase awareness of this heritage, to promote it as belonging to peoples across North Africa (and North Africans in the diaspora), to preserve it, and to enhance recognition at the level of the different states of the region (Monier 2018). This effort has actually witnessed partial progress, through the recognition of Tamazight as an official state language alongside Arabic in Morocco (2011) and in Algeria, where it was declared a national language in 2002 and an official language in 2016. The term minority media can obscure such variations in content, audience, and purpose. While acknowledging that alternative media has also been contentious (for example Atton 2002), an umbrella term of alternative media or particularistic media could be employed to encompass the different kinds of non-­mainstream media produced by different communities directed at particularistic communities, i.e. those other than what is defined as the national community media. Perhaps terming it subnational may highlight the impact of the national framework in or perceptions and categorizations of minorities in general, and therefore minority media even further. Still, this problematization of the meanings of minority media does not completely devalue minority media as a concept, as long as it is contextualized. It is also useful in exploring the use of media in empowerment in a context of minoritization.

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The Tasks of an Alternative Media Space If the categorization of media depends on the identity of its audience and the national context, it also depends on the aims and tasks it fulfills and the audience it is directed at. The very label of minority immediately sets up a sense of otherness from a majority – a norm which at once suggests that this alternative media is necessary to represent a ­section of the population that does not otherwise have access to or appear visible in majority or mainstream media. There is an aspect of marginalization to this and the expectation that the purpose of alternative media is focused on preserving subnational identities and empowering different communities. Riggins argues that there is no better strategy for ensuring minority survival than “the development by  minorities of their own media conveying their own point of view in their own ­language” (1992, 3). The existence of some kind of minority/alternative media belonging to a community suggests that it is needed. According to Cottle (2000, 24–25), one of the key functions of such alternative media is to compensate for gaps in mainstream media, while Caspi and Elias suggest it can also act as a defense against underrepresentation or misrepresentation (2014, 11, 220). This explains why, in his classic volume on ethnic minority media, Stephen Riggins (1992) argues that minority media can be used to empower a community. However, he acknowledges that in acting as a compensatory space, ­particularistic forms of minority media could enhance marginalization. Research on Coptic (Egyptian Christian) media has also suggested that relying on separate media spaces can cause isolation and increase marginalization of a community. This is caused by a reduction in knowledge and visibility in mainstream media and the public sphere as a community retreats into a separate sphere that speaks only to itself (Iskander 2012a). As a result, this not only fails to challenge the minoritization process within mainstream media but also reinforces it. If there are such risks in creating and using separate particularistic media, why do communities that may already experience marginalization seek to establish such platforms? Like other forms of community organization, the reasons are multiple and outcomes vary as each perform different actions depending on the context and aims of each community. Minority media  – which could also variously be termed ethnic minority media, community media, indigenous media, or particularistic media in different contexts – cannot be viewed as a unified form of media as it will be produced and consumed by a variety of individuals and for a variety of reasons that change over time according to circumstances and media technology. It is perhaps to be expected that popular mainstream media will not represent all the interests of individuals within a single state, especially in multicultural societies, and some media platforms will simply reflect a desire to form special interest forums, while others represent a platform for resistance, activism and calls for marginalized communities to achieve greater visibility in the public sphere through popular media discourse. Taking all of this into consideration, this chapter suggests that alternative media spaces, often used by minorities, fulfill several roles, some of which are directed to other

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community members and others that are designed to represent the community to ­others. These can be summarized as follows: 1. A role in community construction and preservation by socializing members into the community. This is especially crucial when the marginalized community is spread across the territory of a state or if the community is located across national borders or in diaspora communities. 2. For preserving and passing on heritage, such as religious beliefs and language. 3. To increase awareness among out-­g roups regarding the community’s identity and heritage. 4. For advocacy for the community, to campaign for rights and interests through a platform under the community’s own control and thereby provide agency and empowerment.

Minority Media/Global Media These four aspects of alternative media can be said to have been facilitated and perhaps rendered increasingly necessary in the Middle East in light of the global developments in media technology and media cultures, in addition to political developments in the region. A particular factor in shaping new ways in which “minority” or community media is being used is the displacement of communities both within their homelands and into diaspora communities across the world. There are many long-­ standing Middle Eastern diasporas particularly in North America, Australia, and Europe but these have grown in the twenty-­f irst century (see Chapter 38). For example, the majority of Iraq’s ancient indigenous Christian population now resides outside of Iraq, due to political insecurity since 2003. The literature on minority, ethnic, community, or indigenous media normally discusses this media in terms of its being a non-­mainstream media within the framework of a nation-­state or national society. However, the continuing developments of new media technologies alongside the globalization of information and patterns of migration will inevitably lead to changes in the way that some forms of non-­mainstream media are conceptualized and performed. Some scholars of global and community media suggest that social media, in particular, represents the biggest change in how media is produced and consumed (Obar, Zube, and Lampe 2012). One key illustration is the way that media and other communications technologies have enabled diasporas to establish networks. Through new media technology they are far more integrated, not only between each separate diaspora community and the Homeland but also between global diaspora communities. In Costa and Alinejad’s (2020) study of Kurdish migrants in Italy, they show how the subjective meanings and experiences of the homeland are connected through social media practices. Social and other online media are perhaps among the most significant factors in enabling dispersed communities to build new communal networks and take greater steps toward the preservation and dissemination of communal heritage (Armanious and Amstutz  2013; Saad and Westbrook  2017). In  North

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America, the Coptic Canadian History Project was a blog established in 2016 with the aim of recording everyday heritage and preserving and connecting Coptic migrants’ social history and experiences. Such networking and preservation functions can be particularly critical for displaced populations who seek to reconnect with their communities, navigate displacement or refugee status, and also to aid in the preservation of heritage. The internet also amplifies the impact of community media and activism (Deuze 2002, 262). Consequently, alternative voices and media can actually become more visible globally, despite marginalization in the national context or in the context of violence or displacement (Wilson and Stewart 2008, 5). Electronic media and specifically social media networking and advocacy have therefore been vital in the case of Syrian refugees (see for example Veronis, Tabler, and Ahmed 2018; Dekker et al. 2018; Putt 2018) and the Yezidis fleeing genocide in northern Iraq who regarded social media networking and online advocacy as lifelines to preserve the heritage and secure the future of a small community dispersed globally by violence (see for example Monier 2017, 2018; Ali 2020). This utilization adds to the complexities attached to defining the use, purpose, and meaning of minority media. It further problematizes the description of communal media as minority because, taken in a global context, all media could be considered minority to something else. Alternatively, it could be argued that there is no minority media because there is no clear majority against which to describe itself as minority media. Without a clear majority, there is no clear minority. On the other hand, this media can be considered as minoritized in new ways. For example, for communities with significant ­diasporas, their media is community or non-­mainstream media in the new home country and is also non-­ mainstream but indigenous in the Homeland. The  “minority-­ness” of any form of media must therefore be understood as constructed and open to shifts in terms of its purpose, production, and consumption, all of which may render it more, or less, associated with an agenda or impact defined as “minority” in nature.

Conclusion In these ways, media used by marginalized groups are tools employed in the (re)construction and performance of communal identity and also its representation to others. As with the application of the term minority to a community, the classification as minority media is not necessary for a media to represent a marginalized media – but minority media normally carries with it the sense of marginalization. Therefore, the application of the term minority to forms of media can be analytically problematic. Community or alternative media are perhaps the most neutral descriptions, with the application of  other categorizations being dependent on the content, purpose, and audience of the media. Generally, the media used and produced by diverse communities from and within the Middle East are similar in their development to that used by other communities globally to create alternative spaces. There are aspects of the preservation and performance of

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alternative identities and heritage, the cohesion and socialization of community ­members, and the representation of specific interests to audiences both within and external to the community. This media has also been influenced by political and technological factors that have resulted in the increase in production of community media content and in the visibility of diverse communities globally. Along with increased visibility comes increased awareness of diversity. In these ways, communities historically minoritized in the Middle East have particularly felt the growing impact of the global media imperative on their communities, in terms of the ways in which they connect with ­others in the Middle East and globally (cf. Monier 2017). References Ali, Majid Hassan. 2020. “The Identity Controversy of Religious Minorities in Iraq: The Crystallization of the Yazidi Identity After 2003.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 47, no. 5: 811–831. Armanious, Febe, and Amstutz, Andrew. 2013. “Emerging Christian Media in Egypt: Clerical Authority and the Visualization of Women in Coptic Video Films.” International. Journal of Middle East Studies 45, no. 3: 513–533. Atton, Chris. 2002. Alternative Media. London: Sage. Berbrier, Mitch. 2004. “Why Are There so Many “Minorities?” Contexts 3, no. 1: 38–44. Bourdieu, Pierre. March 1994. (Translated by Loic J. D. Wacquant and Samar Farage). “Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field.” Sociological Theory 12, no. 1: 1–18. Caspi, Dan, and Elias, Nelly. 2014. Media and Ethnic Minorities in the Holy Land. London: Vallentine Mitchell. Costa, E., and Alinejad, D. 2020. “Experiencing Homeland: Social Media and Transnational Communication Among Kurdish Migrants in Northern Italy.” Global Perspectives 1, no. 1: 12783. Cottle. S. 2000. Ethnic Minorities and the Media. Buckingham: Open University Press. Dekker, R., Engbersen, G., Klaver, J., and Vonk, H. 2018. “Smart Refugees: How Syrian Asylum Migrants Use Social Media Information in Migration Decision-­Making.” Social Media + Society 4, no. 1 ( January). Deuze, Mark. 2006. “Ethnic Media, Community Media and Participatory Culture.” Journalism 7, no. 3: 262–280. Ihaddaden, Zahir. 1992. “The Postcolonial Policy of Algerian Broadcasting in Kabyle.” In Stephen Riggins (Ed.), Ethnic Minority Media: An International Perspective (pp. 243–255). London: Sage. Iskander, E. 2012a. Sectarian Conflict in Egypt: Coptic Media, Identity and Representation. London: Routledge. Iskander, E. 2012b. “The ‘Mediation’ of Muslim-­Christian Relations in Egypt: The Strategies and Discourses of the Official Egyptian Press During Mubarak’s Presidency.” Islam and Christian-­ Muslim Relations 23, no. 1: 31–44. Jackson-­Preece, J. 2004. “Who Is a Minority?” In Bohnet, Armin, and Hoher, Matthias, (Eds.) The Role of Minorities in the Development Process (pp. 7–21). Bern: Peter Lang. Matthiesen, T. 2016. “Transnational Diffusion Between Arab Shia Movements.” Paper given St.  Antony’s College, University of Oxford at the workshop, Transnational Diffusion, Cooperation and Learning in the Middle East and North Africa. ( June 8–9). Mellor, N., Dajani, N., Rinnawi, K. and Ayish, M. 2011. Arab Media Globalization and Emerging Media Industries. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

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Monier, Elizabeth. 2017. “Middle Eastern Minorities in Global Media and the Politics of National Belonging.” Arab Media and Society 24 (Summer). http://www.arabmediasociety.com/ ?article=1028 Monier, Elizabeth. 2018. “Middle Eastern Minorities and the Media.” In Paul Rowe (Ed.), Routledge Handbook of Minorities in the Middle East. London: Routledge. Obar, Jonathan, Zube, Paul, and Lampe, Clifford. 2012. “Advocacy 2.0: An Analysis of How Advocacy Groups in the United States Perceive and Use Social Media as Tools for Facilitating Civic Engagement and Collective Action.” Journal of Information Policy 2: 1–25. Putt, Karin. 2018. “Documentation and Digital Preservation of Syrian Heritage: A German Archive Project for Syria.” The Public Historian 40, no. 4: 107–128. Riggins, Stephen. 1992. Ethnic Minority Media: An International Perspective. London: Sage. Saad, Saad Michael, and Westbrook, Donald. 2015. “Copts, Scripturalization and Identity in the Diaspora.” In Vincent Wimbush (Ed.), Scripturalizing the Human: The Written as Political. New York: Routledge. Saad, Saad Michael, and Westbrook, Donald. 2017. “Religious Identity and Borderless Territoriality in the Coptic e-­Diaspora.” Journal of International Migration and Integration 18, no. 1: 341–351. Smith, M. G. 1987. “Some Problems with Minority Concepts and a Solution.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 10, no. 4: 341–362. Sreberny, A. 2001. “Mediated Culture in the Middle East: Diffusion, Democracy, Difficulties.” Gazette (Leiden, Netherlands), 63, no. 2–3: 101–119. Veronis, L., Tabler, Z., and Ahmed, R. 2018. “Syrian Refugee Youth Use Social Media: Building Transcultural Spaces and Connections for Resettlement in Ottawa, Canada.” Canadian Ethnic Studies 50, no. 2: 79–99. Westbrook, Donald, and Saad, Saad Michael. 2017. “Religious Identity and Borderless Territoriality in the Coptic e-­Diaspora.” Journal of International Migration & Integration 18: 341–351. Wilson, Pamela, and Stewart, Michelle. 2008. Global Indigenous Media: Culture, Poetics, and Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008.

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Part III

Media Industries, Markets, and Technologies

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Media Policy in the MENA The Political Impact of Media Confluence Tourya Guaaybess Introduction At the antipodes of an optimistic and blissful technological determinism of the 2000s, digital media today are associated with the evils of a neoliberal society that would almost bring up to date the Frankfurt School’s critical theories on the deleterious role of mass media. The legitimate fear of a surveillance society and the fading concept of public service media, only darkens an already obscure picture. This chapter aims to address media policy in MENA countries where this pendulum movement from euphoria to disenchantment about digital media is prominent. A few years after the 2010 Arab uprisings, state authorities in most of the affected countries took over the media.1 In opposition to this pessimistic view, however, this chapter posits that these governments could not put forward coherent media policies, and their often-­improvised ad hoc decisions for curbing the circulation of information are no longer effective in the context of contemporary media (see Chapters 11, 12, 13). “Media policy,” “public policy,” and “regulation” are concepts that have spawned prolific literature, and diverse definitions, most often associated with institutional Western democratic rule. Media policy usually entails political actions and legal mechanisms regulating the media in response to public interests. Public policy in the media domain concerned broadcasting (van Cuilenburg 2003; Ward 2008) more than digital  See for instance: Jones, M. O. (2019). “Saudi, UAE Twitter takedowns won’t curb rampant d­ isinformation on Arab Twitter.” Washington Post. Retrieved January 3, 2023, from https://www. washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/09/25/saudi-­uae-­twitter-­takedowns-­wont-­curb-­r ampant-­ disinformation-­arab-­twitter/

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media. By implementing these policies, governments, some considered paternalistic ( Jacka 2003), defended media as capable of enlightening citizens and protecting them from the market. The notion of regulation has also given rise to multiple, sometimes contradictory definitions (Koop and Lodge 2017). Today, we tend to speak of “regulation” in the sense of a method of governance ( Jordana and Levi-­Faur 2003). It is less a question of adopting a coherent policy at national or supranational levels (Cunningham and Silver  2013) than of supervising a composite set of factors (economic actors, users, public sector) and tools. The objective of regulation is to avoid certain abuses (oligopolistic positions, dissemination of false news, etc.). This chapter adopts Baldwin’s (1998) definition of “Regulation as specific form of governance: a set of authoritative rules, often accompanied by some administrative agency, for monitoring and enforcing compliance” (1998, 3). When considering the MENA region, can we seriously examine the thorny issue of “a” media policy within several countries, each with different media and various types of content? Can we even refer within a single country to a single media policy as if a concrete and consistent rationale drove it? Is it possible to highlight a clear and coherent strategy behind the implementation of the various regulatory mechanisms? The answers would probably echo the words of the columnist Jihad Khazen: You make a mistake when you measure other people by your own yardstick; the Arab media are different from other media, and control of the media in the Arab world differs from one country to the next. The Arab media are anything but monolithic. There is no state committee that meets in secret and assigns parts of the control to this prince or that sheikh. (Khazen 1999, 91)

This opening chapter to the Handbook’s section  3 on media policy undertakes this challenge. We have adopted an overall structuralist perspective insofar as we consider the regional media landscape as a system where the media (i.e. the forms and structures they induce) are linked by the very fact that they distribute their productions in the same environment. These national and transnational media players act according to opportunities, yet they often depend on the same audiences and, whether they are linked by a partnership and/or competitive relationship, they are interdependent. Such holistic approach aims to understand the media dynamics and media policies of states within the region. This perspective can capture major trends (Boltanski and Thévenot 1991) that could not be grasped by a socio-­pragmatic approach focusing more closely on the protagonists. Even countries caught in major crises – like Yemen or Libya – are integrated into the regional media system. Populations there have direct or indirect access to MENA media content. Researchers commonly use historical or legal frameworks to understand the links between media and power. The conjunction of these two disciplines can give rise to more-­or-­less convincing classificatory models (Ayish 2002; Galander 2016; Rugh 2004; Siebert, Peterson, and Schramm, 1963) credited with performing the complex and clarifying task of comparison. This chapter is based on two theses. First, the media field and the political one are closely linked. There is a structural homology (Bourdieu  1979) between these two spaces to the extent that the media field is in the image of the

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political field.2 Thus, in the case of monolithic regimes, the media are also monolithic, as they can be pluralistic or communal, as in the case of Lebanon (Richani 2016; Dajani 2013; Kraidy and Khalil 2009). Second, since the mid-­2000s, the media coverage of social phenomena has been the product of “media confluence” (Guaaybess, 2012), broadly defined as the integration of different types of media that address the same news together. As a concept, media confluence moves beyond the once popular idea of “digital convergence.” By implying the miscibility of existing media in the digital world, “convergence” is considered too simplistic. Traditional media continue to exist with their specificities: none of the existing media appear miscible in the digital world. The media confluence makes it possible to reflect the progressive interweaving of the media one into the other within a complete system allowing the coexistence of several formats and several media. Digital media have their uses and modes of production, which make it possible to establish this interdependence with and between existing media. As the new media of the time (radio, television, etc.) never chased away or replaced the old ones, they strengthened – and not weakened – the existing media systems. Media confluence, with its emphasis on uses and modes of production, highlights the fact that media and format are not interchangeable concepts. Newspapers can be printed on paper or digital (format). Consider that an online journal remains a journal and cannot be confused with a blog or social digital network; the same goes for television, which remains television even if its format changes. Beyond the question of uses and modes of production, the media are also distinguished by their temporality and scope. One easily observable constant: all media – including printed press, which is the oldest – have survived all proclaimed technological revolutions. Digital media in the media confluence nevertheless have a prominent specificity: the audience becomes a full-­fledged player in the communication market. Here is an example among many others: in 2016, Mouhcine Fikri, a fish seller in Morocco, was accidentally crushed by a garbage truck while resisting the seizure of his goods. The video of the incident went viral; different media in the country – and also international media – covered the incident from different angles. In view of this coverage and its impact on public opinion, the Moroccan Palace reacted swiftly and several municipal officials were detained. Despite this, popular protests spread throughout the country. This example shows that, even if embarrassing for states, discourses and producers of media content (whether professional or not) can be visible to a large audience. The transnational flow of information considerably strengthens this impact. This merging of different media could also be described as a hybrid media system (Chadwick 2017). This represents a challenge for the authorities because mediatized content can impose itself on the public arena.

 The political parallelism paradigm of Hallin and Mancini (2004) is quite close to the Bourdieusian concept of homology; especially since the authors proposed adapting their model to non-­ Western countries (2011) dependent on whether the media tends to reflect different partisan tendencies (or external pluralism) and take part in public debate (political activity). This model is useful because it offers a vocabulary, turnkey, however it does not help in the overall understanding of the media system that interests us here.

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The first part of this chapter addresses media policies before the Arab revolts; the question will be how different governments have acted and reacted within the regional media system. After the Arab uprisings, when the ruling classes were challenged, a “return of the state” took place (Sigman 2016) or what some have called the “authoritarian restoration” (Hinnebusch 2018). Media governance seemed again more closely associated with the ruling elites (see Chapters 16, 22). In actuality, the complexity of media ecosystems has led to a continuous and ongoing readjustment of state policies. Most governing authorities no longer attempt to display a coherent policy; they are trying at best to maintain control over what appears to be a fragmented and chaotic set of discourses and elements. Even if regulation might be perceived as a device aimed at avoiding excesses and abuse by certain media, in authoritarian regimes, “regulation” is nothing more than a miserably desperate attempt to hold onto the reins of the dominant discourse.

Until 2000: Regulation of Transnational Media in a System in the Making With the formation of modern states in the Middle East, media was organically linked to the governments in power. The print press, sometimes indirectly, remained under this yoke. These media, often set up by the colonial powers (i.e. France, United Kingdom), were nationalized. However, foreign intervention never completely disappeared since many states had recourse to technical and logistical support from the Americans, the French, and later the Japanese to help set up national media. The media in each country had followed their own trajectory and their own pace of development, which made a synthetic reading of this diversity of cases inadequate. More appropriately, the analysis of Arab media using national monographs, such as Boyd’s (1999) anthology of Arab audiovisual media spanning from its inception until the 1990s, is quite valuable. During this period, the broadcasting sector was universally a public body managed by state monopolies, except for Lebanon, where the media also reflected a commercial orientation (Dajani 2019). Though more diversified, the printed press was also an instrument of political power.3 Since the post-­independence period, media governance has been based on an instructive vision of the media, whose role was to enlighten and educate the citizen, consolidate national unity, and promote social development. This institutional discourse was not relegated when MENA countries opened up to the market economy in the 1980s. Although liberal satellite channels flourished in this composite breeding ground, they  We owe the wide variety of this asset to the fact that the press is the fruit of an older history: its golden age stems from the time of the Arab Renaissance or the Nahda in the nineteenth century, with its epicenters in Egypt and the Levant – Lebanon and Syria (Ayalon 1995; Mermier 2016). The famous formula “Egypt writes, Lebanon prints, and Iraq reads” was coined during this decade. It was not until the twentieth century that the first Saudi newspapers, Al Bilad and al Madina, appeared. Most newspapers are still in circulation there (Okaz, Al-­Nadwa, the daily Al-­Jazeera, Al-­ Riyadh, etc.) were launched in the 1960s. In this kingdom, as in the Gulf Emirates, their private or public status is not significant since the press is often the property of the ruling families.

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were also marked by paternalistic and conservative media management. However, the technical possibility for a large audience in the region to access foreign media flow on the one hand, and the liberalization of economies that encouraged the establishment of a regional audiovisual market on the other, led to the birth of a supranational audiovisual system in the MENA region. Despite the emergence of transnational media (e.g. audiovisual, print), the governing policies were enclosed in what could be described as path dependence (Pierson 1997); that is to say, public bodies in most countries remained marked by the presence of heavy administrations and monopolistic overhang that hindered any innovation or change in methods of governance. Egypt is probably the country that suffered the most from this situation. Although it had dominated the field of mass media since the 1930s, thanks to cinema, music, and through its broadcast productions, the country had been left behind due to a heavy bureaucratic industrial policy despite bold ambitions (the launch of broadcasting satellites, the establishment of a media free zone and production studios, etc.). These activities, embedded in state institutions, challenged the rhetoric of a fully open environment for private initiatives (Guaaybess 2013b). State players that did not inherit a large-­scale film and audiovisual industry and that had the financial resources to create one from scratch were the ones that ended up prospering in this growing sector. The Gulf countries, led by Saudi Arabia, became significant players in the MENA media system. Arguably, these countries were more oriented towards the British or American capitalist media models4 (Benson 2013). In Gulf countries, the strategy adopted in the mid-­1990s was a decoupling of media policies: inside the country, the media remained conservative and unattractive to a pan-­Arab audience, whereas outside the country and based in Italy or the United Kingdom, the so-­called offshore media (ART, Orbit, MBC, etc.) followed a purely commercial approach to capture an audience eager for new programs. This two-­headed media policy strategy was also adopted by Qatar, which launched its pan-­Arab news channel (Al Jazeera) in 1996, to target audiences outside Qatar and to stand out from other channels in within the country. However, Al Jazeera has distinguished itself from the previously mentioned offshore channels by remaining based in Doha. The media landscape systemically and increasingly became solidified as audiences made their choices and reinforced the value of broadcasting outlets in the expanding national and transnational advertising markets. This phenomenon can also be observed in newspapers, where readers make choices based on their expectations, current events, and according to the highlight of the year. In this system, Maghreb countries made up most of the captive audiences and readership of content from the Middle East and (later) from Turkey and even Iran. The broadcasting sectors of the Algerian national television company (ENTV), the Moroccan Radio Television (RTM), and the Tunisian Radio Television (RTT) were attached to the central administration of the Ministry of Information and marked by bureaucratic media management, inherited from the French model. Internationally, their productions attracted a diasporic audience of Maghreb origins.

 The United States also participated in training a new generation of journalists at American universities in Cairo, Beirut, or Qatar.

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Nevertheless, the first private media projects appeared in these countries, namely the subscription-­based pay-­TV Canal Horizons in Tunisia and 2M International in Morocco. Established the early 1990s, these partnerships with private French companies ended in failure after the arrival of satellite channels accessible for free (Mostefaoui, 1995). The printed press, whose audience was smaller than that of broadcasting media, opened up to private sector before the other media: Algeria embarked on a policy of “demonopolization” (Driss 2014), whereby the 1990 law on information allowed private enterprises to launch newspapers and audiovisual media. The proliferation of private press titles immediately followed until it was frozen in 1992 during the “black decade” period  – associated with the civil war 1991–2002. The private press in Morocco also started very promisingly after the accession to power of the new monarch in 1999. Investigative newspapers, using a variety of editorial lines, boldly dealt with social news and emerging sensitive issues: le Journal Hebdomadaire was launched in 1997; Tel Quel in 2000, and its Arabic-­language version Nichane in 2006; al Massae (2006) and Al Jareeda al Okhra (2005) (Benchemsi  2013; Hidass  2016). Other private innovative newspapers emerged in the region during the 1990s: in Egypt, the Cairo Times and Al Dostour (distributed from Cyprus); in Jordan, the newspaper Akher Khabar was published in 1993, after a law was passed authorizing private press; and even in Iraq the daily Babel although set up by Uday Hussein (eldest son of the former president), distinguished itself from other Iraqi newspapers with its liberal tone (Chandrasekaran, 2002). While each state could have a specific public media policy during the 1990s, the situation would change in the 2000s as the media system became more integrated.

The Digital Turning Point and Media Confluence In the current mature and increasingly integrated media system, reforms in various countries in the region engendered a strikingly synchronized conception of media policy in the 2000s (Guaaybess 2013a). These top-­down reforms were motivated by the will of each state to remain master of its national broadcasting territory and, for the most proactive such as Qatar, to broadcast throughout the whole region and even the world. For each country, participation in the emerging media system implied an increase in the production of competitive content. It became urgent to implement reforms that articulated interdependent policies: privatization of the media, participation of entrepreneurs in this sector, the establishment of regulatory authorities, and, sometimes, mechanisms to open the media field to external investors, notably through the establishment of media economic free zones.5 In this desire for modernization and to meet the expectations of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), most governments navigated the digital sector by developing infrastructure and telecommunications that made the internet accessible to  An emblematic example of this strong integration of the system is the signing by the Arab States (with the exception of Qatar) of the “Charter of Principles for the Regulation of Satellite Broadcasting in the Arab Region” on February 12, 2008.

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public services and schools. While MENA countries diverged in terms of domestic access to the internet, they converged on their tight control over the content. However, economic liberalization from above would quickly be thwarted by a bottom-­up liberation movement provoked by individuals who pioneered the use digital media to express a desire for emancipation, starting with blogs in the 2000s. In the tradition of hackers, the first generation of computer scientists expressed their political aspirations in the blogosphere. From Iran and Saudi Arabia to Tunisia and Morocco, dissident blogging platforms (Etling, Kelly, Faris, and Palfrey 2010) and the seeds of the future “hacktivists” (Taylor  2005) of the Arab uprisings (Lynch  2007; Radsch  2008) have flourished. In a country as populous as Egypt, digital platforms increased from a few dozen blogs in 2004 to over a thousand two years later. Meanwhile, publishing platforms made it easier to publish Arabic-­language blogs (el-­Nawawy and Khamis 2013). The regulatory authorities were not yet equipped to deal with the authors and (now) publishers of information of these platforms. In countries like Tunisia, for example, Nawaat constituted an oasis in the path of Takrizi, TuneZine, and the Tunisnews newsletter in the 2000s (Touati 2012). The violence of police interventions against bloggers became visible to the whole world, bestowing relative powerlessness on the part of the public authorities regarding anticipation in the management of digital media. In 2006, the image of a “blogger” struggling for freedom of expression embellished the nomenclature of victims of repression defended by NGOs; one of the most sadly emblematic examples is the Egyptian blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah, who has been continuously imprisoned since 2006 (see Chapter 30). The “Arab revolutions” were often associated with these young activists and the use of digital media. By confusing the tools and the participants who used them, one ignores other less visible actors that existed before the 2010s (see Chapter 26). However, the genealogy of the Arab uprisings, referred to as “Facebook revolutions,” provides us with two lessons: on the one hand, the existence of social movements prior to digital tools (Dajani 2014; Chouikha and Gobe  2009; Allal  2012; Choukri  2012; Beinin and Vairel 2012), and on the other, movements that were supported by digital media before 2010– 2011. They include, for example, the 2009 “Twitter” protest movement in Iran (Kamalipour 2010; Sreberny and Khiabany 2010), the Facebook page of the youth movement of April 6  in support of the workers’ strike at the Mahalla el-­Kubra factory in Egypt and the revolt at the mining basin in Gafsa in 2008 which benefited from the support of the Tunisian diaspora (Chouikha and Geisser 2010). Furthermore, the part played by blogs, print media, and broadcast media was also ignored. In practice, digital media supplemented and complemented preexisting media and, as mentioned earlier did not cancel them. They simply made the Arab media system more complex and gave rise to the confluence of the media, that is, the integration of media both horizontally (the media system) and vertically (the interaction of different types of media). The content of this variety of media converged and coexisted with other media that are not necessarily online. The demonstrations in Tahrir Square perfectly illustrate this phenomenon: they were born from the confluence of different media (social networks along with national and transnational television channels such as Al Jazeera, relayed by the printed press and radio), each of which brought their specialisms, their rhythm, and their audiences, to the dissidents who became the icons of the

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movement. The visibility and impact of images of Mohammed Bouazizi – and other martyrs before and after him – were also the product of media confluence: pictured or filmed by an amateur before being relayed to diverse media, they created a resounding echo within the region and beyond. In the wake of this unexpected shock, many private actors took advantage of the revision of constitutions or legal gaps to launch online news platforms or television channels in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, or Morocco. This effervescence lasted a few years before being subject to a crackdown by state apparatuses in several countries in the region. As for social networks, they were also used as tools of surveillance (Owen 2017). The confluence of the media, by causing uncontrolled coverage of events, had challenged the quiet routines of traditional media. It has led to a hardening of media policies, although it is more accurate to use the term repression ( Josua and Edel 2021). In the few years following the uprisings, the media and journalistic sector became more heavily monitored. All the constraints that could be weighed on the media were simply reinforced as never before, and at the same time, the sector was still being marked by massive privatization. How should one interpret the nature of control of the media and journalistic expression after the post-­revolutionary euphoria? Can we use the term “censorship” when we mention the control of voices and dissident initiatives? Of course, the situations vary from country to country, but significant trends can be pinpointed, allowing an overview to emerge of the different models of constraints that bore down on the media. Regulation is, at first glance, in contradiction with arbitrariness; one can even assume that it is at the service of the common good. The problem is that the common interest or “the interest of the nation” is also part of the lexical field of authoritarian regimes. We might then prefer the term censorship to regulation. However, from a strictly legal point of view, censorship depicts a prior intervention by the authorities to prohibit or suppress the dissemination of certain content. Sometimes after an article or item has been published or publicized, a judge or administrative authority can order the removal of the content intended to be made public. “Censorship” is generally associated with mechanisms to limit freedom of expression a posteriori and, more generally, using every means to limit freedom of expression. Police interventions to prohibit the distribution of a book, phone calls by state officials to impose or prohibit content, economic sanctions, intimidation, arbitrary arrests, and disqualification of journalists are all measures we wrongly call “censorship.” In reality, the term “censorship” does not exist in general international law (see Chapter 15). Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights protects freedom of expression but does not mention censorship. Neither does Article 10 of the Convention on Human Rights. The European Court of Human Rights case law defines censorship as contrary to Article 10. Finally, only Article 13 of the American Convention on Human Rights explicitly mentions and prohibits censorship. In addition to the grey regulatory zone, contemporary media face many challenges other than state arbitrariness. The first is obviously the crisis of traditional media and the professions reinventing themselves since the advent of digital media. The liberalization of newspapers and broadcasting has led to the fragmentation of the media supply, accelerated by digital media, capturing a growing share of advertising revenues. The erosion of print media readership has resulted in outlets closures and numerous layoffs

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in recent years. This instability of media and professional positions is compounded by political contexts marked by weak counterpowers in most countries (except for Lebanon and Tunisia); this has led to undivided control of the media and the implementation of arbitrary policies.

Modes of Regulation of Expression The means for limiting freedom of expression are indeed numerous. The case of MENA countries is not unique, but it highlights a series of characteristic constraints that weigh on the media. We will review these modes of “regulation of expression” in the media. This singular listing of media control mechanisms for discussing such diverse regimes may be surprising; the threshold of this attempt needs to be nuanced and substantiated. Nevertheless, certain striking similarities do stand out. The old constraining regimes have become even more stringent and comprehensive through tools adapted to digital media.

The Economic Eviction of Troublemakers It is common practice in most MENA states to deliberately suffocate the media by depriving them of the necessary resources to function and survive. This mode of control eventually leads to the concentration of the media into “loyalist” outlets (Rugh 2004) being controlled directly by the regime or indirectly by their associates. Invariably, privatization does not lead to fragmentation and diversification of media management but rather to its centralization. Since the 2000s, a second wave of media moguls (print media and broadcasting) with state connections emerged in Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria. They could overcome the high production costs that were out of the reach of smaller entrepreneurs. Many participated in a – sometimes relative – opening-­up of the media (Della Rata, Sakr, and Skovgaard-­Petersen 2015). Years after the Arab uprisings, businessmen openly affiliated with the ruling regime sanctioned this liberty by taking over the more progressive media. These practices expanded beyond Arab countries to Turkey, where media enterprises owned by tycoons like Aydın Doğan were bought by Demirören, which worked closely with the government (Yeşil 2018). In the 2020s, 90% of Turkish media is under AKP “friendly management” (Murat Akser and Banu Baybars 2022, 4). The most striking example is undoubtedly that of the Saudi billionaires who originated the glory hours of the pan-­Arab press and satellite channels. As part of an “anti-­ corruption” campaign, they were arrested and held captive for a few months in a luxury hotel in Riyadh. The Saudi monarch, in an operation orchestrated by the police, “nationalized” the properties of these Saudi tycoons. The lack of advertising resources and subsidies, the required licensing fees, and the high cost of printing, production, and distribution are all obstacles to developing ­private media, which do not have access to state assets (see Chapter 21). Thus, the

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filtering of the media by economic asphyxiation allows the authorities to avoid bad publicity from the use of unfair police and legal actions. An academic and founder of two independent Moroccan newspapers confirms such practices: “Instead of attention-­ grabbing police action, independent newspapers were increasingly the subject of civil proceedings resulting in prohibitive fines. More decisive was the strategy of an advertising boycott”  (Benchemsi  2013, 102). Ditto in Turkey, where the Turkish media authority (BIK) has the authority to ban public advertising; the newspaper Cumhuriyet paid the price for criticizing the country’s intervention in Syria in 2019, and we can mention Algerian newspapers such as Liberté in 2019 and al Watan in Algeria, bled dry for lack of sufficient advertising resources. With the partial exception of digital media, forms of public expression end up being controlled, although to varying degrees. In this respect, the extreme case of Egypt can be described as “state capitalism”: the Egyptian Media Group (EMG) is an investment company consortium. The head of the General Intelligence Department, appointed by the Egyptian president, also heads the EMG, representing private radio and television stations, print newspapers, online newspapers, and production and advertising companies (Guaaybess  2021). In Iran, IRIB (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting) has a monopoly on broadcast media (television and radio channels) targeting national and international audiences and owns several companies (outlets) in audiovisual production and publishing. According to Gholam Khiabany, the case of the Iranian media “demonstrates the limits of the liberal theory of the media. . . There is a clear dialectical tension between imperatives of the market on the one hand, and the desire of the central Iranian state to resist possible challenges to their power on the other” (Khiabany 2007 499).

Ad Hoc Laws and Regulatory Bodies Ad hoc regulatory bodies display even more structural homology between the media domain and state apparatuses when the latter appoints personnel to head these bodies. This is the case in Turkey, where the AKP regime heads regulatory bodies such as the Radio and Television Supreme Council (Radio ve Televizyon Üst Kurulu  – RTÜK) (Murat Akser and Banu Baybars 2022). In Jordan, the Jordan Media Commission ( JMC), responsible for licensing TV channels and websites, has a directorate appointed by the Prime Minister (Tweissi 2021). In addition, the Supreme Leader appoints the director of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (see Chapter 23). Legal frameworks are expanding to engulf digital media. In Egypt, administrators of blogs and social networks, whether ordinary users or opinion leaders, can be prosecuted if they have more than 5,000 followers. This is the threshold beyond which such platforms are legally considered media. Legal texts are often vague, giving free rein to arbitrariness. Thus, the cybercrime law of 2018 considers that any site constituting a “threat to security or the national economy”6 can be blocked by the authorities and the authors  Law No. 175 of 2018 on Combating Information Technology Crimes (Arabic text), Official Gazette, Issue No. 36 (bis) (a), August 24, 2018: 2–23. http://www.alamiria.com/images/PDF/ law%20combating%20information%20technology%20crimes%20175-­2018.pdf.

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of the sites prosecuted. In Qatar, Jordan, and Kuwait, equally vague “cyber criminality” laws were adopted in 2014, 2015, and 2016 respectively. In Syria, the 2021 cybercrime law prohibits the “dissemination of fake news online that damages the prestige of the nation.” In Algeria, the 2020 penal code reform punishes the dissemination of fake news and discourse that threatens “the national order and security,”7 including state security and national unity, with up to three years in prison; the terms are virtually identical in Turkey in 2022. This elasticity of the law allows the authorities to close media outlets (as was the case of the Kuwaiti private channel al-­Watan in 2015) or to block alternative news sites and prevent ways to circumvent these blockages by criminalizing the use of VPNs. While “censorship” is not the right term from a legal point of view (see earlier discussion), laws can be used to muzzle media and citizens (see Chapter 18).

The Moral Responsibility of the Media to Their Country: Building a Narrative Registering less tangibly than the economy or the law, the supposed responsibility of the media “towards its own nation” is an effective rhetoric for controlling independent expression in the media. This dogma is even more daunting because it is situated in an axiological register that places the media at the forefront of its moral responsibility and the homeland. This guilt-­inducing and Manichean discourse, “He who is not with me is against me” (Mark 9:41), was paraphrased (if not hijacked) by President George W. Bush in the wake of the September 11 attacks: “You’re either with us or against us in the fight against terror.” A doctrine reflected in a proclamation (1999) proclamation: “A critic is seen as a traitor to his tribe. If he writes in English for a foreign audience, he is ostracized as a traitor to the nation”(Khazen 1999, 87). For some states, the notorious and recurring enemies are the Muslim Brotherhood, terrorists, spies, and betrayers. These qualifiers can also be flawlessly combined. This rhetoric is all the more tolerated as it highlights the issue of economic and political stability. These very convenient traitors, seen as a perpetual threat to this order, are defamed and disqualified by the mainstream media, sometimes with the encouragement of many citizens. In Morocco, for example, journalists have been slandered and dismissed on the basis of morality issues (rape, human trafficking, illegal abortions).8 The foreign media do not escape this curia treatment: when they do not move along with these established rules, they arouse the ire of the authorities. This is the case for Al-­Jazeera and the BBC’s Arabic service, which in 2019 fell prey to a smear campaign in the major newspapers, on television, and on authorized online sites in Egypt. According to the official discourse and the legal charges used, the defendants are guilty of spreading false news and attempting to destabilize the regime and national cohesion. While constitutions guarantee freedom of expression “in accordance with the law,” penal codes  See Art. 196 bis at https://www.joradp.dz/FTP/jo-­francais/2020/F2020025.pdf  See, for instance, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-­release/2021/04/morocco-­journalist-­ targeted-­by-­authorities-­faces-­trial/

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prohibit journalists, bloggers, and online activists from criticizing the government, the emir/king/president, the ruling family, friendly states, and religion.

Conclusion Media policies are used to disguise regulatory tactics specific to authoritarian regimes. The harnessing of the media by policymakers, digital media surveillance (see Chapter 43), the control of media by economic means, the blocking of autonomous sites, and the arbitrary closure of media outlets give rise to a rather strange media landscape. In most MENA countries, the media content often accompanies and supports state policy by building a narrative around the homeland and the head of the state (see Chapter 18). To provide support, a selection is made from among the facts that merit being reported, if not revised. Yet in these homogeneous and dull media landscapes, where self-­censorship is de rigueur, mediatized acts of insubordination appear as genuine events, sometimes triggering debates in the public space, if not mobilizing social movements. Henceforth, publicizing social problems is possible. Through media confluence, events reported or filmed by journalists and even ordinary citizens are picked up by the various media, each with its properties, assets, audience, and users. The public is given access to new information on a massive scale – information that was previously confined to closed audiences or direct witnesses. Finally, the analysis of the media domain in several MENA countries leads to a double observation: the arbitrary regulation of the media by the regimes in place, and – paradoxically – of the liberation of citizens from state media narratives. References Allal, Amin. 2012. “Revolutionary Trajectories in Tunisia: Processus de Radicalisations Politiques 2007–2011.” Revue Française de Science Politique 5-­6, no. 62: 821–841. Ayish, Muhammad I. 2002. “Political Communication on Arab World Television: Evolving Patterns.” Political Communication 19, no. 2: 137–154. Beinin, Joel and Vairel, Frédéric. 2013. (Eds.). Social Movements, Mobilization and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa, 2nd ed. Stanford, Stanford University Press Benchemsi, Ahmed. 2013. “Presse: le Printemps perdu.” Pouvoirs 2, no. 145: 99–103. Benson, R. 2013. “The French and U.S. Journalistic Fields: Position, Logic, and Structure.” Chapter  3  in Shaping Immigration News: A French-­American Comparison (pp. 21–67) (Series: Communication, Society and Politics). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Boltanski, Luc and Thévenot, Laurent. 1991. De la justification: Les économie de la grandeur. Paris: Gallimard. First published 1987. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1979. La Distinction: Critique sociale du jugement Paris: Éditions de Minuit. Boyd, Douglas A. 1999. Broadcasting in the Arab World: A Survey of the Electronic Media in the Middle East, 3rd ed. Ames: Iowa State University Press. Chadwick, A. 2017. The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power. Oxford University Press. Chandrasekaran, Rajiv, November 24, 2002. “Paper Run by Hussein’s Son Closed.” The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2002/11/24/paperrun-by-husseins-son-closed/96b07d4e-8ef9-4265-a259-4601fcae9f86/.

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Chouikha, Larbi and Gobe, Éric. 2009. “La Tunisie entre la ‘révolte du bassin minier de Gafsa’ et l’échéance électorale de 2009.” L’Année du Maghreb V: 387–420. Choukri, Hmed. 2012. “Dormant networks, contingency and structures: Genèses de la ­révolution tunisienne.” Revue française de science politique (Presses de Sciences Po, Paris) 62, no. 5–6: 797–820. Cunningham, S. and Silver, J. 2013. Screen Distribution and the New King Kongs of the Online World. Hampshire: Palgrave Pivot. Dajani, N. 2019. The Media in Lebanon: Fragmentation & Conflict in the Middle East. I.B. Tauris. Dajani, N. 2012. “Technology Cannot a Revolution Make: Nas-­book not Facebook.” Arab Media and Society 15, Spring. Available from https://www.arabmediasociety.com/technology-­ cannot-­a-­revolution-­make-­nas-­book-­not-­facebook/ Dajani, N. 2013. “The Myth of Media Freedom in Lebanon.” Arab Media and Society 18. Available from https://www.arabmediasociety.com/the-­myth-­of-­media-­freedom-­in-­lebanon/ Della Ratta, D., Sakr, N., and Skovgaard-­Petersen, J. (Eds.). 2015. Arab Media Moguls. London: I.B. Tauris. Dris, Cherif. 2014. “Media in Algeria: A Changing Space.” Maghreb – Mashreq 3, no. 221: 65–75. El-­Nawawy, M. and Sahar, Khamis. 2013. Egyptian Revolution 2.0: Political Blogging, Civic Engagement, and Citizen Journalism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. El-­Richani, S. 2016. The Lebanese Media System: Anatomy of a System in Perpetual Crisis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Etlin, B., Kelly, J., Faris, R., and Palfrey, J. 2010. “Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics and Dissent Online.” New Media & Society 12: 1225. Guaaybess, T. 2012. Les médias arabes: Confluence médiatiques et dynamique sociale. Paris, CNRS. Guaaybess, T. (Ed.). 2013a. National Broadcasting and State Policy in Arab Countries. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Guaaybess, T. 2013b. “Reforming Egypt’s Broadcasting in the Post-­25 January Era: The Challenges of Path Dependence.” In T. Guaaybess (Ed.), National Broadcasting and State Policy in Arab Countries (pp. 49–69). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Guaaybess, T. 2021. “Media Ownership in Egypt (2000–2020): Categories and Configuration.” In: R. Springborg, A. Adly, A. Gorman, T. Moustafa. . . (Eds.). Routledge Handbook on Contemporary Egypt (pp. 412–423). Routledge. Gonzales-­Quijano, Y., and Guaaybess, T. (Eds.). 2009. Les Arabes parle aux Arabes: La révolution de l’information dans le monde arabe. Arles, Sindbad: Actes Sud. Hallin, D. and Mancini, P. (2004). Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics (Series: Communication, Society and Politics). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Hallin, D. and Mancini, P. 2011. Comparing Media Systems Beyond the Western World  (Series: Communication, Society and Politics). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hidass, Ahmed. 2010. “Radio and Television in Morocco: New Regulation and Licensing for Private Channels.” Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research 3, no. 12: 19–36. Hidass, Ahmed. 2016. “When the ‘Exception’ Proves the Rule: L’encadrement juridique de la liberté de la presse écrit au Maroc.” L’Année du Maghreb 15: 29–44. Hinnebusch R. 2018. “Understanding Regime Divergence in the post-­uprising Arab States.” Journal of Historical Sociology 31: 39–52. https://doi.org/10.1111/johs.12190 Jordana, Jacint and Levi-­Faur, David. 2003. (Eds.). The Politics of Regulation: Institutions and Regulatory Reforms for the Age of Governance. Edward Edgar. Jacka, E. 2003. “Democracy as Defeat: The Impotence of Arguments for Public Service Broadcasting.” Television and New Media 4, no. 2: 177–191; Nicholas Garnham. “A Response to Elisabeth Jacka’s Democray as Defeat.” Television and New Media 4, no. 2: 193–200.

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Josua, Maria and Edel, Mirjam. 2021. “The Arab Uprisings and the Return of Repression.” Mediterranean Politics 26, no. 5: 586–611. DOI: 10.1080/13629395.2021.1889298 Kamalipour, Y. 2010. “Introduction.” In Y. Kamalipour (Ed.), Media, Power, and Politics in the Digital Age: The 2009 Presidential Election Uprising in Iran (pp. xvii–xxii). Maryland: Rowman & Littlefied. Khazen, Jihad. 1999. “Censorship and State Control of the Press in the Arab World.”, The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 4, no. 3: 87–92. Khiabany, G. 2007. “The Politics of Broadcasting in Iran: Continuity and Change, Expansion and Control.” In D. Ward (Ed.), Television and Public Policy: Change and Continuity in an Era of Global Liberalization. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Koop, Christel, and Lodge, Martin. (2015) What is regulation? An interdisciplinary concept analysis. Regulation and Governance 11, no. 1: 95–108. Kraidy, M., and Khalil, J. 2009. Arab Television Industries. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Lynch M. 2007. “Blogging the New Arab Public: The Political Impact of Blogging in the Middle East.” Arab Media & Society, Spring. Available from https://www.arabmediasociety.com/ blogging-­the-­new-­arab-­public/ Mermier, Franck. 2016. “Le livre dans l’espace arabe.” In Charif Majdalani and Franck Mermier (Eds.), Regards sur l’édition dans le monde arabe (pp. 11–26). Paris: Karthala. Mostefaoui, Belkacem. 1995. La télévision française au Maghreb, structures, stratégies et enjeux. Paris: l’Harmattan. Murat, Akser and Banu, Baybars. 2022. “Repressed Media and Illiberal Politics in Turkey: The Persistence of Fear.” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 23, no. 1: 159–177. Owen Jones, M. 2017. “Social Media, Surveillance and Social Control in the Bahrain Uprising.” Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 9, no. 2: 69–92. Pierson, Pau. 1997. “Increasing Returns, Path Dependence and the Study of Politics.” Jean Monnet, Chair Paper No. 44. Florence: European University Institute, Robert Schuman Centre. Radsch, C. 2008. “Core to Commonplace: The Evolution of Egypt’s Blogosphere.” Arab Media & Society Fall, no. 6. (Cairo: American University of Cairo.) Available at http://www.arabmediasociety.com/?article=692 Rugh, Willian A. 2004. Arab Mass Media: Newspapers, Radio and Television in Arab Politics. Westport, CT: Praeger. Siebert, F. S., Peterson, T., and Schramm, W. 1963. Four Theories of the Press. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Sigman, C. 2016. “The ‘Return of the State’ and New Forms of Domination in Russia: The Case of Higher Education.” Revue française de science politique 66: 915–936. Sreberny, Annabelle and Khiabany, Gholam. 2010. Blogistan: The Internet and Politics in Iran. London and New York: I.B. Tauris. (Published on ICT in Iran.) Taylor, P. A. 2005. “From Hackers to Hacktivists: Speed Bumps on the Global Superhighway?” New Media & Society 7, no. 5: 625–646. Touati, Z. 2012. “La révolution tunisienne: interactions entre militisme de terrain et mobilisation des réseaux sociales.” L’Année du Maghreb VIII: pp. 121–141. Tweissi, Basim. 2021. “Jordan Media’s Sustainability During Hard Times.” In Claudia Kozman and Carola Richter (Eds.), Arab Media Systems (pp. 55–72). Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. Van Cuilenburg, J. and McQuail, D. 2003. “Media Policy Paradigm Shifts: Towards a New Communications Policy Paradigm.” European Journal of Communication 18, no. 2: 181–207. Ward, D. (Ed.). 2007. Television and Public Policy: Change and Continuity in an Era of Global Liberalization. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Yeşil, B. 2018. “Authoritarian Turn or Continuity? Governance of Media Through Capture and Discipline in the AKP Era.” South European Society & Politics 23, no. 2: 239–257.

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Journalism in MENA Triumph and Tragedy in the Struggle to Speak Truth to Power Lawrence Pintak It was a brief and shining moment. The media-­f ueled series of uprisings that jolted the Arab world between 2010 and 2012 were the culmination of a decade in which journalists in the Middle East and North Africa increasingly spoke truth to power. That brief journalistic renaissance was not to last. In the years since the so-­called Arab Spring, as authoritarian rulers reversed the democratic gains with coups, conflict, and political repression, journalists from Morocco to Yemen fought a largely losing battle to maintain some modicum of independence. The fight cost countless reporters their livelihoods, their freedom, and all too often, their lives. The brutal murder and dismemberment of Saudi journalist and activist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, reportedly on orders of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (Shane Harris, Miller, and Dawsey 2018), epitomized the war on journalism and free flow of information (see Chapter 27, “Freedom of Speech”) being waged by authoritarian governments across the region as they sought to silence any voices ­seeking political or social change and crush any seeds of a new Arab Spring before they could be sown. That first decade of the twenty-­f irst century had seen the rise of a new activist Arab journalism, inspired by the “truth-­to-­power” model of Qatar-­based satellite channel Al Jazeera and the crusading efforts of a cadre of activist bloggers and newly independent media outlets in Egypt (Pintak 2011a). In some ways, this was a return to the ethos of the anti-­colonial Arab media that helped drive Arab nationalism and was later subsumed by the region’s governments. In one major survey of journalists across the Arab world in 2008, 75% of Arab journalists said their primary mission was to drive political and social change (Pintak 2011b). But as the second decade of the twenty-­first century came to a close, the picture was  bleak. Many of those change agents were in jail, in exile, or dead. More than

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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300 journalists in the MENA region were killed during that decade; about one-­third in the conflicts in Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. Many of the others were murdered by government security forces or an array of extremist groups (Committee to Protect Journalists 2021d). Meanwhile, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Syria ranked among the world’s leading jailors of journalists – only China held more reporters and editors in its prisons (Committee to Protect Journalists 2020b) – and 10 MENA countries sat in the bottom 20 of the world press freedom rankings (Reporters Without Borders 2020). “There is no press freedom in the Arab world,” according to Günter Meyer, head of the Center for Research on the Arab World at the University of Mainz. “We are dealing exclusively with authoritarian regimes, to a greater or lesser extent. Media outlets that argue against the ruler or criticize his behavior no longer exist” (Knipp 2018). The Khashoggi murder illustrated another dimension of the state of the news media in MENA: Saudi influence was felt across the region. That was evident in the chorus of state-­sanctioned support for Riyadh from official media in the UAE, Egypt, Bahrain, and Jordan, all of which denounced the “rumors” of official Saudi involvement in the Khashoggi assassination (Roya News 2018). As Robert Mahoney of the Committee to Protect Journalists wrote, “The House of Saud controls the flow of information like the flow of oil upon which it is built” (Mahoney 2018).

Journalism Before the Revolution For much of its history, journalism in the Middle East and North Africa has been a tool of power, whether of governments, political parties, or social movements. In the decade after World War II, media outlets in Lebanon challenged the role of the colonial powers and waved the flag for the emergence of Arab nationalism. Former diplomat William McFadden conducted a survey of Lebanese journalists in the early 1950s and reported, “Arab editors believe the role of the press in society should be to fight for political causes. This is much more important, they think, than objectively to inform the Arab public” (McFadden 1953, 18). But “muzzling and suppression  .  .  .  manipulation and co-­option” by regimes that “claimed a monopoly on truth” (Ayalon 1995, 111) became the norm. In the 1970s, Arab media scholar William Rugh categorized the region’s print media organizations. The “mobilization press” supported the revolutionary aspirations of regimes in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Sudan; the “loyalist press” flew the flag for monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. In Lebanon, Kuwait, Morocco, and Yemen, the “diverse press” reflected a variety of views but still faced pressures (Rugh 1979). In an irony that embodies the contradictions of the Arab media in much of the twentieth century, the man long considered the icon of Arab journalism, Egypt’s Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, was also the close confident of the region’s most powerful political figure, Gamal Abdel Nasser. Heikal himself was proud of his role. “The press is an authority whose function is to guide people and actively participate in building their society exactly as does the People’s Assembly” (Dabbous 2004, 95), Heikal, then editor of the influential Al-­Ahram newspaper, wrote in 1960 to justify Nasser’s nationalization of five major publishing houses.

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For a time, Lebanon was home to the region’s most active and diverse press. But Beirut was also the place where the MENA states fought their wars, and the country’s internecine conflicts took their toll on the media. As this writer reported elsewhere, “assassinations of editors, newsroom bombings, kidnappings and threats from the plethora of competing factions, and the governments that sponsored them, silenced the voices of debate” (Pintak 2011b, 29). In 1976, Al Hayat, one of the most respected newspapers in the Arab world, was forced to shut down after 13 bomb attempts at its Beirut offices. It would reemerge in London 11 years later, joining Saudi-­owned Asharq Al-­Awsat, which had been distributing across the Arab world from London since 1977. They would come to be known as the offshore pan-­Arab press. The Saudis soon bought controlling interest in Al Hayat, ensuring Riyadh’s grip on the pan-­Arab media remained intact. Other journalists would also flee into European exile, such as Palestinian journalist Abdel Bari Atwan, who founded Al-­Quds al Arabi in 1989, with financial support from a shifting array of Arab political interests (Rugh 2004a, 171). But distance was no guarantee of safety. Al Hayat’s offices in New York, Washington, London, and Riyadh were the targets of letter bombs and the Beirut bureau chief of Asharq Al-­Awsat was convicted in absentia for “disturbing national security and harming the president’s dignity” (Dar al Hayat 2004). Meanwhile, thanks to the monopoly of state broadcasters at that time, “the concept of television journalism, as a set of distinctive professional values and practices, was virtually nonexistent in Arab world television” (Ayish 2002). William Rugh explained the governmental death grip on Arab broadcasting in testimony before the US Senate in 2004: Most Arab broadcasting laws prohibited criticism of the head of state, defamation of religion, or undermining public order. Additional taboos were observed by broadcast editors based on local custom and political circumstances. Arab broadcast audiences therefore had access only to news and commentary officially approved by their respective governments, unless they could tune in to the Voice of America, BBC, Radio Monte Carlo or CNN. (Rugh, 2004b)

Qatar and Saudi Arabia in the Media Sphere The founding of Al Jazeera, the region’s first pan-­Arab news and current affairs channel, in 1996 marked the beginning of a new era of independence for Arab journalism, which culminated in the Arab Spring, dubbed “the Al Jazeera Revolution” (Pintak  2011a). Social media initially played a key role in circulating the cellphone videos of the self-­ immolation of Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi and served as an organizational tool for Arab activists, but pan-­ Arab satellite television  – particularly Al Jazeera – brought the masses into the streets. Watching the protests in Tunis and Cairo’s Tahrir Square, activists and citizens in places like Morocco and Jordan were inspired and mounted their own demonstrations demanding political and social change. However, the great irony of the Arab Spring was that it transformed Al Jazeera from an inspiration for independent journalism to a mouthpiece of the Qatari regime.

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The Arab uprising, particularly the revolt against Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, quickly evolved into a regional proxy war between Qatar, where Al Jazeera was based, and Saudi Arabia, which controlled the other major pan-­Arab news broadcaster, Al Arabiya (see Chapter 16). The emir of Qatar supported Egypt’s forces of change and the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist political party that would eventually come to power. The House of Saud, which perceived the Brotherhood as an existential threat, backed Mubarak and the military, ultimately supporting the military coup that ousted the Muslim Brotherhood government of President Mohamed Morsi just one year after he was elected (Ulrichsen 2014). It is important to recognize that Al Jazeera was never truly independent. It was created and funded by Qatar’s Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani to move his Gulf state out from under the shadow of Saudi Arabia and make himself a political player in the region. Al Jazeera’s mission, “To be fearless in the pursuit of truth and to be the voice for the voiceless” (Al Jazeera n.d.), served the emir’s goal of using “soft power” to expand influence and position Qatar as trustworthy and progressive. As Qatar and Saudi Arabia provided funding and diplomatic support to their rival proxies in Egypt and elsewhere during the 2011 uprising, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya became overt tools of the respective countries, engaging in a war of words and images, and “the transnational media soon degenerated into an arena for regional power struggles, with Al-­Jazeera serving the interests of the Qatari regime” (Lynch  2015, 93). Al Jazeera’s credibility as a bastion of independent journalism was further undermined by its coverage of the uprisings in Bahrain, an ally of Qatar. While Al Jazeera was “framing the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria as legitimate ‘revolutions’ against dictatorships and authoritarian regimes” (Abdul-­Nabi 2018) and labeling as “martyrs” those who died fighting those regimes, it never used those terms to describe the anti-­ government protests in Bahrain, instead framing the uprising there as a Sunni-­Shia ­sectarian conflict. Some major demonstrations in the Bahraini capital Manama, in which government forces killed protestors and journalists ( Jaber 2012), garnered little or no coverage on the channel (Abdul-­Nabi 2018). In the years that followed, Qatar and Saudi Arabia would repeatedly marshal their media assets to spin competing versions of the truth about the conflicts in Syria and Libya and other regional issues on which their respective foreign policies came to blows. This culminated in Saudi Arabia’s decision in the spring of 2017 to impose a complete blockade on Qatar. The ostensible reason for the blockade: comments by Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al-­Thani, to whom his father handed over power in 2013, published by the official Qatari News Agency (QNA) in which he praised Iran and the Islamist Palestinian group Hamas, both bitter enemies of the Saudis. Within hours, in a carefully orchestrated assault, media outlets across the Gulf were condemning Tamim for his alleged support of terrorism (Pinnell  2018). Influential Saudi columnist Abdulrahman Al-­Rashed called Qatar’s emir a “nut job” (Pintak 2017). But al-­Thani never actually made the comments. The QNA website had been hacked, reportedly by agents paid by the government of the UAE, Saudi Arabia’s ally (DeYoung and Nakashima 2017). The speed at which this anti-­Qatar media chorus erupted in a region where journalists faced prison sentences for criticizing the leader of another Arab state led many observers to assume the Saudi-­influenced media had been primed in advance.

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The war of words would continue for the next several years as Saudi Arabia ­ aintained the blockade. The media found itself squarely at the heart of the confrontam tion as Saudi Arabia demanded Qatar shutter Al Jazeera as one of the conditions of ­lifting the blockade and countries across the Gulf threatened prison terms for any journalist reporting sympathetically about Qatar and for ordinary citizens posting such thoughts on social media (Shilad  2017). Ultimately, the blockade ended, Qatar-­Saudi relations were repaired, and Al Jazeera celebrated its 25th anniversary. Just as Al Jazeera effectively shed its veneer of journalistic independence in the wake of the Arab Spring, Dubai-­based Al Arabiya overtly emerged as Riyadh’s mouthpiece. Launched the same month in 2003 that the United States invaded Iraq, the channel was founded as the “responsible” alternative to Al Jazeera. Unofficially, it was the Saudi answer to Al Jazeera’s frequent criticism of the Saudi regime. The channel was part of a broadcast group controlled by Waleed Al Ibrahim, brother-­in-­law of the late Saudi King Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and one of the richest men in the world. His ownership of the channel allowed the Saudi government to deny it was controlling Al Arabiya’s reporting. That would not last. In 2017, the palace seized direct control. Al Ibrahim was among a group of more than 300 Saudi royals and business elite who were detained, ostensibly on charges of corruption, in a power-­g rab and financial shakedown by newly appointed Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, known as MBS. His father, King Salman, had assumed the throne after the 2015 death of King Abdullah. Ultimately, after reportedly being “coerced, abused and tortured,” many of those detained were released in return for “financial ­settlements” with the government reportedly worth more than $100 billion dollars (De Luce, Dilanian, and Windrem 2018). As part of his deal, Al Ibrahim was reportedly forced to sign over controlling interest of his Middle East Broadcasting Group, the crown jewel of which was Al Arabiya (Watkins 2019). Even the façade of independence at Al Arabiya had come to an end, just as the relative freedom once enjoyed at Al Jazeera when it suited Qatar’s “soft power” foreign policy aims, had been replaced by an agenda that made the channel an overt tool of government policy. Arab broadcasting had come full circle.

The Autocrats Strike Back The MENA media is not a monolith (see Chapters 10, 12, 13). What is true of journalism in the Gulf is not necessarily true in North Africa. Nor was the situation for journalists the same in each country within those regions. Where war was the biggest challenge to independent journalism in some countries, autocracy held journalists in its brutal grip elsewhere. Media oppression was not omnipresent, but the outliers were few and even in those countries journalists still faced pressure. A decade after the region’s journalists were instrumental in driving the Arab uprising, only one Arab country – Tunisia – was categorized as politically free and four – Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon, and Kuwait – as partly free (Freedom House 2020). Tunisia was unique as the only democracy to emerge from the ashes of the Arab Spring. Its successful

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second round of presidential elections in 2019 solidified its place as the world’s youngest democracy (Carnegie Endowment, 2019). In the years after the overthrow of Ben Ali, Tunisia took numerous steps to guarantee media freedom, leading the international NGO Reporters Without Borders to conclude that freedom of the media and information was “the most important achievement” of the 2011 revolution. Despite that, observers expressed concerns about the slow pace of media reform and warned that “the climate for the media and journalists has worsened since the election of a new president in October 2019” (Reporters Without Borders, n.d.b). Elsewhere, the goal of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq was ostensibly that of restoring freedom to the Iraqi people. For journalists, who were tightly controlled by the regime of Saddam Hussein, the war created a blank slate for the Iraqi media that was soon filled by more than 200 rival media outlets primarily aligned with the plethora of political movements and militias that filled the void left by the overthrown of Saddam (Ricchardi 2011). Intimidation, physical violence, and death have plagued Iraqi journalists since the invasion as “ethno-­sectarian ‘media empires’” fanned the flames of sectarian conflict (Price, Griffin, and Marashi 2007, 74). Between 2003 and 2020, at least 189 journalists were killed; some died in combat crossfire but more than half were murdered (Committee to Protect Journalists 2021c). Countless others were bullied into submission. In a 2020 study, the UN reported that journalists and activists were still being targeted for arrest and death by both government security forces and militias (ReliefWeb  2019). Those physical attacks were accompanied by online attacks by “electronic troll armies that belong to Iranian backed militias and political parties in Iraq” (Aldroubi 2020), and naturally led to widespread self-­censorship. Syria, Yemen, and Libya were charnel grounds for journalists. Between November 2011 and February 2020, when photographer Abdul Nasser Haj Hamdan was killed in a Russian airstrike, 136  journalists and media workers  – both Arabs and foreign correspondents – perished covering the Syrian civil war (Committee to Protect Journalists 2021b). Some of those journalists died at the hands of Syrian government forces and allied ­militias (Schaack  2019), others under the guns  – and swords  – of anti-­government extremist groups such as Islamic State. For much of that time, Syria was the most dangerous place in the world to be a journalist. Non-­Syrian news organizations, both Arab and foreign, largely stopped sending correspondents into the country (Friedman 2013). The void was filled by an array of Syrian “news” organizations. Few of the staffers were trained as journalists and “most outlets openly embraced the revolution and opposed the regime” (Dibo 2016). The result was a plethora of competing narratives illustrated by photos and videos of often dubious credibility. Meanwhile, journalists were having an equally difficult time covering the conflict in Yemen, where Iranian-­based Houthi rebels and Yemeni government forces, backed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, had been engaged in a bloody war since 2015. As Reporters Without Borders documented, “Neutral reporting on the war is rare, as the various ­parties to the conflict control the media” (Reporters Without Borders n.d.c). Libya had seen a brief blossoming of free media in the immediate aftermath of the overthrow of dictator Moammar Qadhafi. But as the country descended into civil war, chaos engulfed the media. More than 50 channels appeared in the immediate aftermath of 2011 revolution, along with dozens of newspapers in a country that previously had

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just two TV stations and four papers (Salah, 2015). But independent journalism soon became a target of all sides. Kidnappings, arbitrary detentions, armed attacks on newsrooms, and killings became the norm as the various factions operated with impunity. Between 2011 and 2020, 13 journalists were killed doing their job in Libya, at least three of whom were murdered (Committee to Protect Journalists  2021a). A 2015 Human Rights Watch report found “not . . . a single incident” where those carrying out violence against journalists were punished (Salah  2015). Before long, journalists were being “press-­ganged into serving the various warring factions,” and media outlets were ­transformed into propaganda outlets for the warring factions (Reporters Without Borders. n.d.a), with each side seeing journalists as, in the words of the deposed Mufti of Libya, “mercenaries” for the other ( Jawhar 2020). Meanwhile, across the border in Algeria, the 2019 protest movement against then-­ president Abdelaziz Bouteflika sparked an ongoing crackdown on freedom of expression, media freedom, and internet freedom (Abrougui 2020).

Tools of Oppression Alleged blasphemy, supposed support for terrorism, and criticizing fellow Arab states were all vague categories used by Arab regimes to crack down on independent journalism. In Jordan for example, journalist Jamal Ayyoub was charged with “disrupting the kingdom’s relationships with foreign states” for criticizing the Saudi-­led bombing campaign in Yemen (Committee to Protect Journalists 2015). In Bahrain, Al Wasat, the country’s only independent newspaper, was shuttered by the government for “defamation of a sisterly Arab country” after it published an article criticizing the Moroccan government (Shilad 2017), while in Morocco itself, where “activists and journalists who criticized the regime have faced increased repression” since the Arab Spring (Abouzzohour 2019), bloggers and journalists were jailed for “insulting the king” and “insulting the judiciary” (Middle East Monitor 2019). Rather than protecting journalists, legal statutes in many Arab countries served as a weapon against press freedom (see Chapter 10, 15). Journalists convicted of libel or defamation could find themselves serving long jail sentences (Duffy and Alkazemi  2017). The concept of the accuser proving falsehood was also sometimes turned on its head, as in Morocco where two leading newspapers were found guilty of defamation after they failed to “prove the truth of libelous facts” in their reporting about the Western Sahara conflict (Human Rights Watch 2006). And then there is the issue of religion. In countries as disparate as Kuwait (Stewart 2012), Tunisia (Buckley, Chaabi, and Ouarda 2013), and Jordan (Pelham 2003), reporters found themselves arrested on allegations that they had insulted the Prophet Muhammad or religious authorities. In Jordan, a writer who shared an allegedly blasphemous cartoon on Twitter was killed after the prime minister demanded his arrest (BBC News 2016). Meanwhile, according to Rana Sabbagh, executive director of the Arab Investigative Journalism Network, “[i]n Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and elsewhere, laws intended to

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stop cybercriminals and terrorists are being turned against journalists” (Sabbagh 2017). The sweeping ways in which governments used terrorism laws against journalists was best illustrated in Egypt, where the vibrant community of activist-­bloggers had helped chip away at the Mubarak regime’s grip on free expression, creating safe space for the new array of private media that had emerged in the years before the uprising, then played an important role in the Arab Spring. Following the military coup that ousted the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohamed Morsi, the regime jailed dozens of journalists and bloggers (Committee to Protect Journalists  2020b) on terrorism charges for either being a member of the Brotherhood or writing articles perceived as sympathetic to the Brotherhood. But the broad interpretation of terrorist activities did not stop there. Its bitter disdain for Al Jazeera led the new military-­backed government to label the satellite channel itself as a terrorist organization, and then jail several of its journalists on charges of “aiding a ­terrorist organization” (Committee to Protect Journalists 2016).

Beyond the Arab World The outliers in any discussion of MENA journalism are Turkey and Iran. Unfortunately, they were outliers in terms of ethnicity and language, not media repression. Once home to a vibrant media sector, Turkey became, in the wake of the 2016 coup attempt against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the world’s leading jailer of journalists, accounting for one-­third of all imprisoned journalists in the world, and thousands of other Turkish journalists were put out of work following the government’s closure of more than 150 media outlets (Amnesty International 2017). The situation was also grim in Iran. Since the 1978–1979 revolution, its media had been made up of competing news outlets aligned with the various political factions within the country. Independent journalism was rare; rather, media outlets were weapons for the various factions as they jockeyed for position. That was readily evident as the second decade of the twenty-­f irst century drew to a close and the regime began closing newspapers as it ramped up its confrontation with the United States. As Jason Rezaian of the Washington Post reported in early 2020: Iran’s local newspaper industry, though tightly controlled has been able to publish multiple perspectives and has done so since the late 1990s. Heated debate and intense criticism of the last three presidential administrations were common and encouraged in their pages. But that space seems to be closing…. But while the regime’s record remains consistently terrible, the tools and tactics of silencing journalists are becoming increasingly tailored to fit the digital age. (Rezaian 2020)

Rezaian knew those tools firsthand. The Iranian-­American reporter had been held in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison for 544 days and put on trial for espionage before eventually being released. The threat of prison, or worse, was a daily reality for local journalists.

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Freedom’s Limits As noted earlier, Lebanon was the birthplace of the region’s independent media. Its sectarian politics, reflecting the spectrum of ideological and religious opinion from across the region, meant the country’s media had traditionally been among the region’s most diverse. An array of competing newspaper and television stations operated by or loyal to the plethora of competing factions – and other governments in the region – created a cacophony of news and opinion in what, at times, seemed an information free-­for-­all. However, the limits of that relative freedom were vividly apparent when widespread anti-­government protests broke out in 2019; the government and political parties waged a war of intimidation and suppression against mainstream journalists, leading to widespread self-­ censorship, largely ceding the information landscape to social media (Khalil 2020). An Arab Barometer survey found that the Lebanese now trusted social media more than traditional news outlets (Wee and Li 2019). That seismic shift – the economic fallout of the COVID-­19 virus crisis and rampant corruption – sounded the death knell for newspapers such as the leftist Assafir and the Gulf-­backed Al Anwar that were subsidized by foreign backers who could now fund their own online armies to push their agendas.

Digital Insurgents The counterrevolution against media freedom launched by the region’s autocrats as they restored or shored up their grip on power across the region forced scores of journalists to abandon the profession or flee into exile. Others turned to the internet. Purely online publications, such as Mada Masr in Egypt, Jordan’s 7iber (pronounced “Hiber”) and Inkyfada in Tunisia offered themselves as alternatives to the official line being parroted by the majority of media outlets (see Part V: “Alternative Media” in this volume). But those efforts came at a cost. “I thought, mistakenly, that no matter what happens [after the Arab Spring] there’s no going back,” said Lina Ejeilat, one of the founders of 7iber (Arabic for “ink”) (Westcott 2015). The site began in 2007 as a blogging platform but soon offered hard-­edged reporting. Its publication of Wikileaks cables involving the Jordanian government brought down the ire of the palace. It was among hundreds of online information sites shut down by the Jordanian government (Sweis and Rudoren 2013). Like other online publications in the region, 7iber began a cat-­and-­mouse game in which it bounced between offshore servers to avoid being silenced (Abu-­Fadl 2017), even as its founders fought in the courts against government efforts to extend the Press & Publications Law to online operations (Luque and Ellis 2015) in order to ensure they practiced “responsible freedom” (Westcott 2015). In Egypt, where pressures on the media were even more intense than in Jordan, ­government harassment of Mada Masr included raids on the news organization’s offices and the detention of top editors, including founder Lina Atallah. The prospects for such digital insurgents were not good: “Just as the activists and regime opponents are improving their learning curves and sharpening their resistance

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tools, the regimes are also learning and catching up” (Khamis 2019). After US President Donald Trump popularized the label “fake news” for stories with which he disagreed, Arab authorities seized on the term. Egypt, Iraq, and Sudan, Oman, and Qatar were among those enacting laws against publishing “fake news” (The Independent  2016; SMEX  2018; Mohammed  2020; OCHR-­ Oman  2018; Committee to Protect Journalists 2020a). Saudi Arabia even invoked the term to silence criticism after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, imposing a five-­year jail term for “sharing or spreading rumors or fake news that might affect public order and security” (Saudi Gazette, 2018). With the COVID-­19 pandemic beginning in 2020, numerous governments in the region used the label “fake news” to discredit – and sometimes jail – journalists contradicting official government infection and death figures. In some cases, that included expelling foreign correspondents or closing news bureaus (Loveluck, Dixon, and Taylor 2020). In Turkey, “inciting the public to panic” was added to the alleged offenses used to jail reporters (Loveluck et  al.  2020), while Moroccan Prime Minister Saad Eddine ­El-­Otmai told his nation, “Fake news is the first cause of panic among citizens” after the government arrested more than a dozen people for spreading rumors about the virus online (McDowall and Eljechtimi 2020). In Jordan, the CEO and the top editor of the country’s only private TV channel were jailed under a decree that banned sharing news that might “cause panic” about the crisis, after the channel aired stories about financial difficulties faced by Jordanians under the lockdown (Human Rights Watch,  2020). Iran, one of the countries hardest hit by the COVID-­19 virus, was also one of the most repressive in stopping reporting about the crisis (Alpert 2020). Conversely, governments generated their own “fake news” about the virus to discredit journalists. Lina Atallah of Egypt’s Mada Masr found herself the subject of false reports in government-­ controlled media outlets claiming that she had contracted Covid-­19 by “hanging out with foreigners” – code for foreign spies – and falsely claiming that her news site had to close as a result (Sabbagh 2020). The COVID-­19 virus crisis was “a huge ally of corrupt and oppressive authorities,” according to Hazem Ameen, chief editor at independent media outlet Daraj. “It provided a massive opportunity for authorities to put more pressure on the media” (Sabbagh 2020). It also dramatically added to the woes of the print media. As journalist and scholar Rami Khouri put it, Arab newspapers were already “just a shadow of their former selves” (Lund 2020), but the economic collapse that accompanied COVID-­19 virus lockdowns seemed to put another nail in the coffin of the region’s print media, epitomized by the UAE’s decision to ban distribution of newspapers and magazines for fear they could spread the virus (The New Arab 2020).

In Search of Arab Journalism In 2011, this writer published a book titled The New Arab Journalist about the generation of reporters who broke the old taboos and bravely spoke truth to power. If a new edition were published today, that title might well be amended to The (Death of) the New Arab Journalist. In the place of crusading journalism, we see a servile media. Where Al Jazeera

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and other Arab news organizations shaped history, a decade later the credibility of the Arab media is in tatters. And where bloggers and social media activists broke stories that brought down governments, today the internet is polluted with misinformation, disinformation, and just plain lies, often repeated without question by news organizations that once stood for truth. A decade after the Arab Spring, there are journalists who still risk their lives for their profession. There are websites that dare to go where mainstream media organizations will not. They are few. They are under siege. But they represent the hope that – one day in the future – Arab society will once more find its unfettered voice. References Abdul-­Nabi, Z. 2018. “Al-­Jazeera’s Relationship with Qatar Before and After Arab Spring: Effective Public Diplomacy or Blatant Propaganda?” Arab Media & Society. Retrieved from https:// www.arabmediasociety.com/al-­jazeeras-­relationship-­with-­qatar-­before-­and-­after-­arab-­ spring-­effective-­public-­diplomacy-­or-­blatant-­propaganda/ Abouzzohour, Y. 2019. “Morocco’s Sharp Turn Toward Repression.” Retrieved from https:// www.brookings.edu/opinions/moroccos-­sharp-­turn-­toward-­repression/ Abrougui, A. 2020. “Algeria Crackdown on Dissent Persists with Detention of Journalists.” Global Voices Advox. Retrieved from https://advox.globalvoices.org/2020/03/27/algeria­crackdown-­on-dissent-­persists-­with-­detention-­of-­journalists/ Abu-­Fadl, M. 2017. “7iber, Jordan’s Gutsy Media Platform.” Huffpost. Retrieved from https:// www.huffpost.com/entry/7iber-­jordans-­gutsy-­media_b_5919928?utm_hp_ref=tw Aldroubi, M. 2020. “Iran-­backed Iraqi Militias’ War Against Press Freedom.” The National. Retrieved from https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/mena/iran-­backed-­iraqi­militias-war-­against-­press-­freedom-­1.966505 Alpert, L. I. 2020. “Coronavirus Consequence: Crackdown on Press Freedom World-­Wide.” Wall Street Journal (Online). Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus­consequence-crackdown-­on-­press-­freedom-­world-­wide-­11585838608 Al Jazeera. n.d. “What We Stand For.” Al Jazeera website. Retrieved from https://network. aljazeera.net/about-­us/our-­values Amnesty International. 2017. “Turkey: Journalism is Not a Crime.” Amnesty International website. Retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/02/free-­turkey-­media/ Ayalon, A. 1995. The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History. New York: Oxford University Press. Ayish, M. I. 2002. “Political Communication on Arab World Television: Evolving Patterns.” Political Communication 19, 2: 137–154. BBC News. 2016. “Jordan Writer in Blasphemy Case Nahid Hattar Killed.” BBC News, September 25. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-­middle-­east-­37465656 Buckley, S., Chaabi, S., and Ouarda, B. 2013. “Assessment of Media Development in Tunisia Based on UNESCO’s Media Development Indicators.” Unesco website. Retrieved from https:// unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000222701 Carnegie Endowment. 2019. “Tunisia’s Elections, Explained.” Carnegie Endowment website. Retrieved from https://carnegieendowment.org/publications/interactive/tunisian­elections-­2019 Committee to Protect Journalists. 2015. “Jordan Jails Journalist for Criticizing Saudi Campaign in Yemen.” CPJ website, April 27. Retrieved from https://cpj.org/2015/04/jordan-­jails-­ journalist-­for-­criticizing-­saudi-­camp.php

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Salah, Hanan. 2015. “War on Media: Journalists Under Attack in Libya.” Human Rights Watch website. Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/02/09/war-­media/journalists­under-­attack-­libya Saudi Gazette, 2018. “5-­year Jail, 3 Million Fine for Rumormongers.” Saudi Gazette, October 13. Retrieved from https://saudigazette.com.sa/article/545523 Schaack, B. V. 2019. “Syria Found Liable for the Death of War Correspondent Marie Colvin.” Just Security. Retrieved from https://www.justsecurity.org/62459/breaking-­news-­syria­liable-­death-­war-­correspondent-­marie-­colvin/ Shane Harris, Miller, G., and Dawsey, J. 2018. “CIA Concludes Saudi Crown Prince Ordered Jamal Khashoggi’s Assassination.” The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www. washingtonpost.com/world/national-­security/cia-­concludes-­saudi-­crown-­prince-­ordered-­ jamal-­khashoggis-­assassination/2018/11/16/98c89fe6-­e9b2-­11e8-­a939-­9469f1166f9d_story.html Shilad, J. 2017. “Amid Gulf Tensions, Press Is Used as a Political Pawn.” CPJ.org. Retrieved from https://cpj.org/blog/2017/06/amid-­gulf-­tensions-­press-­is-­used-­as-­a-­political-­pa.php SMEX. 2018. “Do New Sudanese Laws Regulate Digital Space or Limit Freedom of Expression?” SMEX website. Retrieved from https://smex.org/do-­new-­sudanese-­laws-­regulate-­digital-­ space-­or-­limit-­freedom-­of-­expression/ Stewart, C. 2012. “Kuwait May Introduce Death Penalty for Blasphemy After Man’s Twitter Arrest.” The Independent. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/ middle-­e ast/kuwait-­m ay-­i ntroduce-­d eath-­p enalty-­for-­blasphemy-­a fter-­m ans-­t witter-­ arrest-­7640699.html Sweis, R. F., and Rudoren, J. 2013. “Jordan Blocks Local Access to News Sites.” The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/04/world/middleeast/jordan-­ blocks-­local-­access-­to-­300-­news-­web-­sites.html The Independent. 2016. “Iraq Issues Arrest Warrant for Two Journalists over Fake News Story.” The Independent, November 24. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/ world/middle-­east/iraq-­arrest-­warrant-­two-­journalists-­f ake-­news-­story-­saudi-­iranian-­ pilgrims-­rape-­a7436776.html The New Arab. 2020. “UAE Stops Distribution of All Print Newspapers and Magazines over Coronavirus Fears.” The New Arab. Retrieved from https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/ news/2020/3/22/uae-­stops-­distribution-­of-­print-­newspapers-­over-­coronavirus-­fears Ulrichsen, K. C. 2014. Qatar and the Arab Spring. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Retrieved from https://carnegieendowment.org/files/qatar_arab_spring.pdf Watkins, J. 2019. “What to Expect from the Post-­Pan-­Arab Media.” Blog, London School of Economic. Retrieved from https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2019/01/24/what-­to-­expect-­from-­ the-­post-­pan-­arab-­media/ Wee, J., and Li, S. 2019. “Politics and Social Media in the Middle East and North Africa.” Arab Barometer. Retrieved from https://www.arabbarometer.org/wp-­content/uploads/AB_ Media_Report_Final_Public-­Opinion-­2019-­5.pdf Westcott, L. 2015. “Jordan’s Press Fights Back Against Censorship—­ Online.” Newsweek. Retrieved from https://www.newsweek.com/online-­magazine-­shines-­light-­press-­freedom-­ jordan-­339108

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Purposes and Practices of MENA Television Components of an Ever-­evolving Medium Naomi Sakr A censorship incident involving Saudi Arabia and the global online television provider Netflix at the start of 2019 illustrated at a stroke some salient characteristics of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region’s changing television scene, along with some key questions that persist despite the changes. The censored item was an episode of the Netflix comedy series Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, launched in 2018. Its host, a Californian-­born Muslim American of Indian extraction, turned his attention to Saudi Arabia in October that year after the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, affiliated at the time with the Washington Post, was murdered at the Saudi Arabian embassy in the Turkish city of Istanbul. Two months after it had become available to watch in Saudi Arabia, Netflix took the episode down at the behest of Saudi Arabia’s Communications and Information Technology Commission. The Commission complained that it breached Article 6 (Paragraph 1) of the kingdom’s Law Against Cybercrime, which prohibits ­“production, preparation, transmission or storage of material impinging on public order, religious values, public morals, and privacy through the information network or computers”.1 Thanks to geo-­blocking, whereby Netflix can determine which parts of the world can see which of its shows, the item remained available to watch outside Saudi Arabia as well as on YouTube. As a journalist writing about the incident for the technology magazine Wired observed: “Netflix, like most American tech companies, goes to great pains to comply with local laws in order to operate globally” (Dreyfuss 2019).

 Translation from UN Office on Drugs and Crime legal database. Available at https://sherloc. unodc.org/cld/en/legislation/sau/anti_cyber_crime_law/article_6/article_6.html? (accessed 27 July, 2020).

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The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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In highlighting tensions between global operations and local laws, the Patriot Act example offers a window onto the “different technological, cultural, industrial, organizational and experiential components” ( Johnson 2019, 4) that make up the medium of television in the 2020s, as in the past. That “technology” comes before “culture” in the list belies a recognition that, as Raymond Williams argued in Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1974, 13–14), technology cannot be “abstracted” from society, being developed with “certain purposes and practices already in mind.” Unpicking the technology component in the Netflix-­Saudi Arabia configuration depicted here puts the spotlight on internet TV, along with the possibilities of geo-­blocking and its circumvention, which are shown to be bound up with the cultural dimension of “meanings and values” (Williams 1974, 117–118) at play in cross-­border TV transmission and reception. In this case they produced a clash over political content and a technologically facilitated and financially motivated resolution. “Digital distribution,” writes Ramon Lobato (2019, 181), “does not come ‘over the top’ of culture; it must negotiate the rough terrain of markets characterized by fundamental differences in tastes, values, cultural norms, viewing habits, income levels and connectivity.” Meanwhile, to continue with Johnson’s list (2019, 4) of what makes TV, the incident’s “industrial” and “organizational” components are represented by the nature of the services provided  – subscription video-­on-­demand (Netflix) but also advertising-­ supported video-­on-­demand (YouTube) – and their operational context in terms of mixed and contradictory regulatory and business practices (see Chapters 13, 15, 21). The experiential component puts the spotlight on the episode’s MENA viewership and their reactions and expectations. To trace change and continuity in television in the MENA region is to investigate evolutions across these five components. The latter have the advantage of offering stable points of focus for a medium that, judging by the literature (e.g. Drummond and Paterson  1985; Spigel  2004; Curtin  2009; Gripsrud  2010; Lotz  2017), has been in ­“transition” for most of its existence, making it what Wasko continues to call an “enigmatic moving target” (Wasko 2005, 2; Wasko and Meehan 2020, 4). Once it was a mass medium transmitted to household television sets in the form of programs arranged and delivered by channels according to scheduling grids. Today, provided there is high-­ quality broadband internet, TV content can circulate through the “same infrastructure as other media, including e-­books, music, short videos, feature films and podcasts” (Lobato 2019, 6) and be streamed on demand to a range of devices – tablet, television, computer, or mobile phone. The array of institutions, services, and practices is thus expanded, producing a “matrix era” characterized by “interactive exchanges, multiple sites of productivity and diverse modes of interpretation and use” (Curtin  2009, 13), inspiring “hope” for a “more open media future” (Curtin 2009, 19). Yet the hope is laced with suspicion that “affirmative narratives” may offer false reassurance of a “forward march” towards “greater freedom, popular power and pleasure” (Curran  2002, 35). Circulation is not “friction-­free” and internet distribution, while creating “new forms of mobility for content and audiences,” has also led to cases of “increased territorialization” (Lobato 2019, 11). The rest of this chapter reviews the components of the medium, one by one, to identify whether what look to the naked eye like successive changes reflect any real shift in the balance of controlling forces.

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Politically Driven Technology Affords Varying Degrees of Choice Television studio and transmission equipment was introduced into Arab countries via colonial powers in the mid-­1950s – from France into Morocco and Britain into Iraq – and from the United States into Egypt and Syria under a 1959 contract that produced a functioning system in 1960 (Boyd 1999, 37, 86). This was a period when countries, in gaining independence, were coming to regard television as an “instrument of nation-­building” (Kraidy and Khalil 2009, 13). Even in Iran, the privately owned enterprise established as the country’s first TV station in 1958 was nationalized in the late 1960s (Khiabany 2010, 161–162). If programs produced for purposes of national mobilization were not always the most attractive to viewers, a combination of technology and geography – whereby warm weather enhances terrestrial signals  – made alternative content available from other countries, even in the early days. Cairo transmissions could be received in parts of Saudi Arabia, Israel, Lebanon, and even Syria, while Kuwaiti television was received in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province and long humid summers allowed people in the Gulf to receive up to 12 different signals (Boyd 1999, 6). Syrian homes could tune into terrestrial television spilling over from Jordan, Israel, Turkey, and Iraq (ARTICLE 19  1998, 31). Communities in border areas of Iran could access programs from Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan, and the Gulf (Khiabany  2010, 171). The advent of satellite transmission, which gave Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia direct access to French programming in the late 1980s and saw the Egyptian Satellite Channel (ESC) launch from Arabsat in December 1990 in the buildup to the 1991 Gulf War (Sakr 2001, 30–32), was thus technologically novel but arguably built on what, in many places, were existing viewing habits. More of a game changer, in terms of power balances between the owners of satellites, television channels, and set-­top boxes, was digital compression. By increasing capacity on satellite transponders this reduced leasing costs for aspiring channel owners and greatly multiplied the range of channels available to view. Egypt was spurred to acquire digital satellite technology while it was boycotted by the Arab League after its 1979 peace treaty with Israel and because of its long-­standing media rivalry with Saudi Arabia, dating from the days when Nasser aimed hostile radio broadcasts at the kingdom. Excluded from the Saudi-­controlled joint Arab project, Arabsat, and wanting anyway to broadcast to remote domestic areas beyond the reach of line-­of-­sight terrestrial signals, Egypt reserved an orbital slot for a satellite of its own (Sakr 2001, 32, 136). Once Nilesat’s digital capacity came on stream in 1998, followed by Arabsat’s first digital satellite in 1999, there followed a mushrooming of satellite channels and diversification into multichannel provision of news, sports, film, and entertainment, driven in part by networks like Saudi-­owned MBC Group and Qatari-­owned Al-­Jazeera Group seeking to dampen local political tensions inflamed by the 2001 suicide attacks on New York, the subsequent bombing of Afghanistan and the 2003 US-­led invasion of Iraq (Sakr 2008a, 62–64, 67–69). With high-­definition television (HDTV) adding to demand for bandwidth and free-­to-­air television remaining dominant, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) launched the first satellite in its own Yahsat fleet in 2011 and Qatar followed two years later with Es’hailsat – a significant decision in light of the 2017–2021 boycott of Qatar by Saudi

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Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE, triggered by alleged Qatari support for Islamist groups and relations with Iran. Communications technology is expensive, calling for levels of investment that divide the affluent from the disadvantaged. Such divisions are magnified in MENA markets where lack of regulated competition reduces incentives for private investment (Gelvanovska et al. 2015). Heavy expenditure is required not only for satellite systems but also for the cable and fiber-­to-­the-­home infrastructure that can underpin high-­speed broadband connections needed to watch video content online (see Chapter 13). YouTube initially offered only short clips. But as streaming of television content took off in the region, first with MBC’s Shahid.net free catch-­up service in 2011, followed by subscription video-­on-­demand (SVOD) from the likes of Dubai-­based Icflix, OSN, and Starz Play Arabia, disparities widened between people in Gulf countries, a majority of whom had access to high-­speed internet, and those elsewhere in the MENA region, where such access was prohibitively expensive for low-­income families (Gelvanovska et al. 2015). Following the 2016 arrival of Netflix and Amazon Prime to the region (except for Iran because of US sanctions), the annual surveys of media use in seven Middle Eastern countries conducted by Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-­Q) revealed the outcome of these disparities. In 2019 the proportion of respondents reporting that they used streaming services like Shahid and Netflix was 68–69% in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, a figure similar to that in the US, compared with 48% in Lebanon, 30% in Tunisia, 25% in Egypt and 21% in Jordan (NU-­Q 2019, 37).

A Cultural Dynamic of Incumbent Censorship and Community Inventiveness Paradoxically, television’s cultural component in the MENA region – what people do with the medium (Spigel 2004, 8, 11) or the “purposes and practices already in mind” (Williams 1974, 14) – embraces both an expectation of censorship and the resourcefulness required to subvert it. Power elites, who fear free elections or meritocracy and rely on religious taboos as a fallback for blocking inconvenient content in countries with historically low literacy rates,2 strove to control the medium by various means. Government monopolies over broadcasting, buttressed by Penal Code penalties for infringing rules on content, sufficed until the advent of the videocassette recorder, which the Iranian government tried to ban for several years before conceding defeat (Khiabany  2010, 171). Reactions to incoming satellite signals ranged from a ban on dishes – applied somewhat hesitantly in Iran (Khiabany 2008, 293–294), selectively in Saudi Arabia (Sakr  2001, 49), and imposed but not enforced in Bahrain and Qatar

 The Arab country average adult literacy rate was 40% in 1980 and 73% in 2005 according to the Arab Knowledge Report 2009, p. 279 (www.undp.org/content/dam/rbas/report/AKR2009-­Eng-­ Full-­Report.pdf ). UNESCO (http://uis.unesco.org/en/country/) puts adult literacy in Iran at 40% in 1980 and 82% in 2005. This compares with 66% and 88% in Turkey.

2

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(Thomson 2014, 4) – to a licensing regime for dishes in Tunisia (Sakr 2001, 17) and an Egyptian ban on certain decoders (Sakr 2008b, 274). Arab governments’ shared nervousness about the liberalization of political discourse facilitated by satellite signals beamed in from abroad was evident in restrictions they sought to legitimize through an Arab Satellite Charter in 2008 (Sakr 2010, 39–43). As for internet television, ad hoc bans and blocking continued through government control over international gateways and service providers and the occasional complete shutdown. Iran imposed a near-­total internet blackout in December 2019, having developed its own closed intranet system to facilitate disconnection from the World Wide Web (Rahimi 2015, 370, 373). Populations subject to such bans were meanwhile hungry for news in their unstable region and eager for screen entertainment (see Chapters 10, 16). Improvised neighborhood cabling gave households in places like Algeria, Egypt, and Lebanon access to satellite channels through a single dish, often with premium movies, shows, and sport pirated from pay-­TV networks. Palestinian “stations,” relaying existing content from the airwaves interspersed with local advertising, sometimes to just a few buildings, multiplied from one to 30 between 1994 and 2000 (Tawil-­Souri 2007, 9). The practice of making neighborhood TV, airing homemade content along with mainstream movies and series plus advertisements from local businesses and notices about weddings and funerals, was seen again in poor areas of Egypt in the last years of the Mubarak presidency. Demonstrating creative use of satellite TV to amplify marginalized voices across the region, a November 2010 episode of the nightly current affairs show Al-­Ashera Masa’an (10 p.m.) on Dream2, an Egyptian satellite channel privately owned by a businessman close to the regime, saw presenter Mona Shazli interview a blogger, the late Baraa Ashraf, about a documentary he made for the Qatar-­based Al-­Jazeera television network on the phenomenon dubbed telefiziyun al-­hara (alleyway television).3 Throughout the 2000s, convergence of television with telephony and the internet saw smartphone take-­up increase rapidly, with subscriptions exceeding the number of residents in some countries, running in parallel with the rise of music TV, reality television formats dependent on telephone or internet voting, and talk-­shows about sensitive social issues (Sakr 2009a). User-­generated video footage, facilitated by the advent of YouTube in 2005, found its way onto mainstream television, opening a visual window onto abuses of power. By 2020, the blocking of internet video had become part of the region’s TV culture but so had ways of circumventing the blocks by means such as a virtual private network (VPN). NU-­Q found in its annual survey that VPN use, despite the additional cost, increased substantially in several countries in the period 2016–2019, most dramatically in Qatar but also in less affluent countries like Jordan and Tunisia (NU-­Q 2019, 64). At the same time, however, the survey did not ask about VPN in the UAE, where it is illegal, and was not permitted to ask about it in Egypt.

 Part of the Dream2 program can be watched at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= CinriEBK3Q8.

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“Independent” Production Among Structural Stimuli for Industrial Development Media industry economics dictate that profitability is secured more readily by ­integrating media businesses vertically and horizontally. That is to say: the risk of investing in screen content that turns out to be unpopular and thus unprofitable can be defrayed either by diversifying production across multiple production units in a big conglomerate or by owning enough of the supply and distribution chain to ensure that content gets seen, whether popular or not. Prevalence of the second option in the MENA region, operationalized by government-­run broadcasting monopolies and clientelist arrangements between governments and private media owners (Sakr 2007, 45–47), long precluded the rise of media production companies that were truly independent. Such companies only emerged in Europe through regulation in the 1980s that obliged big national broadcasters to commission a specified proportion of programming from independents (Levy 1999, 43). In MENA countries the opposite kind of regulation was the norm. For example, in Egypt, for decades one of the biggest exporters of television programming and personnel, what Ramy Aly (2021) has called a “tutelary approach” to public culture created a system of licensing and syndication that effectively criminalized independent production. Iran’s mojavez (permit) system likewise imposes controls through registration (Rahimi  2015, 367). Consequently, the industrial component of MENA television has historically been rooted in government-­run or well-­connected conglomerates, for whom audience ratings and financial success were less of a priority than placating political patrons. Two axes of potential change in this component therefore lie in the development of independent local production and practitioner skills. Initially, faced with the challenge of filling thousands of hours of extra airtime on proliferating satellite channels, power elites indicated through their preference for imports that they perceived local creativity as a threat (Sakr 2007, 134–136). Measuring ratios of imports to local production is not straightforward because of questions about whether local versions of imported formats count as local and whether local and imported content should be compared in terms of airtime or cost of production, given that talking heads in a studio are cheap and drama is expensive. There have been claims, however. MBC Group, with more than a dozen television channels, including one in Farsi, and described by one insider in 2014 while it was still privately owned as “probably the only really robust player in the region” (Thomson 2014, 6), said it had reduced the proportion of Western content since around 2007, replacing it with more local drama and comedy (Thomson 2014, 12). Traditionally, low levels of advertising income have deterred investment in local ­production. NU-­Q reported (2016) that television advertising spend per head of population stood at US$17 in MENA in 2015 compared with US$80 in Western Europe and US$195 in North America. Against this background the increasing penetration of subscription services – not dependent on advertising income and sometimes less concerned about local taboos – promised structural change, as Netflix began allocating production budgets for several TV shows to independent companies based in Lebanon and Jordan, such as Master Key, Kabreet, and Filmizion, and to unattached producers in Egypt.

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However, when in 2019 Netflix released Jinn, a drama series filmed in Jordan about a group of teenagers, its first to be originated in Arabic, the horrified response from conservative viewers to the teenagers’ allegedly “westernized” behavior reportedly drove the entire cast into hiding, sowing doubt about how readily the experiment could be repeated (Mehio 2019). As for the Egyptian producers of the Netflix series Ma Waraa al-­Tabiaa (Paranormal), based on novels by the late Ahmed Khaled Tawfik, their status as “independent” is blurred by the extent of Egyptian government control over screen production through the military-­linked company Synergy, coupled with suffocating restrictions on the entertainment industry, stepped up in 2018 ahead of the following Ramadan (El Banhawy 2019), the annual season when locally made drama serials traditionally attract large audiences. There are also mixed signals regarding trust in local talent, given the extent of foreign involvement over the years in managing the industry and training its workforce. MBC Group, which started life in London, has had a long roll call of non-­MENA executives, as has OSN and its forerunners (Sakr 2016, 178–180). Nationals taking over media management positions from westerners in Qatar and the UAE have not always favored organic development of local industry. Change at the top of Qatar’s Al-­Jazeera Children’s Channel in 2011 resulted in in-­house production being replaced with imports, allegedly for reasons of quality (Sakr and Steemers 2016, 244), while Abu Dhabi Media Company turned to non-­Arab scriptwriting and production expertise for a children’s channel it described as “homegrown” (Sakr and Steemers 2019, 74–75) and the law series Qalb al-­ Adala (Heart of Justice) (Keller 2019), which aired on Netflix as Justice. Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohamed bin Salman, turned to a Hollywood talent agency in 2018 to help develop his country’s film and television industry. The agency, Endeavor, unsettled by the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, later severed the connection, but efforts to nurture Arab creative talent continued through a US-­sponsored training and mentoring program for ten TV writers and seven producers from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, and the UAE. Participant Hisham Fageeh, whose Saudi production house Telfaz 11 made the 2013 YouTube satirical hit video No Woman No Drive, told a journalist at Variety with “a real amount of sadness” that it took the writers and producers ­“leaving our microcosm and coming all the way to the west coast of California” to “feel comfortable with each other and ourselves as Arab creators and have the element of trust” (Saval 2019).

Organizational Underpinnings Complicated by Authoritarian Governance and Feuds Catherine Johnson’s list (2019, 4) of TV components, adopted as the framework of this chapter, maps neatly onto Lynn Spigel’s earlier list (2004, 2), comprising “technologies, industrial formations, government policies and practices of looking.” For present purposes, Johnson’s “organizational” component can be understood as corresponding to Spigel’s “government policies,” because organization of MENA television ultimately rests on government decisions about regulation, enforcement, and foreign relations.

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Transparency, consistency, and predictability were already rare in television r­ egulation when satellite channels surged across the region, as evidenced by the siting of Saudi-­owned channel headquarters in London and Rome rather than Saudi Arabia and recourse to so-­called media free zones in Jordan, the UAE, and Egypt as a device for controlling satellite channels while ostensibly exempting them from some local laws (Sakr 2007, 194–199). Matters were not visibly enhanced by the subsequent introduction of new regulatory bodies or licensing procedures. In a study of broadcast regulators in 11 Arab countries, Bouziane Zaid (2018, 4402, 4411, 4413) found that, with the possible exception of Tunisia, their creation amounted to “pseudo-­reform,” as they were entrenched in authoritarian governance and a “multilayered architecture of control.” “Multilayered” is an equally apt description of Iranian regulation and licensing, with responsibilities assigned directly to the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (Rahimi 2015, 363–366) as well as the national broadcasting authority, the IRIB. Nor did licensing arrangements safeguard even those private entrepreneurs allied to governments. MBC’s founder and chairman, Shaikh Walid al-­Ibrahim, Rotana Group owner Prince Waleed Bin Talal, and ART’s late owner, Saleh Kamel, were among some 380 Saudi princes and businessmen rounded up on the orders of Mohamed Bin Salman in November 2017 and held for months at the Ritz-­Carlton in Riyadh until they agreed to hand over money or assets. Under the presidency of Abdel-­ Fattah a­ l-­Sisi in Egypt, television tycoons from the Mubarak era ceded their holdings to the Egyptian Media Company, run by state security (Bahgat 2017). Business m ­ agnate Rami Makhlouf, first  cousin of Syrian president Bashar al-­Assad and part owner of Syrian stations Sama TV and Addounia TV, had his assets seized by the Assad ­government in May 2020. One element of regulatory enforcement long sought by MENA television content producers is protection of intellectual property (Sakr 2017, 37–38). As with other areas of regulation, however, action against piracy has been erratic. A MENA Anti-­Piracy Coalition, formed in 2014 by companies from MENA and the United States, closed dozens of channels for piracy over the years. Yet it took the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to adjudicate on the pirate broadcaster beoutQ, which arrived on the scene in 2017. In 2020 the WTO established “prima facie that beoutQ is operated by individuals or entities under the jurisdiction of Saudi Arabia” (WT0 2020, 124). It ruled that, by facilitating beoutQ’s use of Arabsat frequencies and Chinese-­made set-­top boxes to not only pick up satellite signals freely but also large volumes of television entertainment streamed over the internet (Ritman  2019), Saudi Arabia had breached its  ­obligations under the TRIPS agreement on trade-­related aspects of intellectual property rights. The case against beoutQ was brought to the WTO by Qatar, whose beIN Sports, having acquired MENA rights to Premier League football matches, was seeing beoutQ take its sports content and superimpose beoutQ logos over the originals. Behind the issue of payment for these rights, which cost hundreds of millions of pounds, lay the economic blockade and political boycott of Qatar imposed by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt in 2017. Meanwhile, Turkey’s decision to stand with Qatar in this dispute was consistent with its backing at the time for Egyptian opposition groups operating television channels from Istanbul.

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Experiential Elements Increasingly Localized and Susceptible to Credible Measurement “People want to see themselves”: this canny observation from a spokesperson for ­neighborhood TV featured in the 2010 Egyptian talk show mentioned earlier sums up changes to the viewing experience that took place over the ensuing decade. By 2020 the chances of viewers seeing or hearing someone like them on screen had exploded, through developments like the posting of video on independent news websites such as Morocco’s Hespress or Jordan’s 7iber, increased use of Kurdish and Tamazight as well as Arabic, the readiness of Netflix and others to air content in dialect rather than formal standard Arabic, and familiarity with YouTube as a platform for user-­generated content. As Halabi and Salamandra noted (2019, 97) in relation to MENA television drama and social media platforms, “viewers are themselves producing and posting mashups, spoofs, critiques, and homages to TV serials and their creators.” Part of the shift was a trend in television to look inwards, at the local, as demonstrated in Tunisia’s unprecedented engagement with sensitive political and social affairs in late night current affairs shows and drama series (Khalil 2020, 443). Satirical social and political commentary took off in 2011 with YouTube shows like Bassem Youssef ’s B+ Show, which became internationally famous as El-­Bernameg, Tashweesh Wadeh produced by a Jordanian group calling itself FooqAlsadda and taken up by Roya TV, the Masameer miniseries started in 2011 by a 25-­year-­old Saudi and his friends, and Big Brother, a series in which cartoonist Andeel offers “advice” to ­fellow Egyptians, especially followers of the independent media outlet Mada Masr. In tandem with the improved immediacy and relevance of screen content to the ­viewing public, driven by social media and rising viewer expectations, the practice of uploading content to YouTube may also have brought structural change to the economics of MENA television. As YouTube counts became a standard measurement, ­popularity could be tracked with the potential for advertising spend to follow, thereby undercutting the monopoly on pan-­Arab TV advertising that had thwarted every attempt since the 1990s to replace antiquated telephone interviewing with advanced people meters. Even the UAE’s “tview,” intended to gather viewing data scientifically, was closed in November 2016 in a much-­criticized move reportedly driven by a desire to shield the incumbent monopoly (Sakr and Steemers 2019, 28–29). In the absence of people meters, opinion polling  – albeit much increased and diversified since early breakthroughs after 2002 (Sakr 2009b, 135–137) – had remained vulnerable to disputes over accuracy and methodology. Viewer interactions on social media, in contrast, have been key in boosting the fortunes of certain types of TV content, from comedy and music video to drama series. YouTube options meant that, despite worsening Turkish-­Gulf relations from 2018, Arab audiences continued to access Turkish-­made serials, which they discovered when Gümüş (Silver) premiered on Arab screens as Noor in 2008. Reactions to the 150-­episode Diriliş: Ertuğrul (The Resurrection of Ertuğrul), which ran for five seasons in Turkey and across the Arab world from 2014, sparked an Emirati counternarrative about the Ottoman empire in the big-­budget Mamalik al-­Nar (Kingdoms of Fire) in 2019.

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Conclusion Deconstructing MENA television into the components identified by TV scholars ( Johnson  2019; Spigel  2004) reveals just how intricately authoritarian governance, popular resistance, and socioeconomic inequality are woven into every aspect of the medium in the MENA region. This chapter has taken an approach to exploring structural influences on technology, culture, industry, organization, and the viewing experience that scrutinizes the “rough terrain of markets” (Lobato 2019, 181). In doing so it has uncovered change at more granular levels of control and contestation than might be revealed by an “affirmative narrative” (Curran  2002, 33) predicated on assumptions about ­successive technological advances flattening “spaces of exchange” (Lobato 2019, 181). In principle, the range of video content now available to MENA viewers has changed beyond recognition since the rise of video sharing, streaming, and subscription TV. It is true that government policies continue to perpetuate income inequalities and eschew low-­cost, high-­speed internet connections, leading to highly disparate levels of access to the full range. On the other hand, the more material is produced beyond the reach of MENA government censorship, the more disparities in the ability to access it have stimulated media users’ inventiveness, first in informal cabling and piracy and more recently in posting independent content to platforms such as YouTube. Independent producers, denied outlets by governments and their allies, have turned instead to Netflix for commissions and overseas entities for professional development. Local private investors have been ill-­served by organizational unpredictability, lack of protection for intellectual property, and rifts between major players in the region. Yet audience responses, long obscured by the absence of people meters, have finally emerged through social media and YouTube counts. Without idealizing the cultural gains afforded by “matrix media” (Curtin 2009), the evidence presented here suggests they do provide a counterpoint to a continuing saga of repressive local laws. References Aly, Ramy. 2021. “The Culture Police: Manning the Barricades of Allowable Art and Culture.” In Robert Springborg et al. (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Egypt (pp. ­401–411). Abingdon: Routledge. ARTICLE 19. 1998. Walls of Silence: Media and Censorship in Syria. London: ARTICLE 19. Bahgat, H. 2017. “Looking into the Latest Acquisition of Egyptian Media Companies by General Intelligence.” Mada Masr (December 21). Boyd, Douglas. 1999. Broadcasting in the Arab World. Ames: Iowa State University Press. Curran, James. 2002. Media and Power. London: Routledge. Curtin, Michael. 2009. “Matrix Media.” In Graeme Turner and Jinna Tay (Eds.), Television Studies After TV (pp. 9–19). Abingdon: Routledge. Dreyfuss, Emily. 2019. “Saudi Arabia Won’t Be the Last Country to Censor Netflix.” Wired (March 1). Available at https://www.wired.com/story/saudi-­arabia-­netflix-­censorship/ Drummond, Phillip, and Paterson, Richard. 1985. “Editors’ Preface.” In Phillip Drummond and Richard Paterson (Eds.), Television in Transition (pp. vii–viii). London: British Film Institute.

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El Banhawy, Yasmin. 2019. “Why Is the Egyptian State Monopolizing the Entertainment Industry?” Open Democracy ( June 24). https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-­africa-­ west-­asia/why-­egyptian-­state-­monopolizing-­entertainment-­industry/ Gelvanovska, Natalija, Rogy, Michel, and Rossotto, Carlo Maria. 2015. Key Pathways to High-­Speed Internet in the Middle East and North Africa. Washington: World Bank. Gripsrud, Jostein. 2010. “Preface.” In Jostein Gripsrud (Ed.), Relocating Television (pp. xv–xxi), Abingdon: Routledge. Halabi, Nour, and Salamandra, Christa. 2019. “Guest Editors’ Introduction: The Politics in and of Middle Eastern Television Drama.” Middle East Critique 28, no. 2: 97–100. Johnson, Catherine. 2019. Online TV. Abingdon: Routledge. Keller, Joel. 2019. “Stream It or Skip It? ‘Justice’ on Netflix: A Law Procedural from the United Arab Emirates.” Decider ( January 28). https://decider.com/2019/01/28/justice-­on-­netflix-­ stream-­it-­or-­skip-­it/ (accessed August 19, 2020). Khalil, Joe F. 2020. “Television in the Arab Region: History, Structure, and Transformations.” In Janet Wasko and Eileen Meehan (Eds.), A Companion to Television (2nd ed.) (pp. 439–458). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Khiabany, Gholam. 2010. Iranian Media: The Paradox of Modernity. Abingdon: Routledge. Kraidy, Marwan M., and Khalil, Joe F. 2009. Arab Television Industries. London: British Film Institute. Levy, David A. 1999. Europe’s Digital Revolution: Broadcasting Regulation, the EU and the Nation State. London: Routledge. Lobato, Ramon. 2019. Netflix Nations: The Geography of Digital Distribution. New York: New York University Press. Lotz, Amanda. 2017. Portals: A Treatise on Internet-­Distributed Television. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing. Mehio, Reem. 2019. “After Netflix’s First Arabic Series ‘Jinn,’ Jordan’s Film Industry Took a Dip.” Stepfeed (November 29). Available at https://stepfeed.com/after-­netflix-­s-­f irst-­arabic-­series-­ jinn-­jordan-­s-­f ilm-­industry-­took-­a-­dip-­9050 (accessed August 11, 2020). NU-­Q. 2016. “Media Industries in the Middle East.” Doha: Northwestern University in Qatar and Doha Film Institute. Available at http://www.mideastmedia.org/industry/2016/tv/#s14. (accessed May 4, 2019). NU-­Q. 2019. “Media Use in the Middle East: A Seven-­Nation Survey.” Doha: Northwestern University in Qatar. Available at https://www.qatar.northwestern.edu/news/articles/ NUQ_Media_Use_2019.pdf Rahimi, Babak. 2015. “Censorship and the Islamic Republic: Two Modes of Regulatory Measures  for Media in Iran.” Middle East Journal 69, no. 3: 358–378. HTTP://DX.DOI. ORG/10.3751/69.3.12 Ritman, Alex. 2019. “Could This Be the World’s Biggest State-­sponsored Piracy Operation?.” The Hollywood Reporter ( June 20). Available at https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/ could-­be-­worlds-­biggest-­state-­sponsored-­piracy-­operation-­1217919 (accessed 12 August, 2020). Sakr, Naomi. 2001. Satellite Realms: Transnational Television, Globalization and the Middle East. London: I.B. Tauris. __________ 2007. Arab Television Today. London: I.B. Tauris. __________ 2008a. “Oil, Arms and Media: How US Interventionism Shapes Arab TV.” Journal für Entwicklungspolitik 24, no. 1: 57–81. HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.20446/JEP-­2414-­3197-­24-­1-­57 __________ 2008b. “Egyptian TV in the Grip of Government: Politics Before Profit in a Fluid Pan-­Arab Market.” In David Ward (Ed.), Television and Public Policy (pp. 265–281). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum.

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__________ 2009a. “Fragmentation or Consolidation? Factors in the ‘Oprah-­ization’ of Social Talk on Multichannel Arab TV.” In Graeme Turner and Jinna Tay (Eds.), Television Studies After TV (pp. 168–177). Abingdon: Routledge. __________ 2009b. “Is the Arab TV Viewer a King or a Pawn? How Arab Broadcasters Deal with Schedules and Audience Data.” In Arnim Heinemann et al. (Eds.), The Middle East in the Media (pp. 131–146). London: Saqi. __________ 2010. “News, Transparency and the Effectiveness of Reporting from Inside Arab Dictatorships.” International Communication Gazette 72, no. 1: pp. 35–50. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/1748048509350337 __________ 2016. “Media ‘Globalization’ as Survival Strategy for Authoritarian Regimes in the Arab Middle East.” In Terry Flew, Petros Iosifidis, and Jeanette Steemers (Eds.), Global Media and National Policies: The Return of the State (pp. 173–189). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. __________ 2017. “Provision, Protection or Participation? Approaches to Regulating Children’s Television in Arab Countries.” Media International Australia 163, no. 1: 31–41. DOI: 10.1177/ 1329878X17693933 Sakr, Naomi, and Steemers, Jeanette. 2016. “Co-­producing Content for Pan-­Arab Children’s TV: State, Business and the Workplace.” In Miranda Banks et al. (Eds.), Production Studies, The Sequel! (pp. 238–250). Abingdon: Routledge __________ 2019. Screen Media for Arab and European Children: Policy and Production Encounters in the Multiplatform Era. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Saval, Malina. 2019. “USC’s Middle East Media Program Sparks Inclusive Change in TV Industry.” Variety (May 10). Available at https://variety.com/2019/tv/spotlight/usc-­ middle-­ east­media-­program-­sparks-­inclusive-­change-­tv-­industry-­1203210526/ Spigel, Lynn. 2004. “Introduction.” In Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsson (Eds.), Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition (pp. 1–24). Durham and London: Duke University Press. Tawil-­Souri, Helga. 2007. “Global and Local Forces for a Nation-­state Yet to Be Born: The Paradoxes of Palestinian Television Policies.” Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 4, no. 3: 4–25. Thomson, Stuart. 2014. “Mixed Fortunes” and “Interview with Sam Barnett.” In Stuart Thomson (Ed.), Digital TV Europe: Middle East and Africa 2014 (November): 4–8; 11–12. Wasko, Janet. 2005. “Introduction.” In Janet Wasko (Ed.), A Companion to Television (pp. 1–12). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Wasko, Janet, and Meehan, Eileen R. 2020. “Introduction.” In Janet Wasko and Eileen R. Meehan (Eds.), A Companion to Television (2nd ed.) (pp. 3–14). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Williams, Raymond. 1974. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. London: Fontana. WTO 2020. Saudi Arabia – Measures Concerning the Protection of Intellectual Property Rights: Report of the Panel, Geneva: WTO ( June 16). Available at https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/ dispu_e/567r_e.pdf (accessed August 14, 2020). Zaid, Bouziane. 2018. “A Normative Study of Broadcast Regulators in the Arab World.” International Journal of Communication 12: 4401–4420.

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Digital MENA An Overview of Digital Infrastructure, Policies, and Media Practices in the Middle East and North Africa Carola Richter Introduction The advent of the internet, particularly social media, has not only shaken the media systems of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region to their foundations, but also their politics and society. Often dubbed “Facebook revolutions,” the Arab uprisings in 2011 have shown the potential of a role for decentralized digital media in challenging existing orders. In addition, later uprisings such as those in Iraq, Sudan, Algeria, and Lebanon in 2019 proved that digital media can help mobilize and organize protests. At the same time, social media is not only a political tool in the hands of activists but also shapes everyday life and results in, for example, changes in gender relations. Yet, digital media is not a gateway to democratization or, as Larry Diamond (2010, 69) termed it in 2010, a “liberation technology.” It is subject to regulation and governing policies that control, shape, and channel its political, societal, and economic potential in multiple ways. While many governments, particularly in the Arab Gulf states, invest heavily in state-­of-­the-­art digital infrastructure, they link this with rigid control of political content online (see Chapters 10,13). In the following, and by giving first an overview of the digital infrastructure established in the MENA region and, second, the policies behind it, the political economy of the digital Middle East will be examined. In its third part, this chapter will focus on media practices by discussing the use of digital media and its effects on politics, as well

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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as the incorporation of digital media in everyday life and its impact on society. In doing so, the dialectics of the digital will be emphasized.

Exploring the Divide: The Digital Infrastructure of the MENA At the beginning of the 2020s, the digital infrastructure regarding internet connectivity and telecommunications in the MENA region has revealed a strong digital divide among the region’s different countries. From a structural perspective, three main components add to this divide and are connected to the political agenda of the respective regimes, a link which will be discussed in more detail in the second part of this chapter. First, there is an economic component: there needs to be a strong determination by and the financial means of the state to invest in state-­of-­the-­art infrastructure or the will to allow and enable businesses to do so. At the same time, these investments need to be underpinned by a market – i.e. consumers who can afford subscriptions to the offerings out of this infrastructure. The unequal distribution of wealth between and within many MENA countries results in uneven markets. Second, there is an educational component. MENA countries have made considerable progress in providing infrastructure for the education of everyone. Still, the education systems remain strongly divided. As a result, in most MENA countries, there is a highly educated elite, and in some countries, illiteracy rates still stand at a quarter (or more) of the population, as in Yemen, Morocco, Sudan, Egypt, and Algeria.1 With regard to digital media, one could argue that reading and writing skills can be supplemented by visual or audio tools on the internet and mobile phones. Nonetheless, better education is also connected to a growth in internet usage (Wei and Hindman 2011). The third structural component pushing a digital divide is connected to the prevailing problem of violent conflict and wars in many parts of the region. Digital infrastructure is being destroyed, going unmaintained, or never even being built due to armed conflicts, bombings, or physical fragmentations of countries. In this context, the relationship between conflict and digital infrastructure is double-­edged: conflicts often prevent the establishment of a sufficient infrastructure, while infrastructure has become a target of (cyber) warfare. Given the different characteristics of these components in each country, we can detect huge heterogeneity and a broad spectrum regarding digital infrastructure in the MENA region. On one end of the spectrum, the wealthy Arab Gulf countries are positioned with a high-­end infrastructure that connects literally everyone through the internet and mobile phones. Figures from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) indicate an almost complete connectedness of the population to the internet in the small

 See United Nations Development Program (http://hdr.undp.org/en/indicators/101406#a), which estimated literacy rates in 2016 for Yemen at 66.4%, for Morocco at 69.4%, for Egypt and Algeria at 75.1%, and for Sudan at 73.4%.

1

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states of Kuwait (100.0%), Qatar (97.4%), Bahrain (95.9%), and the UAE (94.8%),2 and mobile phone penetration sometimes hits the 200% line, meaning that statistically every citizen has two mobile phone contracts.3 The geographically larger and more populated countries of Saudi Arabia (82.1%) and Oman (80.2%) follow this trend but do not reach those high figures. In all of these countries, the regimes heavily invest in infrastructure and facilitate the establishment of international and leading technology companies in the region. Due to strong investments in the education sector, illiteracy rates are low, and the majority of the (native) citizens can be considered well-­off, thus providing a relevant market for information and communication technologies. There are, of course, other countries in the region that have long realized how investing in media infrastructure in general and internet infrastructure in particular can help in advancing their modernization and economic development. The governments that most strongly advocated for the distribution of computers and the development of an internet infrastructure in the early 2000s were Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, and, after some delay, Algeria (Abdulla 2007). These countries started from a very low level of connectivity, and due to limited financial means, vast geographies, and substantial illiteracy rates, they have reached only modest levels of internet penetration (reaching in 2017, according to the ITU, 45% in Egypt, 47.7% in Algeria, 61.8% in Morocco, and 64.2% in Tunisia). The early and controlled liberalization of the telecommunications market, however, has stimulated comparatively high levels of mobile phone penetration (beyond 100% in all countries except Egypt). In contrast to this are countries such as Lebanon (78.2% in 2017) and Jordan (66.8%), in which internet penetration is comparatively better but mobile phone use has long been considered rather expensive and therefore has remained less common, with mobile phone subscriptions reaching only 64.5% of Lebanese and 87.6% of Jordanians. In Lebanon, for example, until 2017, internet speeds were extremely low due to a neglect of investments into the infrastructure by the responsible state-­owned company, Ogero, as well as alleged corruption, “including the discovery of illegal parallel networks, [until] the sacking of the director of Ogero who also occupied a high post in the relevant ministry” (El-­Richani 2021, 14). Corruption and cronyism also seem to be behind the slow development of the mobile phone market. There are countries with an ambivalent record, such as Palestine (65.2% in 2017), Syria (34.3%), and Iraq (49.4%), where a significant part of the population is familiar with digital media due to advanced levels of education. While all three countries have witnessed major investments in internet infrastructure  – particularly in the telecommunications market, which has a quota reaching close to 100% of the  To allow for an all-­country comparison, all figures given here for internet connectivity were taken from the 2017 ITU statistics: International Telecommunication Union, “Percentage of Individuals Using the Internet.” https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/stat/default.aspx. Definition: “This is the proportion of individuals who used the Internet from any location in the last three months.”, https://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-­d/opb/ind/D-­IND-­ITCMEAS-­2014-­PDF-­E.pdf, p. 54. 3  Figures on mobile phone penetration are taken from the 2018 ITU statistics: International Telecommunication Union, “Mobile-­cellular Subscriptions.” https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/ Statistics/Pages/stat/default.aspx 2

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population – these investments continue to face major setbacks caused by destruction due to occupation, war, or violent conflict. In Palestine, for example, all connections to the World Wide Web flow through Israel, which not only conducts regular shutdowns and restricts broadband width but is also said to attempt removal of Palestinian content from the Web, even in collaboration with Facebook and Google (7amleh 2016). On the other end of the spectrum of technological advancement are Libya (21.8% in 2017), Yemen (26.7%), and Sudan (30.9%), which have the lowest rates of internet connectivity in the MENA region. In these cases, the lag is the product of a mixture of general underdevelopment, war and conflict, and a severe lack of government determination to build an infrastructure until the 2010s. In Libya, for example, sanctions imposed by the United Nations were lifted in 2003, and only since then has communication technology been slowly upgraded. However, the expansion of the digital infrastructure has continued to be very slow. The recent warlike conflicts in Libya, as well as in Yemen or Syria, hinder extensive and sustainable investments in infrastructure.

Of Power and Control: The Policies Behind the Digital In many ways, the infrastructure described here is both a product and reinforcement of certain policies of the different regimes in the MENA region. Often connected to economic capacity, there are specific policies behind the building of a high-­end infrastructure or the lack thereof, such as whether a state makes it a priority to invest in the internet or liberalizes the telecommunications market – or not. Taking a closer look at policies also includes the question of who has power over which technologies – visibly and invisibly – and how this power is implemented. Though there are some exceptions, it is safe to say that, as a rule, in the MENA region, the telecommunication and internet markets are pseudo-­liberalized, while internet content is strongly monitored and regulated. The paradoxical policies of liberalized authoritarianism in the digital realm in many ways mirror the developments of the overall political economy of media systems in the past few decades. A typical feature is an alleged liberalization through pseudo-­ privatization, which characterized reforms in the television sector in the late 1990s and early 2000s (Guaaybess 2013). Also in the 2000s, the “telecommunications sector experienced a shift from state-­ owned governance to its almost complete privatization” (Wavre 2018, 51) as a result of pressures from the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO. These pressures “embodied . . . a new order based on liberalization, privatization and delegation” (Wavre 2018, 55). Due to the continuing economic crisis and dependencies on international donors, these neoliberal policies appeared to be easy to introduce in the MENA countries. Now, in most of them, three or four mobile telecommunication providers are licensed, of which one license is typically given to multinational companies such as the French Orange (operating in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia) or the South African MTN (operating in Syria, Sudan, and Yemen) in an attempt to adhere to the Western-­imposed paradigm of a free market policy.

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Licenses to foreign players, however, are often granted only through a partnership with the state-­owned company. At the same time, one major operator remains under full or partial control by the state, such as Telecom Egypt, Algérie Télécom, or Tunisie Telecom. In some cases, a direct state ownership is camouflaged by an alleged private ownership, as it was in the case of SyriaTel, which was long owned by Rami Makhlouf, a cousin of President Bashar al-­Assad (Middle East Eye 2020), or in the case of du, the second licensed operator in the UAE, which is financed by state-­owned funds and holdings. In general, these companies belong to the ministries of telecommunication (or institutions similarly named) in the respective countries, and all other operators are subject to their licensing and regulatory policies. Typically, through these ministries, financial assets for the respective regimes are created. In the case of Lebanon, for example, “the telecommunications branch is among the highest income generators for the government, which in part uses the funds generated to offset its debts” (Hodali 2019). In Palestine, subscriber fees contribute 10% of Palestine’s GDP, providing 30% of the Palestinian authorities’ annual tax revenues (Tawil-­Souri 2015). Pseudo-­privatization is thus a major characteristic of policies in the digital realm. Another transfer of MENA media policies to the digital realm is the transnational oligarchization of the media scene, which Della Ratta, Sakr, and Skovgaard-­Petersen explain in their book Arab Media Moguls (2015). According to these authors, media tycoons are often political and economic power players who not only own and control major television networks, print media, and related companies in their countries of origin but also influence and invest in several other Arab countries. A general overview of the internet and telecommunication market reveals a continuation of transnational oligarchization within the context of alleged liberalization. Interestingly, and with the exception of only the conflict-­ridden countries of Syria, Sudan, and Libya, at least one license is fully or partly in the hands of transnationally operating Arab enterprises originating from Kuwait (Zain), the UAE (Etisalat), Bahrain (Batelco) and Qatar (Ooredoo). All of these companies are fully or at least partly (Kuwait’s Zain) state-­owned. Thus, the alleged liberalization of the telecommunication and internet markets in the MENA region is connected to an international expansion of the state-­f unded operators of the small rich Arab Gulf states and a means to create influence and revenues for the respective ruling regimes. A mapping of the international investments into other Arab markets also reflects the recent geopolitics of the rivaling Gulf states with Qatar and its political allies on the one side (Ooredoo operates in Oman, Kuwait, Iraq, Palestine, Algeria, and Tunisia) and the UAE-­Saudi connection and their allies on the other side (Etisalat operates in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Egypt). The Kuwaiti company Zain operates in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia, while Bahrain’s Batelco is present in Jordan, Kuwait, and Yemen. At the same time, global players, such as Orange and Vodafone, are operating in the Gulf states only in collaboration with local partners. Many governments in the MENA region, particularly in the Gulf, have realized that a proactive investment in the digital infrastructure puts them in the driver’s seat to control the developments of digital media and its possible political impacts. This resembles again the ways in which other media, such as broadcasting and satellite TV, had been controlled over decades (see Chapters 10, 22). Nowadays, however, these attempts to

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control are underpinned with “visions,” “plans,” and “programs” that frame the activities of state investments into digital media as pathways to economic prosperity, modernization, and national development. In addition, regimes strategically articulate the need to diversify the economy and the wish to satisfy their citizens by providing state-­of-­the-­art communications and a modern lifestyle. In Bahrain, for example, the government pushes the Fourth National Telecommunications Plan (NTP4), which includes “a national fiber-­ based network to support ultrafast broadband” ( Jones 2021, 158). The Digital Morocco 2020 program aims at “positioning Morocco as a strategic digital hub in French-­speaking Africa” (Zaid and Ibahrine 2021, 316), while the Saudi regime focuses on its Empowering Digital Saudi program to enhance Saudi citizens’ digital skills (Ministry of Communications and Information Technology 2019). The UAE claims to be heading toward the Fourth Industrial Revolution, including by adopting blockchain technologies and investing in bioengineering sciences and robotics (UAE Government 2018). The promise of future prosperity comes at a price: the content spread on the internet is often closely monitored and controlled. The ministry of telecommunications, ministry of information, or other governmental institutions such as a telecommunication regulation authority are entrusted with these tasks. There are only two countries in the Arab world in which digital communication can be considered largely free from a legal and practical point of view: Tunisia and Iraq.4 Since the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Iraq has not had a state institution to control cyberspace in the country, so it is a largely unregulated and free space (Khalifa 2021). In Tunisia, internet governance has taken a liberal turn after the transition process started in 2011 (de la Ferrière and Vallina-­ Rodriguez 2014). The Telecommunications Act of 2013 officially put an end to internet censorship. All other countries, however, have imposed strict policies with regard to digital communication. A typical means of legalizing restrictive control of internet content is the establishment of cybercrime laws and anti-­fake-­news regulation. This process accelerated after the “Arab Spring” (see, for the UAE, Saleem 2012) and was surely a result of government fear of the mobilizing effect of the internet. But it was also embedded in a global development during which governments worldwide were trying to get back control of cyberspace by cautioning against unethical content as well as the dangerous effects of internet communication (Morozov 2011). Cybercrime laws – such as those in Qatar created in 2014 or in Syria in 2012, to name two of many – have often been set up under the pretext of protecting citizens from identity theft and bullying, and the economy and the state from money laundering, financial fraud, and hacking.5 While these seem to be noble reasons, in reality, these laws also heavily affect communication on social media as well as journalistic production online. The instruction of many vaguely formulated press and publication laws in the region to  Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net report lists Tunisia as “partly free” and as the highest-­ ranking Arab country. According to its scores, it is close to the “free” category. Iraq is listed as partly free, too. https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-net/scores 5  See the explanation by Mahmoud Galander, retired Professor of Mass Communication at Qatar University, in an explanatory short film on Qatar’s law (2019): https://www.areacore.org/ims/ qatar/is-the-one-eyed-king-among-the-blind-qatar-and-the-media-script-en/ 4

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not publish anything that could undermine social order and moral values has been transferred with these laws to the digital sphere. Depending on the country, what is seen as undermining social order and moral values somewhat differs but generally comprises pornographic displays, comments critical of Islam, controversial coverage of the domestic and foreign policy of the country or its allies, and criticism of the king, emir, or president of the state (Al-­Zubaidi et al. 2012). The laws are often also used to justify surveillance of citizens and the monitoring of journalists. In Syria, laws governing digital media have provided a legal framework for online censorship and content-­and user-­monitoring by internet service providers (ISPs), who are required to retain records of internet traffic (Badran 2021). In Bahrain, ISPs are instructed to install web-­filtering software to block specific websites ( Jones  2021). In Egypt, since the military coup in 2013 and after the subsequent presidential elections in 2014 and 2018, “zero toleration policies toward dissent and criticism have become dominant” (Badr 2021, 228) also in the digital realm. The regime blocked more than 500 websites and media, and the cyberterrorism law of 2018 is used to incriminate Facebook group administrators (Reporters Without Borders 2019). While internet shutdowns have been globally used by several governments to try to control unrest and dissent in the past couple of years (Glasius and Michaelsen 2018), in the MENA region there have only been two incidents of a complete internet shutdown – one in Egypt in 2011, and the other in Iraq in 2019. Countries with better infrastructure have more sophisticated means of effectively repressing what they deem politically dangerous without jeopardizing the whole internet-­based economy, such as the Bahraini government, which imposed a local internet curfew during times of political unrest on the village of Duraz for over 100 days starting in June 2016 (Jones 2021, 158–159). Other regimes aim to counter anti-­government articulation via social media by using trolls or, as in the case of Sudan, by establishing an “electronic Jihad brigade” (Galander 2021, 244). Anti-­fake-­news and anti-­hate-­speech regulations, which are often part of cybercrime laws, also have a strong impact on journalists, contribute to self-­censorship, and prevent interactivity. In Jordan, for example, amendments to the Press and Publication Law in 2011/2012 now require news websites to formally obtain a license from the ministry and hold website owners personally liable for any opinions published through their outlets, even in the comment section (Mendel 2016, 2–3). This led to the widespread closure of websites and comment sections. It becomes obvious that political and economic power players strongly shape digital infrastructure, markets, and laws in the MENA region and thereby try to gain (transnational) influence and hope to channel activism and media usage (see Chapter 44).

When the Political Meets Everyday Life: Digital Media Practices Despite the repressive laws and sometimes lacking digital infrastructure, media practice in the MENA region has turned digital. Even though television is still the number-­one medium of use in all MENA countries, digital devices and technologies are catching up.

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A representative survey among youth in nine MENA countries conducted in 2016 revealed that while 86% of the households surveyed own a TV set, 78% possess a smartphone – albeit with strong differences between the countries due to the digital divide (Richter 2018). Habits of reading newspapers and listening to analogue radio are dying out. There are three interrelated potentials of digital media, or more specifically, social media, that are globally relevant but result(ed) in specific digital media practices in the MENA region: the possibility (1) to enable largely unrestricted articulation of marginalized voices to be heard by a potentially broad public; (2) to directly approach and mobilize people for a certain cause; and (3) to allow for a particular identity formation and creation of a feeling of belonging to a certain community vis-­à-­vis visibility of like-­ minded people. Arora (2012) has pointed out that since the beginnings of the spread of the internet, “cyberleisure practices” in the Global South are as omnipresent as in the West and argued for a more holistic view on digital media practices beyond a focus on the political. Yet, in the 2000s, it was easy to believe in Diamond’s claim of the internet being a political “liberation technology” (2010, 69) in the MENA region, as the previously mentioned three potentials were particularly incorporated by a tech-­savvy young and urban elite to shake up the political sphere. Tracing the developments in Egypt in this period provides an excellent example of how political communication via the internet could, in fact, challenge and even overthrow an authoritarian regime. This started before the advent of social media, when blogging became the first major tool for expressing dissident voices. Radsch (2008) identified three phases of blogging in Egypt: the experimental phase between 2003–2005 in which the earlier mentioned potential of largely free articulation was tried out, followed by an activist phase in 2005–2006, and afterwards a phase of diversification. According to Radsch, the “early adopters were primarily liberal, anti-­establishment and often leftists who blogged about personal interests” (2008). In a phase of political contention starting in 2004, these bloggers became more politicized, establishing what can be termed citizen journalism. Indeed, several hundreds of bloggers were said to “have extended the ability of existing political movements to organize, they have spurred independent campaigns [and have given] the youth a prominent uncensored platform” (Isherwood 2009). At about the same time, one of the biggest opposition movements in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, also built up a large internet presence including plenty of websites, blogs, and later, social media sites (Richter 2010). Furthermore, in 2008, social media left its first footprint when a group of youth supported textile workers’ labor protests and called for a country-­wide strike on April 6 on Facebook. About 70,000 people liked the Facebook page – at that time, around 10% of all Egyptian Facebook users – placing significant pressure on the Egyptian government (Faris 2008). Thus, the digital sphere was indeed a playground for dissident voices and challengers to the incumbent regime. It culminated in the famous Facebook page “We are all Khaled Said,” set up in 2010 to commemorate the brutal police killing of a young man, helping create a “spill-­over effect” of dissident discourse into the mainstream media in Egypt, stimulating a broad mobilization of like-­minded people taking to the streets in early 2011 to carry out what has often been dubbed a “Facebook revolution” (Badr and Richter 2018, 551).

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In other countries of the so-­called Arab Spring, such as Tunisia (see, in particular, Zayani 2015), Bahrain, Libya, and Syria, similar albeit locally differing practices of articulation and mobilization via social media could be observed, adding to the reputation of social media as liberation technology (Howard and Hussain 2013). For about a decade, the internet and social media were seen as  – and have indeed been – the alternative to bypass government control not only in the MENA but in many authoritarian countries worldwide. In the middle of the 2010s, however, this prominent and explicit political usage has decreased. Fragmentation and polarization have made many people cautious with regard to the political dimension of content spread on social media: “I used to share, but not anymore, as I believe that if I share something untrue I will be a part of the lie. So I share what I’m 100% sure of, or something funny that doesn’t relate to politics,” explained a young woman from Egypt about social media use in the earlier mentioned survey in 2016 (quoted in Richter 2018, 230). In the same survey, only 11% of the young people interviewed indicated that they discuss politics online, and only 9% said that they engage in political mobilization. The bulk of interviewees said they used social media to stay in contact with family and friends, organize meetings, and share music and videos (Richter 2018, 227). This turn away from the outright political is also mirrored in the kinds of social media platforms being used. Social networking and sharing services such as Facebook and Twitter seem to have reached their usage peaks. Twitter has become very popular in the Gulf states – statistically, in Saudi Arabia, more than one-­third of the population is on Twitter (Statista  2020)  – while Facebook is the dominant platform in the rest of the MENA region. Given the distrust in traditional media outlets and the widespread use of social media, it is not surprising that many claim to get their news and information mainly from social media (Dennis, Martin, and Hassan 2018). However, WhatsApp and, more locally, some other instant messaging services such as Telegram and Viber have gained an edge over Facebook and Twitter, indicating that upholding individual connections and sharing content among smaller groups is more important to many than attempts to reach broader circles of people or potentially “the world” through Facebook and Twitter. Nowadays, the earlier mentioned third potential to strengthen identity formation seems to be the main function of digital media and can still have political effects, but also goes beyond the outright political. The decentralized and network character of digital media indeed enables a greater visibility of actors and their issues to like-­minded people and allows ideas to circulate. It creates a feeling of belonging to a broader community or, as Merlyna Lim put it, “[i]magination allows the collectives to envision a more desirable future” (Lim 2018, 18). Yet, since the early days of the internet, these collectives have multiplied and diversified, among them radical Islamists, feminists, ethnic groups, and LGBTQI communities. However, this change in usage habits does not mean that social media has lost its mobilization potential. A new wave of political and social uprisings in 2019 in Sudan, Algeria, Iraq, and Lebanon showed that social media still plays a major role in organizing the protests, but also in mobilizing for them. In Sudan, for example, “amid a government crackdown on the press, [WhatsApp was] helping politically charged residents share news and views without fear” (Albaih  2015). Another incident showed how deeply

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incorporated instant message services are in the media repertoire of the people in the MENA region. In October 2019, the Lebanese council of ministers “in a bid to raise revenue  .  .  .  adopted the infamous and now revoked ‘WhatsApp tax’ proposal, which intended to levy a monthly USD 6 tax for the use of WhatsApp” (El-­Richani 2021, 15). The enormous uproar caused by this proposal sparked revolutionary events in which the claims of the tens of thousands of protesters on the streets soon went beyond the revoking of the WhatsApp tax and tackled corruption and incompetence in the ruling elites. Visible events such as demonstrations and even revolutions and their obvious connection to digital media shape the picture of media practices in the MENA. However, there are more practices that ultimately also have a political dimension but are both embedded and result in changing quotidian social practices. It has often been highlighted that digital media helps break open patriarchal patterns in gender relations. Alsalem (2021) shows how in Kuwait, traditionally male-­only sociopolitical gatherings, the so-­called diwaniyas, have also found their virtual counterparts. In these digital spaces, women now actively take part in and shape this informal way of political decision making. The empowerment of genders is not limited to this. Connecting digitally to the other sex when physical meetings are prohibited, such as in Saudi Arabia, or exploring different sexual identities through the web by finding like-­minded people, such as in the LGBTQI communities, has become common in the MENA region (Al-­Qasimi 2011). The transnational visibility and connection to global phenomena is an important dimension in the formation of these communities. Braune (2015), for example, shows how Morocco has seen the development of a “Parkour” subculture – an urban youth culture in which the actors climb and jump on the city’s infrastructure. Videos of cool moves of the so-­called traceurs in Morocco circulate on the internet and establish a connection to like-­minded people not only in Morocco but also those in the Global North. This mediatization of everyday life through the incorporation of digital media practices (Krotz 2017) has had and will have tremendous impacts on social, cultural, and political spheres in the Middle East. Digital media can thus help bypass established authorities and challenge their rules. It can be used to transgress geographical and moral borders, and the sectors in which this happens are manifold in the MENA region. However, we must analyze these digital media practices within the infrastructural and political constraints described earlier to detect their real effects and not fall into the trap of overestimating their potential.

Conclusion Digital media infrastructure, policies, and practices in the MENA region reveal the dialectics of the digital, with an observable simultaneity of progressive policies and rigid control, cultural diversity and paternalistic behavior, political mobilization and political disengagement, all at the same time. Despite being a young technology, digital media has already had a tremendous impact on the regions’ political, social, and cultural development and will continue to do so in the future. Authoritarian regimes also “learn” from each other, as became obvious in the 2010s, and this “authoritarian learning” will more

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strongly shape the regimes’ media policies and infrastructure investments in the upcoming years, thus confining at least the outright political mobilization by oppositional groups via social media (see Chapters 26, 43). However, everyday digital media practices in the MENA region should also be considered political in many ways, as they can challenge authorities and question established religious, societal, or patriarchal structures. A struggle around the directions of social change will thus be fought out via digital media in the years to come.

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Galander, M. 2021. “Sudan: Media under the Military–Democratic Pendulum.” In C. Richter and C. Kozman (Eds.), Arab Media Systems (pp. 233–247). Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. Glasius, M., and Michaelsen, M. 2018. “Illiberal and Authoritarian Practices in the Digital Sphere – Prologue.” Special Section: Authoritarian Practices in the Digital Age. International Journal of Communication 12: 3795–3813. Guaaybess, T. (Ed.) 2013. National Broadcasting and State Policy in Arab Countries. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan Hodali, D. 2019. “Lebanon – Telecommunication in Government Hands.” Deutsche Welle (7 May). https://www.dw.com/en/lebanon-­telecommunication-­in-­government-­hands/a-­48634796-­0 Howard, P. N., and Hussain, M. M. 2013. Democracy’s Fourth Wave?: Digital Media And The Arab Spring. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Isherwood, T. 2009. “A New Direction or More of the Same? Political Blogging in Egypt.” Arab Media & Society (August 6). https://www.arabmediasociety.com/a-­new-­direction-­or-­more­of-­the-­same/ Jones, M.O. 2021. “Bahrain: Media-­Assisted Authoritarianism.” In C. Richter and C. Kozman (Eds.), Arab Media Systems (pp. 145–162). Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. Khalifa, S. 2021. Iraq: Media Between Democratic Freedom and Security Pressures. In C.  Richter and C. Kozman (Eds.), Arab Media Systems (pp. 73–90). Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. Krotz, F. 2017. “Explaining the Mediatisation Approach.” Javnost – The Public 24, no. 2: 103–118. Lim, M. 2018. “Sticks and Stones, Clicks and Phones: Contextualizing the Role of Digital Media in the Politics of Transformation.” In C. Richter, A. Antonakis, and C. Harders (Eds.), Digital Media and the Politics of Transformation in the Arab World and Asia (pp. 9–34). Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Mendel, T. 2016. “Analysis of the Press and Publications Law, No. 8 for the Year 1998, as Amended.” UNESCO, Amman Office. https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/updatedjordan.ppl-­ analysis.16-­05-­18ls-­1.pdf Middle East Eye. 2020. “Syrian Court Seizes Rami Makhlouf ’s Syriatel Amid Assad Spat.” ( June  5). https://www.middleeasteye.net/​news/​syrian​-­court-­seizes-­​r ami-­makhloufs​­syriatel-​amid-spat-​assad Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies. 2019. “MCIT Releases Framework to Empower Digital Skills of Saudi Youth.” (October 5). https://www.mcit.gov.sa/en/ media-­center/news/183883 Morozov, E. 2011. The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. New York: Public Affairs. Radsch, C. C. 2008. “Core to Commonplace: The Evolution of Egypt’s Blogosphere.” Arab Media & Society (September 29). https://www.arabmediasociety.com/core-­to-­commonplace-­the-­ evolution-­of-­egypts-­blogosphere/ Reporters Without Borders. 2019. Egypt Country Report. https://rsf.org/en/country/egypt Richter, C. 2018. “Communication.” In J. Gertel and R. Hexel (Eds.), Coping with Uncertainty: Youth in the Middle East and North Africa (pp. 223–240). London: Saqi. Richter, C. 2010. “Virtual Mobilisation. The Internet and Political Activism in Egypt.” Orient 1: 16–24. Saleem, S. 2012. “New UAE Cyber Crime Law Combating Information Technology Crimes in the UAE: Types, Penalties & Punishment of Cyber Crimes.” Al-­Tamimi & Co. https://www.tamimi.com/ law-­update-­articles/new-­law-­combating-­information-­technology-­crimes/ Statista 2020). “Leading Countries Based on Number of Twitter Users as of July 2020.” https:// www.statista.com/statistics/242606/number-­of-­active-­twitter-­users-­in-­selected-­countries/ Tawil-­Souri, H. 2015. “Occupation Apps.” https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/03/occupation-­ apps-­souri-­palestine/

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UAE Government 2018. The UAE Strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. https://u.ae/en/ about-­the-­uae/strategies-­initiatives-­and-­awards/federal-­governments-­strategies-­and-­plans/ the-­uae-­strategy-­for-­the-­fourth-­industrial-­revolution Wavre, V. 2018. Policy Diffusion and Telecommunications Regulation. Wiesbaden: Springer. Wei, L. and Hindman, D. 2011. “Does the Digital Divide Matter More? Comparing the Effects of New Media and Old Media Use on the Education Based Knowledge Gap.” Mass Communication and Society 14, no. 2: 216–235. Zaid, B. and Ibahrine, M. 2021. “Morocco: Competitive Authoritarianism in Media Reforms.” In C. Richter and C. Kozman (Eds.), Arab Media Systems (pp. 303–322). Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. Zayani, M. 2015. Networked Publics and Digital Contention: The Politics of Everyday Life in Tunisia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Documents, Archives, Absence Current Challenges and Insights from Media Research in the Middle East and Beyond Hatim El-­Hibri and Kaveh Askari This chapter examines the conceptual and practical challenges of doing historical and archival research on media in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Whether by design or neglect, archives and archivists can become inaccessible to researchers. Both can succumb to the passage of time, become restricted, or simply slip out of common awareness. With collections of original sources in the region located in unevenly accessible state and private archives, archival work can include years of careful management of relationships before one has the opportunity to access important collections (see Chapter 30). Access is rarely equitably granted, and the lack of transparency about why such decisions are made creates challenges for peer review. Other points of access require attention to the  personal risks of conducting research on-­site and publishing that research later. Temporary access to material followed by inaccessibility on a subsequent visit (or as a result of shifting travel bans), which happens often, can create challenges for verification of valuable sources even at the later stages of a research project. These issues are often compounded by the disjunctures of decolonization and the formation of postcolonial states, in which both the process of handover and newer state priorities and institutions remake (or abandon) archival practice.1 Governments can throw up considerable barriers while lowering them on certain topics, wars lead to significant losses, and swaths of history are only attended to by independent organizations or private collectors. At the same time, the production of archives and nomination of certain topics as worthy of historical analysis is itself an endeavor driven by the ideological imperatives of powerful political actors, institutions, and governments. In studies of cinema and  See Omnia El Shakry. 2015. “‘History Without Documents’: The Vexed Archives of Decolonization in the Middle East.” The American Historical Review 120, no. 3: 920–934.

1

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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media of the Middle East, these tendencies are exacerbated by the circulation created by transnational and trans-­regional media distribution networks (see Chapters 19, 24). Many of these issues are not unique to the Middle East and North Africa, a problematic unit to begin with. In what follows, we unpack the conceptual and methodological problems of media historical research in the region, and speak to the numerous gaps in our scholarly knowledge.2 What kinds of shifts in emphasis, such as the shift from histories of innovation and disruption to histories of maintenance and repair, might make unused archival collections newly relevant? In a region where so many important archival collections are sharply aligned politically, institutionally, or industrially, when is it possible or ethical to use archives against the grain? How can we discover and use documents about media history in the Middle East in the archives that document transregional flows of media? How does the contemporary media landscape trouble and deepen the question of archival access, particularly as social media proffers a kind of archival record, and as the media industries generate online platforms as an outcome of distribution strategies? How might one contend with the emergence of the modern nation-­state system, which obscured the mediated lifeworlds that preceded or exceeded it? To  address questions such as these, we identify four key areas of theoretical and ­methodological concern: ●● ●●

●● ●●

The challenges presented by unbalanced transregional archives of circulation; The value in uncoupling components of a film or video in order to work against the grain of prevalent textual approaches to those objects; The intersection of archival work and fieldwork; and The unevenness of archives-­in-­the-­making created by online platforms and digitization.

Rather than a comprehensive country-­by-­country guide, we unpack these matters using concrete examples meant to be illustrative rather than comprehensive. We hope to show how archival research, like other methodological approaches such as oral ­history and participant observation, can present challenges to the resourcefulness of the researcher, but as research in media industries shows, the uneven availability of sources can itself be used to generate insight into broader patterns of economic or t­ echnological change.3

Cinema Networks and the Unevenness of Historical Sources When working with archival evidence of cinema and media circulation in the MENA region, inaccessibility is only part of the problem. Unevenness means that, on occasion, one encounters an embarrassment of riches in an original source. Then another set of  While the field has expanded since its initial publication, an early call to address such gaps is Walter Armbrust. 2012. “A History of New Media in the Arab Middle East.” Journal for Cultural Research 16, no. 2–3: 155–74. 3  For a useful overview of these methodological concerns in this literature, see Daniel Herbert, Amanda D. Lotz, and Aswin Punathambekar. Media Industry Studies. (Medford, MA: Polity, 2020). 2

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concerns arise. What to do with the few standout sources whose wealth of material is so vast that one must budget energy for the labor of wielding that imbalance? Some sources are as siloed as they are deep.4 They require a cautious enthusiasm. The 1950s–1970s Tehran weekly film magazine Setare-­ye Cinema (Cinema Star), for example, has been a rare resource for those fortunate enough to be able to work with it in the National Library of Iran or in private collections. Its decades of publication contain exhibition history of important films and intellectual history of the early writings of film critics who would go on to run major film institutions. And yet, what is absent from this influential publication demonstrates precisely how boons of access can overwhelm a study. Its editorial choices obscure the popularity of Hindi and Egyptian films in Iran. Even films made in Iran (except for a few periods in the volatile turnover of the journal’s editorial leadership) get short shrift next to American, French, and British films. To pursue sources like these for years, only to meet the sudden accessibility of a lifetime’s worth of  original material with circumspection, requires an almost perverse mixture of ­obsessiveness and discipline. But some version of that mixture is required to balance sources and to account for their fragmentation. To address both outsized obstructions to sources as well as the imbalances of a few abundant and underexplored sources, it becomes increasingly valuable to pursue multi-­sited archival research. Every archival resource and tool provide its own pattern of illumination and its own shadow. Like any competent cinematographer, archival researchers should work toward competencies in configuring multiple points of illumination. The digitization efforts of the Qatar National Library, for example, provide instant and durable access to a stock of records about cinema circulation in the Gulf. Much of this is only beginning to be explored, as it is in Firat Oruc’s new work on film exhibition in Bahrain.5 His work shows how the QNL resources then intersect with personal diaries and with the cinema records of the BP archives at the University of Warwick. Research on Gulf cinema might also expand to include the records of film companies like Warner Bros., whose legal and accounting records at the University of Southern California comprise boxes of material about the dealings with the Anglo-­ Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) and the Arabian-­American Oil Company (ARAMCO). By comparing these multiple sites of documentation, we can follow the circuitous paths of films that played in Gulf cinemas. The flows of film and film technologies reveal oil companies’ managerial role in distribution and exhibition. Abadan, the important oil city at the southwestern edge of Iran, had several company cinemas of its own in the 1950s – each one marked by the entertainment functions on a highly stratified corporate  For a contemporary example of a wealth of archival information, a dataset surveyed from a c­ollection of funding applications, in a collaboration between Northwestern University in Qatar and the Doha Film Institute, offers a rare overview of independent cinema in the Middle East from 2012 to 2016. It offers a clean, budget-­driven snapshot of independent cinema, and in doing so reveals the many interdependencies that researchers must consider even as we track the  careers and artistic choices of individual filmmakers. Media Industries in the Middle East, Northwestern University in Qatar in Partnership with the Doha Film Institute. http://www. mideastmedia.org/industry/2016/independent-­f ilm/ 5  Firat Oruc.  2020. “Petrocolonial Circulations and Cinema’s Arrival in the Gulf.” Film History 32, no. 3. 4

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campus. This campus’s indoor and outdoor screening spaces formed a node in a ­network of more than 30 company cinemas, which made it, as AIOC officials noted in internal correspondence, one of the largest cinema chains in the region.6 Their network had seats numbering in the thousands, but they managed the flows of films through the Gulf that influenced tens of thousands of movie theater seats in the inland cities in Iraq and Iran. One wants to account for this influence on the movement of films in commercial cinemas without assuming the company cinema chain’s particular mix of educational films, animated material, and narrative features in English, Hindi, and Arabic were identically reproduced in the big city film markets. The networks of commercial cinemas in the major cities and the oil cinemas along the Gulf were different worlds at midcentury. Cinema around the Gulf was shaped by these institutional separations, by distant institutions which nevertheless found ways to exchange valuable reels of film and equipment. For records of commercial circulation in populous urban centers, other multi-­sited configurations of sources become useful. Film magazines document places and dates of exhibition, the duration of the run, and information about dubbing and subtitling. They also contain traces of the graphic publicity material that was repurposed from many sources. It is possible to trace in a magazine illustration whether a film poster for a Hollywood film was designed and printed in a graphic design hub like Rome, which gives further clues about who was distributing the films. If one wants to then compare this information against the written correspondence of commercial film distributors in the Middle East, one will come up largely empty-­handed in records in the region. A better place to look for such records is in the archives of the large film companies from whom they made their purchases. In those rarely pulled folders are debates over licensing, calculations of risk, and counterintuitive discussions about the value of enforcing copyright. A primary distributor in Baghdad, Naim Aizer, communicated with the United Artists office, sometimes directly and sometimes through his brothers who ran a hosiery business in New  York. Those letters are at the Wisconsin Historical Society.7 Letters from George Mansour, an influential film distributor in midcentury Cairo are at the Harry Ransom Center in his correspondence with Selznick Releasing Organization.8 These two distributors, despite continual conflicts over territorial rights, made it possible for the Tehran exhibitor Nourreddin Ashtiany to show certain blockbuster films in his city. The evidence of the US posters are found in libraries in Iran; the traces of Middle East distributor correspondence are archived in Austin, Madison, and Los Angeles. In the National Film Archive of Iran is evidence of the film prints that were shipped  The Anglo Iranian Oil Company aimed to maintain seating in their 33 cinemas at around 16,000. “It will be appreciated that the operation of a chain of 33 cinemas is a vast undertaking, and the provision and programming of film circuits calls for a very considerable amount of organization, particularly in view of the distances to be covered. American, British, Indian, and Arabic films are rented from the UK, various centers in the Middle East and India, and are supplemented by News reels, shorts, etc. The programs are changed three times per week.” “Report on Anglo Iranian Oil Company Cinemas.” June 10, 1947. BP Archives, University of Warwick. 7  See https://wcftr.commarts.wisc.edu/collections/film 8  See https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/selznickpublic/ 6

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along these networks, reedited, and dubbed in local sound studios.9 Such is the ­counterintuitive formation of multi-­sited archival work. How better to reveal the system by which this cinema exhibition infrastructure was maintained? The connections and gaps between production, promotion, and circulation yield fragmentary archives.

Tracking Semi-­detached and Unsynced Elements in Archives Humanistic approaches to film and media, having taken root in the academy with the help of 1970s literary theory, have imparted a legacy of textual analysis to the field. The growth of media archaeological approaches, and the interest in space and place, since then have certainly energized attention to archives, but there are still opportunities to pursue this shift in studies of the Middle East.10 Perhaps as a result of the kinds of festival films that tend to find their way into world cinema curricula, the balance of ­textual analysis relative to archaeological, spatial, or asynchronous approaches in the Middle East has not always reflected the shifts in studies of cinema in other regions.11 This is not to critique central studies of directors and award-­winning films so much as to welcome the paths of research that might complement the knowledge that currently exists in a given subfield rooted in the region. In instances where textual analysis has tended to consider the components of a film artifact in synchronized formal terms there is historiographical value in unsyncing those components. An archivally focused approach can disentangle media components that tend to travel together, and in doing so, can create new revelations from media fragments considered outside of their c­ ontribution to a coherent film text. Such an approach would be particularly welcome for the analysis of small midcentury film industries where technical interruptions and asynchronies have contributed to groups of films being overlooked by researchers. Sound stands out with regard to these possibilities. The semi-­detached soundtrack can reveal institutional and industry dynamics beyond the text. Voices and music in the  films from this period have multiple sources, each one its own material thread. The material of film sound had a meaningful degree of independence from that of the  In situations where the same sound studios and the same voice actors were dubbing and re-­ scoring imported films alongside local productions (almost all dialog and sound was recorded in post-­production at this time), it is not self-­evident where one should draw the line separating local production from import. 10  An entry point into the debates around media archaeology is Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka (Eds.). Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). For an early example in this approach’s intellectual history, see Ceram, C. W. Archaeology of the Cinema (trans. Richard Winston). (New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1965). 11  On the question of the spatial turn in media studies in the region, see Hatim El-­Hibri. 2017. “Media Studies, the Spatial Turn, and the Middle East.” Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 10, no. 1: 24–48. 9

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image. Such independence cannot be adequately illuminated by a purely textual approach. In industries in which a single film character regularly included the recorded voices of two or three performers – camera actor, voice actor, playback singer – this doubling or tripling of the voice bear traces of multiple forms of work and working environments. Voice actors attained their own celebrity while also inhabiting structures of stardom built around the on-­screen bodies in whose place they spoke. We are drawn to scholarship that shows how this is not just an expanded version of common postproduction looping, but a set of working methods that necessitates new approaches to thinking about what performers and technicians do in the creative and maintenance spaces of the studio. As Brian Jacobson (2020, 4) has argued about the space of the studio in media studies, this space requires careful critical attention because it was designed to remain unseen. Its physical properties, the things that could be found in the studio and in what configuration, were set up to hide in plain sight. “As a hidden necessity for illusionary forms of cinematic and televisual production, [studio spaces] were often present but rarely noticed by film and television viewers or acknowledged by critics.”12 A seamless film text is particularly successful at hiding this material foundation. What is fascinating about many contexts in the MENA region are the interruptions to this general design framework. These interruptions can be seen in the image construction, but the films’ soundtracks call attention to the contours of the workspace. Irregularities in dialog tracks, which might otherwise be endured as distracting noise or held up as technical failures, can be used to generate knowledge about an industry in cases where other archival information about them is missing or inaccessible. Nezih Erdogan has used the dubbed dialog in Yesilçam films to understand the workspace of the studio.13 The texture of synchronized dialog can generate knowledge about the interaction of two work spaces: the set and the dubbing studio. On set, script supervisors sometimes hid behind furniture in the scene to feed lines to performers. Their bodies, Erdogan shows, were activated by these lines in a phenomenon of non-­illusionism that calls attention to what is typically rendered unseen in other industries. The textures (not the text) of the audio tracks in these films reveal the economies of maintenance and repair that supported film companies in Turkey and Iran. The space of the dubbing studio was the magical place where almost any problem sustained during shooting could be fixed. Industries built around dubbing were industries that relied heavily on the labor of repair in postproduction. In the pops and hiss or punched-­in dialog are the traces of this unseen and otherwise undocumented labor. And these voices are underscored by music that has its own history of exchange through networks of collectors. At the height of production of Yesilçam films or of Tehran melodramas it was a commonplace for film companies to use compilation scoring for their films. In many instances, the recycled music comes not only from classical recordings, but from other film scores. We can even hear fragments of famous imported film scores in canonical films from the region. Cairo Station is one of the few films from  Brian Jacobson, “Introduction: Studio Perspectives,” in Brian Jacobson (Ed.), In the Studio: Visual Creation and its Material Environments. (Berkeley: University of California Press) 13  Nezih Erdogan. 2002. “Mute Bodies, Disembodied Voices: Notes on Sound in Turkish Popular Cinema.” Screen 43: 3. 12

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Egypt that is regularly taught in general film studies courses around the world, and this canonical early work by Youssef Chahine would be a very different film without its soundtrack, which was compiled from Miklós Rósza’s score for another film that is regularly taught in film courses: The Lost Weekend. The restored versions of Cairo Station tell us as much about the circulation of film music as the film text tells us about a formative moment in the artistic development of a celebrated director. Rósza’s circulating score over Chahine’s performance highlights the synergies of national production and media circulation. These elements can and should be considered together in the hundreds of examples of compilation scores in the midcentury Middle East. The extensive libraries of scores collected by music editors in the Middle East formed essential working material for film studios. These archives of sound studios may be mostly lost, but they can be reconstructed with audio recognition tools within the films that remain. Found sound is part of the braided archival quality of this material. It tells us about the physical space of the studios and the labors of assembly that took place inside of them. Access to these scores, the ability to identify their sources on a large scale, is relatively new, and with this access comes the instability of these sources. As versions of formerly hard-­to-­f ind films appear online, they are marked by practices of copyright evasion that allowed a previous era’s system of distribution and proliferation. It is true that the streaming versions of these films, many of them still bearing the watermarks from collections of video stores in Dubai and elsewhere that are no longer in operation, affirm archivists’ promotions of a decentralized approach to safeguarding material. And this is particularly true when there might be reason to worry about a national audiovisual archive’s ability to support the long-­term preservation of certain material whether because of cost or because of content deemed unsuitable. But as in any case where streaming sources provide access to original material, the semi-­attached life of the compilation score can also be a liability for access. Sometimes an official preservation and restoration of a film depends financially on the possibility of licensing that restored film for broadcast. A compilation score can make that licensing impossible. So many landmark midcentury films from the region must remain accessible only in their semiformal status: online and in the decayed skin of a VHS transfer.14 Even there, the soundtracks of many of these films make them more vulnerable, because takedown requests need not come from copyright owners for the films. The same tools that one can use to rebuild the archive of music editors, by running applications to recognize found scores in batches, are simultaneously being used to police audio content. What we are seeing is the removal of films due to their found scores. In some cases, the films are uploaded again, but with haunting stretches of silence in places where copyrighted fragments formed the original compilation score. The great director of film noir in Tehran in the 1950s and early 1960s, Samuel Khachikian, sampled music from dozens of other films, including John Barry’s score for the James Bond film From Russia with Love in Sarsam  For a discussion of VHS as a deviant format, see Lucas Hilderbrand, Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009). For a history of informal circulation of tapes and video technologies, one that combines oral history and media archaeology, see Blake Atwood, Underground: The Secret Life of Videocassettes in Iran. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2021).

14

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(Delirium, 1965). At one point, one could access Delirium’s entire score on YouTube. In the version that is available in 2022, the climactic car chase is interrupted by gaps of silence where Barry’s score once was. This sonic fragment can tell us about the album’s history and about its use in genre films. It intersects with the simultaneous popularity of  the Bond film in Iran. Its absence reminds us of the need to account for ongoing ­instabilities in our engagement with this material. In the original screenings of these films, as in the streaming forms through which they are currently accessible, these films draw attention to the unsynced and semi-­independent media components that resist ­interpretation as parts of a unified text.

Archival Work as Fieldwork The prospect of locating the archive can refer to finding if and where it exists, or it can refer to the urgent matter of situating it in a broader process in which the past is produced, memory is institutionalized, and history is narrated (Bsheer 2020).15 The story of how and why an archive has been developed is itself part of what is always in need of explanation, as is the place of media in the emergence of modern forms of self-­making.16 In many places in the MENA region, part of what is at issue is not simply the problem of gaining access to identifiable archives on the ground, but even finding an archive to begin with. Many countries (and companies) restrict access to official archives, and many institutional and private archives can be harder to find. This is to say that some finding and gaining access to archives can often involve some degree of fieldwork. Meeting and gaining the trust of people for whom maintaining a private archive is a meaningful activity, or finding who may have documents or artifacts, can mean spending time with and getting to know those people. Alongside the dream of indexing, tagging, and uploading every document, record, and image is the more mundane issue of who has even collected them to begin with. In addition, the media historical record is unbalanced in favor of the material that gets the broadest distribution deals and is more widely available and marketed, even while many of the related documents are in closed state and corporate archives. This does not mean they are totally inaccessible, just that they are not universally available. Similarly, material that is presumed to have the most ill effects on public life, cultural tastes, or ideological and moral dispositions often leads not simply to c­ ensorship, but to public debates or moral panics that are themselves quite revealing (Simon 2019).17 Accounting for the presences and gaps in the archive requires attending to the gaps in our understanding of at times opaque political economic  One study which is exemplary in this regard is Rosie Bsheer. Archive Wars: The Politics of History in Saudi Arabia. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020). 16  For a compelling account of the socialities and modes of self hood enacted in early photography, see Stephen Sheehi. The Arab Imago: A Social History of Portrait Photography, 1860–1910. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). 17  See Andrew Simon.  2019. “Censuring Sounds: Tapes, Taste, and the Creation of Egyptian Culture.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 51, no. 2: 233–256. 15

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arrangements, defined by what is made available. For example, there is a great deal of research material that can be acquired on a reasonable budget by going to a DVD shop with a roomy hard drive, and asking for entire runs of TV series – depending on what was popular or perceived to be sellable, shows from across the region and beyond it can be found this way. Many of these stores are well acquainted with how to circumvent legal and technical restrictions, and often cater to diasporic viewing habits that long for menus found at home.18 In other words, this kind of availability is defined by cultural and political economic dynamics that constitute the recency, scope, and focus of an illicit but popular archival repository. Conceiving, collecting, and building an archive can be a conscious strategy for encountering a cultural field, or be an accidental outcome of that encounter. Such encounters might involve serendipity, but are also the outcome of the stratification of the contemporary landscape, which like the urge to digitize the past, are of material consequence for cultural memory.19 Rather than a single coherent phenomenon, digitization is better understood as a series of problem spaces created by the overlap of media forms, whose meaning and implication have been the subject of active negotiation by a range of social actors.20 The archival impulse, the urge to preserve documents for posterity, can take forms that can respond to an institutionally defined historical custodianship, or individual idiosyncrasy. For example – there are very few places where one can go to find a comprehensive collection of film posters and media-­related periodicals, particularly for material earlier than the 1960s. One exception to this is Abboudi Abou Jaoude’s private collection at Dar Al Furat Press in Beirut. Visiting his extensive archive of these materials – in a storage depot of the publishing house, largely by appointment – gives the impression of  walking into a one-­of-­a-­kind archive, replete with ephemera, resulting from a ­self-­directed cinephile who was at the right place and right time going back decades. This private collection (which is also partly available for sale) reflects not just Lebanese and commercial Arab film, but also American, European, Indian, and other transnational cinemas that left a trace in the form of posters in Arabic, sometimes because ­dubbing was once done in Lebanon.21 The Jafet Library at the American University of

 The role of video stores and video store clerks in shaping and mediating popular taste and cinephilia is well established in studies of the US. For two works that examine the different social and political work outside of that context are Brian Larkin. Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008); and Atwood (2021). 19  For a discussion of the sociotechnical consequences of digitization, see Nanna Bonde Thylstrup. The Politics of Mass Digitization. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2019). For a media-­theoretical critique of the violence that underpins regimes of memory, see Allen Feldman. Archives of the Insensible: Of War, Photopolitics, and Dead Memory. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). 20  The primary question is not the ‘new-­ness’ of media per se, but the fraught manner in which institutions, media form, and lived practice can intersect with the cultural meaning of media practices. For an example of how the material form of the Qur’an has been negotiated from mass printed book to mobile apps, see Natalia K. Suit. Qur’anic Matters: Material Mediations and Religious Practice in Egypt. (New York: Bloomsbury, 2020). 21  Abou Jaoude has written a book-­length study of Lebanese cinema, and gives interviews to the press. See https://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/node/50729. 18

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Beirut, not far away, also has an extensive and unique collection, as well as a substantial collection of periodicals and journals dating back to the Nahda, a necessary set of materials to make sense of the cultural field in which cinema and radio were received and debated. Self-­directed individuals such as Abou Jaoude are themselves part of a media history that they also possess, preserve, and have a deep personal knowledge of. Other independent organizations such as Beirut Art Center, Ashkal Alwan, and Cinémathèque de Tanger possess unique archives of independent and art cinema, particularly of the contemporary period. Organizations such as the Foundation for Arab Music Archiving and Research and the Arab Image Foundation, primarily oriented to older analog formats, also possess considerable material, which they aim to digitize and make increasingly available to the public. This is by no means an exhaustive list of non-­state archives relevant to media scholars in Lebanon, but rather imparts a sense of how the archive is an ongoing process, actively negotiated and built in the present. This is doubled by the manner in which the archival record of the colonial period, like the Ottoman period before it, is not always located in the colonized country.22 To understand the first decades of radio broadcasting, for example, necessitates trips to France, Italy, and the UK.23 Sometimes, the archive is not a central repository but is scattered across the different times and places where it left a mark in local memory (or left a rare print). Much like the archival film practices which activate this history and memory, the original documents are sometimes preserved in the records of festivals, funding bodies, colonial archives, or the homes and offices of individuals involved with the original moment. While some material is lost, a great deal exists but needs to be tracked down.24 As Yaqub’s discussion of the Palestine Film Unit demonstrates, the targeted destruction of archives such as what resulted from the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, means that “much of its ­content is not lost, but scattered and available for retrieval and reassembly” (2018, 199). An important component of contemporary filmmaking practice aims to do just that – remembering political pasts, or reflecting on screen stars of the twentieth century.25 At  other times, the archive is available but overlooked, or the by-­product of things that  were overheard. As Fahmy’s (2020) work on the soundscapes of Egypt demonstrates, the ephemeral nature of sound (and other mediated and sensory experience) is often present in ways that archival research is either not attuned to, or present in  The Ottoman era’s media archives exist in a multitude of repositories. For example, Harvard’s Loeb Music Library contains an impressive number of Arabic Baidaphone 78 rpm records. 23  For example, see Andrea L. Stanton. “This Is Jerusalem Calling”: State Radio in Mandate Palestine. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014). 24  For example, Limbrick’s (2020) reassessment of Arab Modernism through Moumen Smihi’s oeuvre is a good example of the perspective gained by reconsidering filmmakers whose work wasn’t as widely distributed and doesn’t exist in its entirety in any one place. Peter Limbrick. Arab Modernism as World Cinema: The Films of Moumen Smihi. (Oakland: University of California Press, 2020). 25  On the afterlife of the PFU in contemporary film see Nadia Yaqub. Palestinian Cinema in the Days of Revolution. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018). For a discussion of contemporary archival film practice, such as Rania Stephan’s The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni, see Laura U. Marks. Hanan Al-­Cinema: Affections for the Moving Image. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015). 22

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archival sources that are less well travelled, including all those governmental bodies that came to understand the regulation of public conduct to require the regulation of sound. Telling the history of the recent past, of the political economic and technological refashioning of media industries and cultural landscapes since the 1990s, invites or perhaps necessitates a capacious understanding of archival research. The fixity and fluidity of this period can necessitate a flexible methodological sensibility that would include oral history and targeted interviews. Such an approach allows for insight into how and why an archive has been produced, and treats librarians, archivists, and enterprising collectors as equal interlocutors. In some situations, these sources can be the only way to gain access to material that would otherwise remain out of reach. In many others, the filmmaker, executive, producer, distributor, or festival organizer may be the only source that knows what did or did not happen. As the last mile of media distribution (television in particular) is characterized by illicit and illegal sociotechnical arrangements and the contingencies of infrastructural maintenance, it often leaves little in the way of an official record. It is at such junctures that ethnographic approaches to industry and institutional elites,26 but also ground-­level technicians or neighborhood satellite TV service operators,27 can yield complementary insights.

The Unevenness of Online Platforms, Social Media, and Digitization In a limited sense, it is true that whatever happens online stays there forever, but in another sense, the advent of networked computing, social media, online media distribution platforms, and proprietary software are more likely to make the job of film and media researchers much harder.28 It will be a while before we have anything like the Media History Digital Library’s current breadth for film journals published in the region or Lantern’s searchability for sources written in non-­Roman typefaces, so public-­access options are limited.29 The region was generally lacking in reliable information on ticket sales, audience ratings, print readership, or advertising sales rates before the shiny blackboxing of Netflix’s system or YouTube and TikTok’s proprietary data. Platforms such as Instagram, Soundcloud, Spotify, and YouTube present themselves like a readily available  For example, see the essays gathered in Donatella Della Ratta, Naomi Sakr, and Jakob ­Skovgaard-­Petersen. (Eds.). Arab Media Moguls. (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2015). 27  One study of TV repair shops in South India that exemplifies such an approach to the study  of  TV distribution and material culture is Padma Chirumamilla.  2019. “Remaking the Set:  Innovation and Obsolescence in Television’s Digital Future.” Media, Culture & Society 41, no. 4: 433–448. 28  This issue is even more pronounced if the object of research is online social worlds, especially given the semi-­public nature of WhatsApp groups, the instability of online forums, many ­platform’s biases towards recency. 29  The project has, however, begun an ambitious ACLS-­f unded initiative to increase the number of non-­English-­language publications. https://mediahistoryproject.org/ 26

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tool for any user to create an archive for fans, followers, and passersby. The archive here is not simply the distribution strategy of individual users (with differing resources defined by industry status), but also the curatorial outcomes of the sorting and recommendation algorithms that power such platforms. Examining the “back end” of proprietary platforms, which are designed to keep records but only for private use, require innovative approaches to intimate (or reverse engineer) the nature of their inner operations from the outside.30 The geography of media distribution transforms alongside the strategies afforded by these platforms, which are themselves a kind of publicly accessible archive/storefront. The geographic paradoxes that result are defined by power differentials that inhere in digital media economies (see Chapter 30). On the one hand, independent artists, musicians, and content creators begin to find audiences that may or may not be in the country where they live, driven in part by online followings that exceed local ones.31 On the other hand, the release windowing strategies of global media industries have reworked geographies of online availability, creating unstable market silos (as in the rights to national, regional, and global distribution of Turkish TV drama), and nation-­specific versions of online distribution platforms (as in Netflix).32 Digital distribution does not mean global and simultaneous access any more than other socio-­technical arrangements, but this also does not mean bootleg and black market economies are necessarily easier for the powerful to control. The questions of online access and availability are understood to be at best an ambivalent potentiality, and at worst an extinction-­level event for media archives. On the one hand, social media has seen the proliferation of user-­driven and crowdsourced projects, such as the Egyptian cassette archive on Instagram,33 and the seemingly endless stream of libraries’ manuscripts and artifacts that have been put online. On the other hand, the question of the ephemerality multiplies as everyday media practices, and media production and distribution, become dependent on proprietary corporate platforms that thrive on iterative obsolescence. The political economy of government takedown notices potentially leaves less of a trace than an archive of censored materials. At the same time,

 An example to attempt just an investigation is Maria Eriksson, Rasmus Fleischer, Anna Johansson, Pelle Snickars, and Patrick Vonderau. Spotify Teardown: Inside the Black Box of Streaming Music. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2019). 31  Nickell (2020) examines how some independent musicians got their start booking gigs outside of their home country in part due to international interest garnered via Soundcloud, which only later translated into legitimacy at home. See Chris Nickell.  2020. “Promises and Pitfalls: The Two-­Faced Nature of Streaming and Social Media Platforms for Beirut-­Based Independent Musicians.” Popular Communication 18, no. 1: 48–64. 32  On this emergent dialectic of access and blockage, see Evan Elkins. Locked Out: Regional Restrictions in Digital Entertainment Culture. (New  York: New  York University Press, 2019); and Ramon Lobato. Netflix Nations: The Geography of Digital Distribution. (New  York: New  York University Press, 2019). For an examination of similar dynamics in Netflix’s attempts to ­negotiate the landscape of capital in the Arab world, see Joe F. Khalil and Mohamed Zayani. 2020. “De-­Territorialized Digital Capitalism and the Predicament of the Nation-­State: Netflix in Arabia.” Media, Culture & Society ( June): 1–18. 33  See https://www.instagram.com/egyptiancassettearchive 30

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live broadcasting by mainstream news organizations has come to rely on both ­crowdsourced footage and the livestreaming capabilities of social media platforms. The nature of these aesthetic, institutional, and political histories has come to be defined by transformations that only appear at the front end that users interact with after many other decisions have taken place, and which may be even less legible than other kinds of paper documents, even with the explosion of metadata. What is gained in the ability to read precise user and network data – defined by its orientation towards simultaneity and recency of exchange – is outpaced by the ongoing mining and feeding-­forward of that data. Consider the appearance on YouTube of troves of Egyptian cinema from the 1950s–1980s. It has long been lamented that a substantial swath of this material was sold to the Rotana media conglomerate, utilized in part as material for the Rotana Classic satellite channel. A rich dynamic and heated culture war emerges whereby users and viewers upload and watch material on YouTube, and others stage takedown notices, no doubt in part driven by the deployment of powerful music identification software. The new challenge becomes how to write the history of such exchanges when blackboxed algorithms serve curatorial functions, and there may be little trace left after the DMCA takedown notice is anonymously requested and enforced. In addition to a history without documents, there will need to be a history of non-­human actors and synthetic environments.

Conclusion Most media historians encounter challenges of access, fragmented or lost sources, and political implications of working with government archives, but some attention is due to instances in which these practical obstacles present themselves in acute, if not entirely unfamiliar, form. Our chapter highlights a few illustrative sites of encounter to suggest alternatives to corrective approaches. The goal should be less about aligning with research standards of disciplines historically centered in places where the challenges and risks of finding sources are gentler. Such challenges can instead impel a kind of reckoning with archival research that aligns these studies with some of the recent turns happening across our disciplines. The absences of official repositories of an industry can open up ways of considering multiple forms of labor so that the creative innovations of project directors must necessarily be written in tandem with histories that highlight the below-­the-­line labor, the labors of spectatorship and auditory participation, the networked labor of maintaining systems of media distribution, and the engineering efforts of repairing and reverse-­engineering devices. They must also account for the diasporic formations (e.g. regional expat media in Dubai) and stateless nations (Kurdistan, Palestine) that mark the region (see Chapters 19, 20, 39). Definitions of success and failure of a production can realign as a matter of course, broadening our understanding of curatorial histories. If the traditions within our disciplines have been hesitant to directly engage the degree of informal exchange or the overwhelming influence of maintenance thinking in media production and use, then there are opportunities in a field in which one is confronted with creative maintenance and the porous boundaries of intellectual property as driving concerns.

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Part IV

(Mass) Media, Cultures, and Contexts

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15

Freedom of Expression and Media Challenges in the Mena Region A Legal and Regulatory Perspective Joan Barata Introduction This chapter provides an overview of the developments and challenges to freedom of expression in the Arab Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries. The conditions and frameworks for how this fundamental right is exercised are analyzed, mainly focusing on legal and regulatory perspectives. It briefly presents how governments, legislators, and regulators in the region have seriously neglected the international and regional human rights standards applicable to the rights to freedom of expression and information. It will also explain how political or broadly defined national interests ­usually disrupt and alter the interpretation and enforcement of legal and regulatory frameworks, thus affecting legal certainty and a legitimate and proportionate application of the law (see Chapters 8, 10, 18). The chapter first considers the applicable human rights standards, particularly regarding freedom of expression, included in international and regional instruments and documents. Secondly, the chapter frames the notion of censorship and its use in the MENA and Arab contexts. Thirdly, the chapter analyzes the existing challenges to exercising the right to freedom of expression and journalistic activities the post-­ 2011 regional media landscape, identifying a series of common areas of serious concern.

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Regional Standards on Freedom of Expression and Information The right to freedom of thought and expression has been recognized by international human rights law in connection with the democratic principle. Like most members of the international community, MENA countries needed to adopt the rules, mechanisms, and institutions necessary to provide minimum protection to the rights to freedom of expression and information. These rights were recognized internationally in 1948 in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights1 and Articles 19 and 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).2 According to these international legal standards, there are three tenets at the core of the right to freedom of expression: the right to hold opinions without interference; the right to seek and receive information; and the right to impart information of all kinds through any media regardless of frontiers. The UN Human Rights Committee has described in General Comment No. 34 the main elements of the right to freedom of expression within the universal human rights system.3 Within the general provisions in the African regional system, Article 9 of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights contains norms to protect freedom of expression and information, in line with international principles.4 Among all African states, Morocco has neither signed nor ratified the Charter. In the case of other African and Arab states, Egypt expressed its reservation about the provisions of Article 9. It argued the right of every individual to receive information should be within the limits of access established in Egyptian laws and regulations. The provisions of the African Charter are developed by a series of soft law and political instruments elaborated in the region, such as the Declaration of Principles on

 “Article 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” 2  “Article 19. 1. Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference. 2. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice. 3. The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary: (a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others; (b) For the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals.” 3  United Nations, Human Rights Committee. General comment No. 34 – “Article 19: Freedoms of opinion and expression.” CCPR/C/GC/34. July 2011. Available from: http://www2.ohchr.org/ english/bodies/hrc/docs/gc34.pdf 4  “Article 9.1. Every individual shall have the right to receive information.2. Every individual shall have the right to express and disseminate his opinions within the law.” 1

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Freedom of Expression in Africa, adopted by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in 2002, and replaced by a new and updated text adopted in 2019.5 In addition, a UNESCO-­supported seminar in 1991 created the Windhoek Declaration on Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press.6 In 2021, a “Windhoek+30 Declaration”7 highlighted the subject of “information as a public good” and covered internet transparency, audience/user capacity regarding digital communications, and the economic viability of media institutions. The establishment of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (2004) completes the regional institutional landscape. Even though the Court has not been, when it comes to freedom of expression, as prolific as other regional courts (the European Court of Human Rights or the Inter-­American Court of Human Rights), it has a few landmark decisions in this area. In 2014, in the case of Lohé Issa Konaté v The Republic of Burkina Faso, the Court overruled the conviction of a journalist for defamation after publishing several newspaper articles that alleged corruption by a state prosecutor. The Court found that the sentence disproportionately interfered with the applicant’s right to freedom of expression.8 This decision represents an important landmark in the African system. It establishes the need to decriminalize defamation and determines that public figures are subjected to a higher threshold of legitimate criticism and attacks. It is also important to mention that to the present date, and within the Arab World, only Tunisia has signed the Protocol establishing the Court and therefore accepted its jurisdiction.

Relevant Freedom of Expression Documents Subscribed to by MENA and Arab Countries Other sub-­regions, such as the Arab world, have not created comparable regional human rights bodies, courts, or legal standards. However, some legal and political instruments are to be considered concerning particular commitments in this area. The Arab Charter on Human Rights,9 which is formally binding on those States that have ratified it, guarantees: the right to information and to freedom of opinion and expression, as well as the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any medium, regardless of ­geographical boundaries. (article 32)

Of the 22 Arab states, the Charter has been ratified by Algeria, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the UAE, and Yemen. In addition, the Sana’a Declaration on Promoting Independent and Pluralistic Arab Media was  Available at: https://www.achpr.org/pressrelease/detail?id=490  Available at: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0009/000931/093186EB.pdf 7  Available at: https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/windhoek30declaration_wpfd_2021.pdf 8  Application no. 004/2013. December 5, 2014. 9  Adopted May 22, 2004, in force March 15, 2008. Available at: http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/instree/ loas2005.html 5 6

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endorsed by the General Conference of UNESCO at its 29th Session in Paris in 1997.10 Since 2016, over 100 representatives of journalists’ unions, human rights organizations, media groups from across the Arab World, and the heads of state of Jordan, Palestine, Sudan, and Tunisia, have signed the Declaration on Media Freedom in the Arab World.11 In 2008, the efforts of the Arab League failed to provide both policy guidance and regulations through their Arab Media Charter officially titled “Principles for Organizing Satellite TV in the Arab World.” It aimed to impose several restrictions on talk shows, news coverage, and criticism of political and religious figures.12 Adopted by all member states of the Arab League with the exception of Lebanon and Qatar, the charter ultimately failed for lack of unanimous support. Even today, access to satellite broadcasting remains largely subject to the state’s direct control and the very few regional bodies such as the Arab States Broadcasters Union are very limited in jurisdiction. In conclusion, not every Arab country is subjected to regional or sub-­regional human rights commitments or has accepted the application and jurisdiction of monitoring mechanisms, including international Courts. However, States in the region are at least subjected to the rules established by international human rights law at the universal level.

The Notion of Censorship The exercise of the right to freedom of expression is not unlimited. Article 19 of the ICCPR describes duties and responsibilities subject to very restrictive criteria. In this regard, the so-­called “three-­part test” formulates specific conditions for imposing restrictions. More precisely, the limits must be provided by law, pursue a legitimate aim, and be necessary and proportionate. Restrictions may only be imposed when strictly necessary to protect certain principles and values, including the respect of the rights and reputation of others and protecting national security and public order or public health and morals. On the other hand, “proportionate” means that the chosen restriction represents the lesser impact on the right to freedom of expression among all the possible options. The prohibition of direct prior censorship is not explicitly established in Article 19 of the ICCPR or some regional instruments, such as the African Charter. Among international and regional human rights instruments, only the American Convention on Human Rights contains (Article 13.2) an explicit reference and prohibition of prior censorship. It is also important to note that the mentioned Human Rights Committee

  Available online at: https://wayback.archive-­ it.org/10611/20160819090852/http://www. unesco.org/webworld/fed/temp/communication_democracy/sanaa.htm/ 11   Available online at: https://www.ifj.org/fileadmin/images/Middle_East___Arab_World/ Declaration_on_media_freedom_in_the_Arab_World_EN.pdf 12  For better framing of the discussions on the Arab Media Charter see this short comment: https://www.westminsterpapers.org/article/id/123/download/pdf/ 10

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General Comment No. 34 does refer to this matter and clearly states that a free press and other media shall be “able to comment on public issues without censorship or restraint and to inform public opinion.” What is censorship from a legal point of view? Based on the mentioned provision included in the American Convention, the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Organization of American States has established that censorship: takes place when, through public power, means are established to prevent the free circulation of ideas, information, opinions or news in advance, by any type of procedure that conditions the expression or dissemination of information to State control.13

In addition, principle 2 of the Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information in Africa declares that “States shall not interfere with anyone’s freedom of opinion.” The Sana’a Declaration on the Arab media stresses that: “government tendencies to draw limits/‘red lines’ outside the purview of the law restrict these freedoms and are unacceptable.” It is important to note that beyond the idea of censorship as defined earlier, there are modalities of state intervention establishing impediments to the exercise of the right of freedom of expression via compulsory accreditation, dismissal, detention, passport withdrawals, or licensing requirements which are de facto very similar to prior censorship as such. In Scanlen & Holderness v. Zimbabwe, the African Commission on Human Rights analyzed the Zimbabwean legislation that required all journalists to register with the Media and Information Commission (MIC). In this landmark decision, the Commission held that “registration procedures are not in themselves a violation of the right to freedom of expression, provided they are purely technical and administrative in nature and do not involve prohibitive fees, or [. . .] impose onerous conditions.” However, in that case, such provisions “undoubtedly have a negative effect on the exercise of freedom of expression” and the law “creates considerable scope for politically motivated action by the authorities.” The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights also referred to other regional systems and bodies to state that the “compulsory accreditation of journalists has been held at both national and international levels to be a hindrance to the effective enjoyment of the right to freedom of expression.”14 Other possible forms of excessive or unjustified limitations to the right to freedom of expression are as harmful as the forms of prior or indirect censorship mentioned earlier. These limitations may essentially be applied ex post or in the form of ulterior imposition of liability and include the use of criminal law (defamation, blasphemy, and extremism or terrorism provisions, among others), disproportionate penalties related to the rights  Inter-­American Commission for Human Rights. Annual Report 2008. Volume II: Report of the Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression. Chapter III: Inter-­American Legal Framework of the Right to Freedom of Expression, para. 123. OEA/Ser.L/V/II.134. Doc. 5 rev. 1. February 25, 2009. Available at: http://www.cidh.oas.org/annualrep/2008eng/Annual%20 Report%202008-­%20RELE%20-­%20version%20final.pdf. 14  A complete analysis of this decision is available online at: https://globalfreedomofexpression. columbia.edu/cases/scanlen-­holderness-­v-­zimbabwe/ 13

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to honor, good reputation, image, and privacy, restrictions based on public health ­concerns (particularly in the context of the COVID-­19 crisis), limitations dictated based on national security principles, or prohibited speech (in the case of application of overbroad anti-­hate speech provisions). These restrictions may not only limit right to freedom of expression of specific individuals, journalists, or media outlets but also create an intimidatory environment or a general “chilling effect” on the exercise of the mentioned right within the overall media system and the society in general.

Post-­2011 Developments and Increased Restrictions The Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) region comprises various countries with different historical, political, and social backgrounds. These countries are currently experiencing situations ranging from relative political stability (as is the case in Morocco), heavy-­handed authoritarian regimes (Egypt), volatile and lacking basic rule of law mechanisms systems (Libya), and conflict-­torn countries (Syria) to traditional monarchies (Gulf region). Over the last decade, 2010–2020, a wave of social movements and civil unrest started in Tunisia and spread across the region in multiple waves and with different impacts. What began as the Arab Spring has impacted various facets of the region’s political, economic, and social lives. For example, this movement brought to Tunisia, at least in its initial phases, a slow and unsteady process of democratic political transformation encompassing the adoption of a new constitution and the introduction of significant legal changes in media regulation. However, for most of the region, and despite the adoption of some reforms (not always sustained in the long run), the follow-­up to the Arab Spring cannot be described in the same favorable terms: main problems and structural deficiencies that were at the basis of the widespread upheaval remain almost unchanged (social inequalities, human rights violations, democratic deficits, economic crises, regimes’ accountability, corruption, unemployment, etc.). Even in the case of Tunisia, a new draft constitution proposed in June 2022 may be used to derail the parliamentary system resulting from the revolution and significantly affect the protection of human rights in the country.

“Unregulated” Digital Media A critical factor currently (and perhaps too simplistically) associated with the Arab Spring is the emergence of new technologies and unregulated digital media outlets that would facilitate the dissemination of unofficial content and the circulation of some diversity of discourses and political opinions, including those that are not aligned with the voices that incarnate the media status quo. The role of platforms such as Twitter or Facebook and their power to replace traditional media as primary sources of information was probably underestimated by governments. It needs to be noted that until recently, the dissemination of information was controlled by legal

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and regulatory mechanisms based on authoritarian principles and covering the press, radio, and t­ elevision. The very important presence of state broadcasters devoted to disseminating state propaganda cannot be neglected either. Moreover, in 2011 specific legislation or regulation to effectively restrict or limit the dissemination of information through digital platforms was almost inexistent (Duffy 2014). It needs to be added, however, that in the case of Tunisia’s Arab Spring, an important role was also played by traditional actors broadcasting from abroad, such as France 24 or Al Jazeera, which were far more trusted by most citizens than closely controlled local media (Barata Mir 2011). The use of new digital media or social media platforms as alternative communication vehicles began in the 2000s, before the fall of Ben Ali’s administration, particularly with the Wikileaks revelations on corruption that were freely accessible by the Tunisian population online (Zayani 2015). At that time, the police detained various online activists whose blogs and web pages had already alarmed the regime. The increased access to the internet and the widespread use of digital tools has offered activists across the region ways to bypass the regulatory restrictions and the restrictive definitions of journalism. From Bahrain to Morocco, these tools have challenged the regimes forcing Arab countries to revise their regulatory frameworks. From a more general perspective, and as it will be shown, the emergence of these new communication platforms has prompted several countries in the region to adopt unique and tight cybersecurity/digital media/platform laws and regulations severely restricting online speech well. In addition, some governments and state agencies may also use these new platforms to legitimize their policies and disseminate propaganda.

A Restrictive Context for the Exercise of Journalism The Sana’a Declaration on the Arab media emphasizes that: in the Arab World, journalists, publishers, and other media practitioners continue to be victims of harassment, physical assault, threats, arrest, detention, torture, abduction, exile, and murder. They are also subject to economic and political pressures, including dismissal, censorship, curbs on travel, and passport withdrawals or visa denials. In addition to ­limitations on the free flow of news and information and on the circulation of periodicals within countries and across national borders, the media is also subject to restrictions in using newsprint and other professional equipment and material. Licensing systems and abusive controls limit the opportunity to publish or broadcast.

Despite being drafted in 1997, these allegations regarding freedom of expression in the Arab world remain valid, as has already been shown. Protecting media and journalists from attacks or intimidations of all nature, preventing such threats, and the issue of impunity constitute fundamental elements at the core of the full enjoyment of the right to freedom of expression and freedom of information. The safety of journalists (including physical, psychological, and legal aspects) has been

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placed at the top of the priorities in the human rights agenda of most relevant ­international and regional organizations, including the United Nations15 and UNESCO.16 An essential factor that affects the exercise of the right to freedom of expression and freedom of information in the MENA region is the severe lack of safety for journalists and other media actors when performing their activities. In most countries of the region, journalists face physical attacks and serious risks for their lives coming from a wide range of actors: armed militias, criminal groups or individuals, political and religious groups (particularly when they feel targeted or “offended” by reporting activities), and also law enforcement and armed forces. The killing of Al Jazeera’s journalist Shereen Abou Akleh in a purportedly targeted attack by Israeli forces in May 2022 and the assassination of the Saudi journalist Jamal Kashoggi in 2018 are vivid and recent examples of such risks and their consequences. It is also important to mention that according to UNESCO (2018), the MENA region is host to the highest number of killings of journalists globally. In particular, the 2012– 2016 period reflected a substantial increase in the number of killings in the Arab region of over 120% compared to the previous five-­year period. In addition, the percentage of killed women journalists is the highest for any region globally in the same period. Broad national security legislation and strict anti-­terrorism policies (see following) are often behind the use of force against journalists. Most of the mentioned attacks fail to be investigated and prosecuted, thus creating an extreme climate of impunity (UNESCO 2018). All these circumstances have created a context of self-­restraint and self-­ censorship among different media actors, which seriously erodes the possibility of an open and free media environment where citizens can freely form their opinions.

Journalism and Media Regulation in the Digital Era International bodies use a broad definition of the term “journalist,” which includes traditional reporters as well as “media workers” and “social media producers” who generate a significant amount of public interest content. The already mentioned General Comment No. 34 on Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) provides the following definition: Journalism is a function shared by a wide range of actors, including professional full-­time reporters and analysts, as well as bloggers and others who engage in forms of self-­ publication in print, on the internet or elsewhere, and general State systems of registration or licensing of journalists are incompatible with paragraph 3.

 Human Rights Council Resolution 33/2 of 29 September 2016, on the safety on journalists, available online at: https://undocs.org/A/HRC/RES/33/2. Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity, available online at: https://en.unesco.org/ un-­plan-­action-­safety-­journalists 16  UNESCO Journalists’ Safety Indicators. Available online at: https://en.unesco.org/themes/ safety-­of-­journalists/journalists-­safety-­indicators 15

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Therefore, according to international standards, the status of a journalist cannot be c­ ircumscribed only to holders of a professional card. These international standards are not necessarily respected in most MENA countries, where journalism remains a ­state-­controlled profession with high entry barriers. In other words, public authorities generally retain considerable power to decide who can professionally disseminate opinions to the general public to inform, educate, or entertain. This limited notion of journalism is often endorsed by those who already belong to the profession, mainly to retain several privileges. In most countries of the region, journalism is exercised within the constraints of predominantly authoritarian regimes, where information is controlled, manipulated, and repressed by the state. Thus the profession is in a hierarchical, non-­ independent, and often self-­censored environment (see Chapters 11, 16). In addition to “traditional” media professionals, the rise in mobile-­ broadband ­subscriptions, internet users, and households with internet access has also increased the capacity for individual citizens, human rights activists, and similar organizations to disseminate information and opinions and thus to potentially “open up” the public discussion agenda. The use of digital platforms (notably the newest ones, such as TikTok) has increased the number of voices in the public arena. In many countries, the use of digital tools has helped to avoid and circumvent speech restrictions applied on traditional media. It is also important to note, however, the fact that this has also had, in some cases, an effect of increased fragmentation and sectarianism in the Arab media (UNESCO 2018). Across the Middle East and North Africa, governments have also discovered the advantages of using new digital platforms to disseminate their propagandistic messages. Last but not least, the increasing use of new technologies has also led to the adoption and implementation of digital media legislation incorporating new and burdensome requisites for the creation of websites and the power to block the provision of online services, as well as new cybersecurity to specifically curb and repress different forms of digital activism and citizen journalism. Ben-­Hassine and Samaro (2019) noted that instead of limiting the negative ways the internet and other technologies could be used (e.g. for disinformation), Middle Eastern governments have taken to closing the online space by implementing harsh and oppressive cybercrime laws. Such laws give governments the power to censor and block internet sites and applications, facilitate mass surveillance of internet users and even legitimize the complete shutdown of the internet in certain circumstances. Very restrictive examples of such laws and provisions can be found in such countries as Egypt, Bahrain, UAE, and Qatar. Beyond individual activities, as with regards to media bodies and companies, UNESCO (2018) has repeatedly been warning about the general existence of restrictive government regulation and legislation of the media, generally based on vague and overbroad restrictions, and with a lack of reform regarding the roles of ministries of information and the existence of genuinely independent regulators. In addition, public-­owned media outlets do not conform to the notion of public service media and instead play the role of state propaganda vehicles. Moreover, and due precisely to the vagueness and arbitrariness of the media legal environment and enforcement, state authorities also manage to hold a considerable degree of control vis-­à-­vis the content and operation of private media companies.

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Freedom of Expression and Abuse of Terrorism and National Security Legislation The rise of terrorist and fundamentalist groups in different parts of the region has been used by governments to legitimize the adoption and/or implementation of overbroad and restrictive national security, terrorism, and secrecy laws affecting online and offline discourse. These measures have a powerful impact on the exercise of the right to freedom of expression, particularly regarding sensitive political and social matters and reporting activities of Governments’ pursuits in the area of national security. In many cases (for example, in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, or Egypt), such laws are used to criminalize speech that the government finds threatening to its legitimacy and are often used to supplement other totalitarian practices to target and stifle unwanted or politically critical speech (Ben Hassine 2016). The relevant and pressing existence of terrorist groups and other non-­state actors that are essentially able to control and govern specific areas of some of these countries puts the inhabitants of such territories in a challenging and vulnerable situation in terms of exercising their most basic and fundamental rights and even the guarantee of their safety. In addition to this, and due precisely to these circumstances, many states have adopted strict and targeted laws to firmly fight extremist and terrorist groups. These laws connect and interact with already existing broad interpretations of notions such as national security, national unity, or public order. However, these laws generally incorporate severe and disproportionate restrictions on fundamental rights, particularly freedom of expression. The most common intimidation measures carried out by state institutions include heavy penalties, different forms of censorship ranging from bureaucratic obstacles to arrests, banning of content, denial of access to newsworthy events, or the adoption of emergency laws that are applied for extended periods, making the exceptional situation the status quo. Besides the laws’ impact on human rights, some authors also argue that counterterrorism strategies in much of the Middle East have not been effective and have, at times, been counterproductive (Mansour-­Ille 2022). The role and influence of religion cannot be neglected in the mentioned contexts. Even though this factor varies from country to country, religious principles influence political and legal systems. They may directly affect the way freedom of expression is protected and limited in the region due to the intensive use of anti-­blasphemy laws to curb dissenting speech, particularly on digital platforms, in countries like Kuwait, Iran, Jordan, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia. From a different perspective, Islamist groups and political factions have also become significant players, even in more liberal states such as Tunisia. At least until 2011, Tunisian Islamic groups in the political arena were very much constrained despite their long-­standing presence and influence within specific communities. In Egypt, where rights and freedom are constricted under President al-­ Sisi’s authoritarian regime, the current political situation is commonly justified by those in power as a necessary reaction to the arrival of Islamist forces to the government after the fall of Mubarak (2011–2013). Apart from the adverse effects on human rights already discussed, these restrictive provisions do not have a clear and proven impact vis-­à-­vis combatting and preventing

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radicalization and terrorist acts. It is thus essential to underscore that we still know remarkably little about when extremist speech (either legal or illegal) leads to violence and how to prevent that from happening (Keller 2018). As stressed by the Global Network Initiative (2016), governments must ensure that counterterrorism laws and policies do not undermine the development and dissemination of messages by private actors discussing, debating, or reporting on terrorist activities. In this sense, it is crucial to count on precise and balanced legislation that properly differentiates messages aiming to incite terrorist acts from those discussing, debating, or reporting on them. Situations when journalists even engage directly with members of such organizations (by interviewing them, for example) to better inform public opinion about their organization, motivations, and operations have been considered as forms of incitement (Barata Mir 2020a). Relevant examples in this area include the overbroad definition of terrorism by the Algerian Penal Code and the highly ambiguous terms used by Saudi Arabia’s anti-­ terrorism legislation – which can be easily used to silence all forms of peaceful dissent, justify torture, deny freedom of expression, and imprison critics and human rights defenders, according to the UN Special Report on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.17 It is also worth mentioning the general values that the state is entitled to protect under Turkey’s anti-­terrorism legislation ­(“public order,” “the indivisible unity of the State,” and “the attributes of the Republic,” among others), and the reliance on a general provision of public order to identify terrorist acts in the Moroccan Penal Code, to mention just a few examples. Last but not least, the existence of emergency laws, martial laws, and long-­lasting state of emergency declarations (as is the case, for example, in Egypt) only grant additional and “exceptional” powers to state authorities to further restrict human rights without proven accountability and independent oversight.

Libel, Slander, and Defamation According to international standards, the protection of the rights of others (including their reputation) is a legitimate limitation to the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of information under international law. However, any restriction in this area needs to meet the standards set by the previously mentioned three-­part test (legality, legitimacy, and necessity/proportionality). In particular, the use of criminal law to prevent and address damages to the reputation of a person was criticized in 2011 under General Comment No. 34, which states that: State parties should consider the decriminalization of defamation and, in any case, the application of criminal law should only be countenanced in the most serious of cases and imprisonment is never an appropriate penalty. Criticism or attacks against state symbols, state institutions, figures, or representatives and the examination of historical events should

 The report can be found online at https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/ Issues/Terrorism/SR/A.HRC.40._XX.Add.2SaudiArabiaMission.pdf

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not be considered a general principle as forms of defamation. Criminal defamation laws are inherently harsh and have a disproportionate chilling effect on free expression and thus are not acceptable. Disproportionate or excessive civil tort liability compensations paralyze journalistic investigations and generate an atmosphere of intimidation.

Generally, the region’s legal frameworks are not aligned with these international law parameters. Thorough analysis by Duffy (2014) showed that penal codes define a wide range of crimes. Still, they often contain provisions severely punishing acts of defamation, such as libel or slander or insulting the head of state and other higher officials and institutions. These accusations can lead to arrests, fines, and prison sentences (particularly severe punishments and restrictions in this field can be found in the legislation of countries such as Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, or Kuwait). The threat of such punishment also has a pronounced and negative chilling effect on journalism and reporting activities.

The Impact of the COVID-­19 Pandemic on Freedom of Expression and Journalism This major crisis has significantly affected the exercise of freedom of expression, the ­situation and activity of journalists and the media, and citizens’ right to access public information. Many emergency provisions and existing laws and regulations have been used to directly restrict the exercise of such rights and introduce further controls using the rationale of the need to protect public health. Although such provisions seem to focus on the digital world in many cases, they have been applied problematically online and offline. According to a report by Freedom House (2021), authorities in the MENA region have used the pandemic as an excuse to double down on restrictive policies, issuing harsh penalties for journalists and activists and heightening surveillance. In particular, countries such as Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Kuwait, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and the UAE have introduced overly broad and vaguely written laws allegedly to fight against COVID-­ 19-­related “fake news.” Such laws have proven to present grave implications for all online speech and activism, and have only worsened the situation in what already was one of the world’s most restrictive regions in terms of digital freedom (see Chapters 13, 43). In a series of guidelines recently published by UNESCO (Barata Mir 2020b) on the role of judicial operators in the protection and promotion of the right to freedom of expression during the COVID-­19 pandemic, it is particularly underscored that when resorting to state of emergency powers to cope with the COVID-­19 pandemic, states must comply with requirements, criteria, and procedures established by international and regional legal instruments to safeguard citizens’ fundamental rights and prevent abuses and arbitrariness. In addition, and even though UNESCO has warned that falsehoods have spread as fast as the virus itself,18 measures to combat disinformation must never prevent journalists and media actors from carrying out their work or lead to unduly blocked content on the internet.  Issue brief on “Journalism, press freedom and COVID-­19.” Available online at: https:// en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/unesco_covid_brief_en.pdf

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References Barata Mir, Joan. 2011. Political and Media Transitions in Tunisia: A Snapshot of Media Policy and Regulatory Environment. Washington DC: Internews. Available online at: https://internews. org/sites/default/files/resources/Internews_Tunisia_MediaLawReview_Aug11.pdf Barata Mir, Joan. 2020a. Beyond Limiting and Countering: How to Promote Quality Content to Prevent Violent Extremism and Terrorism on Online Platforms. Resonant Voices Initiative. Available online at: https://resonantvoices.info/beyond-­limiting-­and-­countering-­how-­to-­promote­quality-­content-­to-­prevent-­violent-­extremism-­and-­terrorism-­on-­online-­platforms/ Barata Mir, Joan. 2020b. COVID-­19: The Role of Judicial Operators in the Protection and Promotion of the Right to Freedom of Expression: Guidelines. Paris: UNESCO. Available online at: https:// unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000374208 Ben Hassine, Wafa. 2016. The Crime of Speech. How Arab Governments Use the Law to Silence Expression Online. Electronic Frontier Foundation. Available online at: https://www.eff.org/ pages/crime-­speech-­how-­arab-­governments-­use-­law-­silence-­expression-­online Ben Hassine, Wafa and Samaro, Dima. 2019. “Restricting Cybersecurity, Violating Human Rights: Cybercrime Laws in MENA Region.” Open Global Rights. Available online at: https:// www.openglobalrights.org/restricting-­cybersecurity-­violating-­human-­rights/ Duffy, Matt J. 2014. “Arab Media Regulations: Identifying Restraints on Freedom of the Press in the Laws of Six Arabian Peninsula Countries.” Berkeley Journal of Middle Eastern & Islamic Law 6(1). Available online at: https://escholarship.org/content/qt3bg8628m/qt3bg8628m_ noSplash_5899338b3cfe2bc026af6ac075789843.pdf ?t=ph3uo5 Freedom House. 2021. Amid COVID-­19 Pandemic, Internet Freedom Is Under Attack in The Middle East and North Africa. January 19, 2021. Available online at: https://freedomhouse.org/article/amid-­covid-­19-­pandemic-­internet-­freedom-­under-­attack-­middle-­east-­and-­north-­africa Global Network Initiative. 2016. Extremist Content and the ICT Sector. A Global Network Initiative Policy Brief. Available online at: https://globalnetworkinitiative.org/wp-­ content/ uploads/2016/12/Extremist-­Content-­and-­ICT-­Sector.pdf Keller, Daphne. 2018. Internet Platforms. Observations on Speech, Danger and Money. Hoover Institution. June 13, 2018. Available online at: https://www.hoover.org/research/ internet-­platforms-­observations-­speech-­danger-­and-­money Mansour-­Ille, Dina. 2021. “Counterterrorism Policies in the Middle East and North Africa: A Regional Perspective.” International Review of the Red Cross 103 (916-­917): 653–679. UNESCO. 2018. World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development. Regional Overview of Arab States 2017–2018. Paris. Available online at: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/ pf0000266023 Zayani, Mohamed. 2015. Networked Publics and Digital Contention: The Politics of Everyday Life in Tunisia. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Arabic News Channels in the Middle East Development and Transformation Yushi Chiba Introduction Contrary to the prospect of television losing its foothold to the internet and social media, a recent transnational survey conducted in several Arab countries showed that television had remained a primary news source in the Middle East (Northwestern University in Qatar 2019). Indeed, until the late 1980s, almost all regional television services were operated by state broadcasters and served as government mouthpieces. Nevertheless, this monolithic situation changed rapidly after the 1990s. In succession, private broadcasters based in Europe launched several Arabic satellite channels; the apparent intention was to promote media moguls’ interests or challenge the government monopoly over the contemporary broadcasting scene (Sakr  2001; Kraidy and Khalil 2009; Sakr, Skovgaard-­Petersen, and Della Ratta 2015). By the 2000s, the increasing number of satellite channels enabled Arab audiences to access international news, diversified news choices, and transformed the regional broadcasting landscape into a more competitive one than in previous decades (see Chapters 11, 12). This chapter aims to analyze the development and transformation of Arabic news channels, focusing on their situation since the start of the various social uprisings labeled the Arab Spring (early 2010s). In so doing, this chapter does not restrict the perspective to respective national context because, as pioneering studies have emphasized, the media in the Middle East, particularly Arab media, has been formed in the context of cross-­border political and economic dynamics (Sakr 2001; Guaaybess 2005; Kraidy and Khalil 2009). As Marwan Kraidy puts it, the study of Arab media requires us to explore “tensions between national and regional forces that shape the pan-­Arab media system” (Kraidy 2012, 178). With this in mind and based on unstructured interviews with news

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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channels employees,1 this chapter traces the historical background of Arabic news channels. It clarifies their transformation with a particular focus on two leading ­ ­outlets: Al Jazeera and its rival, Al Arabiya.

Development of Arabic News Channels While the history of Middle Eastern broadcasting dates back to the 1920s, its ­development accelerated after the mid-­twentieth century as most governments required broadcasting capabilities for state-­building and to consolidate power after achieving independence from colonial rulers. In addition, many governments were spurred to develop broadcasting facilities by the intra-­Arab strife during the 1950s and 1960s. Since Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser called for socialist revolutions by using transnational radio services such as the Voice of the Arabs, other governments realized the necessity to enrich their broadcasting facilities to keep audiences away from Egyptian radio services (Boyd 1999). Arab governments were not always competing, however; they had cooperative broadcast development relationships. Notably, after the crushing defeat in the 1967 war, they realized the necessity to collaborate in displaying their opinion to the other parts of the world. This collaboration bore fruit in several joint projects, such as the Arab State Broadcasting Union (ASBU) in 1969 and the Arab Satellite Communications Organization (Arabsat) in 1976. The launching of two satellites (Arabsat-­1A and Arabsat-­1B) in 1985 paved the way for the  satellite era shortly after that (Sakr  2001, 9; Guaaybess  2005, 105; Kraidy and Khalil 2009, 154). The 1990s became a watershed in Middle Eastern broadcasting history. Iraq’s 1990  invasion of Kuwait triggered a broadcasting scene change; to counter the Iraqi government propaganda and reach Egyptian troops deployed in Iraq, the Egyptian government started the Egyptian Satellite Channel (ESC) at the end of that year. However, the American channel Cable News Network (CNN) enhanced its reputation dramatically by delivering the latest news to its audiences. Meanwhile, Arab states’ channels failed to exploit their geographical advantages; instead, some heavily relied on CNN’s coverage. In an extreme case, the Saudi state channel did not cover Iraq’s invasion for several days, reinforcing audiences’ mistrust of state media and stimulating many to look for news from non-­state outlets (Foley 2010, 100). It was some Gulf royalists with business interests who first implemented some fundamental changes within the broadcasting scene. They launched private broadcasters outside their own countries (where private broadcasters were banned) and started broadcasting Arabic programs via satellite from Europe. Among them, the Saudi-­owned Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC) was the first private channel to challenge state broadcasters’ dominance, earning itself the moniker “CNN of the Arab World.”

 These interviews were conducted several times between 2011 and 2019 in both Doha and Dubai.

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News Channels in the Early Stage of Satellite Era Although MBC increased entertainment programs after that and enhanced its image as an entertainment-­oriented channel, other broadcasters emerged and diversified the audience’s news choices. For example, in 1994, now-­defunct Orbit Communications Company,2 a Saudi private broadcaster headquartered in Italy, contracted with the BBC and started BBC Arabic as a joint venture. From its beginning, however, there were numerous disputes between Orbit and BBC on editorial matters, and the venture finally collapsed in 1996 when Orbit abruptly canceled its contract with the BBC, purportedly because of the channel’s criticism of the Saudi royal family (Miles 2005, 32). In the same year, the Lebanese Broadcasting Center (LBC) started a satellite channel by transmitting its programs via Italy using Orbit’s rival Arab Radio and Television (ART). Although LBC was famous for its entertainment programs, it enriched its news content through a short-­lived partnership with the Saudi-­owned Al Hayat newspaper after 2002 (Kraidy and Khalil 2009, 77).3 Likewise, in 1997, the Arab News Network (ANN), established by the son of Rifaat al-­Assad, an exiled Syrian politician, started an Arabic satellite channel in  London that became a platform for figures who opposed the Syrian government (Sakr 2001, 59–61). When the satellite channels appeared, most governments were concerned about ­losing control over information flow and, therefore, took restrictive measures such as jamming satellite frequencies and banning satellite dish possession. Owing to regulations for private broadcasters, almost all pioneering private broadcasters established their facilities in Europe; this allowed them to transmit programs under lesser political constraints. However, this situation gradually changed with the establishment of Al  Jazeera, founded in 1996  in Qatar; it demonstrated that being located in Europe would not always be a sine qua non for attracting Arab audiences and guaranteeing ­relative independence from the state (El-­Oifi 2005, 71). Besides, media laws modifications, the assignment of special economic zones for private broadcasters, and increased operating costs in Europe compelled broadcasters to move their headquarters out of Europe (Khalil 2013). Thus, almost all broadcasters now operate within the Arab world. In addition, the launch of new satellites with digital transponders lowered the entry ­barriers to the satellite market, contributing to increased satellite channels. Nevertheless, this increase did not necessarily challenge the political status quo in the region because influential channels were either subsidized or sponsored by Arab governments. Except for a few mavericks like Al Jazeera, most news channels have been careful about criticizing other governments, and this tacit agreement was later documented in the Arab states’ 2008 charter for satellite television. This failed attempt at establishing a transnational broadcasting arrangement required broadcasters to stick to “providing facts to the public, not defaming or libeling public figures and not promoting terrorism or violence, including the violent overthrow of governments” (Amin  2008). In this regard, Qatar’s refusal to sign the charter cannot be dissociated from its unwavering  Orbit later merged with Showtime Arabia to become the Orbit Showtime Network (OSN).  The cooperation between LBC and Al Hayat ended in 2010.

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support of Al Jazeera (see Chapters 11, 16). Furthermore, other governments, particularly the Saudi g­ overnment that took the charter’s initiative, must have reconfirmed the necessity of allying with or retaining rival channels to Al Jazeera.

Impacts of Al Jazeera and Its Relationship with the Qatari Government The US response to the 9/11 attacks transformed the Middle East’s regional order and attracted global audiences’ great deal of attention. Al Jazeera made the most of this opportunity to raise its profile (Lynch 2006, 42–45). Under the strong support of Qatar’s former Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Al Jazeera established a solid foothold in the region even before 9/11, gaining fame for its special coverage of the 1998 bombing of Iraq and the Second Palestinian Intifada in 2000. It received more global recognition with its exclusive coverage of Bin Laden. When the US-­led war in Afghanistan began, Al Jazeera’s bureau in Kabul offered new coverage on the conflict zones; additionally, its  Iraq war coverage strengthened the image that Al Jazeera could offer alternative perspectives on the conflict and challenge Western-­ ­ dominated information flows (Miles  2005; Zayani and Sahroui  2007). Furthermore, Al Jazeera provided audiences with multi-­angled opinions that other Arab media failed to offer or intentionally neglected with its talk show programs. Even in its most praised period (1997–2003) that Marc Lynch called the “Al Jazeera era” (Lynch  2006, 22), however, its coverage was not balanced, nor did it contradict Qatar’s national interest. For example, its fierce criticism of the US-­led Afghanistan and Iraq wars very likely mitigated audiences’ rage against Qatar’s hosting of the US Central Command headquarters. Likewise, the airing of the Bin Laden tapes, which expressed an intense hostility toward the Saudi government, cannot be adequately understood without mentioning the long-­standing discord between Qatar and Saudi Arabia (Fandy 2007, 51). With Al Jazeera, Qatar could establish a positive image as a proponent of democracy and liberalization without initiating substantial democratization (Miles 2005; Samuel-­Azran  2013; Abudul-­Nabi 2017). Instead, the more popularity it earned, the larger the degree of government intervention it seemed to have lured (Lynch 2012, 20). Especially when Saddam Hussain’s Iraq collapsed in 2003, political tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran increased, and the situation was framed as “the new Middle East Cold War” (Gause 2014, 7). With the rising need to take a more careful stance toward other governments, Qatar appeared to wish Al Jazeera would tone down its criticism of other governments. Moreover, some observers regarded Al Jazeera’s tone down of its criticism of Saudi Arabia as the likely prerequisite for the thaw in Saudi-­Qatari relations in 2007 (Kamrava 2013, 76; Figenschou 2017, 41). Yosri Fouda, one of Al Jazeera’s star figures until his resignation in 2009, regards the appointment of Wadah Khanfar, a pro-­Islamic Palestinian journalist, to managing director in 2003 as the watershed that undermined Al Jazeera’s professionalism (Fouda 2015, 19). Besides Fouda, other observers concurred that, under Khanfar’s rule, Al Jazeera favored staff with an Islamic orientation and reduced the ideological diversity within the

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organization (Zayani and Sahraoui 2007, 107). Indeed, through its coverage of the 2006 Lebanon war and the 2008 Israel-­Palestine conflict, Al Jazeera seemingly favored Hezbollah and Hamas, respectively, thus impressing an increased political perspective on audiences (Fandy 2007, 60–65; Elmasry et al. 2013, 764). Therefore, despite evaluating its transformative influence over Arab societies, its coverage style never contradicted Qatar’s foreign policy. Its initial image as an independent news outlet did not last long and was tarnished over time. Coinciding with the end of Lynch’s “Al Jazeera era” was the beginning of Saudi-­f inanced UAE-­based transnational news channels, which challenged the superiority of Al Jazeera and brought fierce competition into the Arab news scene.

The Challenge of Al Arabiya and Its Relationship with the Saudi Government Al Arabiya was launched in March 2003 as an independent branch of MBC just before the US-­led Iraq war commenced. Since its debut, it has been regarded as a strong competitor of Al Jazeera and, in some countries, it even draws a more significant viewership (Northwestern University in Qatar 2016). Its initial investment – around USD 300 million – was paid by MBC and investors from Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, and other Arabian Gulf countries, which were close to the Saudi establishment and hostile toward Al Jazeera (Khalil 2006, 12; Kraidy and Khalil 2009, 84). From the beginning, Al Arabiya has been treated differently from other MBC channels; its management policy is controlled by the general manager appointed by Sheikh Waleed, owner of MBC.4 This appointment is similar to that of editors in chief of Saudi newspapers, suggesting the implicit approval of the king of Saudi Arabia. Thus, the Saudi government’s critical stance toward Arab nationalism and political Islam has run through Al Arabiya (Lahrali 2011, 111). Al Arabiya’s coverage style can be clarified by comparing it with Al Jazeera’s. Taking their coverage of the US war on Iraq as an example, Al Arabiya took a more moderate stance toward the United States than Al Jazeera, which ensured US officials prioritized Al Arabiya when making official appearances and enabled Al Arabiya to establish a foothold in Iraq (Hammond 2007). “Moderate” can differ according to the situation, however, and in its coverage of post-­war Iraq, Al Arabiya’s stance was never moderate. Specifically, when the Shia-­led government formed after the 2005 parliamentary election, Al Arabiya took such a critical position on the Iraqi government that it prompted the government to close the Al Arabiya’s Baghdad bureau for a month in 2006 because of its claimed incitement of sectarian violence (UN Assistance Mission for Iraq 2006, 10). This critical tone was relevant to the Saudi government’s concern regarding Iraq’s relationship with Iran, and Iran’s growing influence over the region. Likewise, after the 2005 assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-­Hariri, popular rallies formed and started to call for the withdrawal of Syrian

 Interview with an executive member of Al Arabiya who wants to remain anonymous, in the Al Arabiya building on November 5, 2019.

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troops; finally, the Syrian government withdrew its troops from Lebanon for the first time since 1976. During this process, Al Arabiya echoed those criticizing Syria and hosted anti-­ Syrian figures on its programs (Fandy  2007, 59–60). Furthermore, when the 2006 July War erupted, Al Arabiya criticized Hezbollah and “often reminded its readers and viewers of who was responsible for the eruption of the war” (Lahlali 2011, 140). Besides, when the Israel-­Palestine conflict re-­arose in 2008, Al Arabiya took another very different stance from Al Jazeera. Compared to Al Jazeera, which covered Hamas positively and criticized Western involvement, Al Arabiya criticized Hamas and was more sympathetic to Western involvement (Elmasry et al. 2013). Al Arabiya reportedly received “pressure from the Saudi royal family” (el-­Nawawy and Strong  2012). Nevertheless, the Saudi government took over complete control of Al Arabiya after it seized MBC’s majority stock in 2018. To complete the Saudi takeover of the channel, Al Arabiya is making Riyadh its headquarters instead of Dubai.

Intensification of Competition and Market Strategy of Leading News Channels Widening our perspective to other channels, most Arab governments encourage their state broadcasters to improve to make them competitive. Some wealthy broadcasters, however, have advanced by installing state-­of-­the-­art technologies and have improved the quality of programs; state channels are, in general, behind private channels in popularity and efficiency (Guaaybess  2013). In addition to the Arab governments, foreign broadcasters also joined the regional satellite market. In 2004, the US government started Al Hurra to appease Arabs’ antipathy toward the United States and facilitate its administration in Iraq. Other broadcasters such as the BBC, France 24, and Deutsche Welle also started Arabic channels. Likewise, non-­Western broadcasters funded by Iran, Russia, China, and Turkey started Arabic channels to expand their influence over the region. While this increase of channels intensified competition among them, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya appear to have maintained their leadership status and still succeeded in attracting sizeable audiences by adapting to the ever-­ changing media situation5 (Northwestern University in Qatar  2016). As for Al Jazeera, after its restructuring and  launch of new departments such as the Al Jazeera Media Training Institute and Al Jazeera Mubasher (Live), renamed the Al Jazeera Media Network in 2006. The same year, it launched Al Jazeera English (AJE) to reach non-­Arabic audiences. Its English website has been acclaimed for bridging the information gap between Western and ­non-­Western media (Figenschou 2017). While Al Arabiya targeted only Arab-­speaking audiences, it started an English website and sites in Urdu and Persian in 2007, ­emphasizing business news that distinguished it from rival channels. In addition, to stay

 The reliable viewership of the pan-­Arab satellite channels is hard to estimate because of ­regulation by governments.

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competitive and keep up with technological developments, both Al Jazeera and Al  Arabiya installed state-­of-­art facilities and have enriched their digital platforms with  multiple languages. This competition among news channels and their resultant transformations accelerated with the onset of the mass protests at the end of 2010.

The Arab Spring and Its Impact on News Channels The protest movements that began in Tunisia at the end of 2010 spread rapidly across the Arab countries, challenging the political stability that most governments had thus far enjoyed. These mass protests are collectively known as the Arab Spring and led to the fall of long-­standing governments in four countries (Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya); they caused unprecedented concern to most authoritarian governments. While the Arab Spring has been frequently referred to as the period that showed the effectiveness of social media platforms in facilitating collective action, the relation between traditional media and social media is complex, and it is now believed that these mass protests cannot be explained just by the role of social media (Zayani and Mirgani 2016). In considering the Arab Spring’s transformative influence over news channels, two aspects should be especially highlighted. First, in the coverage of these protests, most broadcasters heavily relied on sources retrieved from social media owing to their limited access to banned areas and conflict zones, prompting broadcasters to advance into digital platforms. Notably, leading channels such as Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, which had already set up several online portals before this period, expanded their online presence. For example, as early as February 4, 2011, Al Arabiya launched a service called Ana Ara (Arabic for “I See”), allowing citizens to upload a video to be broadcasted on television and posted on its official site. According to Antoine Aoun, then head of the Current Affairs Department of Al Arabiya, “more than seven thousand videos were posted in two weeks from its inception.”6 Like Al Arabiya, Al Jazeera heavily depended on sources and videos posted by “citizens journalists”7 in its coverage. Its struggle to offer the news via digital platforms later bore fruit as AJ+ (Al Jazeera Plus), a digital offshoot offering news and storytelling with multiple languages. Not limited to these leading channels, the Arab Spring made traditional media keenly aware of the importance of digitalization, prompting traditional outlets to expand their reach to digital platforms (Bebawi 2014). Second, the number of satellite channels had increased since the Arab Spring commenced. As soon as the protests began in Egypt, Al Jazeera covered the incidents day and night. It launched Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr, a channel dedicated to Egyptian affairs, days after Mubarak’s fall.8 Likewise, in March 2012, the MBC started Al Hadath, the sister channel of Al Arabiya, to supplement Al Arabiya’s news coverage with continuous  Interview with Antoine Aoun, in the Al Arabiya building on November 14, 2011.  Interview with an Al Jazeera journalist who wants to remain anonymous, in a city mall in Doha on February 18, 2016. 8  Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr was suspended in December 2014. 6 7

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live coverage. Besides, by May 2012, a venture between the UK-­based Sky Group and the Abu Dhabi Media Investment Corporation launched Sky News Arabiya. Furthermore, in countries where long-­standing governments had collapsed, barriers against entering the broadcasting market decreased (even if temporarily). Thus, in Egypt, 16 new channels began broadcasting less than half a year after the fall of Mubarak’s regime (Mekay 2011); however, channels that lacked financial resources and political backing did not last long and stopped operations. Even with financial support, the case of Al Arab demonstrated the difficulty of continuing a news channel operation without political patronage. Saudi billionaire al-­Waleed bin Talal launched this venture toward setting up a credible news outlet in February 2015. It was shut down after only a single day, never being relaunched. While Al Arab’s official Twitter claimed that it stopped broadcasting “for technical and administrative reasons,” it is believed that Saudi ­displeasure likely led to the venture’s cancellation ( Jones 2021, 159).

Political Bias and Loss of Credibility of the Leading News Channels The Arab Spring was an opportunity for news channels to attract fame and surpass rivals; yet, it was not a simple blessing for channels because it exposed their political bias and ruined their credibility. No channel exemplifies this better than Al Jazeera. Regardless of its delay in covering the protests in Tunisia, it was quick to organize special live coverage when the wave of protests reached Egypt, and it covered the incidents day and night. This was in stark contrast to the silence of the Egyptian state channels and was initially hailed as helping citizens hope for political change. However, its image soon became tarnished owing to its relative silence on the protests in Bahrain. Further, in the coverage of both Libya and Syria, Al Jazeera favored revolutionaries so enthusiastically that it was criticized for going beyond its journalistic role (Kühn, Reuter, and Schmitz  2013; Salama 2013). An Al Jazeera journalist who was involved in the coverage of protests admitted that he was ordered: “to avoid the protests” in Bahrain. However, excluding Bahrain, he emphasized the staffs’ enthusiasm for supporting “citizens’ hope for democracy” rather than their seniors’ coercive instructions.9 Besides, citing the adage “if it bleeds, it leads,” he implied the staff ’s desire to “scoop” to stay ahead of other news channels. Undoubtedly, Al Jazeera’s enthusiastic coverages of the protests were facilitated by the staffs’ active contribution. Simultaneously, situating Al Jazeera in a broader context, Qatar’s growing geopolitical ambitions should not be underestimated; after the fall of the Mubarak Regime in February 2011, the Qatari government is believed to have seen this opportunity as a chance to enhance its political influence over other countries and “began to treat it [Al Jazeera] more as a useful weapon in regional politics than as the prestigious independent symbol it had long valued” (Lynch 2012, 90). Some journalists resigned to

 Interview with the previously mentioned Al Jazeera journalist.

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protest Al Jazeera’s shift in policy towards coverage of the events (Salama 2013), but this, of course, did not change Al Jazeera’s course. Similarly, Al Arabiya’s coverage lacked balance; its editorial policies were wholly aligned with Saudi foreign policy. When the protests started in Bahrain, Al Arabiya was unsupportive and disrupted the cross-­sectarian protests by covering it from a sectarian perspective.10 Likewise, Al Arabiya’s coverage of conflicts in countries such as Yemen and Libya was far from balanced. It even aided the revolutionaries by emphasizing the government’s violence and hosting anti-­government figures on its programs. Similarly, when the Muslim Brotherhood took power in post-­revolution Egypt, Al Arabiya also spearheaded the criticism and ridiculed its administration until the organization was purged in 2013. While Al Jazeera framed the pro-­Morsi protesters as ordinary people, Al Arabiya presented them as “a violent group of people” (AlNajjar 2016, 157). Despite its overt backing of particular political standpoints, the fact that “only a few journalists” protested and left the organization over Al Arabiya’s editorial policy suggests that most employees accepted (however hesitantly) rather than opposed it.11 Considering these aspects, the Arab Spring was not just an opportunity for both Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya to “scoop” and march ahead of their rivals but also a period that affected their editorial policy and accelerated their political biases.

News Channels Under New National Leadership The change of monarchies in Qatar in 2013 and Saudi Arabia in 2015 may have influenced both Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya more than the Arab Spring. One former Al Jazeera journalist noted that he felt more profound changes in Al Jazeera “not after 2011, but after 2013.”12 In June 2013, Qatar’s Emir Hamad suddenly announced his abdication and appointed his son Tamim as successor. Despite suspected health problems, many observers opined that this handover aimed to break Qatar’s deadlock since the Arab Spring began. In particular, the military coup in Egypt that ousted the Muslim Brotherhood from power might have reminded Qatar of the difficulty in establishing a regional order in its favor. Under the new leadership, the Qatari government sought to repair relationships with neighboring countries and distance itself from the Muslim Brotherhood (Roberts 2017, 149–165). The change of Emir and adjustment of Qatar’s foreign policy must have affected the government’s media policy; when sheikh Tamim took office, he seemed to distance himself from Al Jazeera. According to a former Al Jazeera journalist, Sheikh Tamim was reluctant to continue subsidizing Al Jazeera to the same extent as his predecessor; furthermore, when the Qatari government reduced subsidies for Al Jazeera in 2015, the  The protests in Bahrain, which initially had cross-­sectarian characteristics, soon became ­fragmented across different sectarian issues (Matthiesen 2013). 11  Interview with an Al Arabiya journalist who wants to remain anonymous, in the Al Arabiya building on September 5, 2019. 12  Interview with the previously mentioned Al Jazeera journalist. 10

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former Emir Hamad seemingly made up for the budget deficit from his pocket.13 Whether in political or financial support, there is a perception difference between former Emir Hamad and current Emir Tamim regarding Al Jazeera. Apart from his father’s media heritage, Sheikh Tamim supposedly supported the launch of the London-­based media venture Al Arabi Al Jadeed (Arabic for “the New Arab”) in 2014. The fact that Azmi Bishara, a secular Palestinian intellectual with a critical attitude toward the Muslim Brotherhood, was in charge of the venture indicates the new Emir’s wish to diversify the country’s media assets ideologically. However, Al Jazeera still operates as an essential media asset of the Qatar government, reaffirmed by the Saudi’s blockade of Qatar with the help of the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt, and thirteen demands on Qatar in 2017, including the closure of Al Jazeera. Until the crisis was resolved in January 2021, Al Jazeera worked as an important media platform for the Qatari government, and it contributed toward criticizing the injustice of the blockade. Like Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya was not immune to the change of ruler in Saudi Arabia. In January 2015, Salman bin Abdulaziz inherited the throne following the death of the late King Abdullah. With his son Muhammad bin Salman’s (MbS) nomination as the new Crown Prince and Deputy Prime minister in 2017, the king gave MbS substantial power. Under MbS’s initiative, the Saudi government concentrated its leading position in the region; this increased political tension with Iran and boosted Saudi Arabia’s involvement in Yemen’s war. Inside the country, MbS ordered the arrests of prominent princes and business people on alleged anti-­corruption charges in 2017; this measure consolidated his power by sidelining the faction of the late King Abdullah (The Economist  2017). Among those arrested were the owners of major media outlets, including Prince al-­ Waleed bin Talal, owner of the Rotana Group; the late Saleh Kamel, former owner of Arab Radio and Television Network; and Waleed al-­Ibrahim, owner of the MBC Group. While they were later released, it was presumed to be in return for their subjection to the new ruler; for example, the release of MBC’s owner appeared to result from his handing over of most of his MBC shares to the government.14 Since then, the Saudi government has been the largest shareholder of the MBC Group. Among its operations, Al Arabiya and its sister channel Al Hadath were put under total control by the government, and some employees have since begun to feel more pressure from “above.”15 With the acquisition of the MBC shares, the government’s intervention appears to have increased. One executive member of Al Arabiya recalled that the pressure to favor the Saudi government, particularly after the killing of Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, intensified more strongly than ever before.16 To counter the negative images distributed by channels such as Al Jazeera and Turkish TRT, which pursued the incident thoroughly, “the government seemed to wish us [Al Arabiya and Al Hadath] to increase the programs defending Saudi Arabia more enthusiastically,” not just turn audiences’ eyes from  Interview with the previously mentioned Al Arabiya journalist.  Interview the previously mentioned Al Arabiya journalist. As of September 2021, both Al Arabiya and Al Hadath are no longer on MBC’s channel list. 15  Interview with the previously mentioned Al Arabiya journalist. 16  Jamal Khashoggi was an exiled Saudi journalist. He was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and this incident caused a global uproar and tarnished the reformist image of MbS. 13 14

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the incident (see Chapter 11).17 Besides, in February 2020, it was announced that MBC was planning to move its home to Saudi Arabia’s Media City, which was scheduled to be set up in Riyadh. Al Arabiya will probably be subject to the influence of Saudi Arabian law, and, under the current severe state regulations, the move would further regulate the channel’s activities. Despite differences in background, both Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya face some ­difficulty distancing themselves from their respective governments; the change of national leadership appears to have tightened the governments’ grip on these news channels.

Conclusion This chapter’s analysis suggests that the latest changes in the Arab news landscape are far from being a radical transition (see Chapters 12, 13). Despite the increasing number of satellite channels, news channels are crucial for most governments; therefore, they have been careful about loosening their reins on these news channels. This situation appears to remain almost unchanged, even after the decade since the Arab Spring began. Instead, through the analysis of both Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, it became apparent that Arab governments have sought to put more pressure on news channels owing to their concern about the rise of political unrest and heightened tension among countries, both of which are considered to have increased because of the Arab Spring. At the same time, the Arab Spring exemplified the importance of digitalization, having converted old media to advanced digital platforms. This transformation would become the key to ­predicting the future of Arabic news channels because it intensifies the competition among satellite television and digital platforms. While Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya have taken the digitalization initiative and seemingly kept their competitiveness, their future would depend on their perpetual adaptation to technological changes and the r­ elationship with their respective governments. Under such a political constraint and rapidly changing technical circumstances, how will the Arabic news channels transform, and what future awaits? Analyzing the past, ongoing situations, and technological transformations would help answer these questions. References Abdul-­Nabi, Z. 2017. “Al Jazeera’s Relationship with Qatar Before and After Arab Spring: Effective Public Diplomacy or Blatant Propaganda?” Arab Media and Society 27 (Summer/Fall 2017). http://www.arabmediasociety.com/?article=1026 (accessed August 20, 2017). Amin, H. 2008. “The Arab States Charter for Satellite Television: A Quest for Regulation.” Arab Media and Society (Satellite Charter Special Feature). https://www.arabmediasociety.com/ post_issue/issue-­5-­spring-­2008/ (accessed August 20, 2017). Bebawi, S. 2014. “A Shift in Media Power: The Mediated Public Sphere During the ‘Arab Spring.’” In S. Bebawi and D. Bossio (Eds.), Social Media and the Politics of Reportage: The ‘Arab Spring’ (pp. 123–138). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.  Interview with the previously mentioned executive member of Al Arabiya.

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Boyd, D. 1999. Broadcasting in the Arab World: A Survey of the Electronic Media in the Middle East. Iowa: Iowa State University Press. The Economist. 2017. “Saudi Arabia’s Unprecedented Shake-­Up.” (November 6). https://www. economist.com/middle-­e ast-­a nd-­a frica/2017/11/05/saudi-­a rabias-­u nprecedented-­ shake-­up (accessed June 6, 2021) Elmasry, M. H., El Shamy, A., Manning, P., et al. 2013. “Al-­Jazeera and Al-­Arabiya Framing of the Israel-­Palestine Conflict During War and Calm Period.” The International Communication Gazette 75, no. 8: 750–768. Fandy, M. 2007. (Un)Civil War of Words: Media and Politics in the Arab World. Westport: Praeger Security International. Foley, S. 2010. The Arab Gulf States: Beyond Oil and Islam. Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Fouda, Y. 2015. In Harm’s Way: From the Stronghold of al-­Qaida to the Heart of ISIL (Arabic). Cairo: Dar El Shrouk. Figenschou, T. U. 2017. Al Jazeera and the Global Media Landscape: The South Is Talking Back. New York and London: Routledge. Gause, G. F., III. 2014. “Beyond Sectarianism: The New Middle East Cold War.” Brookings Doha Center Analysis Paper 11. https://www.brookings.edu/research/beyond-­sectarianism-­the-­ new-­middle-­east-­cold-­war/ (accessed February 10, 2021). Guaaybess, T. 2005. Télévisions Arabes sur Orbite. Un Système Médiatique en Mutation (1960–2004). Paris: CNRS Éditions. Guaaybess, T. (Ed.) 2013. National Broadcasting and State Policy in Arab Countries. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hammond, A. 2007. “Saudi Arabia’s Media Empire: Keeping the Masses at Home.” Arab Media and Society 3 (Fall 2007). https://www.arabmediasociety.com/post_issue/issue-­3-­fall-­2007/ (accessed February 10, 2021). Jones, M. O. 2021. “Bahrain: Media-­Assisted Authoritarianism.” In C. Richter and C. Kozman (Eds.), Arab Media Systems (pp. 145–162). Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. Kamrava, M. 2013. Qatar: Small State, Big Politics. New York: Cornell University Press. Kraidy, M. M. 2012. “The Rise of Transnational Media Systems: Implications of Pan-­Arab Media for Comparative Research.” In D. C. Halin and P. Mancini (Eds.), Comparing Media Systems Beyond the Western World (pp. 177–200). New York: Cambridge University Press. Kraidy, M. M. and Khalil, J. F. 2009. Arab Television Industries. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Khalil, J. F. 2006. “News Television in the Arabian Gulf...Period of Transitions.” Global Media Journal 5, no. 8. https://www.globalmediajournal.com/open-access/news-television-inthe-arabian-gulfperiod-of-transitions.php?aid=35134 (accessed May 25, 2021). Khalil, J. F. 2013. “Towards a Supranational Analysis of Arab Media: The Role of Cities.” In T. Guaaybess (Ed.), National Broadcasting and State Policy in Arab Countries (pp. 188–208). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kühn, A., Reuter, C., and Schmitz, G. P. 2013. “Al-­Jazeera Losing Battle for Independence: After the Arab Spring,” Spiegel Online (February 15). http://www.spiegel.de/ (accessed on April 8, 2021). Lahlali, M. 2011. Contemporary Arab Broadcast Media. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Lynch, M. 2006. Voice of the New Arab Public: Iraq, Al Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today. New York: Columbia University Press. Lynch, M. 2012. The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East. New York: PublicAffairs. Matthiesen, T. 2013. Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn’t. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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Mekay, E. 2011. “T.V. Stations Multiply as Egyptian Censorship Falls.” The New  York Times ( July 13). https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/world/middleeast/14iht-­M14B-­EGYPT-­ MEDIA.html (accessed May 21, 2021). Miles, H. 2005. Al Jazeera: The Inside Story of the Arab News Channel That Is Challenging the West. New York: Grove Press. AlNajjar, A. 2016. “Framing Political Islam: Media Tropes and Power Struggles in Revolutionary Egypt.” In M. Zayani and S. Migani (Eds.), Bullets and Bulletins: Media and Politics in the Wake of the Arab Uprisings (pp. 145–164). London: Hurst & Company. el-­Nawawy, M. and Strong, C. 2012. “Job Satisfaction and Editorial Freedom at Al-­Arabiya: Finding the Balance While Covering Volatile Middle East News.” Arab Media and Society 16 (Fall 2012). https://www.arabmediasociety.com/post_issue/issue-­16-­fall-­2012/ (accessed February 10, 2021). Northwestern University in Qatar. 2016. Media Industries in the Middle East 2016. Northwestern University in Qatar. https://www.qatar.northwestern.edu/research/publications/index.html (accessed May 25, 2021). Northwestern University in Qatar. 2019. Media Use in the Middle East 2019: A Seven-­nation Survey. Northwestern University in Qatar. https://www.qatar.northwestern.edu/research/ publications/index.html (accessed May 25, 2021). El-­Oifi, M. 2005. “Influence Without Power: Al Jazeera and the Arab Public Sphere.” In M. Zayani (Ed.), The Al Jazeera Phenomenon: Critical Perspectives on New Arab Media (pp. 66–79). Boulder: Paradigm Publishers. Robert, D. B. 2017. Qatar: Securing the Global Ambitions of a City-­State. London: Hurst and Company. Sakr, N. 2001. Satellite Realms: Transnational Television, Globalization, and the Middle East. London and New York: I.B. Tauris. Sakr, N. 2007. Arab Television Today. London and New York: I.B. Tauris. Sakr, N., Skovgaard-­Petersen, J., and Della Ratta, D. (Eds.) 2015. Arab Media Moguls. London and New York: I.B. Tauris. Salama, V. 2013. “Al-­Jazeera’s (R)evolution?” In A. Iskandar and B. Haddad (Eds.), Mediating the Arab Uprisings (pp. 39–46). Washington: Tadweem Publishing. Samuel-­Azran, T. 2013. “Al Jazeera, Qatar, and New Tactics in State-­sponsored Media Diplomacy.” American Behavioral Scientist 57, no. 9: 1293–1311. UN Assistance Mission for Iraq. 2006. Human Rights Report. UNAMI Human Rights Reports (September 1–October 31, 2006). UNAMI Rep. https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/ Countries/sept-­october06.pdf (accessed February 2, 2021). Zayani, M. and Mirgani, S. 2016. Bullets and Bulletins: Media and Politics in the Wake of the Arab Uprisings. London: Hurst & Company. Zayani, M. and Sahroui, S. 2007. The Culture of Al Jazeera: Inside an Arab Media Giant. Jefferson: McFarland.

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MENA Independent Media Negotiating the Logics of Media Development Programs Yazan Badran Echo/imec-­SMIT, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

The decade following the 2010–2011 Arab uprisings saw a flourishing of “small” media organizations across the region. This growth included a diverse set of actors from small-­ scale associative radios in Tunisia to numerous oppositional media outlets in Syria. The most well known of these new media outlets include 7iber (Jordan), Mada Masr (Egypt), Enab Baladi (Syria), Daraj (Lebanon), and Inkyfada (Tunisia). The political economy of these emerging media organizations is intricately linked to growth in media development (or assistance) aid flowing into the region since 2011. This chapter will take stock of the growing literature examining these media development interventions and the complex ­relationships they have built with local media producers in the region. Through a number of illustrative examples from a recent fieldwork at the newsroom of Enab Baladi, an online publication operating from Istanbul, Turkey, it will also argue for the value of recentering the perspectives of these local media actors in current scholarship (see Chapters 19, 28, 40).

Media Development Paradigm Media development has grown into a niche field of practice in the broader field of development aid. It refers to interventions which aim at building, supporting, and promoting independent media spheres around the world (Myers and Juma 2018). Any conceptual delineation between “media development” and the broader field of “media for development” has to contend with porous borders and large areas of crossover in terms of the institutions, instruments, and underlying values. In broad strokes, however, we can ­suggest that “media for development” tends to focus on the role that media and communication can play in broader processes of development and social change. Media The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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development, on the other hand, has as its central undertaking the strengthening of the  media sector in and of itself rather than other broader development concerns (Deane 2014; Manyozo 2012). Thus, while media for development seeks to put the affordances of communication in the service of any number of developmental objectives, the media development paradigm views development as a positive externality of a free, pluralist, and professional media environment (Berger 2010). Underlying this distinction is the normative view in the media development paradigm that such a media ­environment is an essential element for democratic governance (Norris 2008, 2010). The types of interventions usually classified under media development focus on a number of areas: pressing for and assisting in media law reform to create an enabling environment for independent and free media; offering material and financial support to media organizations to foster pluralism; organizing capacity and training for media labor; and delivering support to sectoral institutions such as journalists’ unions and self-­ governing bodies (Kumar  2006). Globally, these instruments are deployed differently, and in varying densities, both temporally and geographically. For example, in Myanmar, media development interventions focused on support to exiled media organizations and training for journalists during the dictatorship. Since the 2012 political opening in the country, the work of media development organizations has expanded toward regulatory reform and supporting auxiliary structures, as previously exiled media moved back into the country (McElhone and Brooten 2019). Antecedents of “media development” can be found in the post–World War II reconstruction effort in Europe and in the technical assistance offered to former colonies ­following decolonization. It is only in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and especially ­following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, however, that the media development paradigm emerged as an important (and coherent) pillar of development assistance (Price, Noll, and De Luce 2002). Since then, media development has become increasingly entangled with theories of political (democratic) transition, whether in the former Eastern Bloc (1990s) or later in the Middle East following 9/11 and the 2010–2011 Arab Uprisings (Berger 2010; Higgins 2014; Thomas and van de Fliert 2014). These policies are underpinned by the normative view of the relationship between media, the state, and democratic governance often derived from Anglo-­American traditions of journalism (Nerone 2013; Waisbord and Jones 2010). It emphasizes the role of free, pluralist media systems as a cornerstone of a functioning democracy and as a precondition for good governance (Norris 2008, 2010). Thus, fostering and supporting an enabling environment for independent and free media is seen as a central objective, with positive externalities – such as greater transparency and accountability of governments – flowing from it (Kumar 2006). There is an inherent entanglement here between such external politico-­cultural interventions and the strategic and foreign policy objectives of donor countries (Miller 2009). Conceptualized as a form of “soft power” or “public diplomacy,” development aid, and in particular that in the field of media, can be seen as an instrument to advance ­certain strategic interests and visions (Sienkiewicz 2016; Tietaah, Yeboah-­Banin, Akrofi-­ Quarcoo, and Sesenu  2018). For example, US media assistance interventions in the Middle East following 9/11 show a hybrid between older, more rigid forms of propaganda and newer mechanisms that attempt to advance the “industrial and aesthetic

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conventions of for-­profit, American-­style commercial television and radio” (Sienkiewicz 2016, 2). Recent debates within the media development sector on attempts to infuse a Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) agenda in media assistance efforts, in response to the rise of ISIS, further highlight this tension underlying the political nature of these interventions (Radsch 2016). Furthermore, attempting to transplant journalistic roles, ethos, and epistemologies that developed in Western contexts into different environments without regard for the specific context is an inherent danger in media development approaches (Bama 2010; Berger 2010; Miller 2009; Torosyan and Starc 2006). This danger is exacerbated by the fact that these idealized notions themselves are rarely critically assessed by proponents of media development (Geertsema-­Sligh 2019). At best, it is up for debate whether a liberalized, market-­dominated media industry, as in the American model, is in fact most conducive to democratic flourishing (McChesney  1999); whether Western media, in general, do function as a carrier of democratic values (Zelizer 2013); and whether the economic model of journalism being exported is still sustainable (Peters 2010). It is also important to note the divergences within Western media systems themselves at the ­levels of values and journalistic roles (Hallin and Mancini 2004; LaMay 2011). The disparate and unequal results of such programs across contexts (see, for example, Relly and Zanger 2017, on Afghanistan; Taylor and Napoli 2003, on Bosnia-­Herzegovina) are illustrative of the broader dissonance between the normative model of journalism – which is deeply embedded in these interventions  – and its actual practice (Nerone  2013; Zelizer 2013). Indeed, these contradictions are hardly lost on media development practitioners such as Krishna Kumar who pleaded for an awareness that it is a field where “one size does not fit all” (Kumar 2009). Nevertheless, these contradictions are also a result of institutional logics and imperatives that are embedded in these programs. Jones and Waisbord (2010) point out a number of institutional incentives on the donors’ and implementers’ level that privilege short-­term objectives and indicators; using similar templates of intervention in different contexts without the necessary adjustment (a “one size fits all”); and broad programmatic objectives that are not sufficiently connected to the evaluation indicators. These logics are also reflective of the broader political economy of aid where organizations are often locked into a competitive dynamic for grant funding. On the other hand, these narratives should be made more complex by looking at the phenomenon from the side of the recipients of this aid – an angle that has often been less represented in scholarship on media development (Myers  2018). Media development funding is in many cases an essential lifeline for oppositional, independent, or exilic media organizations struggling to survive under authoritarian, oppressive, or corrupt regimes (Cook 2016b). These media outlets often have little recourse to other funding streams, such as advertisement, and have to contend with an intricate array of pressures from more powerful actors in the state and the market. As Cook notes in her study on the fragile finances of oppositional media, “grant funding is seen as ethical when approached from the perspective of necessity: where market forces prevent other revenues, and as a way of achieving distance from corruption or editorial control” (2016a, 77). In a study on the relationship between Nigerian newspapers and journalists with foreign aid, Myers also finds that local actors have “far more agency in this

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relationship than they are often given credit for” (2018, 38). Myers highlights the complex sets of trade-­ ­ offs and negotiations that underlie this relationship where ­“newspaper editors talk about being able to ‘circumscribe,’ ‘define,’ ‘pick and choose,’ and that they seem to be able to assert their own strategies in the face of donor power” (2018, 38). Similarly, Phiri and Fourie (2011) in analyzing media aid in the South African context, acknowledge the inherent power imbalance in the relationship between external actors and local recipients of aid. They also emphasize, however, that these imbalances are not static and are different depending on the media organization. To understand these imbalances, and how media development programs operate in specific contexts, it  is key to take into account the political nature of these interventions, the institutional logics that structure them, as well as the responses and strategies of their local interlocutors and beneficiaries (see Chapters 3, 18, 27).

Media Development Interventions in the Middle East Western-­led media development activities in the Middle East grew substantially as the United States shifted the strategic focus of its democratization agenda to the region following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the occupation of Iraq in 2003, and ever further still after the 2010–2011 Arab uprisings (Hoffman  2002; El-­Issawi and Benequista  2020). These programs introduce a number of logics that local beneficiaries have to grapple with. Politically, they are often (albeit to varying extents) subordinated to the broader foreign policy objectives of the donor country. Institutionally, they tend to privilege ­certain indicators (often quantitative), modalities (short-­term project funding), and organizational models (increased bureaucratization and hierarchization). The political logics driving media assistance programs have attracted significant interest in current scholarship. The US experience in Iraq is instructive in this regard. Following its invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States attempted to fundamentally reorganize the media system along with the broader nation-­building project in the country. International media development organizations – such as Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), and BBC Media Action  – implemented large-­scale programs aimed at restructuring Iraqi media with funding from the United States and other Western governments (Ricchiardi 2011). Many of these efforts, however, suffered from a lack of coordination and competing agendas (Al-­Rawi 2015; Ricchiardi 2011), as well as from the tension between normative notions of journalism and the Iraqi context into which they aimed to transplant them (Relly, Zanger, and Fahmy 2015). More crucially, these efforts also suffered from their subordination to geostrategic policy objectives that hampered their efficacy and oftentimes contributed to opposite outcomes (see, for example, Al-­Rawi 2013; Barker 2008). Politically, the main challenge facing independent media is to protect their administrative and ­editorial autonomy from political instrumentalization. The logic of subordinating media development interventions to the geopolitical ­interests of donor countries can be observed more broadly across the region. Thus, in  authoritarian Arab countries  – characterized by long-­ standing autocratic and

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nondemocratic governance structures and clientelist networks (see Schlumberger 2007) – with friendly relations to the West (e.g. Egypt under Mubarak and Sisi, and Tunisia under Ben Ali), these interventions are extremely accommodating to avoid destabilizing these regimes. Indeed, much of these grants are happily appropriated by and channeled through the incumbent regime structures or its allies (Sakr 2016a). As Sakr observes, in Egypt under the regime of Sisi, this leads to the absurd situation where “the US government once again found itself financing simultaneously both an Arab government with a record of suppressing free speech and civil society groups interested in promoting it” (2016a, 177). Unsurprisingly, many of these programs had very little impact, even by their own accounts, toward their stated goals of enhancing the enabling environment for freedom of expression and independent media (Sakr 2016a). On the other hand, in the case of similarly authoritarian regimes which are perceived as unfriendly to the West (e.g. Syria), there is less such circumspection. On the contrary, as Brownlee argues in her analysis of media development programs in Syria prior to the 2011 uprising, these programs were also used as a strategic instrument to destabilize an unfriendly regime (Brownlee 2017) with some far-­reaching consequences on how the uprising was later mediated (Brownlee 2018). Another strand of research has sought to recenter the perspectives of local media actors in the region and their experience with these media development policies (e.g. Badran 2020; Ghiglia 2015; Sakr 2016b; Sienkiewicz 2016). These studies emphasize local agency and ingenuity of the recipients and the ways they negotiate the constraints (both political and institutional) of this aid through tactical maneuvering of strategic (policy) landscapes furnished by asymmetrically more powerful actors. They also highlight that the choices made by these actors are as much a function of their professional and political identities and objectives as they are of the structural constraints placed on them by exogenous actors. Donatella Della Ratta (2018), in her compelling account of the tribulations of Syria’s post-­uprising emergent media sphere, also reflects on how the logics of media development programs are experienced and negotiated by local actors. Della Ratta’s critique dwells on the double bind in which Arab and Syrian emergent media makers found themselves in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings and as they sought to move toward professionalization. On the one hand, they were caught between the “need for material survival in countries where the unrest had caused inflation, ­f inancial instability and unemployment. . . On the other hand, in order to move towards more professionalization, Arab activists needed financial and professional support and advice that they were unlikely to find locally” (2018, 113). These pressures, according to Della Ratta, underline “the fragility of contemporary Syrian alternative media in light of its political economy” (2018, 115). Thus, the structural-­level analysis of these programs (and their political objectives) is complemented and made more complex by ­corresponding analyses of how they are negotiated in situ by local media actors. The attempt to recenter the perspective of local media producers in critical scholarship is also a result of the growth of a new generation of independent media outlets in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings (Badran and De Angelis  2016; De Angelis  2015; Ghiglia 2015; Wollenberg and Pack 2013). Despite the fragility of this new sphere, these actors are a genuine outgrowth of the emergent (and also fragile) political subjectivities that arose after the Arab uprisings (Challand 2011; Hanafi 2012). Moreover, the Arab

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uprisings also contributed to a shift in the modalities of media assistance in the region. Indeed, between 2010 and 2015, Middle East regional programs (not including country-­ specific programs) received the largest portion of aid from major donors (Myers and Juma  2018). This shift was not only in terms of substantial increases in funding (see Figure 1 for an illustration of this increase in media assistance flows) but also in the willingness, and increased ability, of international organizations to channel their support through these new media outlets, instead of through official state channels or large regional programs (e.g. Arab Journalists for Investigative Journalism – ARIJ). This shift is largely due to political openings (e.g. Egypt and Tunisia), or territorial and political fragmentation (e.g. Syria and Libya), in the immediate aftermath of the 2011 uprisings that weakened the states’ control over these media assistance flows and their recipients. It is in this period that direct modes of financial support by international media ­assistance actors to new and emerging media organizations1 in the region became a normalized and more visible practice. Major media development organizations  – IWPR (US and UK); IREX (US); International Media Support [IMS] (Denmark); Free Press Unlimited [FPU] (Netherlands); Canal France International [CFI] (France); BBC Media Action (UK); and DW Akademie (Germany); among others – set up new programs and greatly expanded their existing operations across the region (see, for example, the discussion of CFI in Guaaybess 2019). A significant portion of this expanded activity included channeling funding and support to new and emerging media organizations and outlets in many of these countries. This increasingly intertwined relationship needs to be examined in all its ambiguities, ­potentials, and fragilities from a more expansive and nuanced perspective. Qualitative, ethnographic accounts of the practices and evolution of these new media makers can give us a granular view of the complexity of choices they make within the inherently 120 100 80 60 40 20 0

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

Figure  17.1  Growth of Media Development Aid to the MENA Region 2002–2019 Source: OECD ODA Disbursements (in Million USD) to the MENA Region 2002–2019, Under Subsector: Media and Free Flow of Information (15153). Note: The spike in 2003 is completely attributable to the influx of aid to Iraq following the US-­led invasion.  In some cases actively helping to set up these organizations from scratch: e.g. SyriaUntold (IMS), Radio Rozana (IMS and CFI).

1

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asymmetrical power relation they find themselves in vis-­à-­vis other actors. Indeed, such accounts help us identify how the political and professional impetus of these media producers (as well as those of their international interlocutors) are diluted, rigidified, and negotiated in this power relationship.

Perspectives of Local Actors This section offers a preliminary analysis based on interviews and fieldnotes from a three-­month period (October–December 2019) of participant observation at the newsroom of Enab Baladi, a Syrian independent media outlet based in Istanbul, Turkey. To illustrate the newsroom dynamics, we use the discussions at a staff-­only townhall-­style meeting to show how the journalists and managers of Enab Baladi negotiate the meaning and impact of the organization’s grant-­based funding model. The questions and discussions raised at the meeting reveal a deep awareness of the political and institutional logics associated with such grants and the pressures these place on the operation of the media organization. Enab Baladi was established by activists from the town of Darayya, near Damascus, in 2011, as an anti-­regime pamphlet with limited circulation. By 2013, however, the escalation of the conflict in Syria forced most of the founders into exile in Turkey. This relocation coincided with a period of expansion for Syrian independent media in the country. This was largely driven by the concentration of exiled journalists and media activists in Turkey, a laissez-­faire policy by the government regarding their activities, and an influx of media development funding (particularly from the EU and the US) for these initiatives (Badran,  2020). Beginning in 2015–2016, however, these favorable conditions began to shift as Turkey moved to restrict and securitize the Syrian refugee population. Moreover, international media development funding for Syrian media began to dwindle around the same time. Enab Baladi was one of the few media organizations able to consolidate its position despite these adverse conditions and even expand its operations. At the time of the fieldwork in late 2019, Enab Baladi was structured as a nonprofit media organization with high-­trafficked Arabic and English websites (approximately 2 million monthly visits), a weekly print edition, online video production, an in-­house journalism training program, and a full-­time staff of around 45 people. Funded almost entirely through media development grants, the case of Enab Baladi offers important insights into how local media actors understand and negotiate the logics of such funding mechanisms.

Negotiating Internal Legitimacy How much are we financially independent or not? So long as we can work with numerous and diverse donors, and with “non-­lethal” grants (meaning: not very large grants – which explains why our salaries are not very competitive). So long as we continue like this, we will be financially independent and able to continue in our work.

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These were the concluding remarks of the editor-­in-­chief of Enab Baladi during a staff-­only townhall-­style meeting dedicated to the financial position of the organization and its relationship with foreign media development funders. The meeting was intended to explain the business side of running a media outlet that is largely dependent on grants to its journalists and fielded a number of revealing questions from staff about this relationship. What the management was attempting to do in this meeting is to strike a very delicate balance between explaining in layman’s terms the tenets and constraints of recipient-­donor relationship to a (somewhat) wary audience (the journalists), while at the same time still isolating them from that relationship (the business side of the organization). Indeed, the journalists, as with many actors in Syria’s oppositional civil society that has grown since 2011, have come to forge an instinctive wariness and suspicion of the role of international donors and their influence on the autonomy and integrity of this sphere (see, for example, Al Achi 2020). The discussions reveal how the organization attempts to reassert the legitimacy of such a funding model, its own centrality in the relationship with the journalists, and its commitment to their independence. What the editor-­in-­chief chose to say (and omit) in this meeting and what questions the journalists asked are both instructive as to the perspective and choices of these local actors and how they try to negotiate and legitimate them within the organization.

Editorial Independence and Grant Dependence The first item the editor-­in-­chief chose to highlight was the “circle of development aid” starting with the taxpayer and ending with Enab Baladi, the eventual recipient. This chain passes through several stages including the government, national development agencies, and specialized media development organizations. “Why do we prefer this model of funding? Because, in one sense, these different stages make the financing Halal or legitimate in ethical and professional terms,” according to the editor. Through this, he was at pains to emphasize that receiving grants directly from the governments puts the recipient in direct contact with the logic of crude political propaganda. But as the financing passes through a multitude of stages, each will have their own slightly different logics. Funding received through a media development organization is where the recipient can  start engaging, and sometimes resisting, certain demands, through logics of ­professionalism, independence, and (ethical) media practice. There are two important caveats here that were not explicitly addressed by the editor. The first is that even as direct political influences recede at different stages, the autonomy of a local media in forcing arguments based on these logics still depends somewhat on its level of reliance on that particular international partner. This is a problem that the editor mentioned at the end of the meeting (see the opening epigraph of this section). The second caveat is that these logics of professionalism and ethical media practice are often based on universalized (Western) normative notions of journalistic practices (see Nerone 2013) that are propagated by international media development actors and observed by local media partners. To be clear, there is often some alignment between funders and partners in terms of these values, but differences appear in how they are operationalized within a certain context (Badran  2020). Nevertheless, the relative

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heterogeneity of discourses in Syria’s emerging media sphere suggests that local actors do have a modicum of leverage in this particular process (Badran and Smets 2018; Della Ratta 2018). The balance between editorial independence and grant dependence reveals a symbiotic relationship that ebbs and flows depending on the ability of the local actor to diversify funding sources (and thus minimize dependence on each one) and the credibility of the media product (and thus the ability to leverage professional values in such discussions).

Short-­termism and Quantifiable Indicators At the aforementioned meeting, one of the journalists asked whether the internal system of monetary incentives and disincentives that is linked to the number of articles published is also imposed by the international funders. The editor pushed back strongly on this, arguing that this is an internal system devised autonomously, and organically, within the media outlet to enhance the productivity of the team. This may indeed be the case of a strictly operational decision; however, there is another caveat here that is worth reflecting upon. A significant body of evidence exists to suggest that institutional logics at both donor and implementer levels privilege short-­term and quantifiable ­indicators (such as article count) in processes of evaluating and assessing the impact of their projects (Noske-­Turner 2014; Waisbord and Jones 2010). Moreover, and beyond the specific political economy of grants, competing for attention on social media, an imperative for all digital media institutions at this time, also privileges a logic of ever-­higher number of articles and circulation (Dean 2010; Della Ratta 2018). Thus, while such a system might have developed internally and has its own internal legitimation, it is also responding to (and duplicating) logics formulated at a different level. In this particular case, one should question whether a higher number of articles, as imposed by the management, is paramount for an organization that does not (and in the current Syrian context, cannot) rely on digital advertising as a major revenue stream. Especially as the focus on the number of articles is seen, not least by the journalists themselves, to be in direct conflict with another set of stated objectives to expand their more in-­depth and investigative journalistic output.

Bureaucratization and Hierarchization Another revealing snapshot came as the editor was discussing the different reporting systems required by the outlet’s international partners. “Did you notice that up until recently we had one half-­time accountant, and now we have four working full-­time? That’s because of one project,” the editor noted. The fluctuating nature of grants and the necessity to always diversify one’s donor base means that a disproportionate amount of effort and resources in these media organizations are dedicated to grant management and reporting. This also privileges actors who are quicker to install more elaborate and robust management and control systems within the organization, and who have access

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to such skills. Enab Baladi, for example, has had to register as a nonprofit entity in three different countries – Turkey, Germany, and the United States. This was seen as a necessary redundancy measure to protect itself from the instability in Turkey (see Badran and Smets 2021), but also to be able to have access to, and be eligible for, a larger pool of funders, and to make more efficient use of this funding. As I have explored in more detail elsewhere, keeping up with the shifting grounds of donor priorities and reporting requirements requires active and constant recalibration to integrate new projects by the management both at the administrative and production levels (Badran 2020). This process is often fraught with the danger that some projects could end up altering the identity and shape of the organization beyond recognition (Malan 2018).

Conclusion This chapter has provided a concise overview of the current debates within the media development scholarship and how they are carried over into the discussions over media development interventions in the Arab world. Since 2011, and with the absence of favorable economic and political conditions to support independent media, grant funding has become an important pillar for emerging media projects across the region. Systemic and structural analyses reveal some of the inherent tensions that come with such exogenous sociopolitical interventions. I argue, however, for the necessity of engaging more productively with the local actors who are at the front lines of these interventions in order to understand better how such tensions are operationalized in practice. The brief preceding examples illustrate how some of the underlying logics built into media development interventions are negotiated and understood from the perspective of their local interlocutors. These logics are made visible in political pressures (modulated by grant dependence) on the media’s editorial independence or in institutional pressures (embedded in such interventions) that privilege short-­term goals, quantifiable indicators, and increasing bureaucratization (see Chapters 12, 18, 37). The interactions described herein demonstrate that the relationship between the two parties includes both elements of collaboration as well as resistance. They also show that these relationships are deeply embedded and shaped by the broader social, political, and ­economic contexts in which they take place. References Al Achi, A. 2020. “How Syrian Civil Society Lost Its Independence in a War of Conflicting Agendas.” In M. Yahya (Ed.), Contentious Politics in the Syrian Conflict: Opposition, Representation, and Resistance (pp. 13–18). Beirut: Carnegie Middle East Center. Retrieved July 5, 2021, from: https://carnegie-­mec.org/2020/05/15/how-­syrian-­civil-­society-­lost-­its-­independence­in-­war-­of-­conflicting-­agendas-­pub-­81802 Al-­ Rawi, A. 2013. “The US Influence in Shaping Iraq’s Sectarian Media.” International Communication Gazette 75, no. 4: 374–391. https://doi.org/10.1177/1748048513482261 Al-­Rawi, A. 2015. “International Media Organizations’ Role in Assisting the Media Sector in Iraq After 2003.” Global Media Journal 13, no. 25. Retrieved July 5, 2021, from: http://www.

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Noske-­Turner, J. 2014. “Evaluating the Impacts of Media Assistance: Problems and Principles.” Global Media Journal – German Edition 4, no. 2. Retrieved July 5, 2021, from http://globalmediajournal. de/en/2015/01/16/evaluating-­the-­impacts-­of-­media-­assistance-­problems-­and-­principles/ Peters, B. 2010. “The Future of Journalism and Challenges for Media Development: Are We Exporting a Model that No Longer Works At Home?” Journalism Practice 4, no. 3: 268–273. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512781003760535 Phiri, S., and Fourie, P. J. 2011. “Media Development Aid and the Westernisation of Africa: The  Case of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA).” Communicatio 37, no. 1: 80–99. https://doi.org/10.1080/02500167.2010.556575 Price, M., Noll, B. D., and De Luce, D. 2002. Mapping Media Assistance. Oxford: The Programme in Comparative Media Law & Policy, Centre for Socio-­Legal Studies, University of Oxford. Retrieved July 5, 2021, from: https://repository.upenn.edu/asc_papers/62/ Radsch, C. C. 2016. Media Development and Countering Violent Extremism: An Uneasy Relationship, a Need for Dialogue. Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance. Retrieved July 5, 2021, from https://www.cima.ned.org/wp-­content/uploads/2016/10/CIMA-­CVE-­ Paper_web-­150ppi.pdf Relly, J. E., and Zanger, M. 2017. “The Enigma of News Media Development with Multi-­pronged ‘Capture’: The Afghanistan Case.” Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism 18, no. 10: 1233– 1255. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884916670933 Relly, J. E., Zanger, M., and Fahmy, S. 2015. “News Media Landscape in a Fragile State: Professional Ethics Perceptions in a Post-­Ba’athist Iraq.” Mass Communication and Society 18, no. 4: 471– 497. https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2014.1001032 Ricchiardi, S. 2011. Iraq’s News Media After Saddam: Liberation, Repression, and Future Prospects. Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance. Retrieved July 5, 2021, from: https://www.cima.ned.org/wp-­content/uploads/2015/02/CIMA-­Iraq_News_Media-­ Report_1.pdf Sakr, N. 2016a. “Media ‘Globalisation’ as Survival Strategy for Authoritarian Regimes in the Arab Middle East.” In T. Flew, P. Iosifidis, and J. Steemers (Eds.), Global Media and National Policies: The Return of the State (pp. 173–189). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan UK. Sakr, N. 2016b. “Survival or Sustainability? Contributions of Innovatively Managed News Ventures to the Future of Egyptian Journalism.” Journal of Media Business Studies 13, no. 1: 45–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/16522354.2015.1125608 Schlumberger, O. 2007. “Arab Authoritarianism: Debating the Dynamics and Durability of Nondemocratic Regimes.” In O. Schlumberger (Ed.), Debating Arab Authoritarianism (pp. 1–18). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Sienkiewicz, M. 2016. The Other Air Force: U.S. Efforts to Reshape Middle Eastern Media Since 9/11. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Taylor, M., and Napoli, P. M. 2003. “Media Development in Bosnia: A Longitudinal Analysis of Citizen Perceptions of News Media Realism, Importance and Credibility.” International Communication Gazette 65, no. 6: 473–492. https://doi.org/10.1177/0016549203065006004 Thomas, P. N., and van de Fliert, E. 2014. Interrogating the Theory and Practice of Communication for Social Change. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. Tietaah, G.K.M., Yeboah-­Banin, A. A., Akrofi-­Quarcoo, S., and Sesenu, F. Y. 2018. “Journalism Aid: Country of Origin and Influences on Beneficiary Perceptions and Practices.” African Journalism Studies 39, no. 2: 90–103. https://doi.org/10.1080/23743670.2018.1473271 Torosyan, G., and Starck, K. 2006. “Renegotiating Media in the Post-­Soviet Era: Western Journalistic Practices in the Armenian Radio Programme Aniv.” International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics 2, no. 2: 201–218. https://doi.org/info:doi/10.1386/macp.2.2.201/1

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Divergence or Convergence between Mainstream and Independent Journalism in Turkey? The Coverage of Operation Peace Spring Ozan As¸ık Introduction To stay in the journalism business, established mainstream newspapers began to introduce their digital versions on the internet in the late 1990s and early 2000s while keeping their traditional print versions published. Sabah daily, a major player in Turkey’s print news market, is one of them. Its website (www.sabah.com.tr) went online as early as 1997. Internet newspapers have limited audience reach, technical infrastructure, and staff size in the digital media environment. They are considered “alternative media” as they remain independent from government control and challenge the hegemonic power structures (Downing et al. 2001) and dominant journalistic norms promoted by mainstream media outlets (Atton 2002). T24 (www.t24.com.tr) can be considered an alternative news platform because it can challenge the dominant news perspectives of the current mainstream media in Turkey by staying outside the media control of Turkey’s current ruling party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP: Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi). As in many other countries of the Middle East, the media context in Turkey is marked by neoliberal authoritarianism (Bilge 2018). The governments in Syria, Egypt, Bahrain, and Turkey use the deregulated and private media sector to create a privately owned but loyalist media apparatus consisting of government-­aligned news outlets (Iskandar 2021, 348). They outsource their state propaganda to these heavily biased channels (see chapters 11,12, 16). The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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As part of such a propaganda machine in Turkey, Sabah is an influential institution where media power is located in contrast to T24, which has recently become home to critical journalism. T24 represents a current trend in Turkish journalism: the moving of reputed and senior critical journalists who have been banished from the national mainstream media to online platforms where they can freely practice critical watchdog journalism. Juxtaposing Sabah and T24 as two online news platforms, the present study pursues a significant question: Within the conceptual framework of the mainstream–alternative media duality, to what extent do independent internet newspapers differ from mainstream news journalism in terms of journalistic agenda, news frames and sources, and funding? The news coverage of Barış Pınarı Harekatı (Operation Peace Spring) – a Turkish military incursion against Kurdish armed groups in northern Syria – is an opportune case to address this question because, as the present study will demonstrate, the newspapers’ styles of reporting on the operation are directly related to their editorial line on Turkey’s lingering Kurdish question. Given the anti-­democratic regulations and human rights v­ iolations against Kurds in Turkey over decades, the editorial approach to the Kurdish question in Turkish news outlets can easily provide a benchmark for the standards of democratic, critical, pluralist, and politically liberal perspectives in journalistic practice. This is why a comparative study of how T24 and Sabah covered the Turkish military operation will shed light on the limitations and possibilities for the alternative media of offering counter-­hegemonic news perspectives in Turkey’s authoritarian sociopolitical context (see chapter 43). For this research, I deployed critical discourse analysis (CDA) (van Dijk 1988) to analyze the connections between news discourse and journalistic values, norms, and motivations shaped by political contexts and worldviews. My press analysis includes news and editorial articles (319 from Sabah and 179 from T24) published during the military operation (October 9–18, 2019) on the two internet daily newspapers. Analyzing their reporting of Operation Peace Spring and representation of concerned news subjects, this study explores the divergence between Sabah and T24 over their journalistic discourses and practices.

Mainstream and Alternative Media in Turkey Mainstream media produce news content with “a mainstream angle of vision on the issues that concern ordinary people” (Downing  1997, 241). Mainstream media are financially dependent on corporate capital and the state because they need to maximize their advertising revenues and guarantee a flow of money from other investments of media owners to survive in the market, which requires cooperation with ruling elites (Herman and Chomsky 1994). Mainstream media are hierarchical institutions where news is produced under strict editorial control according to established bureaucratic conventions.  Such media rely on professionalized and routinized news practices and values. That is why the communication flows of the mainstream media are top-­down (Downing 1997, 241). Mainstream journalism is expected to offer an overall coverage of current developments across the whole country owing to their financial resources, a large team of news practitioners, and technical infrastructure with a nonpartisan and objective reporting

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style. Nevertheless, they provide access to socially dominant groups both as “reliable sources” and as “accessed voices” in newsgathering, assessments of newsworthiness, and news reporting (Hartley 1982, 111; Atton and Hamilton 2008, 79; Atton 2002, 11). The mainstream media legitimize and reproduce existing asymmetrical power relationships by privileging the voices of the powerful and dominant groups as if they were the voices of common sense (Hall 1986). The framing of news stories appears “natural” as if there were “no other way of doing journalism” (Atton and Hamilton 2008, 124). As a typical mainstream media institution, Sabah has always been an essential part of the Turkish media landscape since its foundation in 1985. At the time of data collection, it was the second-­most popular daily newspaper in circulation.1 Its official website is also widely read in Turkey.2 Since it is the mouthpiece of the ruling AKP government, it heavily relies on AKP politicians, pro-­AKP bureaucrats, and Anadolu Agency (Turkey’s state news agency) as its news sources. Sabah belongs to Turkuaz Media Group, which owns three more newspapers (Takvim, Yeni Asır, and Fotomaç) and two major terrestrial national mainstream television channels (ATV  – a primetime  – and A Haber  – a news channel). Since 2018, Turkuaz Media Group has also established a monopoly over the distribution of national newspapers through Turkuvaz Distribution and Marketing Inc. (http://www.tdp.com.tr/about-­us/company-­profile), which is the only company operating in this media sector at present. Turkuaz Media Group is owned by Kalyon Group, one of Turkey’s most giant conglomerates, with their large investments in the construction and energy sectors. The pro-­government coverage of the media group has earned them lucrative state contracts. During its single-­party rule since 2002, the AKP has rewarded the owners whose media outlets provide pro-­government news coverage with lucrative state contracts and soft loans in other business sectors in which the media moguls invest (Waldman and Çalışkan 2016, 119–141). To further influence media content, the AKP deployed a coercive media capture strategy to acquire property rights of mainstream media outlets and endow pro-­AKP conservative entrepreneurs with these rights (Bilge, 2018). The ruling party can also impose tax fines on media organizations that have a critical editorial line, or directly impose a court order to close down those organizations on charges of taking part in plotting a coup against the government or spreading terrorist propaganda (Aşık 2017; Waldman and Çalışkan 2016, 119–141). As the AKP has gradually captured control over Turkish mainstream media, an alternative media sector is growing outside the pro-­AKP media apparatus. Founded in 2009, T24 is the most popular internet newspaper alternative to the official websites of Turkish mainstream newspapers.3 It is run by a relatively small group of journalists and editors. It is legally owned by Doğan Akın, who is currently the newspaper’s executive editor. Akın is a prominent senior journalist who worked for Turkey’s major mainstream newspapers, Cumhuriyet and Milliyet, as a reporter, chief of Ankara bureau, and executive

 http://gazetetirajlari.com/ (accessed February 15, 2021).  Sabah ranks among the five most popular websites of mainstream newspapers (the others are Hürriyet, Milliyet, Sözcü and Yeni S¸afak) in Turkey (retrieved from www.alexa.com on July 4, 2021). 3  www.alexa.com (accessed February 20, 2021). 1 2

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editor between 1987 and 2008. T24 publishes news articles on various topics ranging from politics to economy, health to sports, and literature to art. Alternative media are hugely diverse in terms of organization, the production and distribution of content, and normative orientation. In the following, I sketch five typical characteristics of alternative media to draw together various perspectives about them. 1. Alternative media organizations are likely to be run as cooperatives or small businesses rather than as part of corporate chains or conglomerates, so their practices can be independent of corporate ownership and the state intervention (Hackett and Caroll 2006, 58; Atkinson 2010, 16; Meikle 2002, 60; Atton 2002, 17). 2. Although many alternative media projects fail due to lack of funding as they strive to remain financially autonomous (Atton and Hamilton 2008, 125), their independence allows them to provide access to a multiplicity of voices that are perpetually marginalized and pushed out of the mainstream media (Atkinson 2010, 16). 3. Through community journalism (Atton and Hamilton 2008, 127–127; Forde et al. 2003, 317) or citizen journalism (Atton and Hamilton 2008, 127), alternative media aim to achieve internally democratic, egalitarian, and collective styles of the production process rather than bureaucratic hierarchies found in corporate media (Hackett and Caroll 2006, 58). However, the prime purpose of news-­making here is not reporting facts but exposing the dynamics of power and inequality (Curran and Seaton  1997, 15) or empowering a particular, marginalized community through their direct involvement in media production (Atton  2002, 18; Atton and Hamilton 2008, 77). 4. The deprofessionalization of journalistic practice (Hamilton  2000) can reach the extent that newsmakers become social activists trying to mobilize people for a radical political cause while offering radical viewpoints to mainstream debate (Downing et al. 2001). 5. Alternative media seek to set up a counterbalance against the power of mainstream media (Couldry 2000) by contending with the mainstream media’s claim to offer a balance of different opinions, stand above partisan politics, and speak for the public interest (Hackett and Zhao 1998, 86). For alternative journalists, news reporting is always biased. Therefore, their goal is to subvert the dominant discourse of mainstream media by presenting different versions of “reality” from those of the mainstream media (Atton and Hamilton 2008, 127; Atton 2002, 153; Harcup 2003). T24 does not meet all these five criteria. It even shares some of the strong characteristics of mainstream media, which makes it an interesting case. T24 appears to have no financial, ideological, and political ties with a particular political party or an ethnic or religious community. It does not receive any trust funds either, which makes the newspaper wholly dependent on advertising revenue. According to Doğan Akın’s account,4 its primary financial resource is online advertising, which shields the newspaper from state intervention and corporate ownership. T24’s financial independence allows it to  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oze76Q8eR2Q (accessed July 4, 2021).

4

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oppose corporate capitalism and state authoritarianism. T24, however, cannot employ traveling or bureau-­based staff reporters due to financial limitations. Without the resources to support a large organization, it most often recycles news information released by mainstream media. As original content, it publishes issue analyses by ­contributing editors and in-­house commentary, which is voluntary work. More than 60 columnists, including widely respected, well-­known, and reputed senior critical journalists who have high popularity in Turkey’s oppositional public, regularly contribute to T24 voluntarily. Their writing strengthens the newspaper’s critical stance against the government, provides a high level of credibility to T24, and attracts many visitors to its website because of the columnists’ popularity. However, T24 is not a media project of a political movement, such as Indymedia (Atton and Hamilton 2008, 80), the reporters of which are not professional journalists but activists or citizens who become recorders of their reality. Also, the newspaper does not necessarily establish a horizontal dialogue between its professional media practitioners and Turkey’s subaltern groups as a routine news practice. Like mainstream media, for T24, audiences are “commodities of the media to be traded by advertisers” (Atton and Hamilton 2008, 125) rather than members of a community or movement, who can participate in the processes of media production (Hackett and Caroll 2006, 58).

Media Representation of the Kurdish Question In addition to becoming a platform for oppositional politics, T24 has addressed the misrepresentation of marginalized communities, including the Kurds. Until the first decade of the twenty-­f irst century, Kurds as a minority group were subjected to various oppressive state policies in Turkey. The Turkish state refused for decades to acknowledge Kurds, who comprise 15–18% of Turkey’s population, as a major constituent among its citizens, denying their distinct national identity. This oppression paved the way to a low-­intensity civil war in southeast Turkey between the PKK5 and the Turkish army for the past three decades. This war has contributed to the perception of Kurds by the Turkish public as “criminals” and “traitors,” an internal threat from within the society which allegedly aims to dismantle the country’s territorial, national, and cultural integrity (Saraçoğlu 2011). The war has also overdetermined the news storylines from Turkey’s Kurdish region. The Turkish national mainstream media perpetually portrayed Kurds as the target of security operations and associated the Kurdish region with terrorism and criminality during the 1990s. Any explicit reference to Kurdishness was tacitly forbidden in the Turkish mainstream media. When journalists failed to comply, they often faced prosecution and state oppression (Çatalbaş 2000).

 The PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan: Kurdistan Workers’ Party) is the armed organization of the Kurdish separatist movement which seeks political and cultural autonomy for the Kurds in Turkey.

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After coming to power in 2002, AKP allowed Kurds to have more positive visibility in the Turkish mainstream news media due to the official recognition of the Kurdish identity and the ensuing democratic reforms, such as granting the Kurds the right to the use of Kurdish in print and broadcast media, and in education. However, this changing political context has not fostered an established democratic and human-­rights journalism practice for reporting on the Kurdish question in Turkey’s mainstream media (Aşık 2021). Moreover, the two significant developments restored to news reporting the traditional militaristic-­nationalist portrayal of the Kurdish question: First, the termination of the cease-­fire with the PKK in 2015, and second, the fight between PKK-­related armed Kurdish groups and Turkish security forces in several districts in Kurdish cities and towns in the subsequent two years. In the meantime, the Kurdish question entered a new phase during the Syrian uprising, when the Assad regime left the administration of its Kurdish region in the hands of Kurdish armed groups. Viewing these groups as a threat to its national security, Turkey launched Operation Peace Spring across its border in northeast Syria October 9–18, 2019, to remove PYD6 forces, which the Turkish government considers an extension of the PKK.

Empirical Discussion In this section, I will compare T24’s and Sabah’s styles of news reporting on Operation Peace Spring by subjecting their news texts to critical discourse analysis. My analysis will demonstrate divergence, as well as convergence, between the Turkish mainstream and alternative media, which deserves thorough attention within the country’s current political context.

Sabah The following table illustrates a thematic analysis of the semantic structure of the coverage of Operation Peace Spring in Sabah. Sabah’s reporting of Operation Peace Spring reproduced the traditional militaristic and nationalistic discourse on the Kurdish question. During the military operation, Sabah portrayed any story concerning the Kurds as a news subject of security operations. It kept updating the information about the location of the conflicts, the number of Kurdish ­militants that were “neutralized,” and the identities of “martyrs” on the Turkish side. Within a 24-­hour news cycle, Sabah constantly updated its website with the most recent information taken from the website and social media accounts of Turkey’s Ministry of Defense about the advance and tactical moves of Turkish troops and war machines in the battleground. The official statements were accompanied by footage shot by A Haber (the news channel owned by the same media company) reporters and  The PYD (Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat) is the leading political party among Syrian Kurds, and the Syrian branch of the PKK.

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Table 18.1  Coverage of Operation Peace Spring in Sabah Front-­page Leads

Inside Stories: events, Editorial: comments, situations, contexts expectations, evaluations

Primary Sources

“Support from artists, business and sports people, politicians.” “Turkey is the strongest country in the Middle East.” “Look at HDP’sa hatred towards Turkey.”

“PKK terrorists are The operation is for attacking civilians.” destroying the terror corridor and bringing peace to the region. “Turkish army is YPG and PYD all are part cleansing Syrian of PKK. villages of terrorists.” “Faces are smiling PKK is a terrorist in areas [in Syria] organization, which that have been propagates the ideology of cleansed of ethnic separatism, murders terrorists.” civilians without any concern for whether they are women or children, and funds itself through arms and drugs trafficking. Terrorists who were trying “The brand new to establish a terrorist state and domestically produced weapons in northern Syria with the support of western of Turkish army countries are shocked by give no respite to Turkey’s successful terrorists.” operation.

Anadolu Agency (AA)

“15 traitors have been neutralized.”

A Haber

Twitter accounts of Erdoğan, Ministry of Defense and Turkish army

˙I hlas News Agency (I˙HA), Demiören News Agency (DHA) (Turkey’s two major national news agencies, which are owned by AKP-­friendly media companies)

“HDP, the political branch of PKK, is doing everything to stop the operation.”  HDP (Halkların Demokrasi Partisi: People’s Democratic Party) is Turkey’s pro-­Kurdish political party.

a

camerapersons at news sites.7 Those audiovisual news items presented the troops as heroic soldiers liberating Syrian towns and rescuing innocent Syrians from the PKK or PYD. These two terms were used interchangeably to convey the meaning of terrorist. During the military operation, Sabah repeatedly published news articles that promoted the military equipment used by the Turkish army with the pictures and descriptions of each military item to display the power capacity of the Turkish Armed Forces. For this purpose, on October 9, Sabah published a comparative analysis of all Middle Eastern countries only to claim that the Turkish army was the strongest and most fit to battle.  There was a direct content-­sharing mechanism between Sabah and A Haber.

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Sabah’s militaristic news discourse is reinforced by its nationalistic “us vs. them” p­ erspective. More than one-­third of all news articles published by Sabah were framed in a way to give the readers a clear idea of “who is with us” and “who is against us.” In my analysis, I found 89 articles about national (73) and international actors (16) – ordinary people, politicians and political organizations, celebrities and artists, NGOs, media organizations, businesspersons, and sportspersons – who publicly expressed their support for the military operation. Compared to 24 news articles about those criticizing and condemning the operation, the greater journalistic emphasis on the “us” category is consistent with the overall editorial effort to promote and legitimize Turkey’s “righteous war on terror.” Besides the public statements of celebrities and politicians, Sabah repeatedly delivered the images of ordinary people from various cities of Turkey and of different ages praying for the Turkish troops, applying to the local military authorities to join the Turkish army, and chanting nationalistic and militaristic slogans on the streets. In defining the supporters as “one-­of-­us,” Sabah denounced those who criticized or condemned the operation as the “enemies of the nation.” Turkish people who fell under the second category were framed as “traitors.” Two groups in particular were subjected to this accusation: celebrities and politicians. Sabah looked keen to tarnish the reputation of highly popular singers and comedians who were critical of the operation or just remained silent without showing any support. While inciting the Turkish public against them, the newspaper amplified few dissenting statements of the members of the Turkish parliament as “scandalous lies.” It charged those MPs with undermining a national cause and the unity and integrity of Turkish society. For example, Sabah’s media exposure to the HDP deserves attention because of its portrayal of the HDP as an extension of the PKK.

T24 The following table illustrates a thematic analysis of the semantic structure of the coverage of Operation Peace Spring in T24. As Table 18.2 demonstrates, the Turkish state’s perspective did not shape T24’s journalistic practice in making news on the operation. Unlike Sabah, T24 pitted one voice against another without any editorial evaluations and comments to practice balanced journalism. The newspaper presented the explanations and justifications of Turkish officials for the operation in full detail. Against that, T24 editors used long quotes from the statements of few politicians and opinion leaders in opposition who had critical views about the operation. Also, T24 did not incorporate any affective and evaluative nationalistic storytelling to its news discourse, contrary to Sabah. Many news sources ranging from national wire services to Mezapotamya News Agency,8 from Syria’s state-­run news agency (SANA) to AFP and Reuters, and from Turkish news channels and broadsheets to the New York Times, the Guardian, and CNN  A Turkey-­origin news agency that is charged by the AKP government with serving the PKK due to its pro-­Kurdish editorial line. Access to its website is blocked by Turkey’s telecommunications authority.

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Table 18.2  Coverage of Operation Peace Spring in T24 Front-­page Leads

Inside Stories: events, situations, contexts

Editorial: comments, Primary Sources expectations, evaluations

“Reactions to the operation from the world: EU said ‘stop the operation.’”

“Local people are leaving their homes in Turkish border towns because of missiles landing on civilian buildings.”

Contrary to the Anadolu Agency Turkish authorities’ (AA) claim, the ethnic composition of the northern territories of Syria where the operation is ongoing is not predominantly Arab.

“Temelli:a You fought, you lost and then you signed a ceasefire.”

“The operation receives negatives public reaction from abroad.” “As EU countries such as France and Germany stop selling arms to Turkey, the US Senate approved a bill to sanction Turkey.”

“UN: Since the beginning of Turkey’s operation, over a hundred of thousand people fled their homes.” “The Arab League: Operation Peace Spring is an invasion of an Arab country.” “I˙stanbul Labor Peace and Democracy Forces:b It is all our duty to build peace by objecting to the war.” “Amnesty International: Turkey committed war crimes.” “Akar:c we are doing our best for the safety of our Kurdish brothers.” “Minister of Foreign Affairs Çavuşoğlu: We will halt the operation; this is not a ceasefire.”

Social media accounts of the Ministry of Defense, politicians and MPs ˙I HA, DHA

AFP, Reuters

NYT, Bloomberg, BBC Turkish, Deutsche Welle, Voice of America, Interfax, Sputnik CNNTürk, NTV, Cumhuriyet newspaper, Mezopotamya News Agency SANA

 He was the co-­president of the HDP at the time of the military operation.  An umbrella civil society organization for defending human rights, which include many syndicates and NGOs in Turkey. c  Turkey’s Minister of Defense. a

b

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International fed the news cycle of T24. Compared to Sabah’s relatively restricted ­information sources, such a rich pool of news sources naturally diversified T24’s news content and made it more inclusive. Nevertheless, its content lacked an analytical and original news narrative about the military operation probably because the newspaper did not have any reporters in Ankara, ˙Istanbul, or in local areas around the Turkish-­ Syrian border to cover news stories from the field. T24 often copy-­pasted, with minimum contextualization, raw textual and visual materials provided by news agencies or recycled the content produced by the mainstream media. Nevertheless, the absence of editorial evaluations and authentic news accounts does mean that T24 did not carry any editorial line that oriented their coverage of Operation Peace Spring. T24 chose to make dissident voices loud. Compared to six news articles that portrayed people or groups supporting the operation, 58 out of the total 179 news articles primarily featured the statements of opinion leaders, politicians, journalists, NGOs, and international organizations, who: (1) directly condemned the operation (United Nations, many EU countries, The Arab League, the representatives of the US Congress, human rights organizations, and the HDP); (2) discouraged the AKP from the operation and warned about its potentially harmful outcomes, which may cause a large-­scale humanitarian crisis (European and American politicians); and (3) urged the AKP to avoid war, if it was unnecessary, and use diplomacy to solve the terror problem (the members of the opposition parties in the Turkish national parliament). The frequency and persistency of such news articles in the newspaper were likely to create a media effect, like “the whole world is against AKP rule and the war it is fighting.” The media representation of the AKP government as a political force that was alone without significant support either from within or outside Turkey9 was an editorial ­decision of T24. T24 picked the most critical, direct, and even harsh words about the operation of foreign politicians from their statements and put them in news headlines. Those headlines and the framing of the news stories were intended to “warn” Turkish readers about three important concerns of the international public: the escape of ISIS members from prisons, the killing of civilians, and the forced migration of local people in northern Syria. Addressing these concerns, the newspaper even reported, based on the claims of a French journalist, that artillery shells fired by the Turkish army killed several journalists operating on the battlefield. Furthermore, to ensure the accuracy of the news information, Reuters, AFP, BBC Turkish, and SANA were cited in the news report. BBC Turkish was not among the news sources of Sabah, probably because their editorial policy does not have to follow the pro-­AKP line. T24 once put on its website an op-­ed article that BBC Turkish originally published. The article argued that, contrary to what the Turkish authorities claimed, the ethnic composition of the northern territories of Syria was not predominantly Arab. There were even many Kurdish towns and villages in the area. Moreover, Turkey was allegedly trying to change the current demographic composition by taking control of northern Syria and relocating non-­indigenous Arab

 Faced with a strong international opposition, the AKP tried to give a positive spin on its ­diplomatic position by calling it “precious loneliness.”

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people to the region. To make domestic criticisms heard, the newspaper again turned to critical news sources. Based on the information that came from Mezapotamya News Agency, T24 ran a story about the press conference of “Istanbul Labor, Peace and Democracy Forces” (I˙stanbul Emek Barış ve Demokrasi Güçleri), which criticized the military operation, arguing that it would exacerbate the Kurdish question instead of resolving it, resulting in the death of more innocent Kurdish people. The story was published with the following headlines: “It is all our duty to build peace by objecting to the war” and “It is not the time to remain silent.”10 The representation of the HDP and Kurdish militants in T24 significantly differed from Sabah. T24 published more articles than Sabah about the pro-­Kurdish opposition to Operation Peace Spring. Moreover, unlike Sabah’s war-­on-­terror discourse, T24 delivered the voices of pro-­Kurdish politicians without criminalizing or demonizing them. Examining T24’s news discourse, it was not hard to notice an editorial effort to avoid any semantic connection between pro-­Kurdish politics and terrorism in news discourse. The newspaper depicted the HDP as the legitimate and civil representative of the pro-­ Kurdish stance demanding peace. The attachment of the phrase “terrorists” to the word “PKK” or “PYD” in news discourse, which was a common characteristic of Sabah’s reporting, was not the case in T24. To sum up, in the case of Sabah, the journalistic coverage of the Kurds once again became overwhelmed with references to terrorism, war, and violence and ignored their local realities. The positive and inclusionary articulation of the Kurdish subject in T24 during a large-­scale Turkish military operation against Kurdish militants dismantled this tradition. The alternative representations of the Kurds differentiate T24 from Turkish mainstream media, which Sabah represents.

Conclusion The general style of covering the Kurdish question in the Turkish press has recently come to be considered an indication of ideal journalistic practice in alternative media in Turkey. Many senior mainstream journalists who were laid off or forced to resign from major media companies have recently published their memoirs or been invited to podcasts or online seminars to talk about their past work experiences. In their accounts, one can quickly notice their apologetic framing of the history of Turkish journalism. They admit the years of “bad” or “low-­quality” journalistic practice, which, for them, requires an overdue reckoning for a profession whose mainstream most often brushed off Kurdish people’s concerns and failed to provide access to what they say. Against the backdrop of this self-­critical reckoning, T24 reports on local realities and voices of Turkey’s Kurds and publishes news articles and commentaries critical of the military operation. This style of journalism theoretically places the newspaper under the category of alternative journalism. It is not, however, a characteristic of T24 to   https://api.t24.com.tr/haber/istanbul-­emek-­baris-­ve-­demokrasi-­gucleri-­savasa-­karsi-­cikarak-­ barisin-­insasi-­hepimizin-­gorevi,843446 (accessed July 4, 2021).

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promote Turkey’s pro-­Kurdish political movement and become the voice of the Kurds. The newspaper appears to produce news for not a specific community but for a national audience with a mainstream effort to offer an overall coverage of current developments across the whole country. In addition, T24, like a mainstream news outlet, heavily relied on the statements of Turkish politicians – either pro-­government or oppositional – in covering Operation Peace Spring. The content and communication flows of T24 are not radically politicized to serve a revolutionary cause or a counter-­ ideology. The case of T24 supports Atton and Hamilton’s criticism for the conception of “a binary opposition” between mainstream and alternative media because the latter often seek to radically redefine mainstream practices without breaking with them (Atton and Hamilton 2008, 78). Not to mention that T24 does not break with mainstream practices; it even seems to bring back, rather than radically define, mainstream journalism with a commitment to its critical watchdog role and nonpartisan values but without the financial resources and technical infrastructure, for example, that Sabah has. To maximize its online advertising revenues in these circumstances, T24, as its executive director Akın admits,11 uses clickbait headlines as a mainstream strategy to attract readership. Turkish mainstream journalism was never entirely free of economic and political constraints. During AKP rule, however, the mainstream media has turned into a media apparatus under the complete control of a single ruling party. The AKP has control over entry into the field of mainstream journalism. When encountering an “undesired” news report published by the mainstream media, the ruling party can: (1) compel media owners to fire the journalist; (2) call news managers to remove critical news content and issue an official decree to forbid the publication of any related content; or (3) manipulate the country’s judicial system to detain and even jail the journalist. This neoliberal authoritarian political context indirectly puts alternative media in competition with the commercial-­popular press in Turkey. In this competition, it would be too bold to argue that T24 offers counter-­hegemonic news perspectives, a theoretically typical alternative media characteristic. The newspaper instead tries to take up the role of providing public access to relatively more accurate news information with a skeptical and balanced journalistic practice, as the pro-­AKP mainstream media fails to do so. To  do that, T24 diversifies its news content by amplifying different and competing voices in politically sensitive news stories, and by using a variety of mainstream and alternative news sources. The internet and digital media technologies enable alternative news media to compile and “curate” an internet newspaper from a global and continuous stream of news information, linking to a broad range of mostly free online sources (Bruns 2015). Using a traditional mainstream method, advertising, some alternative media in Turkey seek to establish themselves as viable and recognized sources of news and commentary within mainstream journalism. The primary purpose of their professional work is not to offer a perspective from below or an alternative set of facts but to replace the current

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oze76Q8eR2Q (accessed July 4, 2021).

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mainstream news media altogether. However, they are likely to develop a critical self-­ reflexive approach to their mainstream journalistic practice in reporting on the Kurdish question in the past, and tell a story of Turkey’s Kurds (see Chapters 19, 27, 37). This story is alternative to the mainstream militaristic-­nationalistic news narrative. References Aşık, Ozan. 2021. “How Does the Political Enter the Newsroom? The Representation of the Kurdish ‘Other’ in Turkish Journalism.” Journalism: Theory, Practice, and Criticism, OnlineFirst. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14648849211015604 Aşık, Ozan. 2017. “The Fall of the Public and the Moral Contestation in the Journalistic Culture of Turkey.” Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 10, no. 1: 69–85. Atkinson, Joshua. 2010. Alternative Media and Politics of Resistance: A Communication Perspective. New York: Peter Lang. Atton, Chris. 2002. Alternative Media. London: Sage. Atton, Chris & Hamilton, James. 2008. Alternative Journalism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Bruns, Axel. 2015. “Working the Story: News Curation in Social Media as a Second Wave of Citizen Journalism.” In Chris Atton (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Alternative and Community Media (pp. 379–388). London and New York: Routledge. Çatalbaş, Dilruba. 2000. “Broadcasting Deregulation in Turkey: Uniformity Within Diversity.” In James Curran (Ed.), Media Organisations in Society (pp. 126–148). London: Arnold. Couldry, Nick. 2000. The Place of Media Power. London and New York: Routledge. Curran, James and Seaton, Jean. 1997. Power Without Responsibility: The Press and Broadcasting in Britain (5th ed.). London: Routledge. Downing, John D. H., Ford, Tamara V., Gil, Geneve & Stein, Laura. 2001. Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Downing, John. 1997. “Alternative Media and the Boston Tea Party.” In Ali Mohammadi, Annabelle Sreberny-­Mohammadi, and John Downing (Eds.), Questioning the Media: A Critical Introduction (pp. 238–251). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Forde, Susan, Foxwell, Kerrie, and Meadows, Michael. 2003. “Through the Lens of the Local: Public Arena Journalism in the Australian Community Broadcasting Sector.” Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism 4, no. 3: 314–335. Iskandar, Adel. 2021. “Media as Method in the Age of Revolution: Statism and Digital Contestation.” In Jens Hanssen and Amal N. Ghazal (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Middle Eastern and North African History (pp. 342–364). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hackett, Robert A., and Carroll, William K. 2006. Remaking Media: The Struggle to Democratize Public Communication. New York and London: Routledge. Hackett, Robert A., and Zhao, Yuezhi. 1998. Sustaining Democracy? Journalism and the Politics of Objectivity. Toronto: Garamond. Hall, Stuart. 1986. Policing the Crisis. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Hamilton, James W. 2000. “Alternative Media: Conceptual Difficulties, Critical Possibilities.” Journal of Communication Inquiry 24, no. 4: 357–378. Harcup, Tony. 2003. “The Unspoken – Said.” Journalism 4, no. 3: 356–376. Hartley, J. 1982. Understanding News. London: Routledge. Herman, Edward S., and Chomsky, Noam. 1994. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. London: Vintage. Meikle, Graham. 2002. Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet. New York: Routledge.

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Saraçoğlu, Cenk. 2011. Kurds of Modern Turkey: Migration, Neoliberalism and Exclusion in Turkey. London: I.B. Tauris. van Dijk, Teun. 1988. News as Discourse. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Waldman, Simon, and Caliskan, Emre. 2016. The New Turkey and Its Discontents. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Yeşil, Bilge. 2018. “Authoritarian Turn or Continuity? Governance of Media Through Capture and Discipline in the AKP Era.” South European Society and Politics 23, no. 2: 239–257.

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Kurdish Cinema Politics, Aesthetics, and Transnational Pathways Suncem Kocer Is there a Kurdish national cinema with a set of aesthetic and narrative conventions and unique production and reception conditions? If so, what makes Kurdish cinema Kurdish? In the absence of a unifying state, how do local, national, and international contexts inform and demarcate Kurdish films and their production and reception? A limited yet expanding literature on Kurdish cinema cultivates these question and others (see, for example, Kennedy 2007; Çiçek 2016; Şengül 2013; Çiftçi 2015; Koçer and Candan 2016; Gündoğdu 2010a, 2010b; Arslan 2009; Koçer 2013, 2014; also Akçalı 2019 and Atlas 2018). Studies on Kurdish cinema carry the traces of a few concepts that have been prevalent in the fields of media and cinema studies. National cinema (Higson 1989), diasporic cinema (Curry 2016), minor cinema (White 2018), hybrid cinema (Stam 2003), and trauma cinema (Walker 2005) are but a few of these concepts. Coined by Hamid Naficy (2001) about films made by exilic, diasporic, and postcolonial/ethnic directors producing primarily in the West, the term “accented cinema” is perhaps the most common theoretical concept referred to in identifying Kurdish films. Those concepts help dissect certain aspects of Kurdish cinema, such as conditions of production and subject matter. However, a more comprehensive approach to Kurdish cinema entails conceiving Kurdish cinema as a disruption to several dichotomies, such as national-­ transnational (Şengül 2013), diaspora-­homeland, and oppression-­resistance. Since 2007, I have carried out extensive ethnographic research with Kurdish filmmakers and media publics in Turkey and European diaspora centers. I have disentangled questions (for example, Koçer 2013, 2014) on Kurdish cinema as a platform of public discourse concerning the historical dynamics and contemporary undercurrents of Kurdish identity, nation, and political existence. Drawing on this work in this chapter, I seek to identify Kurdish cinema’s dynamics as a filmmaking genre and pinpoint film production as a transnational platform for Kurdish identity politics. Three interrelated characteristics demarcate the nature of Kurdish cinema. First, because they lack a The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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unifying nation-­state, Kurds have been subject to the intense assimilation and denial policies of Turkey, Iraq, and Iran, which has rendered film production an overtly political act. Second, as a national cinema bereft of the existence of a state, Kurdish cinema is by default transnational. In addition to working within the Turkish, Iranian, and Iraqi film industries, Kurdish filmmakers have navigated global production and distribution to engage in their media practices (see Chapters 18, 37). Transnational circumstances have, in part, generated the conditions for the nationalization of Kurdish culture, language, and art. Third, Kurdish cinema has become crystallized through the discourses of ­production – however, diverse practices of production fragment the films taken up under the banner of Kurdish cinema. A significant trait arises in divergent forms, most notably a focus on movement. By analyzing these characteristics in three sections, this chapter discusses the opportunities and limitations inherent to digital film distribution and future dynamics in Kurdish cinema.

A Political Arena for Kurdish Identity Kurdish cinema is political by nature. Divided by the borders of several nation-­states in the Middle East, Kurds have been historically oppressed by national projects in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Kurdish cultural existence has been unacknowledged, erased, and/ or reappropriated within the scope of dominant national narratives (Entessar 1992; Gunter 2007; McDougall 1996). After the modern Turkish state was established in 1923, Kurds emerged as a cultural other against which the “ideal” Turk was erected through educational and cultural state policies that constructed the national narrative. Kurds were not distinct in this narrative but were simply backward and savage mountain Turks (Gunter  2007). As Gourlay points out (2017), oppression is a dominant theme in the construction and performance of Kurdish identity. Another motive prevalent in the ­public consciousness of Kurds is resistance against the oppressors (Koçer and Candan 2016, iix). Kurds in Iraq have been subjected to Arab nationalism that has sought to construct Iraq as an ethnically Arab state since its independence in 1932. As Gunter (2015) discusses in detail, Kurdish nationalism in Iraq, as in Turkey, has developed in a dialogical relationship with the Iraqi state’s national policies. Those policies and the Kurdish reactions to them have always been contingent on international agendas in the region. The Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), founded in 1946, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in 1975 have been the face of Kurdish political struggle in Iraq. Saddam Hussain carried out the Halabja massacre to eradicate Kurdish resistance in 1988 in the Iran-­Iraq war. In 1991, the first Gulf War paved the way for creating today’s Kurdistan Regional Government, autonomous Kurdish governance in northern Iraq recognized in the Iraqi constitution of 2003 (Gunter 2015). Although the short-­lived Mahabad state in Iran was the first-­ever structure of self-­administration set up by Kurds, to this day, Kurds are not recognized as a distinct ethnic group in Iran (Nerwiy 2012). The Kurds in Syria, who have been deprived of their cultural, linguistic, and citizenship rights since 1955 (Hasanpour et  al. 2012), became visible to the international public only with the

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outbreak of the Syrian civil war that erupted in 2011 and the YPG (People’s Protection Units), which claimed control over Kurdish-­populated areas. The battle against ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and al-­Sham), won primarily due to the YPG in 2017, placed further international attention on the Kurds in the region (Koçer  2015). However, Western forces withdrew their support once ISIS was defeated and the Turkish military pushed into northern Syria. Subjected to the various state policies implemented in those nation-­states, Kurds have sought to establish a distinct and unified identity in diverse ways throughout the twentieth century (see Chapter 9). Artistic and cultural expressions, organized through community centers and media channels in the diaspora, have functioned as venues to maintain community and expand Kurdish voices. Filmmaking has proven to be a particularly refined means of cultivating the Kurdish social and political experience, which is especially true because Kurds lack the official tools of history writing and cultural preservation that are typically associated with the capacities of a state (Hirschler 2001). As Kevin Smets (2015, 2437) argues in his discussion of Halil Dağ, a Kurdish guerilla filmmaker who was killed during a clash with the Turkish army in 2006, “Cinema can be an important form of cultural resistance, a way to seek legitimacy in times of dispersion, oppression, or crisis.” In such an environment driven by conflict, as in the case of Kurds, what Smets describes as “conflict cinema” is not unique to the case of Halil Dağ. Circumscribed by nation-­state projects reflected in cultural policies, an artist seeking to produce a film revolving around a distinct Kurdish identity often must deal with Kurds’ political conditions and historical oppression as a people. This theme recurs either in the background or within the central narrative.

A National Cinema in Transnational Space Kurdish cinema is transnational for several interrelated reasons. First, the stateless Kurdish nation spread over four nation-­states, and their diaspora lives across Europe and North America (Baser 2011). Secondly, Kurdish cinema as a category of films by and about Kurds has emerged in a transnational space because it lacks a unifying state to regulate national cinema norms or set the film industry’s ecosystem. This space is also related to the visibility of certain films by Kurdish directors at international film festivals, Kurdish films produced in part through global cinema funds, and the support of cultural and political entities in the Kurdish diaspora. The emergence of such films has been connected with political developments and warfare in the Middle East. As events in the region, such as the Gulf Wars and, more recently, the Syrian war, which brought Kurds closer to the Western imagination, hit the newscasts, these films provided imagery that could accompany the news narratives. In order to dissect the complex emergence of Kurdish cinema as a national cinema in a transnational space, I draw on Lee and LiPuma’s notion of “cultures of circulation” (2002: 191), which elucidates circulation as “a cultural process with its forms of abstraction, evaluation, and constraint, which are created by the interactions between specific types of circulating forms and the interpretive communities built around them” (192).

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From this perspective, circulation is a performative process that transcends the objects and people moving through space and time (Goankar and Povinelli  2003, as cited in Koçer 2014). Yılmaz Güney, a figure whose filmmaking is central to the discourse of contemporary Kurdish cinema, is a case in point. A winner of the Cannes Palme d’Or in 1982, Güney’s work remained banned in Turkey until recently. Awarded the Camera d’Or award at the Cannes Film Festival, Bahman Ghobadi is another case in point. Ghobadi was internationally lauded for his debut film narrating the story of Kurdish children living at the border of Iran and Iraq, bringing Kurdish identity closer to the Western imagination. In his interviews, he identified not as an Iranian but as a Kurdish director who faced the oppressive state policies enacted by Iran. Encouraged by the visibility of Kurds and Kurdish filmmaking enabled by Ghobadi in international cinema circles, a group of Kurdish immigrants in London launched the first-­ever Kurdish film festival. Starting in 2001, the London Kurdish Film Festival (LKFF) spotlighted films produced by Kurdish filmmakers from Turkey. Festival organizers sought out a more comprehensive range of films from all over Kurdistan and the diaspora. In 2006, the organizers sought films produced in Kurdistan and countries with Kurdish populations, such as Armenia. Zaré, a silent film shot about the Yezidi Kurds in Soviet Armenia in 1924, came to occupy a central place in the history of Kurdish cinema as an outcome of such efforts. In 2006, Zaré was retrieved from the Armenian national archives following correspondence between the festival committee and Armenian officials. Zaré’s subsequent positioning at the basis of Kurdish cinema history reveals the role played by the transnational conditions that marked the nationalization of Kurdish films at the intersections of different cultures of transnational ­circulation (Koçer 2014). It would be misleading, however, to conclude that the given transnational conditions have necessarily provided Kurds with a space free from the nation-­state’s ideological and political interference. The dialogical relationship between national and transnational contexts has not always resulted in expanding a cultural and political space for the Kurds linearly. On the contrary, global power structures with local ones have made the emergent cultural space for Kurds indeterminate and deeply complicated. The censorship of The Photograph (dir. Kazim Öz, 2001) is illustrative. The Photograph revolves around the encounter between a Kurdish guerilla and a Turkish soldier on their journey toward the opposite sides of the war. In 2009, the New Horizons Film Festival in Poland invited The Photograph to screen as part of their unique selection of films from Turkey sponsored by the Turkish Ministry of Culture. However, a few days before the festival started, the Polish organizers removed The Photograph from the festival program. They sent the production company a note explaining that the removal was upon a request coming from the Turkish cultural attaché in Poland. The attaché proclaimed that the Turkish Ministry would have withdrawn its sponsorship from the festival unless The Photograph, which allegedly misrepresented the Turkish state, was eliminated from the program. An intervention by the Turkish state was enacted by an overseas bureaucrat in the exhibition of a Kurdish film that countered the dominant national narrative; this form of censorship erected the Turkish nation-­state’s sovereignty in transnational space. A more productive approach to these complicated transnational dynamics and their influence on subnational politics is to consider

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emerging transnational spaces, such as media production and circulation, through which agents maneuver to gain political power, as diagnostic of the contradictions within nation-­state projects. The underlying premise here is that nationalism, an unfinished process, contains “a number of contradictions and conflicting elements which allow for a degree of ambivalence and flexibility, and can even open up a space for resistance” (Silverstein 2004, 193). These contradictions are not static and free from local and global power structures but contingent upon them in multilayered ways. Transnational conditions, such as labor migration to Europe or presence in international film festivals, open up spaces for Kurds. However, these spaces are still predicated upon the nation-­ state projects of the countries Kurds inhabit. In unpacking the limitations and opportunities of cinema production and circulation as a discursive space for Kurds, it is crucial to highlight the complex dialogue between the Kurdish identity politics and the hegemonic nationalism projects as they define and reproduce each other at specific points in history. This process needs to be situated within a transnational context.

A Discourse Genre Centered on Movement and Liminality Kurdish cinema transpires in the discourse around filmmaking practices informed by the sociopolitical and historical contexts (Koçer 2014). Here Bill Hanks’s notion of discourse genre as practice helps analyze “Kurdish cinema” as a framework of orientation for the production and reception of films by and about Kurds. In his work on official Mayan language documents dating to sixteenth-­century Yucatan, Hanks combined Bakhtin’s sociological poetics with Bourdieu’s practice theory. Hanks noted that “the conventions of discourse organization are part of the linguistic habitus that actors bring to speech” (1987, 677). Bourdieu (1977, 82–83) pointed out that “habitus is a system of lasting, transposable dispositions . . ., a matrix of perceptions, appreciations, and actions.” Moreover, genres, for Bakhtin, “correspond to typical situations of speech communication and consequently also to particular contacts between the meanings of words and actual concrete reality under certain typical circumstances” (1986, 87). As these situated discussions of Kurdish films reveal, Kurdish cinema is a genre for which conventions transpire in practice, meaning the practice of production, the practice of circulation and exhibition, and the practice of reception. The discourses employed by three prominent Kurdish filmmakers  – Bahman Ghobadi, Hisham Zaman, and Kazim Öz, whose films are regularly included in Kurdish film selections and who are often referred to as the pioneers of Kurdish cinema – reveal the habitus of Kurdish filmmaking as a transnational field of cultural production and a discourse genre. A critical convention in this discourse genre and a common denominator of Ghobadi’s, Zaman’s, and Öz’s film practices focus on movement or liminality (moving back and forth and remaining between states of being). By movement, I am not only referring to the movement of the films’ characters through places, across ­borders, and between states of mind, but more specifically, the movement of crews during production, the movement of films through exhibition venues, and the past and

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continuous movement of the directors as Kurdish subjects. The diverse ways in which Ghobadi, Zaman, and Öz frame such constant movement and the subsequent liminality indicate and are shaped by their respective social position. As Bourdieu has noted (1977), the social position of a speaker governs access; in other words, the speaker can access the language of the institution that is, to the official, orthodox and legitimate speech. While Ghobadi frames liminality and movement as a form of imprisonment, Zaman sees it as an enriching challenge. For Öz, movement is a definitive ­infrastructural element.

In Exile. . . Bahman Ghobadi was born in 1969 in Iranian Kurdistan in Baneh. Because of the Iran-­ Iraq war (1980–1988), his family migrated to Sanandaj, where he acquired an interest in photography and filmmaking. He moved to Tehran to attend film school and later worked as an assistant for Abbas Kiarostami on his film The Wind, and he also acted in Samira Makhmalbaf ’s The Black Board. Ghobadi’s feature-­length debut is A Time for Drunken Horses (2000), the first full-­length feature film shot in Kurdistan using dialogue in Kurdish. The film is set in Ghobadi’s hometown of Baneh during the Iran-­Iraq war. It  follows a young boy, Ayoub, and his siblings as they struggle to make money for their disabled brother, Madi, to have life-­saving surgery across the border in Iraq. Although Ghobadi has clear ties with significant figures of Iranian cinema such as Kiarostami and Makhmalbaf, he defines himself not as Iranian but as a Kurdish filmmaker (Suner 2006, 366). As a consequence of being harassed by the Iranian intelligence agency, Ghobadi had to leave Iran in 2009 and has lived in exile ever since. Bahman Ghobadi was the first international figure to speak extensively in global film circles about his Kurdish identity after Yılmaz Güney in the early 1980s (Koçer 2013). In his interviews, Ghobadi frequently highlighted his Kurdish identity and Kurds as a disjointed, oppressed people whose political status has borne tragic stories. He framed filmmaking as the most suitable and most robust means of representing the Kurds’ tragic lives. He justified this assertion as follows: “Kurds are always on the move. They have something in common with cinema, which is the art of movement” (Kutschera 2003). Characterizing his filmmaking with the desire to situate Kurds within a transient existence in a politically charged geography, Ghobadi contributed to instituting the discursive parameters of Kurdish cinema. Borders set the mise-­en-­scène in most of Ghobadi’s films. Moving constantly between documentary and fiction genres, Ghobadi follows the movement of Kurds across nation-­state borders. In one of his interviews, he describes borders as humanity’s worst enemy (quoted by Kutschera 2003, 58). Ghobadi connects his filmmaking to his condition of homelessness and the situation of Kurds as a stateless people. Having shot Rhino Season in exile, he describes it as a film without a country. Rhino Season is just like Kurds, “a people without a country,” and he believes, “that feeling of foreignness and alienage in the film is so close to my being. It is almost like my soul and body was transposed on Rhino Season” (interview by author on November 9, 2012). The intricate linkage between his state of being, the feelings of alienage in the film, and

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Kurdish existence become tangible in his narrative through instances of the c­ ensorship he faced in Turkey: We had placed the names of Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkey as the financing countries in the credits. Yet unfortunately, the phrase Iraqi Kurdistan got deleted from the credits on the copies circulated in Turkey. . . . Now I do not know to which country I should consider this film belonging. I feel like I belong to no country. I am always in exile. (Interview by author on November 9, 2012)

His status as an artist, which has been emergent through the transnational cultures of circulation cultures (Lee and LiPuma 2002), is symbiotic to his exilic existence, which represents an icon of Kurdish cinema and the state of Kurds as an oppressed people. His oppression, as a director in exile, is a reflection of the historical oppression Kurds have faced as a people without a country: Kurdish cinema is oppressed even more deeply now, so much that I, a Kurdish man, am in exile. . . . How come a filthy government expels me, an artist who makes films that get awarded at Cannes? If we look at it this way, I am a mirror of Kurdish cinema. . . . In our lives, we experience injustice, pain, and longing, and so does Kurdish cinema. (Interview by author on November 9, 2012)

Ghobadi feels imprisoned within his liminal state of being, imposed by the states surrounding Kurds against a backdrop of the lack of a Kurdish nation. Forced upon Kurds, movement and liminality pose an existential limitation and a timeless injustice.

Settled at a Distance. . . Like Ghobadi, Hisham Zaman cultivates liminality in his filmmaking. However, he does not connect his transnational existence to his filmmaking in negative terms. Zaman was born in 1975 in Iraqi Kurdistan. He moved to Norway as a refugee in the 1990s, finished film school, and is now well positioned as an acclaimed filmmaker. His short film Bawke (2005) brought about his initial fame in international film circles. His debut feature Before Snowfall (2013) won numerous prestigious awards. Zaman frames his subjective position and contextual ability to shift between multiple identities as a generative ingredient in his filmmaking: When I am in Norway, they call me a Norwegian director. When I am in Kurdistan, they call me a Kurdish director. In Dubai, I become a Middle Eastern director. It is a privilege to be accepted everywhere. For me, I am a Norwegian filmmaker with Kurdish origins. But it does not matter. I am a filmmaker who seeks to tell stories that will have an impact on ­people. (Interview by author on March 1, 2014)

Before Snowfall centers on the experiences of Siyar, a 16-­year-­old boy living in a Kurdish village, and his coming of age, which is bound up by honor and tradition through an intense journey to the West. After the death of his father, Siyar becomes the “protector”

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of the family. When his sister Nermin flees to Turkey with her lover, Siyar’s elders push him to find her and restore the family’s reputation. Bearing that brutal responsibility on his shoulders, Siyar journeys to Istanbul, Berlin, and Oslo, finding love, but he comes to a tragic end. Although acclaimed at international film festivals, the film had a mixed impact on critics. While some noted weaknesses in the script and described the tragic story set around the issue of honor killing as a cliché (e.g. Simon 2013), others lauded the film for its “beautiful cinematography,” which “impressively” builds up the story (e.g. Wilkenson 2013). Most critics, however, acknowledged the production of the film, noting it as an ambitious effort set in four countries – Iraqi Kurdistan, Turkey, Germany, and Norway – and its development over two years. For Zaman, the production of the film spanned those countries in the following terms: We had to get prepared for each country. It was as if a new film was being shot in each of them. You need to start from scratch each time. We were on the road for 18  months. Normally, you would be done in two months. But not with this one. (Interview by author on March 1, 2014)

Zaman pointed out that transnational production was challenging but not inhibitive. Although he took a similar route as a refugee during the late 1990s, he did not embody that experience in his cinematic discourse. In contrast to Ghobadi’s positionality, which is marked by homelessness and exile, Zaman’s positioning as an acclaimed filmmaker in Norwegian cinema has been defined by his strategic distancing from his subject matter.

Movement as Infrastructure Kazim Öz is a director who grew up within the context of the Kurdish culture movement in Turkey. After moving to Istanbul from Dersim for college, he took part in the Kurdish movement’s cultural organizations and geared his filmmaking toward the politics of Kurdish identity. Öz was among the first students at the Mesopotamia Cinema Center, one of the few Kurdish institutions that flourished in the space reclaimed by the Kurdish movement. Kazim Öz’s career is illustrative of Kurdish cinema as a contradictory and fragmented field of cultural and political production that disentangles the distinction between national and transnational modes of filmmaking. The official and unofficial forms of censorship that Öz has faced since his early cinematic career have defined his filmmaking as a constant and generative movement between national and transnational contexts (Koçer 2013). Unsurprisingly, movement is thus an infrastructural element embedded in Öz’s practice of filmmaking. Such movement has helped him create and maintain transnational publics that further render his filmmaking feasible. All of Öz’s films revolve around his characters’ journeys across places, times, and states of being. In Demsala Dawi Şewaxan (The Last Season Shawaks, 2009), a poetic documentary about Kurdish nomads in the mountains around Dersim, the camera follows the Kurdish movement between the village and the highlands throughout four seasons.

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In Bahoz (The Storm, 2008), the main character, Cemal, moves from Dersim to Istanbul to attend university. At first, Cemal is indifferent to his Kurdish identity. After a trying journey that takes him through student demonstrations, Kurdish university organizations, and Turkish prison, Cemal ends up back in the mountains with a completely different state of mind, as he has now been politicized. Öz’s feature film Zér (2017) is also a transnational road movie. The film follows a young man’s journey into his Kurdish roots through a song he heard his grandmother sing while on her deathbed. Jan traces the song to New York, where his family settled, after discovering a traumatic history marked by the Dersim massacre, which took place in 1938 when the government of Turkey launched brutal attacks against an Alevi uprising. In an interview, Öz said that the script for Zér was closely tied to train journeys: “It became an obsession for me. I could only write on the train. . . It took me five train trips to be able to finish the script. . . It was quite an interesting experience. I could only write Zér with that feeling of movement on the road” (Ögetürk 2017). Öz’s obsession with being on the road is not unique to the scriptwriting of Zér. He noted, “The road is one of the most significant concepts in my life. . . . I like being on the road. Both symbolically and concretely. . . . Moving to me is a revolutionary act. It is a transformation. It is a search. Furthermore, that is, of course, related to the Kurds always being on the move because they constantly change places, they are scattered. . . .” (Ögetürk, 2017). In her introductory essay on Kurdish cinema, Mizgin Müjde Arslan (2009) points out that Kurdish films’ unifying themes are homelessness/exile, borders/movement, and death. In their films, Ghobadi, Zaman, and Öz all cultivate movement and borders as critical issues, and that movement often occurs between nation-­states. Some characters are the inhabitants of border areas, and others are refugees. They traverse nation-­state borders in order to survive, as in the case of Before Snowfall. Sometimes they cross borders to seek out the truth, as in Zér. At times, the borders coexist between cultural worlds; in that sense, they are invisible and unofficial. In Öz’s films The Storm and Zér, Cemal and Jan pass the invisible borders to and from Kurdistan. Cemal moves to Istanbul from Dersim to attend university, and then he moves back to Dersim to join the guerillas there. Jan travels from New  York to Afyon and then to Dersim. Both characters also move between different states of mind. Cemal explores his Alevi/Kurdish identity in Istanbul, becomes politicized, and joins the PKK. Jan discovers a history he is unaware of through a song his sick grandmother sings to him on her deathbed in New York. He traces that song through Dersim against a backdrop of the Dersim massacre. The discourses of the three prominent Kurdish filmmakers discussed here, Bahman Ghobadi, Hisham Zaman, and Kazim Öz, illustrate a few conventions of Kurdish cinema as a discourse genre. Movement and liminality are a common denominator in the cinematic practices of Ghobadi, Zaman, and Öz and a prevalent theme in their approaches to filmmaking. All the same, Ghobadi, Zaman, and Öz relate to movement in different ways. For Öz, movement is revolutionary; he can write most productively when he is on the move. For Zaman, being human means making choices (interview by author on March 1, 2014); narrating stories where the main characters are Kurds involves a choice for him as a Norwegian, Middle Eastern, and Kurdish director. For Ghobadi, on the other hand, movement is equal to imprisonment. An exile himself, Ghobadi points to an iconic overlap between Kurds, his experiences, and filmmaking.

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The Future of Kurdish Cinema On April 28, 2021, the London Kurdish Film Festival held the awards ceremony for its 12th event not at the Rio Cinema, the festival’s regular venue in the district of Dalston in London, but online because of the COVID-­19 pandemic. Held on Zoom and streamed live via Facebook, the event was opened by the festival director Ferhan Stérk, following a publicity video that had already circulated widely on social media starting in March. In the video, two men and two women representing four parts of Kurdistan came together at the Rio Cinema. Their storyline presented the festival as a vehicle of Kurdish unity enlivened by cinema. Wearing traditional colorful outfits, the four Kurds arrived from different directions on public transportation. The setting was London, but the street and station signs marked directions to Kurdish cities like Kobani, Qamishli, and Kirkuk. Facing the daily challenges of transportation in the rainy metropole, the characters met up in the lobby of the Rio Cinema. Overjoyed at being united, they sat and enjoyed the Kurdish films being screened, sharing popcorn as well as laughs and tears. The screen thus became a symbol of an emotional unity among Kurds from the diverse parts of Kurdistan divided by nation-­ states’ borders. The theater brought them together to mark their existence as a people. The festivals of 2020 and 2021, both of which were aired online, reached a more global audience than ever before, as thousands of viewers inside and outside of Kurdistan followed the events. For the 12th event, which was renamed the “Global Kurdish Film Festival” as it was held in cooperation with other Kurdish cinema organizations worldwide, an online platform was launched to host over 120 films. Over two weeks, the films were streamed for free by registered audiences. In addition to master classes held on the YouTube channel of the LKFF, several conversations about the festival and the state of Kurdish cinema were aired via Clubhouse. Before a global online audience, the ceremony lasted for over two hours. It included jury presentations of the awards, trailers of films, and acceptance speeches, live and recorded, by the awardees. In addition to the best feature, documentary, and short film awards, audience choice awards were given to Zér and Bakur, two films censored by the Turkish state and faced challenges in reaching audiences through conventional venues. However, both films reached a global Kurdish audience through the VOD platform launched by the Global Kurdish Film Festival at the 12th event held by the LKFF. The London Kurdish Film Festival’s experiment with the VOD platform is telling for the future of Kurdish cinema. Cutting potentially across nation-­state borders, the digital distribution represents an opportunity for Kurdish filmmakers who often lack access to mainstream venues of theater distribution and only have limited means of accessing film publics through festivals. Producer and journalist ˙I lknur Bilir notes that the internet, especially social media, bears liquid spaces for Kurds to circumvent censorship by the nation-­states. She notes that 240,000 people in total streamed films in 2020. In 2021 the screening number of the films on the LKFF’s VOD platform was 60,000 views. However, it would be misleading to attribute to these digital spaces an unlimited potential to liberate the Kurdish film industry from its historical boundaries. As transnational spaces opened up for Kurds in diaspora, the digital is also contingent on the nation-­state policies (see Chapters 13, 14, 37). Iranian state banning the LKFF platform during the

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2021 festival is a case in point. Stérk noted in our interview that viewers in Iran had to use VPNs to reach the platform. This is also the case in Turkey, where RTÜK (Radio Television Supreme Council) regulates internet broadcasts and VOD platforms. Like the transnational spaces that have transformed the nature of Kurdish cultural circulation, expanding on satellite, internet, and social media as venues of Kurdish unity, digital opportunities emergent at the intersection of diverse cultures of circulation (Lee and LiPuma  2002) bear openings for Kurdish cinema. These openings, however, are not entirely free from nation-­state interventions but flourish about those policies. References Akçalı, E. 2019. “Essayistic Tendencies in Contemporary Kurdish Filmmaking in Turkey.” Journal of Film and Video 71, no. 1: 20–34. https://doi.org/10.5406/jfilmvideo.71.1.0020 Arslan, M. 2009. Kürt Sineması: Yurtsuzluk, Sınır ve Ölüm. Agora Yayınları: ˙I stanbul. Atlas, D. 2018. “Artistic Expression in Times of Peace and War: The Case of Turkey’s Kurds from 2009 to the Present.” Turkish Studies 19, no. 5: 818–840. https://doi.org/10.1080/14683849. 2018.1481399 Bakhtin, M. M. 1986. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays Edited by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. Baser, B. 2011. Kurdish Diaspora Political Activism in Europe with a Particular Focus on Great Britain. Working Paper, Research Report, Berghof Peace Support/Centre for Just Peace and Democracy. https://cadmus.eui.eu//handle/1814/18114 Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. (Translated by R. Nice). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology). https://doi. org/10.1017/cbo9780511812507 Briggs, C. L., and Bauman, R. 1992. “Genre, Intertextuality, and Social Power.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 2, no. 2: 131–172. https://doi.org/10.1525/jlin.1992.2.2.131 Çiçek, Ö. 2016. “Kurdish Cinema: Imprisonment and Representation.” Alternative Politics. Special Issue (May). https://alternatifpolitika.com/eng/makale/kurdish-­cinema-­imprisonment-­ and-­representation-­turkish Çiftçi, A. 2015. The Politics of Text and Context: Kurdish Films in Turkey in a Period of Political Transformation. PhD dissertation. Royal Holloway, University of London. Curry, R. 2016. “Transnational and Diasporic Cinema.” In Cinema and Media Studies. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780199791286-­0243 Goankar, D. P., and Povinelli, E. A. 2003. “Technologies of Public Forms: Circulation, Transfiguration, Recognition.” Public Culture 15: 391. Gourlay, W. 2018. “Oppression, Solidarity, Resistance: The Forging of Kurdish Identity in Turkey.” Ethnopolitics 17, no. 2: 130–146. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449057.2017.1339425 Gündoğdu, M. 2010. “An Introduction to Kurdish Cinema.” https://www.academia. edu/5773023/An_Introduction_to_Kurdish_Cinema (accessed April 30, 2021). Gündoğdu, M. 2010. “Film Festivals and the Diaspora: Impetus to the Development of Kurdish Cinema?” In Film Festival Yearbook 2 – Film Festivals and Imagined Communities. St. Andrew Film Studies. Gunter, M. M. 2007. “Turkey’s Floundering EU Candidacy and Its Kurdish Problem.” Middle East Policy 14, no. 1: 117–123. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-­4967.2007.00289.x Gunter, M. M. 2015. “Iraq, Syria, Isis, and the Kurds: Geostrategic Concerns for the US and Turkey.” Middle East Policy 22, no. 1: 102–111. https://doi.org/10.1111/mepo.12116

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Hanks, W. F. 1987. “Discourse Genres in a Theory of Practice.” American Ethnologist 14, no. 4: 668–692. https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1987.14.4.02a00050 Hassanpour, A., Sheyholislami, J., and Skutnabb-­ K angas, T. 2012. “Introduction Kurdish: Linguicide, Resistance, and Hope.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2012, no. 217: 1–18. De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-­2012-­0047 Higson, A. 1989. “The Concept of National Cinema.” Screen 30, no. 4: 36–47. https://doi. org/10.1093/screen/30.4.36 Hirschler, K. 2001. “Defining the Nation: Kurdish Historiography in Turkey in the 1990s.” Middle Eastern Studies 37, no. 3: 145–166. https://doi.org/10.1080/714004406 Kennedy, T. 2007. Cinema Regarding Nations Re-­imagining Armenian, Kurdish, and Palestinian National Identity in Film. Reading: The University of Reading. Koçer, S. 2013. “Making Transnational Publics: Circuits of Censorship and Technologies of Publicity in Kurdish Media Circulation.” American Ethnologist 40, no. 4. https://doi. org/10.1111/amet.12050 Koçer, S. 2014. “Kurdish Cinema as a Transnational Discourse Genre: Cinematic Visibility, Cultural Resilience, and Political Agency.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 46, no. 3. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743814000555 Koçer, S. 2015. “Transnational Media Representations of Women Fighters Against ISIS in Syria.” In B. Baybars-­Hawks (Ed.), Framing Violence: Conflicting Images, Identities, and Discourses. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Koçer, S. and Can Candan. (Eds.). 2016. Kurdish Documentary Cinema in Turkey: Politics and Aesthetics of Identity and Resistance. Cambridge Scholars Press: London Kutschera, C. 2003. “The Pain of Giving Birth to Kurdish Cinema.” Middle East 399: 56–58. Lee, B., and LiPuma, E. 2002. “Cultures of Circulation: The Imaginations of Modernity.” Public Culture 14, no. 1: 191–213. McDougall, D. 1996. A Modern History of Kurds. London: I.B. Tauris. Naficy, H. 2018. An Accented Cinema. In An Accented Cinema. Princeton University Press. https:// doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv346qqt Nerwiy, H.K.T. 2012. The Republic of Kurdistan, 1946  Hawar Khalil Taher Nerwiy. https://hdl. handle.net/1887/18583 Ögetürk, U. 2017. “Zer’in Sansürlü Sahnelerine Sansür.” https://filmloverss.com/zerin-­sansurlu-­ sahnelerine-­sansur/, Accessed April 30, 2021 Şengül, A. F. 2013. “The First Kurdish Cinema Conference and the National Question.” Sarai Reader: Projections, 9. Smets, K. 2015. “Cinemas of Conflict: A Framework of Cinematic Engagement with Violent Conflict, Illustrated with Kurdish Cinema.” International Journal of Communication 9, no. 1: 2434–2455. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/3363/1328 Smets, K., and Akkaya, A. H. 2016. “Media and Violent Conflict: Halil Daǧ, Kurdish Insurgency, and the Hybridity of Vernacular Cinema of Conflict.” Media, War, and Conflict 9, no. 1: 76–92). SAGE Publications Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750635215611611 Stam, R. 2003. “Beyond Third Cinema: The Aesthetics of Hybridity. In A. R. Guneratne and W. Dissanayake (Eds.), Rethinking Third Cinema (pp. 31–47). Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. Suner, A. 2006. “Outside in: ‘Accented Cinema’ at Large.” Inter-­Asia Cultural Studies 7, no. 3: ­363–382. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649370600849223 Walker, J. 2005. Trauma Cinema: Documenting Incest and the Holocaust. Los Angeles: University of California Press. White, J. 2018. “Introduction: Four Kinds of Minor Cinema (and Some Thoughts on a Fifth).” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 45, no. 3: 357–380. Academic Printing and Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1353/crc.2018.0035

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Aesthetic Arabism The Syrian Musalsal Beyond Borders Christa Salamandra

In “Do the Ramadan,” an early episode of the dramedy series Ramy (2019), the newly pious antihero suggests a prayer before iftar. Entranced by their flickering TV screen, his Egyptian-­American family spurn the suggestion. “This is the first episode,” his father entreats, “if we miss that, we’re gonna be lost for the rest of the month. Please! It seems the shows are gonna be good this year. Good trailers mean good shows, good Ramadan, insha’allah.” With the rise of satellite television, Ramy’s fictional family in New York City joins a transnational media ritual. The Hassans of Hulu represent diasporic audiences that no longer need catch up with Arab-­language television; they participate in real time and feature in production and broadcasting decisions.1 Like viewers back in their countries of origin, they would likely include Syrian dramas (musalsalat) in their Ramadan schedules.2 The pan-­Arab satellite era has witnessed a golden age of Syrian drama (see Chapter 12). The proliferation of Emirati-­based entertainment networks that began in the early 1990s helped spur what has become known as Syria’s “drama outpouring” (al-­fawra al-­dramiyya). Agile, innovative, and reliant on human capital rather than physical infrastructure, Syria’s musalsal industry has survived economic transformation, layers of censorship, and a 10-­year revolution turned civil and proxy war. Television serials have familiarized a global Arabic-­speaking audience with Damascus’s lilting dialect, its old cities’ winding streets and courtyard houses, its modern urban architecture, and its informal settlements. A counterpoint to Egypt’s strongly national drama, Syria’s musalsal offers a local authenticity that evokes a wider Arab sensibility and treats a shared set of sociopolitical issues. Syrian creators, like their products, regularly transverse geographic and artistic borders, lending their expertise to joint productions and fashioning numerous subgenres.  For more on diasporic Arab audiences, see Galal (2014).  This chapter draws from ongoing ethnographic and archival research I have conducted from the early 1990s.

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The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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They have crafted an aesthetic Arabism that reconfigures an older ideology of transnational connectedness for the satellite era. Syrian drama’s aesthetic Arabism deploys a constellation of techniques, qualities, and concerns to interpellate the viewer as (an) Arab. Foremost among them is a formal and thematic realism that industry commentators and audiences alike contrast with Egyptian television’s melodrama.3 As leading screenwriter Najeeb Nseir notes, realism serves as Syrian drama’s cross genre “cultural reference” (marji‘iyya thaqafiyya), one that: . . .folds under its wing various types of television visual products, from contemporary fantasy to historical fantasy, to the ancient historical as well as the recent, known as Damascene milieu drama, and to contemporary dramas, from comedy and melodrama, such as the drama of slums, and the well-­known dramas of suspense. (2020)

Like audiovisual realism in general, Syrian drama is associated with a set of conventions that includes on-­location filming, the use of basic equipment, the avoidance of special effects, long camera takes and slow panning shots, information density, ethnographic attention to detail, the incorporation of unscripted material, and nonprofessional and/or ensemble acting. Syrian historical and folkloric works draw on extensive research. Contemporary dramas revolve around ordinary people and everyday life and are commonly set in working-­class neighborhoods. They treat a range of sociopolitical issues, including gender inequality, generational conflict, class struggle, regional tensions, emigration, mental illness, child abuse, urban poverty, and domestic violence, and present them not as essential deficits or individual shortcomings, but as systemic failings linked to structures of exploitation. I argue these works reflect an Arab socialist impulse that has endured in Syrian drama despite its demise in other realms of social and ­political life. Social embeddedness animates aesthetic Arabism’s realist orientation. More than their counterparts in established industries, drama makers in Syria operate amid the everyday. Location shooting – among Syrian drama’s most recognizable features – takes place in lived-­in and traversed spaces: houses, businesses, institutions, parks, streets, and alleyways. No closed-­off streets, caravans, or security details separate cast and crew from their fellow Damascus dwellers. They operate in homes whose residents watch from behind the camera, in restaurants as patrons dine, and on pavements and streets that remain open to traffic. Production conditions seep into drama making, transforming both what appears on screen, and the perspectives of drama creators. Syrian-­style location shooting offers regular opportunities for the “happy accidents” of real life to appear on screen (Pitman 1960, cited in Gleich  2018, 107). While clearly “Arab,” locations are  rarely recognizably Syrian. Iconic sites or monuments signaling “Syria” form exceptions. Paradoxically, what tells the viewer a particular drama is “Syrian” is its very supranationality. Real-­life settings relatable to pan-­Arab audiences are matched by topics that are  Lila Abu-­Lughod (2004) categorizes Egyptian serials of the 1980s and 1990s as melodramas; my depiction of their Syrian counterparts as realist highlights a key difference between the two national styles.

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shared throughout the region. Syrian drama’s triumphant medieval empires, charming folkloric quarters, and degraded postcolonial present resonate broadly. Imperial works have obvious transnational appeal. Yet Syria’s critically acclaimed genre of contemporary social drama (al-­drama al-­ijima‘iya al-­mu‘asira) also embraces the region with its focus on the effects of globalization, neoliberalism, and authoritarianism. It has shed light on class struggle and urban poverty just as rural to urban migration intensified in much of the Arab Middle East. Most storylines could be dropped into other Arab contexts with minimal tweaking. While this lack of specificity is often read as a response to censorship or marketing, I attribute it to the ideological commitment of Syrian creators who see themselves as part of, and their role as speaking to and for, a wider polity and society. Syrian drama may resonate with widespread audiences’ lived experience, but it is no straightforward reflection of reality. Filmic realism is a representational effect produced through elaborate mise-­en-­scène: professional writing, and careful lighting, framing, and composition. Locations are molded to narratives. Simulating the real necessitates such a degree of manipulation, and therefore control over production conditions, that Hollywood filmmakers have sometimes preferred to produced it in studios (Gleich 2018). In short, realism is a contrivance, much like the authenticity it seeks to represent. Authenticity is a quality viewers and critics associate with Syrian drama; it is also a gauge they use to evaluate it (Salamandra  1998,  2004). As Arjun Appadurai argues, authenticity can be seen as a measure of the degree to which something is what it ought to be (1986, 25). The “ought to be” quality of Syrian drama generates representations of the real that remain true to norms, values, aspirations, and expectations; they do not necessarily correspond to life as it is lived. Drama’s production of authenticity draws on audience associations and matches their preconceptions. As Nseir puts it, the normative realism of Syrian serials fails to capture the fullness of life, and sometimes contradicts reality (2020). Yet it also articulates ideals that, at the discursive level, are very much part of lived experience. As I have argued elsewhere, even at its most normative, Syrian drama sparks conversations about sensitive sociopolitcal issues that would be unlikely to arise without it (Salamandra 1998, 2004, 2011, 2015). Easily recognizable in the flow of satellite television programming, Syria’s Arabist aesthetic has become a transnational register of critical commentary.4 The strong representation of literary figures and intellectuals among Syrian screenwriters generates a critical, issue-­driven genre. At its best, Syrian drama bears the hallmarks of what critics and scholars call “quality television”: it aspires towards realism, attracts educated audiences, aims to enlighten, deals with controversial topics, and references high culture; it  is  literary or script-­driven, mixes genres and employs ensemble casts that depict ­complex, evolving characters (Thompson 1996, 13–15). The TV drama industry reflects and refracts Syria’s geographic, material, and ideological positioning. The emergence of a regional satellite market has enabled Syrian

 While drama makers complain about the need to accommodate conservative Gulf states and markets, Halabi (forthcoming) argues that they have in fact harnessed pan-­Arab media’s freedom from Syrian censorship to critique the al-­Asad regime more directly.

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producers to challenge a monopoly that held sway through the first three decades of  Arabic-­language television broadcast. During this formative period, Egyptian ­producers dominated the airways with a series of landmark dramas that were aired on terrestrial stations throughout the region. With its large national market and local satellite channels, Egypt has maintained a degree of independence from the Gulf-­based networks that now dominate the pan-­Arab media landscape. The nation’s strong infrastructure and cadre of star actors have kept its industry afloat, but also precluded the innovation that has distinguished Egyptian cinema. During the 1990s and 2000s, an older generation of film celebrities shifted to television, commanding substantial fees  that left little funding available for increased production values. Screenplays often revolved around wealthy families, and their concerns remained distinctively Egyptian. In contrast, Syria’s drama creators worked with a set of disadvantages that they, like the Italian neorealist cineastes who inspired them, turned into assets (Cardullo  2011, 20–21). Syrians produced drama without formal training or studios, and with basic, portable equipment. They took their cameras on location, achieving cinematic quality through single-­ camera shooting. The country’s leading novelists and poets found employment and recognition by writing musalsal screenplays. Theatrically trained actors formed strong ensemble casts that left budgets available for high production values. Unlike Egypt, Syria developed no other commercial cultural industries; drama is the only source of livelihood for most of Syria’s directors, writers, and actors. As state-­sector production shrank from the mid-­1990s, reliance on the pan-­Arab satellite outlets has helped to foster transnational relevance; Syrian drama makers were compelled to speak across national markets. There are also significant ideological and affective dimensions to Syrian drama’s Arab orientation. Over nearly three decades of musalsal research, I have been struck by my drama interlocutors’ frequent reference to constructs of Arab rather than Syrian identity.5 In formal interviews and casual conversations, they offer commentary on “Arab society,” “Arab culture,” even “Arab mentality.” I argue that this tendency is no mere opportunistic appeal to pan-­Arab markets. Nor do restrictions on mention of high-­ranking Syrian regime figures explain it. Syria’s association with Arabness runs deep. Damascus is known as the birthplace and “beating heart of Arab nationalism” (qalb ­al-­‘uruba al-­nabid), and a strong sense of Arabism endures. Scholars often attribute Syrians’ Arabist sentiment to four decades of regime discourse and its echoes in the news media (Mellor 2021; Phillips 2013). Yet it would be a mistake to dismiss Syrian drama creators as propagandists. As prominent members of their country’s intelligentsia – indeed, as Syria’s most public of intellectuals – TV industry figures creators cling to Arab nationalist ideals and identities. Since the demise of socialism as a sociopolitical force, Syria’s intellectuals struggle to uphold what Elizabeth Kassab (2019) calls “political humanism,” an orientation that retains traces of the Arab enlightenment (tanwiri) project of the post-­independence era. Ultimately, while Egyptian

 While Joubin’s exhaustive research (2013, 2020) does not address Arabism, the utterances of drama creators that she recounts convey a similar impression.

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drama has focused on nation-­building (Abu-­Lughod 2004; Armbrust 1996), the Syrian musalsal’s aesthetic Arabism has sought to identify with, engage, critique, and reform Arab politics and society.

The Backstory Syrian TV drama’s aesthetic Arabism is a product of historical contingency, geopolitical positioning, and technological transformation. Syrian drama of the late 1960s and 1970s benefitted from a vibrant, socially committed artistic field, which became a major site of political discussion and critique when other avenues, such as party politics and journalism, were suppressed. From its inception, the Syrian musalsal blurred boundaries between “high” and “low” artistic registers by encompassing the nation’s elite culture producers. Two groundbreaking early dramas set the tone for much of what followed. The first, Director Ghassan Jabri’s 1968 Tales of the Night (Hakaya al-­Layl), featured a screen play by renowned poet Muhammad al-­Maghut. Aired weekly over a year, Tales established the hara, or old city neighborhood, as a key dramatic device. Tales consisted of self-­contained stories framed by two working-­class characters: a street cleaner and night watchman. Like many of the works that followed it, Tales of the Night explored social change though somber irony. An oft-­remembered episode, “Mawt Qa‘id,” (“Retirement”) employs a bitter play on words to convey the deadening effects of modern bureaucracy. The Arabic term for retirement, mutaqa‘id, derives from the Arabic root meaning “to sit;” here the reference extends to death, “mawt” by sitting “qa‘id.” Released from years behind a desk, a former civil servant faces eternal boredom, interfering with housekeeping and annoying his family to the point where his wife tries to get him his job back. Al-­Maghut’s topical and tightly scripted narratives set a high-­art tone for Syrian drama and opened the door for other literary figures to write for television without losing artistic status. A second milestone musalsal, ‘Ala’ al-­Din Kawkash’s Palace Quarter (Harat al-­Qasr, 1970) offered an equally sophisticated and sober depiction of contemporary urban life. Historian and author ‘Adil Abu Shanab, known as “Damascus’s Storyteller” (Hakawati al-­Sham), wrote the screenplay, in which a well-­heeled widower’s desire to marry a much younger woman sets off a catastrophic chain of events. A folkloric chorus punctuates and comments on the unfolding tragedy. Palace Quarter highlights the generational tensions emerging from post-­independence social and economic transformation: changing gender roles, expanded educational opportunities, and the coercive power of wealth, themes shared throughout the region that echo through dramas of subsequent decades. With Palace Quarter the Syrian musalsal began to reflect what television scholar Jason Mittell refers to as “narrative complexity.” It introduced a storyline that developed throughout the work, making it a serial rather than a series. Like complex television in general, Palace Quarter was a primetime serial that offered a “cumulative narrative that builds over time, rather than resettling back to a steady-­ready equilibrium at the end of every episode” (2015, 18). Like other complex serials, it disrupts linear time through flashbacks and omens that the narrator and chorus frequently deliver, and that bookend

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each episode (2015, 26). That fact that this form evolved in the 1960s and 1970s American and British industries places Syrian drama creators in the vanguard of television making (2015, 18). Indeed, Kawkash offered fully serialized primetime television before his American counterparts routinely did so (Newman and Levine  2012, 82–88). Another innovation presaged the interactive television of the digital age; Kawkash and Abu  Shanab  incorporated audience feedback on the serial’s weekly airings into an evolving plot, a technique that drama makers of the 2000s would revisit (Nasih 2012; Mansour 2016). Deepening political restrictions and material austerity during the 1970s and 1980s brought about what might be called Syrian drama’s first exile, demonstrating that despite its distinctive national style, Syrian drama has long been transnational. As drama fell to the bottom of the state’s priority list, and private production remained prohibited, TV makers left for sojourns in the Gulf and joined Jordanian productions. Leading ­producer Ayman Sheikhani relocated to Athens, and in a move that proved pivotal for Syrian drama, hired the young director Haytham Haqqi. Widely credited with Syrian TV drama’s technical refinement, Haqqi transferred to the skills he learned at Moscow’s prestigious Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) to musalsal making. In the absence of formal production academies, the director himself became what Syrians call a “school” (madrasa) in both senses of the term: he devised a filmic approach and trained a generation of directors. Major figures of the new millennium  – including Allaith Hajjo, Hatem Ali, Samer al-­Barqawi, Saif al-­Din Sbe‘i, and Muthana Sabah – served as his assistants before moving on to direct their own serials, shaping the contours of the contemporary Syrian musalsal. The 1988 serial Circle of Fire (Da’irat al-­Nar) marked the foundation of the Haqqi school. Set in a contemporary Old Damascus neighborhood, the drama explored the era’s rapid social and material transformation, with young people defying their elders, and residents resisting or embracing attempts to replace their courtyard houses with lucrative high rises. Circle of Fire is remembered as the first Arab serial to make extensive use of location shooting with a single camera, producing an effect that Arab viewers have come to associate with the Syrian musalsal. In form, content and setting, the serial carried forward the aesthetic Arabism that ‘Ala al-­Din Kawkash and Ghassan Jabri ­established in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Outpouring Arab journalists date Syria’s “drama outpouring” (al-­fawra al-­dramiyya) to the early 1990s, when the Syrian state privatized production, and pan-­Arab entertainment networks – most notably the Saudi owned, Dubai based MBC – first appeared. Yet it was a decade later that this outpouring surged into a torrent. By the mid 2000s, hundreds of serials aired on dozens of pan-­Arab and national channels. Satellite TV’s generous airtime fostered niche markets, much as cable television did for American – and now global – serial drama. Syrians were uniquely positioned to navigate this transforming television landscape, and their dramas helped to generate an expanded – if nebulous – Arabic-­language

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public sphere (Ayish 2008; Zayani 2008). Arab media analysts typically identify broadcast journalism  – particularly al-­Jazeera  – and, more recently, social media, as the new Arabism’s engine (Abdelmoula  2015, Lynch 2007; Mellor  2021; Pintak  2009; Sarkhoh and Koshravinik 2020). Yet given that contemporary Arabism is more identity than ideology (Phillips 2013, 10), it is popular culture forms like the musalsal that engender an emotive connectedness among global Arab audiences, linking them in time and across space, much like the novel did for national readerships in Benedict Anderson’s famous formulation (2016). The new Arabism reflects no coherent political project. Instead, it fosters a borderless cultural and political imaginary, and an arena for constructing and contesting identity. Groundbreaking Syrian productions of the 1990s featured breathtaking visuals and captivating scripts. Najdat Isma‘il Anzour moved from advertising to musalsal making in 1994, adapting Hanna Minna’s acclaimed novel The End of a Brave Man (Nihayat Rajul Shuja‘) to the small screen. The mountainous northern coast and the French Mandate era provided a panoramic backdrop to this story of a fiery, defiant protagonist suffering multiple forms of oppression. The End of a Brave Man showcased the lush imagery and complex character development that have become associated with Syrian drama in general. Haytham Haqqi married expert cinematography with a politically charged plotline in The Silk Market (Khan al-­Harir), aired in Ramadan of 1996 with a sequel in 1998. Renown novelist Nihad Sirees’s screenplay explored the rise and fall of the United Arab Republic (1958–1961), portraying merchants debating the merits of union with Nasser’s anti-­ colonial Egypt or Nuri Sa‘id’s pro-­British Baghdad. Some warned against the loss of parliamentary and participatory governance, and the domination by Damascus and Cairo that unity with Egypt would entail. These figures presaged what would become a key feature of Syrian drama: intellectual characters with autobiographical attributes who represent various, often conflicting viewpoints and regional concerns. The Silk Market has also come to serve an unforeseen function: preserving footage of the city’s spectacular and now destroyed covered souq. The 1990s cemented the Syrian musalsal’s association with the city, which developed in starkly contrasting directions. Damascene Days (Ayyam Shamiyya, 1994) launched a genre that would later become known as “Damascene milieu” (bi’ah shamiyya), offering nostalgic reimaginings of the Old City hara of the early twentieth century (Salamandra  1998,  2004). Folkloric touches of dress, décor, and idiom celebrate Old Damascus as an idyll of harmonious social relations and anti-­colonial resistance. The serial introduced affectionately-­drawn caricatures of everyday life – barber, baker, coppersmith, hummus-­seller, with humorously exaggerated Damascene accents  – that would later become Damascene milieu stock characters. The new millennium brought heightened production values, put to spectacular use in the Gulf-­f unded big budget epics of the early 2000s. Drama makers turn to the distant past, and travel beyond Syria’s borders, to reenvision Arab society for the present and future. Lavish depictions of imperial history complement the Ramadan broadcast season’s celebration of identity, and appeal to pan-­Arab audiences. Works set in the golden ages of the Ummayyad, Abbasid, and Andalusian eras – complete with elaborate period sets, luxurious costumes, and sweeping battle scenes – appear to conform with revivalist

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and political Islam by pitting Muslim community against foreign enemy.6 Yet by ­invoking al-­Andalus (Islamic Spain), as director Hatem Ali has done in a quartet of masterful epics, drama recreates a cherished – and partly imaginary – instance of cosmopolitan connectedness beyond contemporary borders (Salamandra 2013). Ali’s Hawk of the Quraysh (Saqr Quraysh) of 2002, Cordoba Spring (Rubi’ Qurtuba) of 2003, Petty Kingdoms (Muluk al-­Tawa’if) 2005, and The Fall of Granada (Suqut Gharnata) of 2007, also offer s­ubversive sociopolitical commentary that stresses the power of Arab unity and the ­perils of its dissolution.7 Gulf funding also raised the production values of Damascene milieu dramas. Damascene Days director Bassam al-­Mulla capped his prolific Old Damascus opus with a big budget 12-­season blockbuster, The Neighborhood Gate (Bab al-­Hara, 2006-­2020). Aired on MBC, this work vividly illustrates Arab satellite media’s global footprint: Bab al-­Hara restaurants appear in Brussels, Brooklyn, and Vienna, a Bab al-­Hara Hotel in Thailand, and a Bab al-­Hara Food Festival in Detroit. In response to its mass appeal – and MBC’s strong promotion – The Neighborhood Gate has received the lion’s share of the media and academic attention devoted to Syrian drama.8 Much to the chagrin of serious-­minded drama makers who dub it “bab al-­khara” (shit gate), Bab al-­Hara has become the global face of satellite-­era Syrian drama. Drama creators contrast the glory of Arab empire and the charm of the Old City hara with the grim realities of the present. Realist dramas of the 2000s explore the “legacy of raised expectations” left in the wake of the economic liberalization without democratization that has occurred in much of the region (Salamandra and Stenberg 2015). These works emphasize the unfulfilled promises of reform and revolution, depicting persistent corruption, mounting inequality, sectarian intolerance, youth unemployment, housing shortages, antiquated personal status laws, and the unchecked security power of intelligence services. Social drama captured the era’s desires and discontents, as lifestyle “choices” dangled before the many who could not afford them. In the wake of the Damascus Spring of 2000–2001, the new Asad regime’s short lived relaxation of restrictions on freedom of expression, drama makers dealt with the promise and precarity of globalization, and featured biting critiques of the new economic order (Salamandra 2019, 2015). They also foregrounded Syria’s interrelations and commonalities with the wider Arab world. Adopting drama creators’ self-­critical register, Haytham Haqqi’s Memories of a Time to Come (Zikriyat al-­Zaman al-­Qadim, 2003), depicts Syrian intellectuals as ineffectual fossils, privileged romantics, or hypocritical turncoats. Rim Hanna’s screenplay follows the reappearance of a former revolutionary after his disappearance 20 years earlier. Matar, whose name means “rain,” resurfaces as a vulture capitalist, poised to take revenge on his old circle of leftist friends whose comfort and status were achieved at the expense of less fortunate brethren. He jolts them out of oblivion and into the degraded realities of twenty-­first century neoliberalism. “When

 Skovgaard-­Petersen (2018, 2012) analyses the depiction of Islamic empire in the musalsal.  See Dick (2005) and Shoup (2005) for detailed discussion of Ali’s Andalusian series. 8  For scholarly analysis of Bab al-­Hara, see al-­Ghazzi (2013); Chamieh (2016); Della Ratta (2018); Joubin (2020, 2013); Hudson (2014); Nassif (2015); and Zaatari (2015). 6 7

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September 11 brought extremism, where were you?” he asks. “What happened to your grand project? You stuck it in a drawer, and the world went 2000 years backward.” The 9/11 events and their effects ripple through a second serial tackling globalization that aired the following year. Fahd Miri’s An Autumn Tale (Hikayat Kharif, 2004), depicts what screenwriter Hassan Sami Yusuf and Najeeb Nseir see as their nation’s growing connectedness to, reliance on, and inability to cope with the wider world. Engineer Tawfiq languishes in a mid-­level government position, and longs to join his son Sa’ib in the United States. Characters follow the Twin Towers’ fall an array on satellite TV channels, none of them Syrian. Tawfiq worries about the political repercussions for all Arabs; his entrepreneur son-­in-­law frets over the dollar’s plummeting value. Anti-­Arab sentiment compels Sa’ib to return to Syria after completing his medical degree, squelching Tawfik’s hopes for a green card. Both Memories of a Time to Come and An Autumn Tale convey a sense of impotence and irrelevance in the new national, regional, and global order. They expose the era’s illusions: novel, seemingly boundless opportunities for the audacious; tantalizing, ethically dubious possibilities to circumvent the laborious stages of public sector education and employment that yield ever-­diminishing returns. The discourse of globalization waned in after the mid-­2000s, in Syria and beyond. Drama no longer references the concept, but social realist serials have continued to treat globalization’s multiple effects. New communication technologies have transformed the drama making and drama content. While industry figures predicted that the spread of internet access would mark the end of the Syrian musalsal, the interactive media convergence of web 2.0 has enhanced the genre’s global reach through dedicated Facebook pages, blogs, and fan sites. It has amplified drama creators’ notoriety and weakened the boundaries that had once separated them from their audiences (Alhayek 2017). Interactions between makers and viewers living inside and beyond the Arab region enhance and extend the geography of connectedness. As the decade unfolded, social realist serials responded to the massive migration from Syria’s drought afflicted hinterlands to the outskirts of its major cities. By 2010, an estimated 50% of the country’s urban population lived in informal “haphazard neighborhoods” (al-­harat al-­‘ashwa’iya). Informal settlements grew throughout the region, sharing the afflictions of (sub)urban poverty globally: deficient infrastructure, crowding, hazardous construction, inadequate services, and widespread unemployment. They also inspired a genre that has come to be known as “haphazard drama.” In an instance of anthropological serendipity, I was able to witness the three-­month filming of Waiting (al-­Intizar, 2006), a frequently rebroadcast classic that launched the haphazard genre (Salamandra and Stenberg 2015; Salamandra 2019). Scriptwriters Najib Nseir and Hassan Sami Yusuf share an affinity with and concern for the informal settlement, which serves as the setting for two of their earlier successful series, Our Sweet Days (Ayyamna al-­Hilwa, 2003) and Men and Women (Rijal wa Nisa’, 2005). Waiting was funded from a source in Dubai, and directed by Allaith Hajjo, then best known for his biting satirical comedy sketch series Spotlight (Buq‘at Daw’ 2001, 2002, 2004).9

 Wedeen (2019) analyzes the complex ideological messaging in Hajjo’s comedies.

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Waiting revolves around a Robin Hood figure and a low-­level journalist. Both are sons of the haphazard hara – the real life Dwaila’a – in which most of the action takes place. ‘ Abbud robs clothing from posh boutiques in the city center and tosses it onto his neighbors’ rooftops in the dead of night. Wa’il writes for the low-­paying state newspaper; his wife Samira, urges him to try al-­Jazeera. Wa’il waxes romantic about the neighborhood’s goodness and humanity; Samira rails against its dirt and danger, a position reflected in Waiting’s dramatic turning point. While playing in a rubble-­strewn lot at the edge of a busy highway, their son is struck by a minivan and blinded. In a standard realist technique, this scene, like many others in Waiting, incorporates nonactors, chance passersby who, believing the scene to be real, feature as horrified spectators. Waiting’s creators sought not merely to produce technically sophisticated, entertaining television; they aimed to expose problems, suggest causes, and provoke discussion, in the hope of prompting change. Rather than tradition or illiteracy, Waiting blames structural inequality, and the ruling elite that perpetuates it, for the haphazard hara’s social and economic pathologies. Characters remain stuck, as Wa’il puts it, on a never-­ ending waiting list that symbolizes what Waiting’s creators see as the Arab condition. Self-­improvement through education, the solution an earlier generation of Arab drama offered (Abu-­Lughod  2004), has lost credibility after decades of expanded university access has failed to stem growing levels of poverty and underemployment. The makers of serials like Waiting alerted audiences and leaderships to the social maladies and political failures that informal settlements typify. In the case of Syria, they argue, drama’s warnings went unheeded, and a devastating war ensued. The 2010s saw a reconfiguration of Syria’s industry, with the exile of media professionals, and the emergence of the Emirates as a key production center, making it increasingly difficult to determine what makes a musalsal “Syrian.”10 This very question, rarely asked of works associated with Egypt, illustrates the very Arabness of Syrian serials. What is clear is that the nation’s drama creators have continued producing despite the conflict, both inside and outside of Syria. Many dramas of the 2010s treated wartime themes of loss, exile, and rupture from various – and often conflicted – ideological viewpoints through depictions of everyday experience. As Syrian television drama critic Maher Mansour put it, the satellite airways became shot through with Syrian pain (2015, 72). Viewers and industry figures rank some of these serials among the decade’s best. Rami Hanna’s Tomorrow We’ll Meet Again (Ghadan Naltaqi, 2015) features refugees sharing a Beirut tenement. Hanna cross-­cast two prominent actors whose public stances on the conflict opposed their characters’ positions. The deceptively titled Lipstick (Qalam Hamra, 2014), whose protagonist is arrested by Syrian security while on an errand to purchase the cosmetic, depicts the regime’s ruthless treatment of its perceived opponents. Having left Syria for Canada, director Hatem Ali filmed Lipstick in Lebanon, with Beirut standing in as Damascus.  While production company’s geographic base lends a work its marketed nationality, musalsal-­s are locally understood through a combination of content, setting, and creators’ affiliations. Syrian drama critic Maher Mansour deems a serial Syrian if nationals fill three out of four key roles: producer, director, writer, and starring actor. I expand this into an ethnographic definition, treating a musalsal as Syrian if TV creators and audiences discuss it as such.

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Allaith Hajjo shot daring scenes of regime abuse inside Syria for Regret (al-­Nadm, 2016), in which an imprisoned dissident commits suicide when torture becomes unbearable. Digital technologies have breathed new life into Syrian drama, as video on demand enables screening outside the Ramadan season (see Chapters 13, 22). Dedicated services like MBC’s Shahid feature landmark Syrian dramas of the past two decades, broadening Syrian drama’s reach in time as well as space. Video sharing platforms like YouTube and Dailymotion foster global interactivity: fans have uploaded their personal collections of early works like Tales of the Night and Palace Quarter that had been nearly impossible to access. Syrian drama creators’ longstanding Arabist inclination has situated them at the forefront of trends emerging in the early 2020s. Following their country’s long tradition of exporting creative talent to Cairo, Syrian actors, directors, and screenwriters have joined a resurgent Egyptian industry. Mastering the Egyptian dialect, Syrian actors have depicted such national icons as King Faruq and Gamal Abdel Nasser. Syrians have also partnered with Lebanese and Gulf-­based producers in a new format: mushtarak (joint) productions. These collaborations extend a tradition of shared expertise in Arab drama making. Mushtarak serials drawn on global trends, combining elements of organized crime, courtroom, police procedural, forensic, psychological, dramedic, family, and romantic genres. Syrian drama, very much as Arab drama, has itself gone global. The streaming service Netflix features a variety of serials marketed as Lebanese that showcase Syrian directors, writers, and actors. Samer al-­Barqawi’s al-­Hayba (2017), Rami Hanna’s Tango (2018) and The Writer (al-­K atib, 2019), and Allaith Hajjo’s, Children of Arab (Awlad Adam, 2020) all stream there, subtitled in a range of languages including English, French, Spanish, German, and Chinese. While most were first aired on Arab TV during Ramadan, The Writer represents a unique experiment: Netflix released one of its 30 episodes daily during Ramadan 2019.

Conclusion Some industry figures contend that the musalsal has superseded waning political ideologies to reinvigorate a sentiment of regional connectedness. As MBC producer Fadi Ismail argued: The influence of Arab television has been, in the last 10 years . . . more important and more serious in all Arab societies than 30, 50 or 60 years of work by political parties and ideologues for Arab unity . . . the most unifying factor is now TV, and maybe Arab drama.11

Ismail spoke in 2008, at the height of the Syrian outpouring, when reference to “Arab drama” conjured its Syrian iteration. Syrian drama creators have taken up the mantle of Arabism that regimes and thinkers alike have largely left to them (see Chapters 3, 4, 39). Their marginality to the realm of Arab cultural production has positioned them at the center of musalsal making in and for the pan-­Arab satellite era. Their aesthetic Arabism,  Interview with author, August 13, 2008.

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which evokes shared and collective experience, links diverse and dispersed audiences through dramatic representation of specific times and places, moments of past glory and contemporary pathos. It contrasts rosy nostalgia with bleak reality. It archives and celebrates ­monumental, material, and intangible heritage. With their ability to create beyond their national borders, Syrian drama makers ­continue to foster Arabist sentiments through a revamped a serial drama form that is transregional in production as well as narrative. Experiences of war, displacement, and exile have transformed musalsal makers’ lives and work, situating them beyond the nation, and informing dramatic content. Syrian drama navigates ever broadening scales of ­production, distribution, and reception, reshaping the Arab musalsal for global audiences. References Abdelmoula, E. 2015. Al Jazeera and Democratization: The Rise of the Arab Public Sphere. London: Routledge. Abu-­Lughod, L. 2004. Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. al-­Ghazzi, O. 2013. “Nation as Neighborhood: How Bab al-­Hara Dramatized Syrian Identity.” Media, Culture & Society 35, no. 5: 586–601. Alhayek, K. 2020. “Watching Television while Forcibly Displaced: Syrian Refugees as Participant Audiences.” Participations 17, no. 1: 8–25. Anderson, B. 2016. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Appadurai, Arjun. 1986. “On Culinary Authenticity.” Anthropology Today 2, no. 4: 25. Armbrust, W. 1996. Mass Consumption and Modernism in Egypt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ayish, M. I. 2008. The New Arab Public Sphere. Berlin: Frank & Timme. Cardullo, B. (Ed.). 2011. André Bazin and Italian Neorealism. New York: Continuum. Chamieh, J. 2016. “‘Once Upon a Time’: The Efficacy of Storytelling in Shaping Drama Series, a Case Study on Bab El Hara.” Journal of Arts & Humanities 5, no. 12: 19–34. Della Ratta, D. 2018. “Expanded Places: Redefining Media and Violence in the Networked Age.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 21, no. 1: 90–104. Dick, M. 2005. “The State of the Musalsal: Arab Television Drama and Comedy in the Satellite Era.” Arab Media & Society (September 1). Galal, E. (Ed.). 2014. Arab TV-­Audiences: Negotiating Religion and Identity. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Gleich, J. 2018. Hollywood in San Francisco: Location Shooting and the Aesthetics of Urban Decline. Austin: University of Texas Press. Halabi, N. Forthcoming. “Syrian Drama in the Satellite Era: The Impact of Gulf Investment on the Syrian TV Drama Industry.” In The World Watches the Musalsal. Doha: Media Majlis Museum, Northwestern University in Qatar. Hudson, L. 2014. “Neopatriarchy in Syrian and Turkish Television Drama: Between the Culture Industry and the Dialect Imagination.” In L. Hudson, A. Iskandar, and M. Kirk (Eds.), Media Evolution on the Eve of the Arab Spring (pp. 127–138). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Joubin, R. 2013. The Politics of Love: Sexuality, Gender and Marriage in Syrian Drama. Lanham: Lexington Books. ——— 2020. Mediating the Uprising: Narratives of Gender and Marriage in Syrian Television Drama. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

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Kassab, E. S. 2019. Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution: The Egyptian and Syrian Debates. New York: Columbia University Press. Lynch, M. 2006. Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, al-­Jazeera, and Mideast Politics Today. New York: Columbia University Press. Mansour, M. 2015. Drama: Fire and Unrest. (Drama: al-­Nar wa-­l-­Qalaq). Damascus: Dar al-­K ana‘an. ——— 2016. “The Syrian ‘Brecht’ Breaks the Fourth Wall in Television Before and After Its Broadcast” (“‘Brecht’ al-­Suri. . .Yukasir al-­Jidar al-­Rabi‘ ba‘d wa qabalhu”). Nuqad al-­Drama (September 3). Mellor, N. 2021. “The Syrian Press and Online Media: A Driver of Arabism.” In N. Miladi and N. Mellor (Eds.), Routledge Handbook on Arab Media (pp. 417–427). London: Routledge. Mittell, J. 2015. Complex Television: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: New York University Press. Nasih, M. 2012. “The Neighborhood Gate: The Search for Roots” (“Bab al-­Hara: Al-­Bahth ‘ayn al-­Judhur”). al-­Shuruq (December 31). Nassif, H. 2015. “Home Under Siege: Bab al-­Hara, Televising Morality and Everyday Life in the Levant.” PhD thesis, University of Westminster. Newman, M. Z., and Levine, E. 2012. Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status. New York: Routledge. Nseir, N. 2020. “Reality Trumps Imagination: Writing Television Drama,” (“al-­Wāqi‘ alladi Sabaqa al-­Khayal: Kitaba li Drama al-­Talfaziyun”) Suriya al-­Ghad (October 7). Phillips, C. 2013. Everyday Arab Identity: The Daily Reproduction of the Arab World. London: Routledge. Pintak, L. 2009. “Border Guards of the ‘Imagined’ Watan: Arab Journalists and the New Arab Consciousness.” Middle East Journal 63, no. 2: 191–212. Salamandra, C. 1998. “Moustache Hairs Lost: Ramadan Television Serials and the Construction of Identity in Damascus, Syria.” Visual Anthropology 10, no. 2–4: 227–246. ——— 2004. A New Old Damascus: Authenticity and Distinction in Urban Syria. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ——— 2013. “Arab Television Drama in the Islamic Public Sphere.” In C. Gruber and S. Haugbølle (Eds.) Rhetoric of the Image: Visual Culture in Muslim Contexts (pp. 261–274). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ——— 2019. “Past Continuous: Memory and History in Syrian Social Drama.” Middle East Critique 28, no. 2: 121–141. Salamandra, C. and L. Stenberg. 2015. “Introduction: A Legacy of Raised Expectations.” In C. Salamandra and L. Stenberg (Eds.), Syria from Reform to Revolt, Volume 2: Culture, Society and Religion (pp. 1–15). Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Sarkhoh, N., and M. Koshravinik 2020. “Social Media Discourses of Arabism and the Negotiation of Self in the Middle East.” World Englishes 39, no. 4: 609–622. Shoup, J. 2005. “As It Was, and as It Should Be Now: Al Andalus in Contemporary Arab Television Dramas.” Transnational Broadcasting Studies, 15. Skovgaard-­Petersen, J. 2012. “The Caliphate in Contemporary Arab TV Culture.” In M. al-­ Rasheed and C. Kersten (Eds.), Demystifying the Caliphate: Historical Memory and Contemporary Contexts (pp. 147–164). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ——— 2018. “The Umayyads in Contemporary Arab TV Drama: Umar ibn ‘Abd al-­‘Azīz and ­Al-­Hajjāj ibn Yūsuf in Musalsalāt.” In A. George and A. Marsham (Eds.), Power, Patronage and Memory in Early Islam. Perspectives on Umayyad Elites (pp. 321–333). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Thompson, R. J. 1996. Television’s Second Golden Age: From Hill Street Blues to ER. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Wedeen, L. 2019. Authoritarian Apprehensions: Ideology, Judgement, and Mourning in Syria. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Zaatari, Z. 2015. “Desirable Masculinity/Femininity and Nostalgia of the “Anti-­Modern”: Bab el-­Hara Television Series as a Site of Production.” Sexuality & Culture 19: 19–36. Zayani, M. 2008. “The Challenges and Limits of Universalist Concepts: Problematizing Public Opinion and a Mediated Arab Public Sphere.” Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 1, no. 1: 60–79.

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21

The Dynamics of Advertising in MENA An Empirical Model Ilhem Allagui Northwestern University in Qatar

For decades, advertising in Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries has been labeled as Arab advertising or Middle Eastern advertising bringing with this nomenclature extended misconceptions, stereotypes, and ambiguities infecting the appreciation of an industry hundreds of years old. Outdated, standardized, homogeneous, and “imitati[ng] Western advertising” (Keenan  2002, 21) are only a few labels attached to the perception of advertising in the region. In this chapter, I move beyond this conversation already laid (Allagui 2019) and I argue for a fresh, de-­Westernized approach toward understanding the business of advertising in various MENA countries. Building on the argument developed in Allagui (2019) that advertising in MENA is rooted in political economy, here I suggest a three-­dimensional model that gives prominence to the diverse aspects of advertising in the region – it being a multifaceted business, tied  to a global-­local consumer culture, and in sync with the political economies in the region. Toward this aim, and mindful of the central theme of this book – contemporary media and culture in the Middle East – this chapter discusses the development of the MENA advertising industry. It will examine how the amalgam of flows that intersected its formation takes a key role in the advertising activity as we know it today: it is practiced under the tensions of the media and the local-­global dichotomy, while also being affected by industry changes driven by digital media, as well as the social and political-­economic movements within the various countries in the region (see Chapters 4, 12, 13). In this chapter, advertising is understood as any sponsored form of communication that channels through media platforms to reach out to targeted audiences. An initial look at its early days in the region enables us to understand its development, at this juncture. The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Beginnings: The Struggle of Establishing Place Just like Europe, South America, and Asia, the Middle East has been affected by the ­globalization of the advertising industry. However, the roots of advertising, some argue, go back to the pharaonic times in Egypt (Al-­Hadidi, 1999), long before it became modeled after the Mad Men1 way. Messages once circulated on pyramid walls, papyrus rolls, and through hawkers’ calls; later in more modern forms that came with the printing press (introduced in Egypt by Napoleon and the French expedition in the late eighteenth century); and more recently, in postcolonial times we witnessed the development of the broadcast and digital forms that we know today. In Egypt, after the adoption of the 1923 Constitution that endorsed the free press, advertising developed and became a substantial revenue source for the print media. Advertising agencies burgeoned, and advertising gained popularity among businesses and media leading to a competitive advertising market that official organs, including the Commerce and Industry Authority, started regularizing (Al-­Hadidi 1999; Shechter 2003). For instance, in Egypt advertising for nightclubs was not permitted. Tunisia did not allow advertising for foreign products, whereas Egypt, in support of national manufacturers, applied higher advertising costs for nonlocal products (Al-­Hadid 1999; Guaaybess 2005). Advertising became recognized as a revenue generator for Egyptian broadcast media, particularly for radio with the launch of Radio El-­Shaab (tr. People’s Radio) and later with Radio Middle East in the 1960s (Al-­Hadidi 1999). In Tunisia, advertising remained under state monopoly from 1963 to 1971 and only in 1971 was the profession of commercial advertising agent defined and regularized (UNESCO 2013). In Morocco, the buying of media space for advertising became possible in the 1930s and the first advertising agency, Havas, was established in 1946 (Media Marketing 2010). Advertising became more prevalent around the 1970s when television became popular. Lebanon was first to introduce commercial advertising in 1959, followed by Kuwait in 1969, Qatar in 1977, and Saudi Arabia in 1986 (Raad 2019). The 1952 Egyptian revolution combined with the restrictive nationalization policies caused displacement of businesses from Egypt to Lebanon, which was enjoying a liberal market economy. Advertising agencies, keen to keep managing those businesses’ accounts, moved along with them to the new markets. This displacement helped the advertising and media business flourish in Lebanon, hosting branches of global agencies that moved to serve their clients from proximity, but also serving new local businesses. Global advertising agencies multiplied their offices in several MENA countries, from the far East to the far West building networks that expanded with local mergers and international alliances (Figure 21.1 points to mergers and acquisitions regionally, but also to the launch of new local agencies). When the Lebanese civil war hit in 1975 and ran through 1990, history repeated itself with the displacement of businesses and agencies, this time from Lebanon to Bahrain and its neighboring countries, particularly the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Bahrain’s plan was to become the financial hub in the region and the host of multinational corporations, but Dubai had an even bigger plan. With the Dubai Media Free Zone  “Mad Men” refers to the 1950s advertising professionals who were based on Madison Avenue (Manhattan, New York City), which hosted several advertising agencies at the time. In 2007, the term was used for a drama series that features the world of advertising in the 1960s. 1

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United Arab Emirates Lebanon Saudi Arabia Kuwait Qatar Tunisia Egypt Morocco Bahrain Jordan Oman Palestine Algeria Syria Iraq Merges and Examples Include: Omnicom - United Arab Emirates: TBWA/RAAD, Kuwait: TBWA/RAAD/BCOMAD, Bahrain: TBWA/RAAD/Almoayyed Advertising, Oman: TBWA/ZEENAH, acquisitions

Algeria: TBWA/DJAZ Publicis - United Arab Emirates: Leo Burnett Group MEA, Saudi Arabia:Targets/Leo Burnett and Akeel Saatchi and Saatchi Riyadh, Kuwait: Radius Leo Burnett Havas -Algeria: Ganfood, Lebanon: Havas Levant, Y&R/Panorama, Tunisia. WPP-Algeria, crea y&R. BBDO/3SG, Tunisia- DDBLCG Levant Communicaation Group, Beirut. DDB, Promoaction, Saudi Arabia. DDB: TD&A-DDB, UAE.

New market entry

Figure 21.1  Networks of Selected Global Agencies in MENA Countries

launched in 2000, the Emirate of Dubai offered incentives including tax exemptions and production facilities for global media companies to make Dubai their home. Attracted by such facilities and keen to remain close to their clients that dislocated to the UAE, several global advertising agencies that embraced and extended the local-­global integration that marked the 1980s and 1990s made their Dubai offices the main contact points in the region. It is fair to say that the position that Dubai and the UAE holds in advertising today is the result of regional sociopolitical factors and a strategic vision that has made the UAE a major advertising hub in the Middle East2 hosting global, regional, and local advertising businesses and professionals of various origins and cultural backgrounds.

The Flow of Lebanese Advertising Talent Across the Region This flow of professionals relocating from the rest of the world to the region is not a one-­way movement, but a transnational exchange phenomenon that occurred in the industry through decades. For instance, with the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war  By size, the major advertising markets remain Egypt and Saudi Arabia, with the highest populations.

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and the displacement of displaced ad agencies, some practitioners decided to leave Lebanon, “the cradle of creativity and professional communication since the late 40s” (Raad  2019, para. 4). Gurus of the advertising business today include those who migrated and continued developing in this business elsewhere, mainly in Europe. Lebanese Antoine Choueiri (deceased in 2010), founder of the pan-­Arab advertising business, is an example of those who left Lebanon for France, where he joined Publicis, and later returned to the region with expertise and new ideas that have transformed the interregional advertising business. Kamal Dimachkieh, now at Leo Burnett, worked in Lebanon and Bahrain, but also Chicago and Canada. Raja Trad started his experience in Beirut, then Athens, before he joined Leo Burnett and grew with that network to become the chairman of the Publicis Group in the Middle East and Africa. Ramzi Raad, now chairman of TBWA/RAAD, fled the Lebanese war for Dubai in the 1970s, then moved to Paris and London before returning to Dubai in the late 1980s and merging RAAD with TBWA in 1999. Hence, the Western experience gained by local talents, at a time when local training was not as well developed as today, combined with the establishment of global agencies and the migration of a skilled foreign workforce in local markets, have shaped the spirit and practical applications of the advertising business. One should also mention that the advertising and marketing communication education in the region has been tied to a Western curriculum, and that Lebanon was a pioneer in offering advertising, business, and graphic design training ahead of other countries in the region. In addition to these dynamics of place that affected the development of the advertising markets across the region, the diversification of the media played a significant role in the structure of the business, as will be discussed in the next section.

Media Diversification and the Emergence of the Pan-­Arab Media Market The media in MENA countries developed after the various independences, and inherited a management style close to that of the colonizers. MENA political leaders, profiting from a multiparty vacuum they created, reproduced the colonizers’ style and implemented a media system based on government-­ownership and control that ran through the 1980s up until the mid-­1990s. Advertising was consequently controlled, and at times ad space or time was allocated on a loyalty basis. The weak economies, based on government-­owned manufacturing and little privatization which led to little competition between brands, restrained advertising from developing. At that time, advertising contributed little to the funding of media. The development of private media since the late 1990s introduced a commercial approach to media and offered semi-­independent platforms for advertisers, as control of the state remained a significant impediment to media freedom in MENA (see Chapters 12, 13). Media privatization came in through different waves in MENA countries, but it has been satellite television that has helped create a sizable market, the pan-­Arab market, and has elevated the business of advertising across MENA.

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The new pan-­Arab media market rests on the premise that MENA countries share similar cultural identifiers including language, religion, and traditions. The pan-­Arab advertising market, developed thanks to transnational media, is a Lebanese creation (Raad  2019). In fact, its early footsteps were made by Antoine Choueiri who placed advertisements in Egyptian movies’ videocassettes before they were distributed in Saudi Arabia and neighboring Gulf countries (Harb 2015; Raad 2019). Nevertheless, the satellite television market reinvigorated the transnational advertising market, in particular that of the UAE with the establishment of these agencies there (Raad 2019). The pan-­ Arab advertising market targets far-­reaching and massive audiences, and expands brand exposure across the region. Mainly manufactured in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG), as well as airlines, beauty products, hospitality facilities, malls, banking facilities, automotive dealerships in the GCC, schools and training centers, all promoted their brands on satellite channels, reaching audiences from East to West. This represented an appealing market for media and Choueiri played a significant role promoting to brands the advantages of “going pan-­Arab,” and thus advertising on transnational media. He was also a pioneer in contributing to the regulation of the satellite market, namely through the establishment of price lists of advertisement opportunities in media outlets, known as rate cards (Harb 2015). Although rate cards remain a controversial topic due to high inflation between the real media costs that brands actually pay, as compared to the rates shown on the cards (Aoun 2020), it is undeniable that advertising revenues helped media develop into the empires we know today (i.e. the MBC group). The excessive cost of television advertising, particularly during Ramadan,3 a pan-­Arab prime season for advertising, and the commission on TV placement in satellite channels helped groups like the Choueiri Group as well as Leo Burnett, through its media division Starcom, rule the advertising media markets for years. This development of the pan-­Arab market, the media buildup, and agency collaboration also helped in the acquisition of new and licensed programs on private media; this led not only to an improved style and more aesthetics on television, which helped increase reach and engagement, but also to new or emergent opportunities of advertising formats, such as sponsored and branded content. Licensed format television including Star Academy and other reality television shows are tied with branded content deals, which at the time were new to local advertising. Case in point, Star Academy  Advertising during Ramadan, a religious and cultural season during which Muslims are instructed to fast from sunrise to sunset and embrace a spiritual attitude, is the most expensive advertising season of the year. For multinational brands, advertising during Ramadan is an opportunity to reach audiences with quasi similar media habits, tuned to pan-­Arab media channels to watch religious lectures, cooking programs, or drama series. Advertisers, especially in food and FMCG, reach out to this receptive audience willing to engage with brands both offline and online. The media development, combined with audiences’ adoption of the Internet and their changing media consumption patterns, means that advertising during Ramadan became increasingly localized and digital not only because brands aim to follow an audience that migrated online and that have little patience for long commercial breaks when watching their favorite Ramadan Musalsalet (tr. tele series), but also because of the high media cost at a time economically challenging for brands. For more on advertising during Ramadan, see Allagui (2019).

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(2003–2016) came with a “global” product placement4 deal with Coca-­Cola; however, locally and even in the region, product placement has never kicked off as a significant ad revenue source. Product placement is still only occasional in Arab movies, and cinema advertising remains the weakest media among advertising expenses with 3.5% of estimated net advertising expenses (see Figure  21.2). More recently, the adoption of digital technologies and the improvement of the internet infrastructure5 across the region have enabled diverse brand opportunities to reach audiences through the online platforms. The rise of a regional advertising market as a consequence of the dynamics of place for brands and their agencies, as well as the development of the media business across the region, shape the political economies of the industry that represent the first pillar of the advertising model suggested here. The remainder of the chapter will discuss the two other pillars: advertising as a multifaceted business in an environment marked by a global-­local consumer culture.

Ipsos Estimated Net Expenditures Ratio

Figure 21.2  Advertising Expenditures in MENA  Product placement is only one example of branded content. Branded content has become multidimensional– it can be both paid and owned – but most importantly, it presents some value and benefits to the consumers such as information, education or entertainment. For Zuckerman et al. (2015, 5), branded content “combines the promotional purpose of traditional ads with the consumers’ experience of non-­brand-­affiliated news, information, or entertainment. It provides a consumer benefit in the service of a brand. Second, the content is consistent with its setting – that is, it fits with the medium or method that delivers it from both a creative and a contextual point of view.” 5  It is important to note that these experiences are highly inconsistent across the countries of the region. The high internet infrastructure and affordable subscription deals in the GCC countries cannot compare with those in North Africa, for instance, which makes the viewing experiences and brand interactions much more enjoyable in GCC countries. 4

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Development of Advertising Formats: Experiential and Engagement Opportunities The internet and digital technologies continued the transformation of the advertising industry with the emergence of specialized businesses including online advertising agencies, and the development of new advertising formats offering diverse placement opportunities, including social and branded content. For instance, young content producers in Saudi Arabia and Jordan have popularized branded content in web series, making such deals with brands mainstream. An illustration of this can be found in the popular Saudi web series Takki, which counts millions of views for each episode, and the scenario for which was written in light of branded content opportunities including Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority and Nissan (Allagui  2019, 2018). Additional opportunities include social media influencer marketing, now accessible to large brands or small and medium enterprises (SME) that are interested in local and pan-­Arab users identifiable through specific segments using demographics, psychographics, or technographic profiles. A recent illustration of this can be found in Ramadan 21 social media series, Qata’ef, a partnership between magazine Vogue Arabia and Mac Cosmetics Middle East, which featured regional influencers such as Saudi Lujain Omran and Palestinian Haifa Beseisso. This series played on Instagram and targeted those interested in beauty, fashion, and drama across the region. Another Ramadan 21 Instagram series, Musalsal Gucci, also a partnership between a media brand that targets millennials, Mille,6 and a fashion brand (Gucci), also featured influencers from the region and targeted those interested in luxury goods, lifestyle, and fashion. Ipsos estimates that in 2019 brands in MENA spent US$250 million on influencer marketing, which represents about 6% of total advertising expenditures (see Figure 21.2). Often times, deals with influencers do not involve advertising brokers; they occur between the influencer and the brand, sidelining the agency, and thus introducing a structural change to the business of advertising post-­internet and social media times. Native advertising involves editors and is increasingly developed by journalists. Placement on owned social channels such as YouTube or Instagram is an additional disruption to traditional advertising models and an opportunity for brands to try different formats. For instance, experiential techniques placed on owned social channels help connect the brand directly with audiences in formats other than the traditional 30-­second TVC spots. Created by Memac Ogilvy & Mather Dubai, Coca Cola’s Dark Iftar “No Labels,”7 a Ramadan short movie, is an interesting example of how brands innovate with techniques to provoke conversations with audiences. This dinner experience in the dark with a group of six male influencers who cannot see each other tackles the issues of stereotypes and judgments based on appearance. The short movie turns emotional when, once the lights are on, the participants discover how wrong they were in labeling each other. The brand is a facilitator of the conversation to eradicate prejudice that has occurred on social platforms. Another example that speaks to the variety  Mille TV counts several partnerships with brands including Burberry, Ralph Lauren, and Nike. See https://www.milleworld.com/category/mille-­tv/ 7  “No Labels” short movie can be seen here: https://youtu.be/84OT0NLlqfM 6

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of formats and facets of advertising is OMO’s “Dirt Is Good.”8 The 23-­hour challenge draws on the finding9 that “Arab” kids have become the most idle kids in the world because parents think they are protecting them by keeping them inside, away from the dirt, and not allowing them to play outside, notes Tahaab Rais, head of strategy at FP7/ Mena (Allagui 2019). Created by FP7 Dubai, the “dullest ad in history for the least active kids in history” is a 23-­hour stream, supported by social conversations and on-­g round activation;10 it speaks to a new generation of audiences in the GCC countries who are called to reconsider traditions and lifestyles they have been used to for years now. The examples mentioned are only a few of the various formats available, evidence of the multifaceted advertising business that has developed along with the political and economic transformations locally, regionally, and globally. The next section will discuss the third pillar of the MENA advertising model and how global flows and cultural tensions shape the business of marketing communication. Advertising revolves around understanding audiences, a paramount task that is increasingly dynamic, considering the time and the space.

Culture in the Scope of Brands’ Growth Strategies The Global Consumer Culture Theory points to the central role of culture in marketing communication and the impact that culture creates on consumers in foreign markets (early works include Waters [1995] and Nijman [1999]). Through symbols and projected experiences, and embraced in global brand communications, culture can influence consumers, and create a “new” consumer culture that “serves as a symbolic mediation, capable of providing the foundation for meaning, self-­images, self-­identities, and values” (Taylor et  al. 2012, 152). Consumer culture translates not only in consuming the same products, say Taylor et al. (2012), but also in having similar motivation for consuming these products. In the 1950s, American advertising spread messages about freedom, happiness, love, and self-­achievement. At that time, the majority of Arab countries were still fighting colonialism. Values of freedom and happiness therefore do not resonate equally among audiences across time and space, even though Grow (2017) notes that the values diffused by American advertising were welcomed nearly all across the world; “American advertising’s hegemonic power has infused the aspirational values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness into the global marketplace. Today, these aspirational values are rooted in, and perpetuated by, consumption; and, with the pervasive nature of technology, their influence bleeds across international borders” (Grow 2017, 59).  “Dirt Is Good” is available at: https://www2.dubailynx.com/winners/2018/media/entry. cfm?entryid=1374&award=2 9  This research is conducted by Unilever; the data is collected globally, including “Arab” countries (unlisted). “Arab kids spend less than 1-­hour a day engaged in physical activity,” says the FP7/ Mena case submitted to the Dubai Lynx Advertising Festival. (https://www2.dubailynx.com/ winners/2018/media/entry.cfm?entryid=1374&award=2) 10  Brand activation offers the audience opportunities to engage, test, and interact with the brand through events, experiences and different other kinds of interactions. 8

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In the MENA markets, there is a persistent tension between being attracted to those values and actually embracing them. Values of freedom and liberty do not resonate or apply similarly in patriarchal and controlled societies, and brands cannot always connect with audiences through those themes so prevalent elsewhere. Instead, advertisers have been seeking more relatable themes including friendship, family, and togetherness in societies that lean more toward (moderate) conservatism and patriarchy (Allagui 2019). Evidently, even within the MENA region and at the subject level, openness to modern values and adherence to traditionalism varies significantly. For instance, when users were asked about whether more should be done to preserve cultural traditions, nearly twice as many Egyptians than Tunisians agreed (Egyptians 86% vs. Tunisians 48%). Preference to view one’s culture or foreign culture in entertainment products also varies among the countries: in Tunisia there is more interest in watching foreign culture in movies compared to the UAE; 81% of the UAE respondents prefer watching movies that portray their own culture compared to 45% of Tunisian respondents.11 Typically, marketers’ strategies are designed in light of quantitative insights provided by market research that are statistically representative of consumers’ attitudes and opinions. In this case, for instance, a UAE’s brand-­advertising strategy would be framed around a closer representation of consumers’ own culture although some consumers in the UAE may be more curious about and interested in foreign cultures. Only with the emergent ­opportunity of big data processing can marketers now start targeting at a personal level. The Global Consumer Culture Theory has widely adopted cross-­national similarities to understand and communicate with consumers (Taylor et al. 2012). In cases where the local inclinations among countries show diversity, campaigns following the GCCT framework would rely more on human truths or purposes that are shared across different cultures and markets (e.g. motherhood, good vs. evil, helping the needy, etc.). For instance, McDonald’s slogan “I’m lovin’ it,” has been running since 2003 in several countries, with copy translation on a country-­by-­country basis. It is about a moment that everyone could relate to, regardless of one’s origin or time. When advertisers opt for a more localized strategy, they will adopt messaging using rituals, religion, community dialect, or a specific way of life that is exclusive to the community, city, or country. Localized theories emphasize understanding, relating to, and adopting the local consumer culture in their brand communications ( Jackson 2004). For instance, the telecommunications service provider Viva Kuwait launched a funny Ramadan commercial based on the local insight that people share food during Ramadan, but it’s imperative that the individual cookware returns to its right owner. Non-­Kuwaitis would not necessarily relate to the commercial, highly loaded as it is with local cultural cues. At times, advertisers merge a globalized strategy with some localization specifics, then, we speak about “glocalization.” The glocalized theory is a hybrid model between localization and standardization and is based on the preference that some advertisers and strategists have toward understanding, positioning, and adopting their messaging to consumers living in both localized and globalized cultures. For example, McDonalds would use the same slogan and visuals for “I’m lovin’ it,” benefiting from a globalized  This section’s statistics are pulled from mideastmedia.org, 2018.

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concept while promoting a McArabia sandwich or Ramadan dinner and inserting ­g raphics and visuals relatable to the local culture in the Ramadan season (e.g. lanterns and crescent). Globalization, localization, and glocalization are approaches based on geographic fences that fail to satisfy new segmentation criteria that neglect countries’ actual borders and limits. The emergence of cross-­market segmentation moves the conversation beyond geopolitical borders and considers that, wherever they are based, consumers form homogeneous groups by modes of consumption (Holt et al. 2004). For instance, in the music-­streaming services, segmentation drives the business; it enables the building and connecting of audiences according to the different music genres that audiences in Bombay, Doha, or Helsinki are interested in and subscribe to. Spotify or Anghami have audiences across the world; those interested in hip-­hop or classical Tarab could be based in Africa, Asia, or South America, belong to different age groups, and hold different lifestyles. Dove’s Real Beauty campaign is based on a human truth, embraced by a group of people wherever they are located and regardless of any languages they speak. The campaign targets those who share the belief that beauty is natural, and comes from the inside, despite sizes or wrinkles. Global communication agencies like WPP or Publicis may see advantages in using globalized approaches to advertising, including cost efficiency. Campaigns such as Priceless (MasterCard) or Real Beauty (Dove) are based on human truths that transcend cultures and make it convenient for agencies to use the same concept in different countries. Having agency representatives and offices in various cities extends the maneuverability of agencies to serve their clients. Global agencies identify local agencies to partner with for specific accounts. This merger of local and global has extensive implications on the campaign development process and creative outcome.

Creating Advertisements: The Impact of Place Advertising promotes brands, products, services, and causes. Advertising aims to reach out to and persuade intended audiences with the brands’ marketing communication. This requires an understanding of consumers’ individual and collective mindsets, which remains a prerequisite of any advertising work. Culture is embraced in each component of the matrix of communication. Hofstede defines culture as “the collective mental programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another” (1997, 5) and Shavitt et al. (2008, 1103) add that “Cultural distinctions have been demonstrated to have important implications for advertising content, persuasiveness of appeals, consumer motivation, consumer judgement process, and consumer response style.” At every stage, culture is embedded in the creative process that triggers commerce: advertising messages call for audiences’ responses to the marketing messages, including commercial responses (i.e. buying products or services), and noncommercial responses (i.e. involving behavioral change). To incite a response, the messages need to be culturally framed and designed in a way that is accessible for the audiences to grasp and act upon. It is within culture that ideas are born (creative team),

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through culture that messages are transmitted (media channels and content), and thanks to culture that they are understood (consumer culture). Organizational cultures play a role in the ways that ideas develop and materialize within an agency. In addition to leadership styles and company values, other factors include the flow of people or personnel that pass through the agency. The historical displacement of advertisers across the region does not relate to countries of the region equally. While the GCC labor market is heavily reliant on Lebanese, Egyptians, Asians, and more recently, Westerners, markets in North Africa, for instance, are less concerned with this migration but highly influenced by Western colonization and the inherited relationships they have with their European colonizers. Agencies in Morocco, Tunisia, or even farther East in Lebanon, are comprised of talents with homogeneous backgrounds, typically all nationals. If talents from a foreign country join in those markets, they would be outliers. Conversely, in the UAE or Qatar markets, the outliers would be the nationals of their own countries, if they ever do work in advertising agencies.12 The composite of cultures and backgrounds within agencies in the GCC, and in the UAE more particularly, is a trademark of the advertising business there. Thus, the interactive dynamic within the various national agencies is quite different, as foreigners would have to be “acculturated” before being able to understand the particular ­consumer culture. The question then becomes, does it make an agency more or less creative if the personnel are from multinational cultures and backgrounds? It is true that diversity enriches ideas; the variation in styles of work, the collision of ideas, spontaneity, and even mayhem generated within agencies, all have advantages and disadvantages, and present opportunities and threats. Data shows, however, that more prize-­winning creative works came out of the UAE than from any other country in the region (Allagui 2019). This does not mean that UAE agencies are necessarily more creative (see Figure 21.3) because 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 Egypt

Morocco

Tunisia

Bahrain

Kuwait

Saudi Arabia

United Arab Emirates

Qatar

2001

2004 2005

2006 2008

2009 2010

2011

2012

2013 2014

2015 2016

2017 2018

2019

Lebanon

Jordan

Figure 21.3  MENA Advertising Campaign Winners at the Cannes Lions Creativity Festival  Nationals in GCC countries are known to prefer working in the public sector that offers more advantages to nationals than the private sector.

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of the diversity of their teams; those UAE agencies also represent typically the main offices of the global networks in MENA and consequently they have more resources, easier access to the global teams, bigger clients, and bigger networks of media with which they have tighter collaboration and thus they enjoy a setting that is attractive to expats for building careers.

The Structure: An Audience-­Media Play The media transformations in the MENA region during the last decade are as jaw-­dropping as its sociopolitical transformations (see Chapter 10). Aside from the fact that media both mushroomed and became more fragmented right after the Arab uprisings (Schoenback et al. 2016), media also became relatively more free and has displayed content that is more local than regional or global, meeting the taste and preference of local audiences (Dennis et al. 2018). A show on Lebanese LBC, Tunisian Al-­Hiwar, or Egyptian Al Kahera Wal Nas would be in a similarly dressed-­up studio, with a fine décor, but the host and guests would speak a local dialect, go through local news, and invite local celebrities to play games, exchange jokes, and interact with local audiences (there are some exceptions with online interactions or on pan-­Arab channels). Television remains important across countries, and digital platforms have picked up an equally important audience across the region. Data shows that with the exception of Tunisia, people use the internet more than they watch television across Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Jordan, and Lebanon (Dennis et al. 2019). So far, digital advertising and advertising on television have the lion’s share in the region’s advertising expenditures (see Figure 21.1). Similar to newspapers, which lost several outlets and significant advertising revenues mainly due to the migration of audiences to online news platforms,13 private media are currently going through the same hurdles due to uprisings, economic downturn, and COVID-­19, which has made marketers fearful about the survival of their businesses and thus have been cutting their advertising spending. For instance, Lebanon, home to the highest ad spend per capita (see Table  21.1), went through severe revolts in 2019’s last quarter, bringing ad spending on media to a stop, or dropping up to 70–80% for some brands (Akerman  2020). Continuous crises with more revolts in Lebanon, war in Syria and Yemen, and COVID-­19 across the region are leading to layoffs and business closures, only aggravating the crisis for the advertising industry. To fight the crises, Lebanese ad entrepreneurs plan to adopt the same old strategies: to either relocate to the Gulf, look for clients outside Lebanon, reduce staff and salaries, or relocate talents in the region. Alain Rizk, CEO of Rizk group, speaks about serving  businesses from abroad, which enables his agency to offer prices that are more ­competitive and thus “attract clients to work with Lebanese agencies out of Lebanon. Lebanese creatives at Lebanese prices, not Lebanese creatives at UAE and Saudi prices” (Akerman  2020, 9). With the COVID-­19 crisis hitting the GCC countries, businesses

 For an example from the region, see Ibahrine (2019).

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Table 21.1  2019 Ad spend per capital in MENA. Data from Ipsos (Aoun, 2020) Population (2019, M) Lebanon UAE Kuwait Qatar Egypt Bahrain Jordan KSA Oman Morocco Iraq Tunisia

7 10 4.7 2.8 100 1.4 10.1 34 4.9 36.4 38.4 11.6

Annual GDP (2018, Bn, $US)

Total Ad spend (2019, M, $US)

Ad spend per capita

57 414 141 191 251 38 42 787 79 118 224 40

1,343.9 1,834.9 620.3 322.5 7,749.1 85.8 328.7 1,338.7 135.2 743.4 657.7 70.11

191.9 183.4 131.9 115.3 77.5 61.4 32.5 39.37 27.5 20.4 17.12 6.04

across the region will have to adjust to the economic downturn. It is clear that while marketers ask their agencies to shuffle the budget and cut spending, agencies look for alternatives to suggest to their clients: concentration on selected products or spending on local online portals in a way to prioritize proximity to the consumers and support their clients with short-­term sale strategies. Previous research on advertising in economic downturn times shows that brands that keep promoting and maintain brand presence in the minds of their consumers win account advantages and may resume their businesses at recovery more easily than those brands that stopped advertising (Allagui and Ibahrine 2014). With more audiences shifting to online and particularly social media, advertisers note that “local” leads. In addition to language, preference for programs portraying one’s own culture was a consistent finding in six MENA countries (Dennis et  al. 2018). However, advertisers are wary of the transforming mindsets of consumers now exposed to global narratives, and who have become engaged with worldwide events, protests, and causes in different ways, be it tweeting, liking, re-­sharing stories online or actually organizing and attending sit-­ins on the streets. Audiences in MENA have become more critical and more vocal than they have ever been. Females realize the dogma they have been suppressed by and are less inclined to go along with what their mothers or grandmothers have endured. Patriarchy is being questioned across the countries in the region and women’s participation has never been this prevalent in the region (Thomas 2019; Allagui 2019). This does not mean that all females became free from traditional practices and pressures, but more families are setting examples in defying and challenging old practices, and more male and females are online interacting, discussing, or listening. Brands that listen have an opportunity to tap into and walk with this audience. For instance, Knorr produced a series of branded

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content highlighting women from the Middle East achieving their dreams by becoming entrepreneurs, sports leaders, and coaches, and the positive impact they achieved in their communities. Vimto, a famous Saudi brand for a Ramadan drink, has used images showing women in the kitchen or women serving food for decades; Vimto’s most recent commercials feature women doctors helping their communities, while dads are at home with the children. The emergent sociocultural transformation that has been recognizing new roles and responsibilities in the societies is slowly and steadily being reflected in modern advertising in the Middle East.

Conclusion This chapter discusses the emergence and development of the advertising industry in MENA, with a particular focus on the post-­2000 era, and in line with the contemporary time period of the book. In its initial stage, advertising emerged in a region largely under colonialism. It suffered the aftermath of wars, including delocalization. Thus, its development across the region is impacted by the flow of people and organizations across the region and the world, but also by national economic and political policies (see Chapters 10, 12). Such policies include the nationalization of organizations early on in Egypt, the liberalization of the media sector across the region in the 1990s, the adoption of a free zone policy to encourage the establishment of multinationals in the UAE, or the adoption of a pan-­Arab market through facilitating media buying for brands that advertise across countries. This political economy dimension constitutes the first pillar of the tripartite model of the advertising industry in MENA introduced in this chapter. This model also stems from two additional dimensions. First, advertising is a multifaceted business considering the breadth of strategies from traditional posters and TV commercials to branded content and brand partnerships in social media series. Second, advertising in MENA swings in multiple consumer cultures, both global and local. Just as the region is engrained in different cultures, so is advertising. Advertising in MENA embraces cultures from within and beyond to communicate with audiences in verbal and nonverbal languages that they comprehend. While globalization is far-­reaching and impacting audiences worldwide, advertisers became mindful of how important it is to connect brands with audiences on grounds they relate to and with whom bonding should only add value to their lives. References Akerman, I. 2020. “Lebanese Ad Men and Women Fighting for Survival.” ArabAd online. (February). https://www.arabadonline.com/en/details/advertising/lebanese-­ad-­men­and-­women-­f ighting-­for-­survival Allagui, I. 2018. “The Changing Nature of Socialization Among Arab Youth: Insights from Online Practices.” In Zayani, M (Ed.), Digital Middle East: State and Society in the Information Age (pp. 33–57). London: Hurst Publishers and Oxford University Press.

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Allagui, I. 2019. Advertising in MENA Goes Digital. New York: Routledge. Allagui, I., and Ibahrine, M. 2014. “Downturn Times in the Arab Advertising Industry: Strategies of Survival.” Journal of Business and Policy Research 9, no. 2: 54–64. Al Hadidi, M. 1999. Advertising? Cairo, Egypt: Eddar AlMasria AlLubnania. Aoun, E. 2020. “MENA Advertising Expenditures Dissected.” ArabAd online. (May 12). http:// arabadonline.com/en/details/advertising/MENA-­Advertising-­Expenditure-­Dissected Dennis, E. E., Martin, J. D., and Hassan, F. 2018. Media Use in the Middle East, 2018: A Seven-­nation Survey. Northwestern University in Qatar. Retrieved from www.mideastmedia.org/ survey/2018 Dennis, E. E., Martin, J. D., and Hassan, F. 2019. Media Use in the Middle East, 2019: A Seven-­nation Survey. Northwestern University in Qatar. Retrieved from www.mideastmedia.org/ survey/2019 Grow, J. M. 2017. “American Advertising and the Politics of Consumption.” In R. Crawford Brennan and L. Parker (Eds.), Global Advertising Practice in a Borderless World (pp. 59–72). New York: Routledge. Guayybess, T. 2005. Televisions arabes sur orbite: Un systeme mediatique en mutation (1960–2004). CNRS Editions. https://books.openedition.org/editionscnrs/2364?lang=en Harb, Z. 2015. “Antoine Choueiri: ‘President’ of Arab Advertising.” In D. R. Donatella, N. Sakr, and S. P. Jakob, (Eds.), Arab Media Moguls (pp. 31–47). London: I.B. Tauris. Hofstede, G. 1997. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. New York: McGraw-­Hill. Holt, D., Quelch, J. A., and Taylor, E. L. 2004. “How Global Brands Compete.” Harvard Business Review 82, no. 9: 68–75. Ibahrine, M. 2019. “Emergence of a News Website Ecosystem: An Exploratory Study of Hespress.” Journalism Practice, 14, no. 8: 971–990. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2019. 1679037. Jackson, P. 2004. “Local Consumption Cultures in a Globalized World.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 29, no. 2: 165–178. Keenan, K. L. 2002. “Africa, Northern.” In J. McDonough and K. Egolf (Eds.), The Advertising Age Encyclopedia of Advertising (pp. 20–22). London: Routledge. Media Marketing. 2010. “Il était une fois la pub au Maroc.” (October 15). https://mediamarketing. ma/view/ZCGFHEE/il_aetait_une_fois_la_pub_au_maroc.html Mideastmedia.org. 2018. “Media Use in the Middle East.” Interactive website. Northwestern University in Qatar. http://www.mideastmedia.org/survey/2018/. Nijman, J. 1999. “Cultural Globalization and the Identity of Place: The Reconstruction of Amsterdam.” Ecumene 6, no. 2, 146–164. Raad, R. 2019. “Ramzi Raad: Get Up and Let Us Count our Blessings.” ArabAd online. https:// arabadonline.com/en/details/advertising/ramzi-­raad-­get-­up-­and-­let-­us-­count-­our-­blessings Schoenbach, K., Wood, R., and Saeed, M. 2016. Media Industries in the Middle East, 2016. Northwestern University in Qatar. Retrieved from http://www.mideastmedia.org/ industry/2016/ Shavitt, S., Lee, A. Y., and Johnson, T. P. 2008. “Cross-­ cultural Consumer Psychology.” In C. Haugtvedt, P. Herr, and F. Kardes. (Eds.), Handbook of Consumer Psychology (pp. 1103–1131). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Shechter, R. 2003. Press Advertising in Egypt: Business Realities and Local Meaning, 1882–1956. The Arab Studies Journal 10/11, no. 2/1 (Fall 2002/Spring 2003): 44–66. Shimp, T. A. 2000. Advertising, Promotion, and supplemental aspects of Incremental Marketing Communications (5th ed.). Dryden Press.

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Taylor, C. R., Okazaki, S., and Mueller, B. 2012. “Theory Advancement in International Advertising: Drawing on Theories from Strategic Management and International Business.” In S. Rodgers and E. Thorson (Eds.), Advertising Theory (pp. 149–161). New York: Routledge. Thomas, K. 2019. Women’s Rights in the Middle East and North Africa. https://www.arabbarometer. org/wp-­content/uploads/AB_Women_August2019_Public-­Opinion_Arab-­Barometer.pdf UNESCO 2013. Assessment of Media Development in Tunisia. Available at http://www.unesco.org/ new/en/communication-­and-­information/resources/publications-­and-­communication-­ materials/publications/full-­list/assessment-­of-­media-­development-­in-­tunisia/ Waters, M. 1995. Globalization. London: Routledge. Zuckerman, N., Arthofer, F., Mei-­Pochtler, A., Hutchison, R., and Rastogi, V. 2015. Branded Content: Growth for Marketers and Media Companies. The Boston Consulting Group. https:// www.bcg.com/publications/2015/media-­entertainment-­branded-­content-­g rowth-­for-­ marketers-­and-­media-­companies.aspx

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22

Reconfigurations of Religiopolitical Traditions and Identities Mediated Religion in the Arab Countries1 Ehab Galal Introduction After a trial period that lasted for weeks, Misr Qur’ān Karim TV channel was officially launched at the dawning of the first days of the holy month of Ramadan, and offers various recitations of verses by the most eminent scholars/reciters with pure Egyptian voices.2

The launch of a new TV channel: Misr Qur’ān Karim TV (Egyptian Holy Qur’ān TV) was announced on the website of the Egyptian newspaper Al-­’In Al-­Ikhbariya on April 24, 2020. According to the epigraph, the channel wanted to promote the most skillful, Egyptian religious scholars. The chairman of the board and owner of United Media Services Company (UMSC) argues, “The new channel will be a gateway for discovering the voices of new reciters of the Holy Qur’ān and religious chants.”3 Considering the already large number of Islamic channels, the launch may raise the question whether  The research for this chapter formed part of the research project Mediatized Diaspora (MEDIASP) – Contentious Politics among Arab Media Users in Europe, which is financed by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (funding ID: 8018–00038B). 2  https://al-­ain.com/article/ramadan-­egypt-­holy-­quran (accessed February 13, 2021). My translations from Arabic into English. 3   https://al-­ain.com/article/ramadan-­egypt-­holy-­quran (accessed February 13, 2021). 1

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Egypt – or any other Muslim or Arab country – needs yet another Islamic satellite TV channel. According to a study conducted in 2016 on Muslim attitudes on religion and religious leadership, the answer could be yes. The study asked 5,374  Muslim youths (between the ages of 15 and 34 years) from eight different Arab countries4 about their views and attitudes towards religious identity, religious leadership, the role of the state in religious affairs, the need for reform, and religious extremism. It concluded that a significant number pointed to religious TV shows as “their most important source of guidance and direction” (The Futures Initiative 2016, 8). A majority of the respondents, on the other hand, agreed that the language, the topics, and the questions of the religious scholars need to become better accorded with Muslims’ everyday modern life. They referred to Friday sermons as a “tirade,” “boring,” or “the voice of the government.” They requested more female religious scholars and preachers – regardless of the respondents’ gender. One may ask if a government-­initiated Qu’rān channel may satisfy the need. The launch, the study, and the respondents’ criticism mirror a reality in the Arab countries in which religious television has become an influential, cultural phenomenon that is popular, largely controlled, and contested. Religion has continuously had a prominent position in Arab countries, but it has not always been a predominant aspect of Arab media. Religion only had a limited presence in national media in most Arab countries – apart from the Arab peninsula – in the aftermath of independence. Only Friday sermons, fatwa5 programs, and Qur’ānic interpretations were included. Religion was, moreover, separated from news, entertainment, and children’s programs. This compartmentalization was seen as a natural consequence of secular state-­building after national independence (Abu-­Lughod 2008). This has changed dramatically since the 1990s when new satellite technology and the internet gave rise to an explosion of new, border-­ crossing satellite channels and online media (Sakr 2002; El-­Nawawy and Khamis 2016). This new configuration of Arab religious media – mainly focusing on satellite television  – will be characterized and analyzed in the following discussion. The aim is to understand its role and contribution in a landscape of Arab media which has generally been proliferated, diversified, and richly illustrated in other chapters in this volume (see Chapters 12,13, 21).

A Typology The exact number of religious television channels are, for several reasons, difficult to establish. First, there is no clear consensus among researchers, producers, or state authorities about what qualifies a channel to be religious. To differentiate between various kinds of satellite channels, a report on Satellite TV in the Arab world simply describes religious channels as “religiously-­focused” (Al Atiyat and Khreisha 2017). In the following  Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, and Palestine.  A fatwa is a formal ruling or interpretation issued by a qualified legal scholar in response to questions from individuals or Islamic courts. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/ (accessed February 13, 2021). 4 5

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discussion, a similar empirical categorization is adopted perceiving religious media as aiming to promote specific religious values and ideas. Research on mediated religious media, however, emphasizes that the current increase in digital mediation of religious beliefs and practices is not only a question of moving religion from a traditional institution to a new platform (Campbell 2012; Hoover 2016). Digital religion, including satellite TV, may “re-­form rituals and bypass traditional systems of legitimation or recognized gatekeepers,” and provide opportunities “to transcend normal limits of time, space, and geography’ (Campbell  2012, 2–3). Religious media therefore refer to what Campbell (2012, 3) describes as a “technological and cultural space.” This is interesting not only due to its new transnational reach, but also because the online and offline religious spheres have become blended (2012, 4), thus altering religious identities, practices, and beliefs. Following this definition, 122 out of 1,000 channels can be considered as religious channels and are available on seven satellites targeting the Arab world.6 These include Sunni, Shi’a, and Christian channels; most are in Arabic, while a few are in English, Amharic, Persian, or other languages (Al Atiyat and Khreisha 2017). Considering the location of the channel’s headquarters, Egypt is ranked as the largest provider with 23 religious channels followed by Saudi Arabia with 20. Egypt is by far the country with the most satellite channels – 178 covering all genres. The ownership of almost all religious channels is private, with only eight of the 122 channels owned by governments (Al Atiyat and Khreisha 2017). The private companies that finance the channels often have changing or hidden majority proprietorship, which can make it difficult to establish the actual owners. Second, these numbers may be informative, but they are not fully reliable as they do not capture the complexity of the religious media landscape. These numbers only include programs broadcast by seven specific satellites, and reflect a mere snapshot of the landscape. They do not capture why channels continuously open and close, usually due to either financial or political reasons.7 Yet, this large number of religious television channels, and the variations between them, makes it useful to provide a typology. Table 22.1 offers a typology, despite its analytical distinctions being open for discussion. The table is not exhaustive but includes examples of channels broadcasting in Arabic only. Although new satellite and digital technology makes all channels accessible across national borders, not all channels target a global audience. The following classification therefore distinguishes between nationally and transnationally-­oriented channels. The majority of religious channels belong to the category of transnationally oriented and privately owned channels, of which some have close connections to the ruling elites and others refrain from contesting the regime. The first Islamic satellite channel, Iqraa, was launched in 1998 by Arab Radio and Television (ART), which was owned by the Saudi businessman Saleh Kamel (1941–2020). ART comprised several thematic channels  The seven satellites were: Arabsat, Nilesat, Noorsat, Yahlive, Eutelsat, Gulfsat, and Es´hailsat (Al Atiyat and Khreisha 2017). 7  A growing number of religious websites and YouTube channels, moreover, has increased the diversity and complexity of Arab religious media. These are not included in the following analysis. 6

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Table 22.1  Arab Religious Television – A Typology Sunni Nationally-­ oriented, state-­owned television company

Nationally-­ oriented, privately-­ owned but state-­loyal

Transnationally oriented, privately owned, state affiliated or loyal

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-­Al-­Sadisa (Marocco, 2005) -­Al-­Madinah (Saudi) -­Mecca (Saudi) -­Bahrain Qurān -­Nour al-­Sham (Syria, 2011) -­Noor Dubai (UAE) -­Misr Qur’ān Karim (Egypt, 2020).

-­Iqraa (1998). -­Al-­Fajr (2004). -­Huda (2005) -­Alafasy (2005) -­Al-­Resala (2006). -­Muhammed (2006) -­Al-­Nas (2006) -­Al-­Hikma (2006) -­Al-­Rahma (2006). -­Al-­Najah (2006) -­Tiba (2007) -­Azhari (2009) -­Zitouna (2012)

Shi’a

Christian

-­K arbala TV (2008), official television of the Imam Husayn Shrine in the city of Karbala, Iraq. Financially supported by the Shi’a Endowment Bureau and under guidance of the Supreme Religious Authority. -­Alfarqadain (2012), Iraqi satellite television channel based in Baghdad, Iraq.

-­The Catholic-­associated Lebanese Tele Lumiere (1990) developed into -­Noursat: Noursat Family (2003), -­Noursat co-­operates with the Catholic Church. -­Aghapy (2005), an Egyptian Coptic Christian TV station broadcasts in Arabic to Coptic Christians in Egypt and in North America. Aghapy TV was founded by the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. -­CTV (2007), another Egyptian Coptic Christian TV channel founded by the late Sarwat Basili, a Coptic businessman.

-­Al-­K awthar (2006), based in Teheran, broadcasting in Arabic.

-­Ishtar TV (2005), an Assyrian broadcasting channel based in Ankawa, Iraq. The network broadcasts mostly in Syriac, but also in Arabic and Kurdish. Ishtar TV is affiliated with the Chaldean Syriac Assyrian Popular Council. * The cross-­denominational SAT7 (1995) includes SAT-­7 ARABIC, SAT-­7 KIDS (Arabic language), SAT-­7 PARS (Persian language), and SAT-­7 TÜRK (Turkish language). SAT-­7 ACADEMY, an Arabic complementary educational brand, airs programs on the SAT-­7 KIDS and SAT-­7 ARABIC channels.

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Table 22.1  (Continued) Sunni

Shi’a

-­Al-­Majd, established 2003, includes today several channels, e.g., Main General (channel 1), Holy Qur’an (channel 2), Hadith (channel 3), ‘Ilmiya (religious sciences, channel 4), news (channel 5), documentary channels (6 & 7), children’s channels (8, 9,10,11); Islamic music (channel 12), youth channel (13). Transnationally oriented, privately owned, displays a distance from the home state out of economic pragmatism or for political reasons.

-­Dawa (2017), Istanbul-­based, in Arabic, Muslim Brotherhood affiliated.

Christian SAT7’ headquarters is located in Nicosia, Cyprus, but the channel also has offices in Beirut and Cairo. SAT7 is financially supported by cross-­denominational Christian partners (churches and organisations) from countries all over the world.

-­Ahul Bayt TV (2009), London-­based, programmes in English, Arabic, and Urdu, run by the Shiite cleric Mahdi Al-­Mudarissi, who lives in Karbala, Iraq. Ahul Bayt TV financially supported by well off Shiites living in the Arab Gulf, Europe, and North America -­Al-­Anwar, Iraqi and based in London (2004). -­Sahar, Arabic language, based in Iran.

-­Al-­Hayat (2003), Arabic language Cyprus-­based evangelical Christian. -­Al-­K arma (2002), Arabic language, US-­based Evangelical Christian channel. -­The Kingdom Sat (2009), Arabic language, US-­based Evangelical Christian channel -­Al-­Horreya (2013), Arabic language US-­based Coptic channel.

* SAT7 cannot be easily placed within this typology. It is neither state-­affiliated nor loyal, but tries to position itself as neutral by avoiding addressing political and sectarian issues.

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including sports and entertainment. Iqraa’s main office was situated in Jeddah, but it was broadcast from different studios such as in Cairo and Amman. Al-­Resalah, similar to Iqraa, belongs to a larger business consortia: Rotana Media Group owned by the Saudi Prince Al-­Walid bin Talal (Khan 2005). It has 11 different thematic channels that include music, films, and a “Rotana Kids” program. A slightly different example is Al-­Majd, which is owned by a group of business partners headed by the Saudi businessman Fahad Abdulrahman Alshimeimri. Al-­Majd broadcasts from Dubai, Riyadh, and Cairo, and differs from the others by including 13 channels that are all explicitly Islamic. Among these are e.g. a Holy Qur’an channel; a Hadith channel; ‘Ilmiya, a religious sciences channel; several children’s channels; an Islamic music channel; and a youth channel. Despite their differences, this type of channel is typically owned by Arab businesspersons or companies as part of larger business consortia which include other media outlets and investments. The ownership is not always easily detected, and some businesspersons prefer not to display their investment in a particular media entity. Saudis own the three channels just discussed, although businesspeople of other nationalities have also established Islamic satellite channels such as Al-­R ahma-­TV and Azhari-­TV in Egypt. Alafasy TV was established by the Kuwaiti businessman and religious scholar Mshari bin Rashid Al-­Afasy. The commercial interests behind the creation of channels within this category are also evident: Al-­Najah TV started broadcasting as a channel giving advice on investments but shortly after changed and became a religious television channel. The channel is owned by the company Al-­Najah, the proprietor of which is the Jordanian businessman Ghazi Mahfuz. These Islamic channels, as such, appear as businesses among other businesses. The general concept is based on a Salafi trend within Islam; however, the ideological or religious motivation is blurred: the religious channel seems more like one consumer product, among others. The religious channel from a business perspective is not only a tool for advertising the company and other products, but also a way of portraying the owners as trustworthy business partners (Galal 2015). In contrast to the Sunni Islamic channels, the Shi’a Islamic channels – and particularly the Christian Arabic channels – are largely connected to a particular religious institution. This is owing to their minority status in the regional context, which makes it difficult to claim a mainstream faith. At the same time, the religious institutions have an interest in keeping up a religious authority which is not given or safeguarded by its national position. The majority of them are consequently launched in close collaboration with church communities such as the Coptic Orthodox Aghapy TV which transmits explicit religious programs including religious services and celebrations. Christian channels in Lebanon, similar to those in Egypt, are also primarily owned by, or closely connected to, Christian churches, organizations, or institutions. Sat-­7 differs from most Christian channels by being cross-­denominational and by addressing all Christians transnationally, regardless of creed or church (Christian religious community). Together with its headquarter in Nicosia at Cyprus, the channel also has offices in Beirut and Cairo and includes SAT-­7 ARABIC and SAT-­7 KIDS (Arabic language); SAT-­7 PARS (Persian language); and SAT-­7 TÜRK (Turkish language). Accordingly, the Christian channels are more of a strategic element of the established religious institutions than the privately owned Sunni Islamic channels.

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Religious Channels as Political Tools Arab satellite media have become a tool for competing political positions among the ruling elite and its financial alliances in the Arab countries since the 1990s (Sakr 2002, 2015; Zayani and Mirgani 2016). This applies to religious media as well; new satellite and digital technology have triggered the explosion of new religious media in the Arab countries. They utilize potential of the media for transgressing national borders, and thereby challenging state monopoly (Howard and Hussain 2013). The first Islamic channel in Arabic, Iqraa, thus intentionally targeted a global, Arabic-­speaking audience (Galal 2015) and still does. IslamOnline.net is another medium that at an early stage benefited from digital technology. Having been online since 1997, it has been one of the most visited internet media websites reaching out to users all over the world (Abdel-­Fadil 2012, 63). However, since its headquarter moved to Doha, resulting from disagreements about the editorial line, its influence has weakened.8 When the Egyptian government instigates a new private Egyptian Qur’ān channel in 2020 – as presented in the introduction – it utilized the media to promote its own and nationally embedded version of Islam in competition with other – and often transnational – attempts to govern Arab Muslim identities.9 The national investments in mediated religion are undeniably connected with regional geopolitics, on the one hand, and global processes of Islamic radicalization on the other (see Chapters 2, 4). Not only have geopolitical crises motivated the launch of Islamic television, but they also seem to affect the content and perspective of the channels. The attacks of 9/11 may thus be part of the explanation behind the increase of Islamic satellite channels from one (Iqraa) to five within the ensuing four years. The channels explicitly wanted to defend Islam and to give another, more positive image of it, while distancing themselves from the terror attack in the United States. By the end of 2005, another global conflict occurred: the Danish Cartoon Crisis, stirred up by the derogatory drawings of the prophet Mohammed published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-­Posten (Henkel 2010), set off an explosive increase of new Islamic satellite channels to reach 48 channels, two years later. Without being able to prove a direct interrelation, it is striking, however, that several channels had programs defending the prophet Mohammed, and one channel even adopted the name: Mohammed Channel; thus, not only did the numbers change, but so did the religious rhetoric of the channels. Before 9/11, he focus was on the necessity of Muslims to learn about and engage in their religion and history. That was primarily a dogmatic, text-­interpretive, and historical rhetorical narrative. The aim was  – so to speak  – to convert Muslims into “real” Muslims, a strategy of reverting Muslims (Galal 2011b); after 9/11 – and even more so after the cartoon crisis – the religious rhetoric increasingly had a defensive tone. It emphasized the valuable aspects and  The well-­known religious scholar Yusuf al-­Qaradawi was one of the founders of IslamOnline. net while businessmen from Qatar funded it. Previously it operated equally from Egypt and Doha. 9  For example, in 1964, President Nasser’s socialistic regime established the Qur’an radio to oppose the Wahhabism of the Saudi monarchy. The radio was transmitted via short waves to the other Arab countries. 8

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contributions of Islam, not only globally reaching out to Muslims, but also to non-­ Muslims, to provide a more positive image of Islam. Despite this geopolitical sensitivity, most Islamic channels have generally avoided dealing with state politics. There is commonly no contradiction between the channels’ and the Arab regimes’ promotion of Islam. If contradictions do appear, however, the states do not hesitate to withdraw broadcasting licenses. This was also the case during the Arab Spring in 2010–2011, when some channels in the revolting countries began broadcasting more political programs following the fall of regimes. Zitouna TV in Tunisia, for example, was launched in 2012 by Osama Ben Salem; the businessman Sami Essid followed by launching a second channel with a religious theme, Zitouna Hidaya TV in 2013. Due to flashing the logo of the Ennahda party during the electoral campaign in 2014, the Independent High Authority for Audio-­visual Communication (HAICA) fined Zitouna Hidaya TV, and seized its equipment in 2015. In 2013, the removal of Egypt’s first democratically elected president and member of the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated Freedom and Justice Party, Mohamed Morsi, triggered a series of repressive media policies. Channels such as Al-­Rahma, Misr25, Al-­Nas, and Al-­Hafez were closed down (Galal 2014b, 11). They either remained banned, such as the Muslim Brotherhood channel Misr25, or – like Al-­Nas – refrained from covering current political affairs. Al-­Nas commenced addressing political issues after the 2011 revolution, from a Salafi perspective. Having retrieved its license in 2015, it returned to focusing on religion, piety, and personal practices with Tarik Ismail as the new owner – an Egyptian who also owned other broadcast media. It replaced the Salafi preachers with others from Al-­Azhar in accordance with its regime-­friendly line, and reintroduced female presenters (Galal 2021). In 2019, the Sudanese government closed ten “Islamic-­ focused” TV channels citing “national concerns,” including one headed by the hard-­line Islamist cleric Abdelhayy Youssef.10 Consequently, most Islamic channels only attend to spiritual matters and keep away from criticizing state policy. There are some channels which, under the guise of religion, have clear political affiliations. The Muslin Brotherhood channels in Egypt belong to a group of channels that were motivated by political opposition. One of these was Misr25 (mentioned earlier), and another was Ahrar25 – both referring to the 25 January uprisings, and are now closed. One could argue that they were not genuinely religious channels since their programming was more political than religious – the reason for not including them in the suggested typology. The Shi’a Islamic Hizbullah-­affiliated Almanar TV in Lebanon is another example. Advocating for the Palestinian people, it is considered to be an Arab and Muslim TV channel promoting the “Community of the Islamic Resistance” (Dakhlalah 2012, 219). These channels may not primarily be transmitting religious content; however, Islam becomes an identity marker in their political claims. The establishment of Christian television channels has not been without political attention. A country such as Egypt, for instance, did not accept transmission of Coptic Christian television until 2005. Egyptian authorities claimed that state-­owned Nilesat

  https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2019/12/31/sudanese-­government-­closes-­ten-­ unauthorised-­islamic-­themed-­channels (accessed February 21, 2021). 10

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does not permit any form of political and religious television stations. Channels such as Iqraa and Al-­Nas, which claimed universalism, were categorized as family channels, while the Egyptian state categorized minority channels as sectarian and therefore not permitted. While the majority of Egypt-­based Christian channels do not challenge the regime, channels based outside the Middle East may do so. One example is the Cyprus-­ based Al-­Hayat TV – a Christian evangelical channel – which has a clear missionary and anti-­Islamic agenda. Until 2010, its main figure was Zakaria Botros, who had served as a priest in the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt before being expelled. The channel has been criticized by Islamic institutions for its clear anti-­Islamic and proselytizing agenda (Galal  2011a). Accordingly, some Christian channels utilize the possibility of transnational broadcast to criticize the Arab states and, in particular, address the vulnerable minority position of Christians in the Arab countries.

Mainstreaming a Salafi Trend In contrast to the conflict-­driven channels, popular Islamic channels such as Iqraa, Al-­ Resalah, and Al-­Majd represent and inspire a dominant and apolitical trend among the majority of privately owned Sunni-­Islamic religious channels. Sharing the far-­reaching idea of bringing Muslims back to “the ‘pure’ (Salafi) path to Islam” (Hroub 2012, 8), they promote what is presented as a universalized Islam that stipulates a return to an Islamic tradition of the Prophet Mohammed and his companions. Labelled as adopting a “neo-­ liberal Salafi-­trend” (Galal 2012, 2014a, 2015; Roy 2004), these channels claim to communicate knowledge of religious, cultural, social, educational, economic, and political subjects based on the Qu’rān and the Sunna, according to Prophet Mohammed’s tradition. To some extent, Iqraa has served as a model for other Islamic channels. Following the first years in which Iqraa was launched, it specified on its website that its aim was to strengthen the sense of belonging to “the Arab-­Islamic nation and culture.” (Galal 2012, 59). This was a referral to the idea of the Arab countries being united through the Arabic language, Arab culture, and Islam. By emphasizing words such as “tolerance,” “moderate Islam,” and “positive national and international interaction,” Iqraa also tried to rework the negative, Western image of Muslims by highlighting what it defined as Al-­ Wasatiya  – the “middle way” or moderate Islam (Galal  2012, 59). Thus, whereas the majority of Iqraa’s programs are in Arabic, several are made available to a wider audience owing to English subtitles. Al-­Resalah similarly highlights moderate and non-­ extremist aspects on its website: Contributing to the positive influence in the thought of the Arab nation, preserving the moderation of its youth away from extremism or negligence, and contributing to improving their behaviour, motivating, and supporting them to carry the torch of renaissance and development.11

 https://www.alresalah.net/ (accessed February 21, 2021).

11

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A third Salafi-­oriented channel, Al-­Nas, writes on its website that it wants to serve the Muslim Umma (nation), and communicate knowledge about life and faith. The aim is to educate the Muslim and Arab Umma within religion, society, and health without transmitting anything that is against Islamic principles or practices. These channels, besides their self-­positioning as moderate, also emphasize that they target  all Muslims and produce quality programs for the entire family. This self-­positioning is further strengthened by the lack of explicit reference to a specific Islamic school or interpretation; some of the Shi’a-­Islamic channels have a similar self-­presentation promoting the notion of universal Islamic ideas and values. Ahlulbayt TV, for example, writes that, it “transcends all divides, serving Muslims as well as non-­Muslims, the religious and the non-­practising, submissive and inquisitive, young, old and everyone in between.”12 Hence, channels like Iqraa, Al-­Resalah and Al-­Nas position themselves as more than just religious channels by promoting Islam as a universal, comprehensive, and total system which advocates a specific, religious missionary agenda. They claim, instead, a nonideological, individualized, and universal Islamic identity, which is partly why the Arab states accept these channels. Another reason is that their version of Islam is compartmentalized, commodified, and state-­supported, offering the audience a specialized and distinct space for Islam. They promote a privatization of religion through an economic liberalism which encourages the individual believer’s re-­ Islamization and embracement of religious role models in the shape of new, successful preachers. These tendencies of Islamization are connected in their shared opposition to political and radical Islam.

New Religious Authorities and Celebrities One consequence of mediated religion is a change in religious authority (Galal 2014b; Hoover 2016; Linderman 2016). However, the relationship between media and religious authority is “not simple or straightforward. It is complex, layered, and nuanced” (Hoover  2016, 2). The neoliberal Salafi trend that dominates Arab religious channels illustrates this change and complexity of religious authority rather well. The programming of these channels differs between religious teaching, talk shows, and entertainment, sometimes explicitly pious, at other times “in accordance with Islamic values” without being solely spiritual. There are some channels such as Iqraa and Al-­Resalah which are global in their outlook, and support a private and individual approach to the Islamic path; others have a more explicit local or regional color. Al-­Majd, for instance, targets the Gulf Arab audience and therefore leans towards state-­loyal and Salafism broadcasting, and primarily transmits explicitly religious teaching and talk shows. The majority of channels are known for broadcasting programs featuring a particular, prominent Muslim celebrity.

12

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 http://ahlulbayt.tv/the-­channel/ (accessed February 21, 2021).

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Religious scholars have played an essential role as religious celebrities on Islamic television from the very start. One particular genre – the fatwa program – has fostered this celebrity culture – especially with one scholar functioning as a model. Sheikh Dr. Yusuf Al-­Qaradawi was the key person in the 1990s and the 2000s behind the talk show “Shari’a and Life.” The program was not broadcast by a religious channel but by Al-­ Jazeera, which is known for its critical news coverage of global affairs. Al-­Qaradawi provided answers to the audiences about all kinds of issues relating to being a Muslim in daily life (Galal  2009). The role of Al-­Qaradawi and other scholars of fatwa programs, has been to give an interpretation of what is allowed (halāl) and what is forbidden (haram) based on Islam. Audiences may email or call in to ask scholars questions. This embracement of religious authorities is common in both Sunni and Shi’a channels. The Arab Christian satellite channels Al-­K arma, Al-­Hayat, and Aghapy TV transmit similar religious programs in which religious scholars provide answers and guidance. In the 1990s, the first wave of religious celebrities were scholars who were educated in religious universities. A different kind of religious authority appeared in the 2000s: the so-­called “new missionaries” who were typically self-­taught, became popular due to their personal charisma and their use of everyday language and metaphors. Examples of this second wave of religious celebrities are Egyptians Amr Khaled, Mustafa Hosny and Moez Masoud, Ahmad Al-­Shagari from Saudi Arabia, and Mohammad Nouh Al-­ Qudah from Jordan. By adopting a less authoritative style, the new missionaries strived to present Islamic history and tradition as relevant to a younger audience. Whereas the traditional scholars adopted a more abstract and universalistic approach, the new missionaries encouraged younger Muslims to make up their own minds regarding their Muslim identity. This distinction between traditional scholars and new missionaries dominated the Islamic media in the 2000s. Today, the current numbers and varieties of Islamic celebrity preachers have multiplied several times, and a third wave dominated by Salafi preachers has become influential. Thus, the Egyptians Muhammad Hassan and Khaled Al-­Gindi have obtained celebrity status as well as Al-­Habib Al-­Jifri from Yemen, Tareq Al-­Suwaidan from Kuwait, and many others (Galal 2014a). While some were active already under the second wave, e.g. Al-­Suwaidan, these preachers increasingly move between channels, and have become a commodity that Islamic media use to promote themselves. The result is accusations such as “they are ‘exploiting religion’ to make money” and “they are ‘playing politics’ in the guise of promoting piety” (Moll 2017, 18); similar accusations have led to the widespread adoption of the notion of “fatwa chaos,” referring to the many competing and often contradictory interpretations of what is halāl and what is haram. The escalation and diversity of religious authorities have, nevertheless, further increased with the establishment of websites and YouTube video platforms that have made it easy to set up a channel promoting a single religious “celebrity.” The pluralism in programs, preachers, and interpretations is entangled with the demands by the Arab audiences for information and entertainment (Eickelman and Anderson 1999; Galal 2010). These are audiences who are characterized as being better and more broadly educated, and as consumers requesting media content that not only functions as the state’s attempt to educate their populations. Religion has

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become a consumer and entertainment product addressing the need for identity among people in a globalized (and individualized) world (Clark  2007; Galal  2012; Roy 2004). This development has simultaneously strengthened the responsibility and desire of the individual believer to find their own way within the diverse source of religious opinions; rather than only drawing on a scholarly corpus of knowledge, the lived experiences of the believer become the key to religious identity (Eickelman and Anderson  1999; Galal  2014a; Linderman  2016). At the same time, this individual believer is increasingly met by venues, particularly on the internet, that promote either extremist or radical interpretations (thinking about ISIS) or liberal Western-­ influenced applications of religion (thinking about gender and queer identities). In contrast hereto, most religious celebrities at the Islamic channels work at countering these interpretations – the extremist, radical, and Western alike – by entangling the Muslim Salafi movement with neoliberalism. They incite religious experience based on inner pursuit that accords well with the individual’s quest for authenticity – for a truth that does not find its cue from authorized, dogmatic regulations, but in which the individual is the final authority. Religious television becomes part of a global celebrity culture, which generally draws on global models for popular entertainment programs. Participation in recitation competitions and nominations for the “finest Muslim woman”  – explicitly inspired by other amateur competitions such as “America’s Got Talent” and “Beauty Queen” competitions – are endorsed while promoting virtues and skills denoted as individualized and Islamic (Galal 2008, 2010).

Conclusion Arab religious television offers new spaces for religious and spiritual identities. There are some channels with explicitly political agendas, although most are promoting different versions of how to become a true believer through one’s own pious behaviour. These different versions primarily include variations of liberal and Salafi interpretations, which Arab regimes tolerate if they stay apolitical. The increase in numbers of “celebrity preachers” appears remarkable, but it is worth noting that the general number of media channels (secular or religious) have had an equivalent increase. The explosion in supply places the religious media – together with other topical media, such as music, sport, children and documentary channels – as cultural products in mutual competition. This situation was further complicated by the diversity of media platforms, which introduced new content for the internet and mobile devices such as YouTube and diverse platforms (see Chapters 12, 13, 20). Traditional TV programs may consequently be circulating on other platforms, religious authorities strengthen their media presence by setting up personal websites, and committed individuals create their own YouTube channel to distribute religious messages. A final question could therefore be about their impact. How do religious media, as cultural artifacts, influence Arab cultures? There is, of course, no simple answer to that question, but what the media provide is symbolic resources on spirituality between w ­ ell-­defined rules, rituals, and practices on the one hand, and on the other a symbolic inventory which individual audiences make into their own.

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References Abdel-­Fadil, Mona. 2012. “Living ‘the Message’ and Empowering Muslim Selves: A Behind the Screens Study of Online Islam.” PhD thesis. Oslo: University of Oslo. Abu-­Lughod, Lila. 2008. Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Al Atiyat, Hiba, and Khreisha, Dina. 2017. Satellite TV in the Arab World 2017. Amman, Jordan: Arab Advisors Group. Campbell, Heidi A. 2012. “Introduction. The Rise of the Study of Digital Religion.” In Heidi A. Campbell (Ed.), Digital Religion: Understanding Religious Practice in New Media Worlds (pp. ­1–21). London: Routledge. Clark, Lynn Schofield. 2007. “Introduction: Identity, Belonging, and Religious Lifestyle Branding (Fashion Bibles, Bhangra Parties, and Muslim Pop).” In Lynn Schofield Clark (Ed.), Religion, Media, and the Marketplace (pp. 1–33). New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London: Rutgers University Press. Dakhlalah, Farah. 2012. “Al-­Manar and the Islamic Sphere in Lebanon: An Evolving Agenda.” In Khaled Hroub (Ed.), Religious Broadcasting in the Middle East (pp. 219–236). London: Hurst. Eickelman, Dale F., and Anderson, John W. (Eds.) 1999. New Media in the Muslim World. The Emerging Public Sphere. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. El-­Nawawy, Mohammed, and Khamis, Sahar. 2016. Egyptian Revolution 2.0: Political Blogging, Civic Engagement, and Citizen Journalism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Galal, Ehab. 2008. “Magic Spells and Recitation Contests: The Quran as Entertainment on Arab Satellite Television.” Northern Lights: Film & Media Studies Yearbook 6, no. 1: 165–179. ——— 2009. “Yūsuf Al-­Qaradāwī and the New Islamic TV.” In Bettina Gräf and Jakob Skovgaard-­ Petersen (Eds.), Global Mufti: The Phenomenon of Yusuf Al-­Qaradawi (pp. 149–180). London: Hurst. ——— 2010. “The Muslim Woman as a Beauty Queen.” Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research 3 no. 3: 159–175. ——— 2011a. “Al-­Hayat TV: Satellit-­Båren Kristen Mission.” Carsten Niebuhr Biblioteket, 13–17. ——— 2011b. “Transnational Islamic TV: A Space for Religious and Gendered Living.” In Jakob Egholm Feldt and Kirstine Sinclair (Eds.), Lived Space: Reconsidering Transnationalism among Muslim Minorities (pp. 99–122). Frankfurt: Peter Lang. ——— 2012. “’Modern’ Salafi Broadcasting: Iqraa Channel (Saudi Arabia).” In Khaled Hroub (Ed.), Religious Broadcasting in the Middle East (pp. 57–79). London: Hurst & Company. ——— 2014a. “Audience Responses to Islamic TV: Between Resistance and Piety.” In Arab TV Audiences: Negotiating Religion and Identity (pp. 29–50). Frankfurt: Peter Lang. ——— 2014b. “Where Has the Authority Gone? New Imperatives and Audience Research.” In Ehab Galal (Ed.), Arab TV Audiences: Negotiating Religion and Identity (pp. 7–28). Frankfurt: Peter Lang. ——— 2015. “Saleh Kamel: Investing in Islam.” In Naomi Sakr, Jakob Skovgaard-­Petersen, and D. Della Ratta (Eds), Arab Media Moguls (pp. 81–95). London: I.B. Tauris. ——— 2021. “Ringfenced Religion? Egypt’s Religious Media Between Faith and Politics.” In  Robert Springborg, Aisha I. Saad, Amr I. A. Adly, Anthony P. Gorman, Tamir Moustafa,  Naomi Sakr, and Sarah Smierciak (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Egypt (pp. 435–445). London: Routledge. Henkel, Heiko. 2010. “Fundamentally Danish? The Muhammad Cartoon Crisis as Transitional Drama.” Human Architecture 8, no 2: 67.

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Hoover, Stewart M. 2016. “Introduction.” In Stewart M. Hoover (Ed.), The Media and Religious Authority (pp. 1–11). Philadelphia: Penn State University Press. Howard, Philip N., and Hussain, Muzammil M. 2013. Democracy’s Fourth Wave?: Digital Media and the Arab Spring. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hroub, Khaled. 2012. “Introduction. Religious Broadcasting: Beyond the Innocence of Political Indifference.” In Khaled Hroub (Ed.), Religious Broadcasting in the Middle East (pp. 1–12). London: Hurst & Company. Khan, Riz. 2005. Alwaleed: Businessman, Billionaire, Prince. New York: Harper Collins. Linderman, Alf. 2016. “Media and (Vicarious) Religion: Two Levels of Religious Authority.” In Stewart M. Hoover (Ed.), The Media and Religious Authority (pp. 67–80). Philadelphia: Penn State University Press. Moll, Yasmin. 2017. “The Moral Economy of Islamic Television: Panic and Its Perils.” In New Islamic Media (pp. 18–21). Pomeps Studies 23. Roy, Olivier. 2004. Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah. New York: Columbia University Press. Sakr, Naomi. 2002. Satellite Realms: Transnational Television, Globalization, and the Middle East. London: I.B. Tauris. ——— 2015. “Naguib Sawiris: Global Capitalist, Egyptian Media Investor.” In Naomi Sakr, Jakob Skovgaard-­Petersen, and D. Della Ratta (Eds.), Arab Media Moguls (pp. 147–164). London: I.B. Tauris. The Futures Initiative. 2016. “Muslim Millennial Attitudes on Religion & Religious Leadership.” Abu Dhabi: Tabah Foundation. Zayani, Mohamed, and Mirgani, Suzi. (Eds.). 2016. Bullets and Bulletins: Media and Politics in the Wake of the Arab Uprisings. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Constructing a New Identity Women’s Work in the Iranian Broadcast Media Asemeh Ghasemi Generally, Western media portray Islam as a “secluder” or “excluder” of women of the Middle East from the public sphere; as a force that inhibits women from integrating into modern life (Haghighat-­Sordellini 2010, 9). The image of Muslim women in these media is traditionally represented as oppressed individuals controlled by men and religion (Ahmed, 1999; Edward Said, 1979). As Haghighat-­Sordellini (2010) suggests, the “bundling effect” of media is one reason for the spread of such images; that is, “Muslim women are bundled into an undifferentiated group of powerless individuals with no voice, no identity and no autonomy” (2010, 9). However, women in this region are not homogenous and have diverse historical, cultural, political, and economic backgrounds and trajectories. Middle Eastern people are a mixture of different social classes, ethnicities, religions, nationalities, and linguistic communities. Therefore, when studying women’s situations in this region, the diverse conditions of women’s lives should be considered. The status and roles of women in the Middle East have significantly transformed in the twentieth century, as in other parts of the world (see Chapters 7, 36). Though the changes are not entirely identical in all areas of the Middle East and are not necessarily similar to the changes in women’s lives elsewhere, from the mid-­nineteenth century, social and economic reform movements identified women’s active role in Middle Eastern societies (Graham-­Brown 2001, 24). The earliest organized women’s signs emerged in Iran, Turkey, and Egypt in the first decades of the twentieth century (Graham-­ Brown 2001). In the mid-­twentieth, the region faced more political activism in the context of independence movements in Morocco and left-­wing movements in Yemen and Palestine (Moghadam  2019). Since then, more independent women’s rights and civil society organizations have emerged in the MENA region (Moghadam  2019). In the broader Middle East, particularly Iran, the massive participation of women from various social classes in the 1979 Islamic revolution was unprecedented.

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Over the past decades, new communication technologies have considerably increased Middle Eastern women’s visibility in social and political affairs and empowered more women to express their views publicly. This has been evident in various protests and movements across the region (see Chapters 26, 29, 35). The digital revolution in traditional forms of media such as radio, television, and later the emergence of virtual networks have created more opportunities for Middle Eastern women to participate in different aspects of society. By utilizing both traditional and emerging media, women in the Middle East have ­constructed new identities. They have represented them to the world as forms of self-­ expression, activism, and democratization (Eltantawy 2016). Today women in the region use various media platforms to express distinctive images of themselves. Based on women’s experiences of work in radio and television after the 1979 revolution in Iran, this chapter studies women’s motivations to work in the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting Organization (IRIB), the challenges they encounter; and the strategies they employ to negotiate the obstacles in the workplace. The research data is drawn from a qualitative research project that documented the diverse voices and lived experiences of 30 Muslim women who work in the IRIB. The participants were recruited from different occupational levels and roles in television, radio, and news departments, such as managers, producers, directors, presenters, editors, camerawomen, and sound designers. Aiming to collect rich narratives that illustrate the multiple dimensions of the women’s experiences, the research employed in-­ depth interviews as the research method. Interviews were conducted in the places that the interviewees suggested, such as their workplace, lobbies or halls of buildings on the main campus of IRIB, private studios of the interviewee, or in restaurants. The chapter is divided into different sections: firstly, women’s participation in the Islamic Revolution in Iran is discussed. In the next section, women’s work in the broadcast media after the revolution is reviewed, followed by a brief overview of gender relations in the workplace. This leads to a section on Iranian women’s motivations, challenges, and strategies in broadcast media. Finally, the chapter concludes by discussing the new identity that Iranian women have constructed in this process.

Women and the Islamic Revolution While a minority of educated middle-­and upper-­class women had participated in social and political activities under the Pahlavi-­era “modernization” projects (1925–1979), the massive participation of women from various social classes in the uprisings leading to the Revolution was unprecedented. Apart from large masses of religious and traditional women from working-­class families, many educated and middle-­class women with different political orientations joined the movement led by Ayatollah Khomeini against the Pahlavi monarchy. Despite disagreements about the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution, it is generally agreed that this Revolution was a “catalyst for women’s activism” in Iran which was initially manifested “through their political mobilization in support of the prolonged nationwide movement to overthrow the regime of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi” (Bahramitash and Hooglund 2011, 2).

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After the Revolution, the Islamic definition of an “ideal woman” was spelled out through defining gender relations and gender roles within the family and society. In the family, motherhood was considered the crucial role for women. At the same time, women were also expected to participate in education, culture, economy, politics, and even defend the country during the war with Iraq (1980–1988) as active Muslims. Although widely neglected in Western reports about the revolution, a relatively modernized Islam was presented (Sadeghi  2008). Some traditional Islamists considered Ayatollah Khomeini’s statements supporting women’s social and political rights a form of heresy (Kolaee and Behbahani 2012). Yet, due to Khomeini’s charisma and popularity, traditional clerics mainly refrained from publicly denouncing his views. It is argued that there was a shift from “cultural Islam” to “political Islam” after the Revolution, which brought in different views towards issues such as women’s employment, education, social and political activities, and veiling (Sadeghi 2008). Influential Islamic and revolutionary scholars such Ali Shariati (1971), Morteza Motahari (1990) introduced “Holy women” from the family of the Prophet Mohammad, such as Fatima, daughter of the Prophet; Khadija, wife of the Prophet; and Zeinab, the granddaughter of the Prophet, who had played significant social, economic, or political roles during their lives, in addition to being wives and mothers and thus role models for motherhood and womanhood. They were seen as perfect mothers and wives who were also active in society to the extent that they fought tyranny, resisted oppression, and sacrificed for the sake of Islam. Using such role models, “Islamist women construct a form of self-­representation and self-­empowerment by their narratives, arguing that Islam is compatible with women’s rights” (Povey and Rostami-­Povey 2012, 25). However, some women were disadvantaged by the new rules and regulations in the Islamization process: secular female employees who supported the previous regime or did not abide by the new regulations were dismissed from their positions or forced into early retirement. After the Revolution, a large segment of religious families and communities who had prevented their daughters from attending school or going to the university due to the “un-­ Islamic” and “Westernized” environment of public institutions under the Pahlavi regime began encouraging girls and women to become literate, educated, and active in the society. Apart from education, women were also directly encouraged by Ayatollah Khomeini to participate in society during difficult times such as war, civil unrest, and parliamentary or presidential elections. For example, he stated that “women must be involved in all fundamental aspects of the society” (Khomeini 2010, 39). Some gender-­segregation policies based on Islamic morality laws implemented in public institutions, such as schools and hospitals, resulted in a demand for female teachers, nurses, and doctors. This official encouragement did not bring a dramatic increase in women’s employment rates. Women’s economic activity rate was 16.3% in 2020 (Statistical Center of Iran 2020a) compared to 12.9% in 1975 (Women’s Statistical Status in the Islamic Republic of Iran 2020). It should be noted, however, that Iran’s population has almost tripled over this period, so the number of employed women has significantly increased. While women’s engagement in cultural, social, and political affairs has been considered crucial to Iran’s development, the notion that “family comes first” is a fundamental aspect of the ideology regarding women. Current statistics show a much higher literacy rate among Iranian women. The literacy rate of females aged six years and older was 84.2% in 2016 compared to their literacy

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rate at the time of the Revolution, 35.5% in 1977 (Statistical Center of Iran 2020b). In 2020, women constituted approximately 53% of the student population who enter Iranian universities through national competitive exams. Overall, it can be argued that the Islamic Revolution had a significant impact on gendered social structures and women’s situation and participation in different aspects of society. Broadcast media is one area where this impact can be further explored.

Women and Broadcast Media in Iran After 1979 The first radio station in Iran was launched in 1940, and 17 years later, the first television station went on the air. The state restructured both radio and television in 1971 and launched the National Iranian Radio and Television (NIRT). By 1974, in terms of equipment and employees, the Iranian broadcasting organization had become the second-­ largest broadcasting network in Asia after NHK in Japan (Mohammadi 1995, cited in Khiabany 2010). However, at the time of the Pahlavi-­era, religious authorities considered much of film, television, and radio content as decadent and in violation of Islamic moral principles (Guivian  2006). Therefore, many religious leaders prohibited their followers from watching television programs, and many religious families refrained from owning television sets. Many practicing Muslim women, and men, avoided working in film and television industries due to the dominant public perception of their “Western” and “secular” work culture, and “un-­Islamic” content. Therefore broadcasting sector was considered as “a forbidden space” for Muslim women, But after the Revolution, as with all government departments, the state-­owned broadcast media became “Islamized” both in terms of the work culture and the content of its programs (Islamic Parliament Research Center of the Islamic Republic of Iran 2020). The broadcast media were identified as powerful instruments for spreading the message of Islam (Khiabany 2010). Ayatollah Khomeini famously referred to the radio and television organization as a “public university,” a totally different vision from the notion of “decadent” and “vulgar” broadcast media. Generations of practicing Muslim women joined the media, particularly the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting organization (IRIB), Iran’s only state-­run broadcasting organization. They worked in a wide range of occupations across different departments. According to an internal report on the employment rate in the National Television and Radio, women made up merely 2% of the employees of the National Iranian Radio and Television in 1971 (Human Resources Department 1978). In 2021, female employees who had permanent contracts were 21% of the total IRIB employees (Human Resources Department, 2021). In addition, many women are working for the IRIB with annual or short-­term contracts through independent production companies. Overall it has been estimated that women currently constitute almost half of IRIB’s work force (Ghasemi, 2022).

Gender Relations, Women, and Media As patterned interactions between men and women in societies, gender relations are fluid, dynamic, and embedded in social structures (Acker,  1990; Rahman and Jackson  2010; Williams and Stein  2002). Gender relations exist in all institutions (Connell 1994, 2009) and thus can be studied within media organizations.

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Interaction between gender and media in all aspects of media, such as production, content, and consumption, has been studied from the early stages of research on media by feminist academics, particularly since the second wave of feminism (Krijnen 2020). However, the relationship between gender and media is diverse and complex because gender relations in media, in society, and also in media studies have changed in recent decades (e.g. Krijnen 2020; Carter, Steiner and McLaughlin, 2015; Krijnen and Van Bauwel 2015; Gallagher 2014; Byerly and Ross 2006). It is therefore necessary to carefully examine these changes in different media organizations and within different sociocultural contexts. In this chapter, I discuss how women in IRIB managed to contest and negotiate gender structures and gender relations in IRIB and gain considerable achievements despite the challenges they faced in the unequal environment of broadcast media.

Women’s Motivations Based on qualitative research on women’s experiences of working in IRIB, this chapter identifies three significant factors as the participants’ motivations for work in IRIB: personal passion and enthusiasm for culture and the media occupations in IRIB; expressing their thoughts; and contributing to social progress. Shima, a television producer, explains how her interest in film and her family’s involvement in the field of art influenced her work orientation: I think that television is related to the arts. And I think interest in the arts is related initially to your genes. It’s something intrinsic. Something you inherit. My family, my father, and my grandfather worked in these fields… I was also interested in films from my childhood. When I was about six, I went to the cinema with my parents from my childhood.

Shima studied cinema at university and then joined IRIB as a producer. Her initial goal was to produce films and documentaries about women’s lives in Iran. Yet, due to “discouraging conditions,” she failed in fulfilling her ambition and decided to create programs for children and teenagers. Beyond enthusiasm for work in the broadcasting sector, Shima considered her job an opportunity to accomplish social and cultural ambitions, particularly women’s issues. While personal interest in the arts has been a crucial parameter in guiding Shima’s orientation to work in IRIB, she also had a social agenda and a sense of commitment towards depicting women’s lives and their social problems through her work in IRIB. Expressing their thoughts is another motivation of the participants in this study to join the broadcasting sector. They argue that working in IRIB enables them to know and be in contact with different groups of people across society. Homa, a radio producer, feels privileged to be in this occupation due to the opportunity that it provides for expressing her thoughts: In each program, I express myself, and I believe it’s fascinating to be able to do this. I mean expressing my thoughts, my opinions. I disseminate my ideas and share them with the people. As a producer, I communicate with the people, and they hear me through my programs.

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Broadcast media are considered significant means of transmitting messages to the public, and some participants seek to transfer their thoughts and ideas to people through work in IRIB. It should be noted that Homa, like many other producers of programs in similar media organizations, has to comply with general production guidelines and regulations. However, she has managed to negotiate a space that enables her to express her views. Moreover, some participants express that they have been motivated to work due to certain social missions. They mention “improving the social situation” and “contributing to the development of society” as significant motives that inspired them to join IRIB and continue working there. From the participants’ viewpoint, social participation is much more important than economic need. They seek to help develop their society by working in an important organization such as IRIB. Neda, a television presenter, explains that producing “progressive programs” that show the reality of women’s role in the private and public spheres of life from an Islamic viewpoint is one of her work ambitions. She maintains that some of the present interpretations of Islam regarding women’s roles in society are incomplete and incorrect. Therefore, she plans to produce programs for and about women, and do something for the community. For example, women’s participation in society and politics, their nomination in different elections, and their appointment to high-­ranking positions have been the subjects of certain television shows. Generally speaking, the research observations on women’s motivations indicate that most of the respondents joined IRIB due to their passion for film and media production and their desire to be an active agent of change in society. They believe that a professional career in IRIB empowers them to be more effective and influential in their community. Since the Islamic Revolution, Muslim women have frequently been encouraged to contribute to society through social and political participation. Many religious women consider their participation in society a sacred duty and a social responsibility. Some participants’ narratives indicate that they seek to accomplish their religious objectives through social participation. Regarding the sample specifications of the research, it could be noted that the participants who identify themselves as “observant religious women” are more likely to emphasize that they aim to participate in society and serve the public, rather than merely seeking personal ambition or economic gain. This research also shows that women, particularly those who joined IRIB in the first decade after the Revolution, encountered some adverse reactions from their families. It was demonstrated that some negative attitudes and skeptical views towards women’s work in broadcasting gradually changed after the Revolution because radio and television were redefined as “public universities” by religious leaders, rather than the more-khane (literally “the musician’s house”) that they were deemed to be before the Revolution. However, the new generation of Muslim women has fewer problems in this regard. Some participants in this study even mentioned that their families encouraged them to work in IRIB and view this organization as a significant educational institution, as important as a university. I suggest that the perceptions of honor and shame regarding women’s work in nontraditional occupations such as broadcast media have changed among religious and traditional communities in post-­revolutionary Iran. It could be suggested that the redefinition of the concepts of honor and shame indicates the transformations

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of gender relations in Iranian society that include more tolerance toward social interactions between men and women and changes in the roles of men and women in the family and society. Since IRIB is the sole broadcasting organization in Iran, it is the obvious choice for those who seek a workplace to realize their ambitions. Nevertheless, for younger participants, personal passion and expression of their thoughts are considered the main aims for joining IRIB.

Women’s Challenges and Strategies The interview narratives suggest that the broadcasting sector’s work environment was challenging for the participants. Women in this study expressed two main challenges: the complexity of physical proximity in a gender-­mixed work environment while observing religious codes of conduct; and gender-­unequal stratification of work positions and opportunities. According to the dominant Islamic teachings and ethical codes of conduct in Iran, unrelated women and men are not permitted physical contact. They must avoid intimate relationships and undue proximity unless under some exceptional circumstances.1 However, speaking to or working with other men for “reasonable causes” is allowed. At the same time, observing codes of modesty and dignity that are formally part of IRIB’s organizational culture is highly recommended. For participants who aspire to conform to this code of conduct, working in radio and television program production, which usually involves close relations and communication between male and female employees, is a considerable challenge. Participants’ narratives demonstrated that the occupational structure of the IRIB was gendered. There was strong evidence of both vertical and horizontal segregation. The investigation of vertical gender segregation revealed that there is indeed a limited number of women in management posts in the IRIB. Participants invoked the notion of “unwritten law” – reminiscent of the more familiar idea of “glass ceiling” – to articulate the hidden barriers in, and restrictions to, the path of women’s ascendance to senior positions in the hierarchy of the IRIB. Over the past few decades, only one woman has been appointed to the position of deputy director of IRIB out of the approximately 10 deputy posts men usually hold. The “glass” nature of the ceiling indicates that while the path for promotion is clear, an invisible barrier prevents women from reaching higher ranks. In the present research, participants used terms such as “unwritten laws” and “unwritten rules” to refer to the concept of a glass ceiling.

 In Iran, for a Muslim woman, apart from her husband, Mahrams or Maharem are men who are of unmarriageable kin. They are divided into three categories: Mahrams by blood, such as father, grandfather, brother, uncle, and nephew; Mahrams by marriage such as father-­in-­law and son-­in-­ law; and Mahrams by breastfeeding, i.e. if a women breastfeeds an unrelated baby boy for a certain period, he will be Mahram to her and her daughters.

1

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In terms of horizontal gender segregation, participants reported evidence of sexist attitudes and prejudiced views towards women, which underlined male managers’ distrust of women’s professional capability and competence in general. Despite the weakening of paternalistic and patriarchal power relations in Iranian families, as Friedl (2009) has observed  – and in the society along with the empowerment of women through education and economic self-­sufficiency such power structures still resurface at critical moments and inhibit women’s progress in different organizations such as the IRIB. In this journey of struggle, women destabilized and disrupted, to some extent, the foundations of gender inequality entrenched in the IRIB. Participants generally adopted two strategies. Some of them adopted a “skeptical approach,” through which they focused on accomplishing their professional duties and advancing their careers but avoiding any kind of confrontation with the male-­dominated authorities. Other participants adopted an “optimist approach” in response to the work challenges. They believed that resistance, perseverance, and negotiation with the authorities could help to improve women’s situation in the IRIB and overcome some of the discriminatory practices against them. They acknowledged, however, that progressive change was likely to happen at a slow pace. Safura, who is currently a sports correspondent in IRIB, joined television in 1995. She contended that work conditions for women in broadcast media had improved during the past three decades. She summarized three factors that contributed to these changes as: the struggles of female employees with IRIB’s male executives; the changes in the attitudes of the organization’s executives; and the wider social and cultural developments in Iran. She stated: Women still have many problems in society and radio, and television should pay more attention to these problems. For me, despite limited attention by the media, women’s achievements in sports are very significant. So, I decided to highlight women’s accomplishments and successes in television.

She covers women’s sporting events on the 24-­hour news channel IRINN. She is proud of her main achievement in IRIB that is reporting women’s participation in different sport fields on television news. When she started her job in IRIB, women’s sporting events were hardly reported on television news, except in the form of rolling news texts. Her endeavor to visually report women’s sporting activities was not a simple task. She had to be very cautious in producing news reports of women’s sports in order to avoid crossing the religious guidelines and cultural norms in the society and the regulations in IRIB. Some religious authorities maintained that depicting women running, jumping, or cycling was inappropriate, even when the sportswomen were covering their hair and body. Gradually, she managed to push back some of the restrictive regulations and after five years of work she was sent by IRIB to the 2008 Beijing Olympics to cover the news of female Iranian athletes and sportswomen for the first time. Safura believed that the changes in her managers’ views and their cooperation had been crucial in opening the space for reporting women’s sports on television. This observation reveals that change and progress in male-­dominated organizations and conservative contexts require perseverance, resistance, negotiation, and persuasion skills.

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Conclusion: Constructing a New Identity In discussing the concept of “agency” in this chapter, I have had in mind Saba Mahmood’s (2005) widely cited work Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Mahmood reflects on some key concepts in liberal philosophy, such as the idea that human beings naturally seek freedom and to assert their autonomy. Therefore human agency, she believes, primarily constituted by acts that challenge social and cultural norms. She reviews the criticisms of liberal notions of freedom and autonomy and proposes that the idea of self-­realization must be “uncoupled from that of an autonomous will. Mahmood suggests that agency should be detached from the particular aims of progressive politics. In her view, the ability to make change is historically and culturally specific in terms of what constitutes change and how change takes place. From a similar viewpoint, I would observe that not all the participants in the present study understood self-­realization in the sense of subverting social norms or engaging in progressive politics. As the case of participants who adopted the skeptical approach demonstrated, some women may have a different understanding of change and its p­ ossibility within the gendered structures of the IRIB. Yet, they seek self-­ realization through other means, such as advancing their professional qualifications and careers. Rather than seeking an explicitly political ambition such as subversion, these participants who seemingly worked submissively within the framework of a gendered organization sought to reform it from inside through negotiation and perseverance. For these women, working professionally and attempting to improve the situation step-­by-­step was an enactment of the agency. Indeed, they did not resort to being submissive and inactive. They sought to achieve changes that may be slow but real. In the struggle to assert their agency within the broadcasting media, women in this research have constructed a new identity for themselves and other women beyond the traditional-­modern binary. Media have provided opportunities for Muslim women to participate actively in society. However, with the development of social media platforms in recent years, Muslim women increasingly utilize social media and virtual platforms (see Chapters 29, 35, 36). Social networks have provided Muslim women with new spaces and opportunities to articulate and express their political and social arguments and opinions. As elsewhere in Iran, cyberspace has created new spaces and opportunities for women in society and led them to express further their agency (Montazerghaem and Sha’ban Kasegar 2015). Recent studies demonstrate that new media technologies enable women to increase their knowledge and social participation (Yazdanpanah Dero  2019). During the COVID-­19 pandemic, Iranian women have experienced new space for participating in society. Some suggest the term “new digital housewives” to introduce a new generation of post-­traditionalist/post-­modernist women who cannot be theorized in classic dichotomies (Badamchi and Alborzi 2020). Examining women’s activities in Instagram during the pandemic demonstrates that Iranian women redefine their roles and images in society using virtual ­networks. In doing so, they have refused both traditional patriarchal boundaries and modern feminism’ stereotypes (Badamchi and Alborzi 2020).

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References Acker, J. 1990. “Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations.” Gender and Society 4, 2: 139–158. Ahmed, L. 1999. A Border Passage from Cairo to America: A Women’s Journey. New York: Penguin Books. Badamchi, M. H., and Alborzi, F. 2020. Corona: bazghasht be khaneh va baramadan olgouye nozohor zanan khanedar majazi [Corona pandemic: return home and emerging a new generation of digital homemakers in Iran] Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities 12, 3: 183–217. Bahramitash, R., and Hooglund, E. 2011. “Introduction.” In R. Bahramitash and E. Hooglund (Eds.), Gender in Contemporary Iran: Pushing the Boundaries (1st ed.) (pp. 1–10). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Byerly, C. M., and Ross, K. 2006. Women and Media: A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Carter, C., Steiner, L., and McLaughlin, L. (Eds.) 2015. The Routledge Companion to Media and Gender. London: Routledge. Connell, R. W. 1994. “Gender Regimes and the Gender Order.” In The Polity Reader in Gender Studies (pp. 29–40). Cambridge: Polity. Connell, R. W. 2009. Gender: In World Perspective. Cambridge: Polity. Eltantawy, N. 2016. Women and Media in the Middle East: From Veiling to Blogging. London: Routledge. Gallagher, M. (2014. “Feminist Scholarship and the Debates on Gender and Communication.” In UNESCO, Media and Gender: A Scholarly Agenda for a Global Alliance (pp. 11–14). Paris: UNESCO. Ghasemi, A. 2022. Author’s personal interview with Human Resource manager in IRIB. Graham-­Brown, S. 2001. “Women’s Activism in the Middle East: A Historical Perspective.” In S. Joseph and S. Slyomovics (Eds.) Women and Power in the Middle East (pp. 23–34). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Guivian, A. 2006. “Religion, Television and Culture in Post-­Revolutionary Iran.” PhD thesis. London University. Haghighat-­Sordellini, E. 2010. Women in the Middle East and North Africa: Change and Continuity. New York: Palgrave. IRIB Human Resource Department. 1978. Unpublished Internal Report. IRIB Human Resource Department. 2021. Unpublished Internal Report. Islamic Parliament Research Center of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 2020. “Statute of Islamic Republic of Iranian Broadcasting.” Retrieved from https://rc.majlis.ir/fa/law/show/90402 Khiabany, G. 2010. Iranian Media: The Paradox of Modernity. New York: Rutledge. Khomeini, R. 2010. Women’s Position in Imam Khomeini’s Thoughts [Jaygah Zan Dar Andishe Imam Khomeinin]. Tehran, Orouj. Kolaee, E., and Behbahani, S. 2012. “Zannan Va Pishrafthaye Farhangi Ba’ad Az Engheleab [Women and Cultural Development after the Islamic Revolution with an Emphasis on Cinema].” Global Media Journal 11, 1: 1–16. Krijnen T., and Van Bauwel, S. 2015. Gender and Media: Representing, Producing, Consumers. London: Palgrave. Krinjnen 2020. “Gender and Media.” In K. Ross, I. Bachmann, V. Cardo, et al. (Eds.), The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication (1st ed.) (pp. 1–9). New York: Wiley. Moghadam, V. M. 2019. “Social Transformation in a Digital Age: Women’s Participation in Civil AND Political Domains in the MENA Region.” In L. A. Secat, H. Gallego, and C. Sala (Eds.), IEMed Mediterranean Yearbook 2019 (pp. 140–146). European Institute of the Mediterranean. Montazarghaem, M., and Sha’ban Kasegar, M. 2015. “Fazaye cyber va tavanmandsazi zanan dar Iran [Cyberspace and the Empowerment of Women in Iran].” New Media Studies 3, 1: 43–76.

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Motahari, M. 1990. Majmoueh Asar shahid Motahari [Collection of Motahari’s books and notes]. Tehran: Sadra. Povey, T., and Rostami-­Povey, E. 2012. “The Women’s Movement in Its Historical Context.” In Rostami-­Povey, E. (Ed.), Women, Power and Politics in 21st Century Iran (pp. 17–33). Surrey: Ashgate. Rahman, M., and Jackson, S. 2010. Gender and Sexuality: Sociological Approaches. Cambridge: Polity Press. Sadeghi, F. 2008. “Fundamentalism, Gender and the Discourse of Veiling (Hijab) in Contemporary Iran.” In M. Semati, (Ed.), Culture and Society in Iran: Living with Globalization and the Islamic State (pp. 207–223). New York: Routledge. Said, E. 1979. Orientalism. New York: Vintage. Shariati, A. 1971. Fatemeh ast [Fatemeh Is Fatemeh]. Tehran: Hossiniyeh Ershad Press. Statistical Center of Iran. 2020a. “A Selection of Labor Force Survey Results: Winter 1398 [22 December 2019–19 March 2020].” Retrieved from https://www.amar.org.ir/Portals/1/ releases/lfs/A-­Selection-­of-­Labour-­Force-­Survey-­Results-­Winter-­1398.pdf Statistical Center of Iran. 2020b. “Literacy Rate Aged 6 Years and Over [Mizan basadi jamiat 6 sale va bulutar balatar].” Retrieved from https://www.amar.org.ir/%D8%A2%D9%85%D8%A 7%D8%B1%D9%87%D8%A7%DB%8C-­%D9%85%D9%88%D8%B6%D9%88%D8%B9% DB%8C/%D8%B3%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%AF#5549661 Williams, C. L., and Stein, A. 2002. Sexuality and Gender. Oxford: Blackwell. Women’s Statistical Status in the Islamic Republic of Iran. 2020. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Retrieved from https://lib.ohchr.org/HRBodies/ UPR/Documents/Session7/IR/A_HRC_WG6_7_IRN_1_ANNEXV_E.pdf Yazdanpanah Dero, K. 2019. “Karkad Fazaye Majazi dar etreghaye sath fekri va ejtemaee zanan da Iran [Function of Cyberspace in Promoting the Intellectual and Social Level of Women in Iran].” Human Geography Research 51, 2: 513–530.

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Mediations of Political Identities in Arab Animation Omar Sayfo

In Arabic, the word “cartoon” traditionally denotes animated films – either feature-­length or series – which are also translated as “moving drawings” (al-­rusuum al-­mutaharrika). British animation scholar Paul Wells observed that large numbers of animation studios around the globe “have insisted upon using their own indigenous fine art traditions, mythologies and cultural imperatives in order to differentiate their own work from what may be regarded as a diluted form of American artistic and cultural imperialism.”1 While figurative illustrations in traditional Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and Russian visual arts have greatly influenced the styles of modern animation productions, traditional Arab visual arts have been relatively poor in figurative illustrations for reasons rooted in ­culture and religion.2 Therefore, Arab animation producers since the 1930s found it rather challenging to develop unique styles rooted in their own artistic traditions. Given the influence that Disney’s style had on producers and animators all around the world, including Arab countries, the majority of Arab animations seem to recall what Wells defines as Disney’s “orthodox hyper-­realist styling, informed by close engagement with authentic, anatomically viable movement forms.”3 For Arab animation, the visual styles of Western and Japanese animations were much more inspirational than traditional Arab or Islamic visual arts. Nevertheless, Arab producers certainly succeeded in ­hybridizing the global format in order to meet local demands and to mediate local identities (see Chapters 2, 4). Arab animation, therefore, should be analyzed as the product of a long tradition of intercultural exchanges between Western and Eastern cultures, and as an effort in  Paul Wells, Animation: Genre and Authorship (London: Wallflower Press, 2002) 2.  While many illustrated medieval Arab books do contain figurative scenes, the Arab illustrative arts are primarily dominated by non-­figurative and calligraphic imagery. See: Anna Contadini, Arab Painting: Text and Image in Illustrated Arabic Manuscripts (Leiden: Brill, 2007). 3  Paul Wells, Animation, 4. 1 2

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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localizing global cultural forms. Waisbord and Jalfin note that the concept of ­“localization” is central to the process of cultural hybridization: “the blending of global and local cultural forms, the constant borrowing and meshing of styles and forms whose origins are geographically located in distant corners of the globe.”4 According to Straubhaar, cultures interact over time, mediated by technology, migration, and institutional and economic forms.5 Very often, cultural products hybridize with local and imported cultural elements blending to create new forms of culture. Kraidy stresses that the utilization of the concept of hybridity is based on the negation of both cultural homogeneity and Western cultural dominance.6 Cultural globalization itself can be regarded as a process of hybridization, whereby cultural forms are continuously transformed and new cultural forms are created.7 As Kraidy puts it, “[s]ince hybridity involves the fusion of two hitherto relatively distinct forms, styles, or identities, cross-­cultural contact, which often occurs across national ­borders as well as across cultural boundaries, is a requisite for hybridity.”8 Kraidy goes even further, claiming hybridity to be the “cultural logic” of globalization as it “entails that traces of other cultures exist in every culture, thus offering foreign media and marketers transcultural wedges for forging affective links between their commodities and local communities.”9 In this regard, Arab animations are expressions of local, national, and regional adaptation and appropriation of global patterns, and also of resistance to global tendencies toward cultural homogenization.

The Early Challenges of Arab Animation More so than in the West, in Arab popular discourse, animations were long seen as a children-­only format. For many decades, this perception posed an obstacle to broader investment in homegrown productions. Until the 1990s, it was common for Arab television companies to restrict funds for children’s programs in their budgets.10 Animated cartoons presented on Arab television channels were almost exclusively imports from Europe, Japan, and the United States. The dubbing of these imported cartoons usually

 Silvio Waisbord and Sonia Jalfin, “Imagining the National: Television Gatekeepers and the Adaptation of Global Franchises in Argentina,” in TV Formats Worldwide Localizing Global Programs, ed. Albert Moran (Bristol/Chicago: Intellect 2009), 58. 5  Joseph Straubhaar, “(Re)Asserting National Television And National Identity Against the Global, Regional, and Local Levels of World Television,” in Media and Cultural Studies, eds. Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas M. Kellner (Wiley 2009), 681–703. 6  Marwan M. Kraidy, Hybridity, or the Cultural Logic of Globalization (New Delhi: Temple University Press, 2005), 75. 7  Marwan M. Kraidy, Hybridity, 16. 8  Marwan M. Kraidy, Hybridity, 5. 9  Marwan M. Kraidy, Hybridity, 148. 10  Omar Sayfo, “The Emergence of Arab Children’s Televisions and Animation Industry in the Gulf States,” in State-­society Relations in the Arab Gulf States, eds. Mazhar Al-­zo’oby and Birol Baskan (Berlin: Gerlach Press, 2014), 77–101. 4

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came along with cultural appropriation and “Arabization” of content such as changing the dialogue and giving characters Arabic names, as the case of renaming Captain Tsubasa to Captain Majed. Because animation production alone was not profitable, it was common for Arab animators11 – particularly in Egypt, Algeria, and Tunisia, the three countries where animation production first emerged – from the 1960s to the 1990s to prepare their projects individually or in small workshops, while working “day jobs” in local television or cinema industries. Although these animators have enjoyed a high level of creative freedom, their position was economically delicate, and a dichotomy between creative and economic motivations began to emerge. While most of them successfully used their personal and professional networks to have their works presented on television, and some short productions were also presented in cinema and at festivals, they largely failed to reach larger audiences. For those who strove to produce labor-­intensive, costly, and high-­ quality animation and to distribute it widely, strong links to decisionmakers (such as board members, managing directors, acquisition managers, program directors, and others) and integration into the media and cultural industries alone was barely enough. They often needed to support the discourse of a political regime and to connect it to a glorious past. In return, producers and animators received funding, access to distribution platforms, publicity, and in some cases even prizes. The prestige of animation started to increase as demand for local content grew ­following the boom of satellite TV in the 1990s, and the establishment of thematic children’s channels in the 2000s (see Chapters 12, 13). In the mid-­2000s a new generation of producers emerged, leading to the spread of sitcom animations, inspired by The Simpsons, South Park, and others, discussing serious social and even political issues, and then to the flourishing of online political animations during the Arab uprisings.

The Political Economy of Arab Animation Economic and political circumstances have long influenced the production and ­distribution of Arab animation content. In the 1930s, the pioneers of animation producers, the Frenkel Brothers, sons of Russian-­Jewish immigrants to then multicultural Alexandria, maintained close working relations with governmental institutions such as the Ministry of Agriculture and influential commercial companies of their time. Their goal was to gain commissions from the government or commercial companies, and to produce advertisements presented in cinemas. Their high-­profile 15-­minute production al-­Difaʿal-­Wataniyy (National Defense, 1940) was commissioned by the Ministry of War in order to support the loan initiated by the Egyptian government for the army.12  See Algerian Mohammed ʿAram (b. 1934); Egyptians Ali Moheeb, Sameeʿ Rafeʿ, Mohamed Haseeb (1937–2001) and Noshi Iskandar (1938–2009); Tunisians Mongi Sancho (b. 1948), Mustafa Taieb (b. 1961), and Zouhair Mahjoub (b. 1945). 12  Omar Sayfo, Arab Animation: Images of Identity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2021), 29. 11

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­ ost-­independence Arab regimes also cultivated an interest in the production of P ­animation for ideological purposes. Baathist Iraq’s sole feature-­length animation production, ­al-­Amira wal-­Nahr (The Princess and the River, 1982) was produced by Babylon, a state-­f unded company. The film, which cost US$1 million, recounts a story set against a background of quarrelling Sumerian kingdoms, in part fueled by the intrigues of Eiran, the ruler of the neighboring hostile empire. The promotion of such narratives through animation film contributed to Saddam Hussein’s propaganda during the ­Iran-­Iraq War (1980–1988). A more recent example of political and commercial interests in animation is al-­Jaza’ir Tarikh wa Hadarah (Algeria History and Civilization, 2012). The 52-­episode series offers a chronological overview of the history of Algeria from the creation of the kingdom of Numidia in antiquity until the end of French colonial rule in 1962, presenting a past written from an Algerian nationalistic, anti-­colonialist perspective. Production and animation work was signed by the al-­Bouraq Studio, a private enterprise, and lasted for five years.13 The cost of 50 million dinar (approx. US$600,000) was largely covered by the Ministry of Mujahedeen and the Ministry of Culture, as indicated by the title sequence of each episode.14 To gain the support of decisionmakers, producers often include references that align with the official political discourse. Still, the overwhelming majority of Arab animations do not directly engage in politics, but rather opt for mediating political identities in line with the ruling discourse.

Identity Representation in Arab Animation Similarly to Arab films and television series, animation as a format and cultural text ­provides space for reproducing and also creating elements of the “local” culture. Arab animated cartoons usually transform foreign forms, ideas, and topics to meet local cultural sensibilities. The outcome of these modifications are “hybrid texts.” Such adaptation and localization of formats involves a combination of “cultural codes” that define matters of language, ethnicity, history, religion, geography, and culture.15 Despite the clear influence of Disney and other imported productions, there is no canonized way of expressing identities in animated cartoons, and Arab producers are therefore relatively free to play with the mosaics of identity markers in their productions. The articulation of the “local” identity is mainly reflected in the narrative, the visuals, and the language. Narratives can include familiar stories based on collective memory that define national, regional, and/or religious and ethnic identities, such as folktales, historical events, stories known from religious texts, and others. On the visual level, the main  Telephone interview with Tayeb Cherif Seddik, director of Studio El Bouraq (March 15, 2013).  Larbi Gradne, Le numérique peut-­il sauver Mqidech? (March 29, 2012), Available at: http://www. lemidi-­dz.com/index.php?operation=voir_article&id_article=sup_magazine%40art1%402012-­03-­29 15  Albert Moran, “When TV Formats Are Translated,” in TV Formats Worldwide: Localizing Global Programs, ed. Albert Moran (Chicago: Intellect Books, 2009), 50. 13 14

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indicators of identity can be buildings, cityscapes, indoor and outdoor locations, and natural landscapes, as well as characters, including their physiognomy and dress. The primary marker of identity is language. In everyday life, the usage of Arabic is characterized by diglossia: standard Arabic constitutes the formal or “high” variety, while dialects represent the informal, or less formal, or “low” variety.16 Waisbord pointed out that “broadcast language could be understood as a way in which nations are daily reproduced” and television, therefore, “normalizes the ties between language and nations.”17 In the case of Arab cinematic and media productions, language is a similarly vital factor in reproducing social and political struggles, and the choice of language in Arab media productions has a symbolic value. The choice between standard Arabic (fusha) and a local dialect can often be understood as a statement made by the author with reference to national versus regional identities. Therefore, Arab animated films and series generally use local dialects when their authors intend to target local (national) audiences and create a sense of belonging. In these shows, presenting characters that speak a dialect other than the local one can also serve as a marker of otherness. Animated cartoons using fusha essentially target transnational Arab audiences because, alongside narratives of regional validity and a visual presentation of Arab characters and scenes, they create a sense of neutrality and cultural proximity compared to Western animated cartoons, and are therefore more attractive to other national markets. Fusha, the language of the Qur’an and Islamic discourse, is also appreciated by productions mediating Islamic identities. Certainly, fusha also increases the chances of the transnational distribution of the production. Depending on a variety of factors that include the producer’s identity and aims, sponsorship, targeted audience, distribution channels, and also political and economic considerations, there are three main identities Arab animation aims to mediate: the national, the pan-­Arab, and the Islamic.

Articulating Nationhood by Animation Mass communication in general and television in particular is central to the process of nation formation.18 In this respect, cultural and media productions, including animated cartoons, have been potential means for Arab “national” elites to create and maintain “imagined communities” sharing common identities.19 With the proliferation of ­satellite channels in the 1990s, more diffused regional identities became prominent with the emergence of media powerhouses addressing a pan-­Arab audience with homegrown entertaining content. This trend, however, started to break down in the later 2000s, with  Yasir Suleiman, The Arabic Language and National Identity: A Study in Ideology (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2003), 15. 17  Silvio Waisbord, “McTV: Understanding the Global Popularity of Television Formats,” Television & New Media 5, no. 4 (2004): 359–383. 18  Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso,1991), 6. 19  Geoffrey Bennington, “Postal Politics and the Institution of the Nation,” in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi K. Bhabha (London: Methuen, 1990), 121–137. 16

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the reemergence of the “national,” as opposed to the regional, and a reassertion of the “local,” especially in entertainment programming.20 The tension between transnational and local content persists as consumption patterns are further fragmented along ­demographics, linguistic, cultural, and other factors. Very often, Arab animated cartoons funded by state-­related institutions and presented on television channels linked to governments, whether directly or indirectly, articulate ideas about national identities. Also, they often deal with political issues that serve as the cornerstones of the legitimacy of particular regimes. In (re)constructing the national, narratives are generally rich in local references: local environments and characters are largely preferred on the visual level, and local dialect is used. The otherness of other Arab countries and characters is stressed both in visuals and language. One case in point is Egypt’s high-­profile series, Bakkar (1998–2007, 2015–2016), ­revolving around a Nubian boy and his friends. The show was created by Mona ­Abul-­Nasr, an influential producer at the Egyptian Television Channel, and a university professor. Bakkar’s debut came at a politically sensitive period. The violent clashes between the army and Islamist forces in the early 1990s fueled the political elite’s need for national reconciliation with various segments of the society. Therefore, as a member of an ethnic minority, Bakkar symbolizes not the Nubian community, but the unity of Egyptians.21 The theme song, performed by popular Egyptian singer Mohammed Muneer, leaves no doubts about the authors’ intentions: “Ever since he [Bakkar] was young, he knew in his heart and soul that he is Egyptian; that the Nile runs in him; that his country’s history courses through his blood.” Similarly, Dubai’s first 3D series, Freej (2006–2013), was c­ reated in line with the Emirati government’s heritage-­revival strategies that came as a response to the expansion of the city and an influx of foreign labor that led to a shift in lifestyle and identity. Lammtara Pictures, the producer of Freej was funded by Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid’s Establishment for Young Business Leaders in 2005. The plots revolve around four elderly ladies living in a traditional neighborhood, showing how their daily lives are challenged by the ever-­expanding city and the modernizing world around them. In both cases, producers gained financial support for their project on the promise to advocate official notions of national identity. However, not all animations mediating national identities uncritically follow the official discourses.

Critical Notions to National Identities Since the mid-­2000s, homegrown animated sitcoms became popular in the Arab world. Original Arab shows, as hybridized versions of the American genre, share generic codes of realism, intertextuality, and cultural relevance, as well as social and political

 Joe F Khalil, “The Business Push and Audience Pull in Arab Entertainment Television.” International Journal of Communication 10 (2016): 3632–3646. 21  Ehab Galal, “Domestication and Commodification of ‘the Other’ on Children’s TV,” in Children’s Television and Digital Media in the Arab World, eds. Naomi Sakr, and Jeanette Steemers (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015). 20

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commentary.22 Although produced and distributed in a conservative geo-­cultural region ­characterized by (self )censorship, these shows largely avoid head-­on confrontations with influential social, political, and religious hierarchies – especially as they are often sponsored by commercial companies, and they debut on television channels connected to local political and business elites both by formal or informal ties.23 Nevertheless, they preserve the animated sitcom genre’s critical edge by discussing issues of general concern, as the case of Jordanian political cartoonist Emad Hajjaj’s Abu Mahjoub (2001–2003) shows. Based on a newspaper comic cartoon character, Abu Mahjoub, a slender, ­middle-­aged man wearing traditional kufiyyeh represents the average lower-­middle class citizen’s frustration with bureaucracy, economic hardships, and other issues. As in the case of American shows like The Simpsons and others, Arab sitcom animations feature visually, behaviorally, and linguistically stereotyped characters vested with national characteristics, speaking a local dialect, set in a local environment, and referring to local events, presenting identities bound up with the nation. Yet, by representing different segments of local societies, both on the ethnic, gender, and cultural level, a number of shows challenge official notions of national identities where differences between various groups of people are often downplayed. In the case of Kuwait’s Block 13 (2000–2002) and Yowmiyyat Bu Qatada wa Bu Nabeel (2007–2014), Oman’s Youm wa Youm (2011) and Dubai’s Shaʿbeyyat al-­Kartoon (2006–), the producers depict ethnic and political fissures within the national community tempered with comic relief, indicated by visual representations and dialect. Such series are largely presented on television channels embedded into the national media and political ecosystem, and sponsored by banks, telecom, and local companies, and even ministries. In the case of Dubai’s Shaʿbeyyat al-­K artoon or Tunisia’s Tunis 2050 (2010–2013, 2020) and others, the animated cityscapes are branded with logos of sponsoring companies. Therefore, producers balance between progressive sociopolitical discourses and maintaining connections to traditional decisionmakers. Still, unlike shows directly (and often solely) funded by state institutions, they are relatively bold in representing diverse social and even political groups, and in portraying the “national” as a mosaic that covers more than one community or group of people. Shaʿbeyyat al-­K artoon, for example, include main characters of Bedouin, urban Arab, and ‘ajam (Iranian) background. Meanwhile, by showing Arabs from other states and by highlighting the differences between local and foreign Arabs – both on the visual and linguistic levels – these heterogeneous portrayals of the national stress national identities even more.

Competing Notions of Pan-­Arab Identities Mediations of pan-­Arab identities are set within the framework of broader politics and these notions can differ widely depending on the preferences of writers and the general production background, as well as the political/historical context of the countries involved and the areas of broadcasting.  Jason Mittell, “Cartoon Realism: Genre Mixing and the Cultural Life of The Simpsons,” Velvet Light Trap 47 (2001): 15–28. 23  Omar Sayfo, “Arab Sitcom Animations as Platforms of Satire,” in The Power of Satire, ed. Sonja de Leeuw (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2015). 22

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The first significant producer of animation content aimed for a pan-­Arab audience was the Gulf Cooperation Council’s Joint Program Production Institution ( JPPI), a Kuwaiti-­based transnational organization established in 1976. The institution had as its declared goal the creation of content advocating a shared Arab Gulf identity, and its distribution primarily on state-­owned channels of the member states. The first animated productions signed by JPPI were one-­and two-­minute films teaching Arabic letters and numbers featured in the Arab adaptation of Sesame Street, called Iftah Ya Simsim (Open Sesame!) that premiered in Kuwait and other Arab countries (1979–1990).24 This was followed by a number of animation shows, including the series of Zaʿtoor (1995) revolving around a young donkey and his human friends. The plot was set in an undefined rural environment, and the physical appearance and clothing of the characters lacked national characteristics, in order to satisfy the requirements of the funders to articulate a regional identity. One case in point is the character of a policeman wearing a blue-­and-­white uniform, which bears no resemblance to the uniforms worn by any of the police forces in the Gulf countries. Through its use of fusha Arabic, Zaʿtoor mediates an Arab identity in which Arabness is largely associated with a Gulf environment. Here, religion is only used as a frame and presented as part of the culture, indicated by mosques and women veiled according to Gulf customs. Operating under the Syrian Baathist regime, production companies such as Star Animation for Artistic Production (est. in 1995) and Tiger Production (est. 2001) were responsible for the majority of animation series and films. Established in line with the Investment Law of 1991, these companies encouraged the private-­sector entrepreneurs to create television programs for commercial entertainment. The most successful private entrepreneurs were those with strong ties to the regime and with experience in the  television industry. Inseparable from the Baathist milieu, feature-­length films like ­Al-­Jarrah (The Jug, 2001), Khayt al-­Hayat (Yarn of Life, 2007) and Tuyur al-­Yasmin ( Jasmine Birds, 2009) carry universal moral messages, advocating values such as honesty, justice, love for work, and loyalty to the homeland. Regarding the productions and animations from both Baathist Syria and from the Gulf, there is an obvious tendency toward “regionalizing the subregional,” in the sense of presenting subregional identity markers as having pan-­Arab validity. Given the  ­production background, however, the Syrian and Gulf approaches are different. While Syrian animated cartoons tend to associate “Arabness” with the Middle Eastern/ Levantine physical and cultural environment, townscapes, and attire, the animations produced by GCC’s JPPI prefer references to cultural markers of the Gulf. Arabness within the geopolitical area is a contested idea, whereas there is no specific representation in productions intended for a transnational audience. More recently, pan-­Arab children’s channels such as Qatari Al Jazeera Children’s Channel (AJCC, rebranded as Jeem TV in 2013) and Saudi MBC3 emerged as the main platforms of exclusive animated content of pan-­Arab orientation. Along with educational content, remediating themes from Arab literature and history and using them in  the construction of a pan-­Arab identity is a common feature of these animations.  During the last decades, different versions of Sesame Street were produced in Egypt, Jordan, and recently the UAE.

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One case in point is represented by the stories of AJCC’s Khalila wa Dimna (Kahlila and Dimna), a feature-­length production, followed by a series with an identical title in 2006, based on the widely known animal fables translated from the Persian by Abdullah Ibn al-­Muqaffa in AD 750. Another example is AJCC’s Saladin: The Animated Series (2009). Here, the stories take place in a fictional period of the 18-­year-­old Saladin’s life and can thus hardly be called historically accurate: rather, they resemble similar plots in Disney cartoons, recounting the adventures of the protagonist who, together with his loyal friends, embarks on various challenges.25 In April 2016 Jeem TV was acquired by beIN Channels Network and turned into a pay service with little local production, which meant a setback to the production of pan-­Arab animated content. Despite the different priorities and approaches to pan-­Arab identities, there are a number of characteristics shared by the animations of Syrian Baathist, GCC’s JPPI, and pan-­Arab channels. A high number of productions were involved in promoting the notion of a common Arab identity through the mediation of a shared past and culture as well as a general tendency toward remediating narratives and characters from Islamic and Arab history and literature. By doing so, they celebrate the glorious past as a foundation of current pan-­Arabic identities. Even when the narratives are authentic, they largely avoid references to particularities that would evoke associations with a specific country. On the linguistic level, they all use fusha Arabic. This approach is also highlighted visually, as pan-­Arab productions, regardless of their country of origin and production background, mostly present scenes and characters that can be accepted as the “own” to all Arabs, regardless of their country. The narratives are either set in an unspecified Middle Eastern and North African milieu or involve scenes located in various Arab countries. The same holds true for the characters, who are either presented without indicating their actual nationality, or as Arabs from different countries, while avoiding a focus on differences regarding physiognomy, costume, or culture. While “Islamic identities” are not always accentuated, Islam is usually presented as part of Arab culture. Islamic buildings such as mosques and minarets, and costume elements such as women’s veils (hijab) are shown. Several productions feature Islamic phrases used in daily life without getting engaged in direct discourses over religion.

Animating the Ummah The observations on the local demand for culturally relevant productions seem to be valid not only on geo-­linguistic, but also on cultural (Islamic) markets, as shown by the immense popularity of Turkish soap operas in the Arab world.26 When transcending  Salah al-­Din Yusuf Ibn Ayyub (1138–1193), known as Saladin in the Western world was the founder of the Ayyubid ruling house (1169–1260). Under his leadership, Muslim forces defeated European Crusaders, then united Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, Hejaz, and Yemen under one sultanate. 26  Alexandra Buccianti, “Dubbed Turkish Soap Operas Conquering the Arab World: Social Liberation or Cultural Alienation?” Arab Media and Society 10 (2010), Available at: http://www. arabmediasociety.com/?article=735 25

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geo-­linguistic markets, Arab animations are mainly distributed in Muslim countries and among immigrant communities. Advocating Islamic, nonnational bounded identities, Arabic Islamic animations also reach beyond the borders of the geo-­linguistic region and find their way to distant Muslim markets, and thus act as a counternarrative to cultural imperialism. Certainly, Islamic identities in animation are as diverse as in real life, and they follow broader notions and understandings of religion. The pioneer of “Islamic animation” was Ella (est. 1994, later rebranded as OK Toons), a  private Saudi company owned by Osama Khalifa, producer of a large number of feature-­length animated films. While claiming a universal “Islamic” identity, the films articulate particularities of Saudi Wahhabi Islamic identity, mirrored by characteristic traits such as the exclusion of instrumental music and the inclusion of religious songs without instruments (anasheed). As the cases of Mohammad al-­Fatih (1995), Tareq ibn Ziyad (1999), and other Ella productions show, on the visual level racial differences are downplayed when representing the Muslim “self,” while markers of otherness regarding ­physical appearance (such as color, lineaments, and attire) were highlighted when representing the non-­Muslim “other.” On the narrative level, the approach to Islam often claims an exclusive ownership of an ultimate truth that struggles with an often demonized “other.” Certainly, the values of Islam are largely associated with general humanist values. In one scene of Tareq ibn Ziyad, a film revolving around the Muslim conquest of Andalusia in the eighth century, we see the protagonist imploring God to bestow good and justice on all humankind (insaniyya); meanwhile, non-­Muslim Andalusians are shown suffering under the tyrannical rule of the Visigoth King Roderic, longing for the Muslim armies to liberate them. By adapting and Islamicizing stories both from Arab/Muslim history and literature, these productions are used for the “Islamization” of Arab popular culture in a way that can be associated with Saudi and Gulf Muslim identities. A different kind of Islamic identity is articulated by Meem Cultural Production (est. 2016), a Lebanese studio founded by Abbas Sharara, with links to Hezbollah’s Imam al-­Mahdi Scouts. Their high-­quality feature Princess of Rome (2015) narrates the tale of Melika, the granddaughter of the Byzantine Caesar, who became the wife of Imam al-­Hadi’s son Hassan al-­Askari. Shia visual traditions are adapted, as the face of the Imam is shown with a light illuminating the upper part of his face, i.e. the forehead, nasal bone, and cheekbones, as known from posters distributed in the Shia areas of the Middle East.27 The film was produced in cooperation with Iranian studios, and distributed among Shia communities of the Middle East and the European diasporas.28 Islamic animation production in Egypt is also closely linked to the wider Egyptian political and religious environment, as it was principally facilitated by the Egyptian government’s efforts to create a controlled Islamic public sphere in the media in order to strengthen its own legitimacy.29 Egyptian productions such as Mustafa al-­Faramawi’s  Flaskerud, Ingvild, Visualizing Belief and Piety in Iranian Shiism (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010), 39–40. 28  Personal interview with Abbas Shrara, founder of Meem Cultural Production (Beirut, January 8, 2020). 29  Omar Sayfo, “Mediating a Disney-­style Islam: The Emergence of Egyptian Islamic Animated Cartoons.” Animation 13, no. 2 (2018): 102–115. 27

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Qisas al-­Qur’an (Stories of the Qur’an) series largely associate Muslim identity with ­moderation and harmony. In order to facilitate the transnational flow and marketability of the productions beyond the borders of Egypt and the Arab world, the producers largely avoid touching sensitive religious doctrines, while create a narrative fusing Muslim and popular Western elements. The scripts are officially approved by al-­Azhar, Egypt’s highest religious authority that enjoys a good reputation in the Muslim world and is regarded less politically motivated than Saudi or Iranian institutions. In brief, Islamic cartoons are diverse and mediate rivaling notions of religious identities. Still, in all cases, fusha Arabic, the language of the Qur’an and religious discourse is used to emphasize the Islamic identity of the productions, regardless of production background. Unlike the pan-­Arab animated cartoons discussed earlier, fusha Arabic is not used as a symbol of Arab unity, but of Islamic identity. On the visual level, animation is employed to create different worlds, constructed according to the artistic preference of the authors, representing different approaches to Muslim identities. In this regard, Saudi Wahhabi Islamic productions as well as Egyptian Islamic animated cartoons hybridized the hyperrealist style (often associated with Disney) to create different representations of Muslim characters and environments. Regarding the characters, the “own” and the “other” are represented in manners that evoke sympathy or antipathy.

The Arab Spring of Animation The wave of regional unrest called the “Arab Spring” included not only political, social, and economic uprisings, but also a cultural and artistic uprising. Very soon after Tunisian president Zine el-­Abidine Ben Ali announced his resignation, a short, edgy animation appeared online. The spot featuring cut-­out animated characters was created by a small Jordanian company called Kharabeesh (Scribbles, est. 2008). It showed the Tunisian president fleeing his country by plane and phoning his former Middle Eastern and European allies, begging for refuge. The popularity of the animation prompted Kharabeesh to release more productions of this kind, and it inspired others across the region to follow suit. Soon, short sarcastic animations, produced mainly by Flash, Post Productions, 3D  Studio, and other easy-­access software, mushroomed on YouTube and on social media, making animation production an integral part of this “creative insurgency” and a distinguished platform for the mediation of emerging revolutionary identities.30 Although demonstrators across the region embraced different ideologies, they put their differences aside, particularly in the early days of the Arab uprisings, which gave them a sense of collective action and a feeling that all factions of society were in agreement.31 In the exuberant revolutionary public discourse, individuals and creative groups such as Syrian WikiSham, Tunisian Atelier’s 216, Egyptian Egyptoon, and others were hailed  Marwan M. Kraidy, The Naked Blogger of Cairo (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 15–17. 31  Brian K. Barber and James Youniss (2013) “Egyptian Youth Make History: Forging a Revolutionary Identity Amid Brutality,” Harvard International Review 34, no. 4 (2013): 68–72. 30

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as champions of the democratization of media production. In the ensuing years, ­hundreds of short animated spots appeared online. Similar to other revolutionary social media content, a number of online animations of the Arab uprisings managed to break the boundaries between old and new media, and were promoted by transnational ­channels such as BBC, Al-­Jazeera, Al-­Arabiya, and others. In this respect, these animations participated in the consolidation of a “synchronization of new social media and satellite media.”32 While most animation appeared exclusively online, the changing mediascape and the increase of animation’s prestige offered opportunities for some of the producers, as the example of Atelier 216 shows, which was approached by the newly established Tunisia World Television to produce exclusive animation series for Ramadan 2012. Although the reactionary political reality put a hiatus to revolutionary animation production in the Middle East, forcing producers like Kharabeesh and Atelier 216 to embrace self-­censorship and focus on commercial projects, the genie was out of the bottle. Easy access to computers and animation software on the producers’ side, and laptops, tablets, and smartphones on the consumers’ side enabled creative individuals and groups across the entire Arab world to publish their short animation projects online (see Chapter 13). Emboldened by the example of the early revolutionaries, numerous projects emerged at various scales and of varying duration. Despite the chaos after the toppling of President Abdullah Saleh in February 2012, followed by a war with the Houthi rebels, Yemen, a country that had never before engaged in animation production, became home to Hadramtoun, a sharp-­tongued sitcom animation series distributed online, rich in references to the social characteristics of the Hadramout region, which succeeded in mobilizing sufficient financial support to keep releasing short episodes. Such humorous animated voices offer tiny specks relief for societies struggling with conflict and fragmentation.

Conclusion The animation format is an extremely open text in which different understandings of nation and identity are projected, defined, redefined, and contested against local competitors and imported formats and genres. Arab animations can be seen as local champions challenging the decades-­long hegemony of cultural authority imposed by imported and dubbed animated cartoons. Likewise, Arab cultural and media producers used animations for their potential to express sociocultural, national, and regional realities, and to mediate notions of identities (see Chapters 4, 5, 39). Animation is also a legitimate target of well-­ defined cultural policies and, in some cases, even of political and religious agendas. Arab animation certainly managed to gain a foothold on national, pan-­Arab, and Islamic niche markets. Yet, despite the tremendous growth that Arab animated cartoon productions had experienced since the mid-­1990s, only a few animation studios and ­production houses have expanded beyond the borders of the Arab world. Even when  Miriyam Aouragh and Anne Alexander, “The Arab Spring| The Egyptian Experience: Sense and Nonsense of the Internet Revolution,” International Journal of communication 5 (2011): 15.

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they do, their global reach has been largely restricted to international festivals, Muslim ­markets, and immigrant communities in the West, who share some basic religious or cultural identities with the producers. Recently, new means of distribution certainly have become a beacon of hope. In March 2020 Arab animation gained momentum like never before, as Netflix acquired Masameer the Movie. Produced by Myrkott, a Saudi animation studio based in Riyadh, the film tells the story of a local girl with a passion for robots and her three friends, who all go on a journey to prove themselves to society by becoming crime-­fighting superheroes. It still remains to be seen whether the new generation of resourceful producers, many of them hampered by a harsh economic context, will be able to achieve growth on the global level, ruled by affluent Western and Asian production companies. References Anderson, B. 1991. Imagined Communities. London: Verso. Aouragh, M., and Alexander, A. 2011. “The Arab Spring| The Egyptian Experience: Sense and Nonsense of the Internet Revolution.” International Journal of Communication 5: 1344–1358. Barber, B. K., and Youniss, J. 2013. “Egyptian Youth Make History: Forging a Revolutionary Identity Amid Brutality,” Harvard International Review 34, no. 4: 68–72. Bennington, G. 1990. “Postal Politics and the Institution of the Nation.” In H. K. Bhabha (Ed.) Nation and Narration (pp. 121–137). London: Methuen. Buccianti, A. 2010. “Dubbed Turkish Soap Operas Conquering the Arab World: Social Liberation or Cultural Alienation?” Arab Media and Society 10. http://www.arabmediasociety.com/ ?article=735 Contadini, A. 2007. Arab Painting: Text and Image in Illustrated Arabic Manuscripts. Leiden: Brill. Gelal, E. 2015. “Domestication and Commodification of ‘the Other’ on Children’s TV,” In N. Sakr and J. Steemers (Eds.), Children’s Television and Digital Media in the Arab World (pp. 163–181). London: I.B. Tauris. Gradne, L. 2012. “Le numérique peut-­il sauver Mqidech?” Lemidi. (March). http://www.lemidi-­dz. com/index.php?operation=voir_article&id_article=sup_magazine%40art1%402012-­03-­29 Flaskerud, I. 2010. Visualizing Belief and Piety in Iranian Shiism. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Khalil, J. F. 2016. “The Business Push and Audience Pull in Arab Entertainment Television.” International Journal of Communication 10: 3632–3646. Kraidy, M. M. 2016. The Naked Blogger of Cairo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kraidy, M. M. 2005. Hybridity, or the Cultural Logic of Globalization. New Delhi: Temple University Press. Mittell, J. 2001. “Cartoon Realism: Genre Mixing and the Cultural Life of The Simpsons.” Velvet Light Trap 47: 15–28. Moran, A. 2009. “When TV Formats Are Translated.” In A. Moran (Ed.), TV Formats Worldwide: Localizing Global Programs (pp. 39–54). Chicago: Intellect books. Sayfo, O. 2014. “The Emergence of Arab Children’s Televisions and Animation Industry in the Gulf States.” In M. Al-­zo’oby and B. Baskan (Eds.), State-­society Relations in the Arab Gulf States (pp. 77–101). Berlin: Gerlach Press. Sayfo, O. 2015. “Arab Sitcom Animations as Platforms of Satire.” In S. De Leeuw (Ed.), The Power of Satire (81–91). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Sayfo, O. 2018. “Mediating a Disney-­style Islam: The Emergence of Egyptian Islamic Animated Cartoons.” Animation 13, no. 2: 102–115.

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Sayfo, O. 2021. Arab Animation: Images of Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Straubhaar, J. 2009. “(Re)Asserting National Television And National Identity Against the Global, Regional, and Local Levels of World Television.” In M. G. Durham and D. M. Kellner (Eds.), Media and Cultural Studies (pp. 681–703). Wiley. Yasir, S. 2003. The Arabic Language and National Identity: A Study in Ideology. Washington: Georgetown University Press. Waisbord, S. “McTV: Understanding the Global Popularity of Television Formats,” Television & New Media 5, no. 4: 359–383. Waisbord, S., and Jalfin, S. 2009. “Imagining the National: Television Gatekeepers and the Adaptation of Global Franchises in Argentina,” In A. Moran (Ed.), TV Formats Worldwide Localizing Global Programs (pp. 55–74). Bristol/Chicago: Intellect. Wells, P. 2002. Animation: Genre and Authorship. London: Wallflower Press.

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Breaking Barriers The Emergence of a Video Game Culture and Industry in the Arab World Vít Šisler, Lars de Wildt, and Samer Abbas Video games are a massively popular medium with skyrocketing economic relevance. In 2020, revenues from the global gaming industry exceeded those of film, TV, and the digital music industries combined, reportedly approaching $90 billion (YouGov 2020). Video games also constitute an increasingly important form of cultural production, ­representing a growing diversity of genres, cultures, and worldviews. Over 2.2 billion players worldwide spend six hours in-­game per week on average. They are spread across all continents and demographics (WePC 2019). The Middle East is one of the fastest-­g rowing gaming markets in the world. This growth is driven by the region’s young, fast-­g rowing population of active gamers, a high penetration of smartphones and internet, and a supply of localized content from regional and global game publishers (The National  2020). In the Arab world, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Egypt are among the top game markets; with Saudi Arabia ranked as the 19th largest gaming market globally in terms of revenue, i.e. around US$837 million (Tashkandi 2021). At the same time, Cairo was notably the biggest location for the Global Game Jam in 2020, in which 1,692 game developers from Egypt participated (GGJ 2020). Until recently, video game histories focused mainly on the traditional centers of the  video game industry; namely, the United States, Western Europe, South Korea, and  Japan. There exists a limited, albeit growing, body of literature analyzing video game cultures and industries from a broader global perspective; discussing local, regional, and transnational game development, distribution, and policy (Aslinger and Huntemann 2013); cataloguing the global video game industry and its national specificities (Wolf 2015); and analyzing the video games and game cultures of countries within the global South (Penix-­Tadsen 2019). The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Despite the fundamental contributions of many scholars, research on the video game culture and industry in the Arab world remains fragmented and omits recent technological, political, and societal development in the region. This chapter aims to fill that gap (see Chapters 13, 30). We understand technology as “an arena contested by a wide variety of individuals, institutions and actors and through complex local processes of reception, rejection, adaptation and hybridization” (Cueto  2014, vii). The Arab video game scene is multifaceted and diverse, and it encompasses various actors with different visions and interests. Nevertheless, despite its diversity, the scene as a whole can be characterized by a high degree of cultural hybridization, strong emphasis on authenticity of visual representation, and sensitivity to religious and cultural issues (Šisler 2013, 2018; Clément 2019). In this chapter, we examine the roles of economics, politics, religion, and global cultural flows in the appropriation of the video game medium by local players, developers, and institutions, linking them to a broader context of global cultural production and transnational consumer culture. This chapter stems from fieldwork conducted by the authors in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, the UAE, and Qatar between 2005 and 2020, interviews with more than 40 Arab video game developers, video game analysis, and meta-­analysis of existing research. The chapter revisits some of the already published material (Šisler  2008,  2013,  2018; Abbas 2019) and systematizes it within a new theoretical framework. Namely, the chapter adopts the theoretical concepts of gamevironments, game production studies, and critical transculturalism to assess how we can study global video game consumption and production, particularly in the case of the Arab world. We are aware that the distinction between “centers” of global technological culture and their “peripheries” is problematic (Penix-­Tadsen  2019). The global cultural economy constitutes a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order, which cannot be fully understood in terms of center-­periphery models (Appadurai 1990). Many geographical locales once considered part of the high-­tech periphery are now home to “longstanding and widespread technocultures with their own unique characteristics, and with their own geometries of power” (Penix-­Tadsen 2019, 6). It is precisely these geometries of power through which we study video games as “hybrid media texts” that result from industry practices of coproduction, format adaptation, and localization (Kraidy 2005, viii).

Arab Gamevironments Studies of the Arab world in video games predominantly fall into two camps: those that study the representation of the Arab world by European and US developers; and those that study the production of games in the Arab world (and their self-­presentation). Studies of representation predominantly date from around the time of the US-­led “War on Terror” and examine how villains in popular video games are often rendered as generically Middle Eastern terrorists and other reductive, Orientalist presentations of Arab cultural identities (Marashi 2001; Reichmuth and Werning  2006; Keogh  2012). Arabs and their culture “have a history of being misrepresented by non-­Arabs in ­mainstream media, and videogames are no exception” (Alfaraj  2019, 169). Similarly,

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“Arab players overwhelmingly report that Arabs are either underrepresented or ­misrepresented in videogames” (Alfaraj 2019, 170). A second strand of research has moved toward the study of video games produced in the Arab world and the self-­representation of Arabs and Muslims therein (Galloway 2004; Machin and Suleiman  2006; Tawil-­Souri  2007). We, ourselves, have also studied how mainstream European and American games construct the representation of Arabs or Muslims (Šisler 2008, 2014; de Wildt forthcoming); identity-­construction in Arab games (Šisler  2014); and Arab game development (Šisler  2013,  2018). Video game culture extends beyond the games themselves into forums and websites where players actively discuss games’ meanings (de Wildt and Aupers 2020). Others have studied social media engagement by players in the Middle East (Al-­Rawi and Consalvo 2019), showing that much of the communal identity constructed there is through the Arabic language and shared consumption of (Arab) video games. We consider video games in the Arab world as necessarily contextualized by and inseparable from a global gaming culture (Šisler, Švelch, and Šlerka 2017). With Kraidy (2005, 148), we argue here that cultural hybridity “is the cultural logic of globalization” that “poses a challenge to empirical research on media” (Kraidy 2005, viii). Instead of a dualistic framework such as that of “cultural imperialism” or “cultural globalization” (e.g. Appadurai  1990; Dyer-­Witheford and de Peuter  2009; Hammar et  al. 2020), this chapter adopts Kraidy’s framework of “critical transculturalism” (2005) and analyzes cultural hybridity in concrete politico-­economic contexts: in this case, the Arab video game industry and culture as contextualized by the global gaming industry (see Chapter 4). By focusing critically on power in intercultural relations, a critical transcultural approach “integrat[es] both agency and structure in international communication analysis” (Kraidy 2005, 149). We do this in contrast to cultural imperialism perspectives that focus on the production and distribution of media – often from a hegemonic center to a presumed periphery – and in contrast to cultural pluralist perspectives that emphasize message and reception – e.g. how different cultures may understand and consume the same message differently. Critical transculturalism considers instead “the active links between production, text and reception in the moment of cultural reproduction” (Kraidy 2005, 149) and looks at the interconnection of production, games, play, and player communities. It is within this framework that we examine the structural forces – political, economic, regulatory, and legal – that influence video games’ production and consumption in the Arab world. Similarly, we utilize the methodological framework of game production studies that aims to uncover the economic, cultural, and political structures that influence the video game industry. While the field of game studies has developed quickly over the past two decades, “the study of the videogame industry and different modes of videogame production have been mostly dismissed by game studies scholars and requires more attention” (Sotamaa and Švelch 2021, 7). However, rather than splitting Arab video game cultures between developers on the one hand, and their consumers on the other, we prefer the concept of gamevironments. “Gamevironments” are an attempt to integrate analysis of video games within their broader cultural and social contexts (Radde-­Antweiler, Waltemathe, and Zeiler 2014). Similar to approaches of encoding–decoding, this includes consideration of the game itself, its production and consumption, and the cultures around that consumption

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(de  Wildt and Aupers  2019). This encompasses the hybrid figure of the “prosumer,” an  equally producing–consuming player who adds to or makes games (Ritzer and Jurgenson 2010). As Pierre-­Alain Clément notes, In terms of audience reception, modding and recoding practices in the Middle East, there are even fewer studies still. Analyses of how players receive and appropriate the games and their messages have been conducted in Palestine, Iran, in the Arab world in general, in the West and online. Recoding remains the least-­studied facet of Middle Eastern gaming. Tracing how consumers’ practices can feedback to producers is difficult in and of itself, however it has shown how the increased weight of Middle Eastern markets (and Arab or Muslim consumers in the West) has incited Western developers to adopt a more sensitive approach when depicting Arabs and Muslims. (Clément 2019, 118)

History of Video Gaming in the Arab World Games spread through the Arab world in the late 1970s and 1980s, just as in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Game consoles were popular, with the Atari VCS 2600 dominating the markets (Kasmiya 2015, 29). Early Arab video game players consumed primarily American, European, and to a lesser degree, Japanese games. This section briefly sets out this specific context of the Arab gamevironment in terms of its consumption (through import, piracy, and cybercafés), its production (and localization), and the ­influence of specific cultural norms.

Foreign Consumption The entry of foreign imports preceded local video game production, “establishing conventions and audience expectations” that shaped the region’s domestic video game industry and its output (Wolf  2015, 6). In Saudi Arabia, middle-­and upper-­middle-­ income families had access to early game consoles through visits to the United States or electronics shops in that country’s main cities. Elsewhere in the Arab world, the high cost of original games encouraged piracy. Illegally copied games played a pivotal role in the spread of video gaming in the Arab world. Piracy levels in the region were among the highest worldwide (Šisler  2013; Ibahrine  2015) due to the ease of reproducing digital media such as CD-­ROMs and DVDs, the governmental approach regarding copyrights and their infringements, and cultural attitudes toward intellectual property (Wolf 2015, 7). Piracy generally occurs especially when the population in question is already subject to low wages and economic hardship (Wolf 2015, 7). As a result, copies of US or European games could be bought for US$2 to US$3 in most Arab cities and appeared on the local market soon after their release in the United States or Europe (Šisler 2013). The consequences of such widespread piracy were twofold. On the one hand, local producers and importers competed on the domestic market with cheap, copied Western

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games. Lower-­priced pirated merchandise “makes it harder for legitimate industry to compete and thus drives away legitimate outlets and companies” (Wolf 2015, 7). On the other hand, piracy had a democratizing effect. The informal market benefited players by offering access to hardware and software that were otherwise unavailable locally on the formal market, lowering consumer prices by circumventing import taxes, and expanding access to players of different socioeconomic classes (Penix-­Tadsen 2019, 15). Informal market software use in the global South is a tactical response to global inequalities, one that is only logical given the structural unevenness of an industry with ­ever-­g rowing demands for hardware and internet performance (Apperley 2010, 15). The region’s high level of software piracy also shaped video game industry practices, forcing companies to turn to producing online games that require monthly subscriptions and access to a company’s servers. This, in turn, made them less vulnerable to loss of profit than stand-­alone games (Wolf 2015, 7). Access to video games in the Arab world was further facilitated through cybercafés that spread rapidly in the region, even in the most remote places (Šisler 2013). These venues catered mainly to Arab youth, enabling them to play popular multiplayer games, either via the internet or local area networks, for a small fee. Cybercafés in particular played an important role in countries like Egypt, Algeria, or Jordan, that had less, or slower developing, internet infrastructure.

Local Production In 1981, the demand for video game consoles with an Arabic-­friendly interface led ­Al-­Alamyyeh, a Kuwaiti company, to start producing an Arabic home computer called Sakhr. It was based on the well-­known Japanese MSX and became popular with middle-­ class families across the Arab world (Kasmiya 2015, 30). Al-­Alamyyeh localized some games to Arabic and developed their own simple Arabic games, such as a trivia game Road to Makkah (Abbas 2019). The pioneering work of Al-­Alamyyeh resembled many other companies in the global South that have pursued technological development ­primarily as a way of overcoming obstacles and resolving problems for the end user (Penix-­Tadsen 2019). The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait put an end to such emerging game development in the 1990s. A decade later in 2000, however, The Stone Throwers by Syrian medical student Muhammad Hamza marked an important trend of the early Arab video game production. It was a technologically simple game dealing with the Al-­Aqsa Intifada, which put players into the role of a Palestinian defending the Al-­Aqsa Mosque from Israeli soldiers (Šisler 2018). Soon, other games were developed that more closely reflected Arabic culture, history, and religion than did games from elsewhere (Šisler  2008). They can be considered “counter-­discourses” (Lefebvre  1991), posing an alternative to hegemonic misrepresentations in US and European video games of Arabs as terrorists and religious fundamentalists (Šisler 2018). These games can be roughly divided into three categories: resistance, education, and cultural dialogue. The resistance games were typically ­first-­person shooters based on real conflicts with Israel in Palestine and Lebanon and included games by the Lebanese Hezbollah movement (Special Force, Special Force 2);

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Syrian companies Dar al-­Fikr and Af kar Media (Under Ash, Under Siege); or the Jordanian studio Turath (Jenin: The Road of Heroes). These games provided Arab youth with heroes of their own and retold the story of the conflicts from the Arab perspective (Šisler 2018). Early educational games aimed at teaching the basic tenets of Islam, narrated the history of Islamic civilization, or promoted “family values,” and included titles such as Young Muslim, Prophets’ Tales, Adventures of Ahmad, or Children of Jerusalem. Only a few early games developed in the Arab world were intended as a tool for cultural dialogue with the West; for example, Quraish, created by the Syrian company Af kar Media in 2005. This strategy game dealt with the pre-­Islamic Bedouin wars, the origin of Islam, and its subsequent spread. It could be played from different perspectives (those of pagan Bedouins, Muslim Arabs, or Zoroastrian Persians) and was available in Arabic and English (Šisler 2018). One of the authors of Quraish, Radwan Kasmiya, later established Falafel Games with Vincent Ghossoub. The company opened offices in the Middle East and China and their first game, Knights of Glory (2011), reached more than a million players. In Egypt, many independent developers have tried to publish culture-­themed games or political-­ themed games. For example, Nezal Entertainment managed to obtain investments of more than US$1  million with Elmadinah (2013), an Arabic-­style FarmVille-­like game. Their p­ revious game, Crowds Vote (2012), was based on the Egyptian revolution of 2012 (Kasmiya 2015).

Cultural Authenticity Early Arab video game designers emphasized “authenticity.” Nevertheless, despite the emphasis on regional tradition, history, and religion, many early Arab games still based their games’ underlying structures of rule systems, quest structures, and ergonomic principles on existing foreign conventions that had already proven successful (Šisler 2013). As a result, what emerged from early game production in the Arab world was a story of “hybridization” and cross-­cultural exchange rather than “authenticity” (Šisler 2018). Beyond domestic production, localization became a viable option for video game monetization. Travian, a German browser-­based strategy game, was the first massive multiplayer game available in Arabic that enabled payments with telco payment a­ ggregators and prepaid cards. During its peak in 2009, the Arabic version of Travian accounted for one-­f ifth of Travian’s global player audience, generating US$1.5 to $3  ­million monthly (Abbas 2019). Travian’s success opened the Arab world to other European browser games and attracted investments into regional game companies. The  popularity of browser games stemmed from no download requirements and s­ upport for l­ ow-­end PCs. Localized, free-­to-­play games spread further with the proliferation of smartphones and social networking sites. As a result, several US and European companies set up offices in the Arab world and started retooling their games for the Arabic market (Campbell 2013). Such localization requires more than linguistic translation. It also demands adaptation to cultural, religious, and political contexts. In the case of localizing US and European video games for the Arab market, this entails avoiding overt depictions of sexuality, explicit violence, criticism of religion, and alcohol consumption. For instance, the very

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successful localization of Travian, as mentioned above, replaced its “brewery” building with a tea house, including its graphics. Although there were no regulatory frameworks for video games in the early days of video gaming in most Arab states, several games have been banned in Saudi Arabia and the UAE for displaying sexuality and for misrepresentation of religion or Arab culture (Šisler 2018). This eventually led to integrating regulatory frameworks for video games into national media policies.

Current Trends in Video Gaming in the Arab World The video game industry has experienced profound socio-­technical and socioeconomic changes during the last decade (Ter Minassian and Zabban 2021). These changes include the democratization of game design know-­how and tools, such as Unity and GameMaker, and accessibility to global markets through distribution platforms like Steam and Itch (Ter Minassian and Zabban 2021). Both of these factors lower development and publishing costs, benefiting developers in economically fragile regions. Despite the previously mentioned changes, commercially successful studios are still rare in the Arab world. Local companies continue to struggle with a number of political and economic issues, including political instability, economic uncertainty, lack of foreign investment, fragmented gaming communities, missing know-­how, and limited education for video game development.

Governmental Support and Regulation In several Arab countries, local governments started to realize the cultural, technological, and economical potential of creative industries and decided to support the nascent industry with an array of incentives. In the Gulf, investment in digital media initiatives such as Abu Dhabi Media City and Ad Gaming in the UAE, or the Game Changers Program in Saudi Arabia, is also part of the region’s strategy to diversify a rent-­based economy (Richter and Kozman 2021). Elsewhere, various supportive programs include the King Abdullah Development Fund that runs Jordan Gaming Lab and Pocket Gamer Connects Jordan, and the Information Technology Institute in Egypt. Beyond funding, these programs offer networking and entrepreneurship support. Initially, video games were not subject to any regulatory frameworks in the Arab world. In 2016, the General Commission for Audiovisual Media in Saudi Arabia introduced the region’s first official age rating system for local and imported video games. Prohibited content includes nudity, explicit sexuality, homosexuality, criticism of religion, and politically sensitive issues. In 2018, the UAE followed suit, introducing a similar rating system via the country’s National Media Council (NMC). According to the NMC press release, the system “aims at preserving the values of the UAE society and its ­cultural heritage, and at protecting children from the negative influences from various media platforms, including videogames” (National Media Council 2018). These emerging regulatory frameworks impact not only local production but also ­localization of foreign titles.

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Globalization and Transnational Networks Outwardly, Arab developers are becoming more vocal about existing schematizations and misrepresentations of Arab and Muslim cultures in global video game production. For example, the annual Game Developers’ Conference (GDC) has hosted multiple talks on this topic by industry insiders such as Mahmoud Khasawneh, Imad Khan, Osama Dorias, and Rami Ismail. In 2018, Osama Dorias delivered a seminal talk entitled “A How-­To Guide for Muslim Representation in Video Games” at GDC in San Francisco. Dutch–Egyptian game designer Rami Ismail launched the website isthisarabic.com to combat the recurring failure of game companies to represent Arabic script accurately. These examples indicate a broader change in Arab gaming: globalization and the e­mergence of transnational networks. Networking is an integral aspect of video gaming culture and development. For players, social networks afford them opportunities for community-­building and information sharing (of tips and tricks). Shared identity in these networks is publicly constructed “based on the commonalities that gamers feel due to their use of Arabic along with English, their geographical proximity and their sense of shared history and possibly ­religion” (Al-­Rawi and Consalvo 2019, 238). For developers, networking is crucial to video game production, distribution, and marketing. Game development is typically project-­based and includes networks of experts that restructuralize themselves according to concrete project needs. Until recently, game development networks in the Arab world were local and existed in loosely interconnected groups organized nationally. Recently, such networks have become increasingly formalized and international, organizing social networking events and platforms for the region as a whole (Šisler 2018). A prominent example is Game Zanga, the largest annual game development event in the Arab world, during which developers from all over the Arabic world work together to make games about community-­selected topics. The topics selected for the individual yearly events reflect the political situation in  the region. In 2012, when the Egyptian revolution peaked, the community chose “freedom” as a topic for a game jam; in 2013, it was “lost,”; and then “chaos” in 2014 when the Islamic State appeared on the scene (Abbas 2019).

Representation and Politics A political consequence of a global industry being led mostly from North America is that contemporary global conflicts are almost by default represented from the US perspective. One such example is the game Six Days in Fallujah, which was nearing publication at the time of writing this chapter. It was announced that the game would follow a squad of US Marines fighting in 2004’s Second Battle of Fallujah during the Iraq War. From the moment of its announcement, tensions were high concerning how the conflict would be represented. A short video trailer from 2021 immediately invited criticism. Purportedly being of “documentary realism,” the trailer included interviews with US Marines explaining their traumatic experiences, while forgetting about the traumas of

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thousands of Iraqi civilians. Such a perspective is very much the default in large-­scale produced video games. When an Arab perspective does prevail, it is too eagerly discarded as controversial or non-­neutral. An example is Liyla and the Shadows of War created by Palestinian designer Rasheed Abu Eideh in 2016. It explores the civilian cost of war from a Palestinian perspective and was initially rejected by Apple for sale on its online store. The game was later admitted, but only after massive protests from the global game development community (Batchelor 2017).

Casual Games For most Arab video game developers, however, the issue of in-­game representational politics is not a crucial one. They struggle with everyday business concerns and try to find a financially sustainable mode of operation. Mobile, casual gaming structures seem to have been chosen by many local developers for capacity building and as a pathway to more complex, refined games. The rise of casual games and mobile gaming, coupled with accessible game development tools, has made it possible for small companies not only to develop games, but also to reach a global audience (Wolf 2015). When we examine the top 50 mobile games in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Egypt, and Bahrain, we find that an increasing number of the most popular games are made in the Arab world and are designed for Arabic speakers (Al-­Rawi and Consalvo 2019). Similarly, most of the economic growth in the past five years can be attributed to mobile sales (Abbas 2019).

Modding and Community Translations Finally, what cannot be made in the Arab world can at least be modified by the Arab world. There is an existing tradition within game communities as a whole to modify or “mod” existing games. This ranges from adding game-­play elements to translating ­in-­game text to Arabic. These can become long-­term tasks for whole communities of players. One such effort is the fan translation of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, originally released in Japanese and English in 1998. Fifteen years later in 2013, after three years of work, an Arabic translation was released by fan-­translators from around the Arab world ( Johnson 2013).

Conclusion The global video game industry has witnessed significant changes over the past decade. Digital distribution platforms, accessible development tools, and new audiences have also spawned “informal game development practices” (Keogh 2019), which turn game production into a process that is “both inherently global and intensely localized” (Sotamaa and Švelch 2021, 9).

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In the Arab world, the video game industry has been in existence for 30 years. It has the potential to emerge as an engine of growth for the region (Research and Markets 2021). Nevertheless, this potential has not been fully realized, and Arab video gaming is still struggling with certain barriers. These barriers include political instability, economic uncertainty, lack of foreign investment, missing know-­how, and fragmented gaming communities. The Arab video game industry seems to follow these characteristics common to the gamevironments of the global South: 1. Reputation as part of the technological “periphery” or “margin,” in spite of a ­considerable history of game consumption, production, circulation, and related practices. 2. Shared set of historical obstacles and affordances to the development of local game culture and game industries. 3. History of in-­game representations of local culture, created by developers in the global North. 4. Dual government role with regard to video games: split between censorship and regulation and a growing push to promote national game industries. (­ Penix-­Tadsen 2019, 12–13) Dutch–Egyptian game developer Rami Ismail proposed six stages of regional game development communities. Most Arab game development communities are in the first few stages. In the first stage, territories may have very few amateurs, then communities emerge to share knowledge; then knowledge is exchanged internationally, all while the goal is still “to make it big in the West” (Ismail 2015). Ismail’s fourth stage is entered when one company reaches economic success, which in the fifth and sixth stages leads to the emergence of a region’s own game design tradition that is distinct from copying the “standard” of big (US) game companies. As the preceding overview shows, the Arab video game industry has been developing for a while, but it still needs a “big success story” (Abbas 2019) – what Ismail calls a “hero.” As Penix-­Tadsen, Ismail, and this chapter show, there is room for growth. The Arab world continues to be schematized and misrepresented in global mainstream video game production. This has led to the emergence of “counter-­discourse” games in the early phase of Arab video game development. Those games strived to provide Arab gamers with more accurate and “authentic” heroes and stories. Today, this ongoing misrepresentation is met with vocal criticism originating from video game professionals of Arab origin who are part of global video gaming networks. At the same time, video game production in the Arab world has shifted from strong emphasis on “authenticity” and representation of Arab history and culture to casual, mobile games that are marketed and distributed globally. For both the early and recent phases of Arab gaming culture, hybridization and ­cross-­cultural exchange is crucial (see chapters 4, 5, 39). Technology as both a specific outcome of, and influence on, social practices has to be considered a driver of hybridity; a hybrid system “draws attention to change and flux, the passing of an older set of cultural and institutional norms, and the gradual emergence of new norms” (Chadwick 2017, 12). While the counter-­discourse games created new “authentic” content on the level

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of a­ udiovisuals and narratives, they replicated the underlying structures of global, ­primarily European and US, video game production. More recent mobile and casual games directly appropriate the successful patterns of the latter. Across the historical contexts and current trends we have described, it is clear that Arab gaming cultures are not just growing, hybridizing, and entering into cross-­cultural exchange. Importantly, they also include an emerging consumer base, with its own unique player culture. We see this not just through increasing interest in game consumption and development, but also in the emergent transnational communities of players who modify and translate the games they love. Gaming cultures and industries thrive on such engaged communal practices. In this sense, we should expand on what Ismail calls the “heroes” of emerging territories. In the Arab context, we have indeed seen some promising game developers who might soon prove to be the driving force behind an emerging game industry – whether professional or informal. But at the same time, the cultures around it – the Arab “gamevironments” – then need all kinds of equally important heroes. Those are the people who distribute, localize, modify, regulate, organize, make, and indeed play Arab games – not just as part of the Arab world, but also a transnational, global gaming culture.

Acknowledgments This chapter was supported by the European Regional Development Fund project Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions of the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World (No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000734) and the Charles University projects Primus/ Hum/03, Primus/21/Hum/005 and Progress Q15. Lars was supported by KU Leuven’s Post-­Doctoral Mandate (PDM/20/033) and the Academy of Finland-­f unded Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies (CoE-­GameCult 312395). References Abbas, S. 2019. “Games Market in Saudi & GCC.” Presentation in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, December 2019. Alfaraj, B. 2019. “Arab Gamers: An Identity Inclusivity Study.” In Phillip Penix-­Tadsen (Ed.), Video Games and the Global South (pp. 169–182). Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University/ETC Press. Al-­Rawi, A., and Consalvo, M. 2019. “Video Game Engagement on Social Media in the Middle East.” In Phillip Penix-­ Tadsen (Ed.), Video Games and the Global South (pp. 225–244). Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Mellon University/ETC Press. Appadurai, A. 1990. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.” Public Culture 2, no. 2: 1–24. Apperley, T. 2010. Gaming Rhythms: Play and Counterplay from the Situated to the Global. Institute of Network Cultures. https://www.networkcultures.org/_uploads/TOD%236%20total%20 def.pdf Aslinger, B., and Huntemann, N. B. 2013. “Introduction.” In Nina B. Huntemann and Ben Aslinger (Eds.), Gaming Globally: Production, Play and Place (pp. 1–15). Palgrave Macmillan.

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Alternative, Independent, and Social Media

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Taking Revolution Seriously A Keywords Approach to Middle East Studies Omar Al-­Ghazzi Introduction Since late 2010, revolutionary activities and ideas have shaped politics and culture in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), whether as part of the 2011 uprisings or starting from 2019 in countries like Algeria, Sudan, Lebanon, and Iraq. A common feature of these uprisings is that they were locally dubbed as, or debated whether they were, revolutions (singular: thawra). Arabic news media and social media were marked by such exchanges in the last decade. In this chapter, I argue that zero-­sum discussions and discord on whether they are revolutions – or not – misrecognize and obscure the dynamism of how revolution is deployed in language, culture, and politics. I seek to move away from this form of binary thinking by making a distinction between the ideal/normative meaning of revolution as the complete overthrow of a ruling system and revolution(s) as a key term that marks Arab political lexicon and culture. My intention is to open up the conceptualization of revolution to accommodate its  spatial and temporal contexts. Inspired by Raymond Willams’s book Keywords: A  Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1976), I analyze contestation over what the word ­revolution means in contemporary Arab contexts. For Williams, the point of unpacking key terms was not merely to say that the meanings of words change over time, but also that they could change in relationship to shifting political, social, and economic situations and needs (Bennett et  al.  2005, xvii). Applying his approach to contexts in the Arabic-­speaking world is important because it challenges the classical Arabic linguistic centrism that assumes that one word is used in the same way across more than 20 countries. Using keywords as a method entails understanding language as a form of social production, and then exploring words as such products (Moran 2021, 6). In addition, if  revolution is to be taken seriously, the affective and performative elements of its The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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deployment have to feature in our analyses to go beyond words as descriptions of what already is and to approach them as “performative utterances” that bring to life what is sought and desired (Austin, 2013). Accordingly, I examine what the term revolution means in Arab contexts, with examples mainly from Libya, Lebanon, and Syria, by formulating a classification that considers the temporal tense of the term’s deployment. I conceptualize the use of the term in the following ways: (1) revolution as suspended in temporality: an authoritarian frame wherein the leader is said to embody “the revolution” that always remains an unfinishable project constantly under threat; (2) revolution as a future goal: a protest mobilization tactic to raise the stakes of political action and justify the sacrifices endured by protestors; and (3) revolution as a past experience: an expression of political affiliation, a cherished and/ or a difficult memory based on a formative political involvement in the near past. This temporal typology, starting with authoritarian co-­optation of revolution and its suspension in time, revolution as activist future-­oriented mobilization, and revolution as a past reflective mnemonic endeavor opens up the conceptualization of the term beyond the simple binary of success and failure. While this typology is by no means exhaustive, it serves as a call for moving away from taking Arabic words at face value, to analyze the social and political meanings they acquire and/or lose in relation to the histories they carry and the futures they invoke, and finally to take seriously the vocabulary and practices of revolution in the region. In  doing so, and following Williams, I approach language from a cultural materialist standpoint that highlights ordinary and everyday cultural forms (Moran 2021, 3). I conclude by situating this approach within wider discussions about discourse and representation in Middle East Studies, mainly by way of Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism (see Chapters 1, 4, 6).

A Revolutionary Region My engagement with revolution seeks to highlight the dominant usages of the term in a way that takes history and political culture seriously in order to move away from dogmatic assumptions about what revolution entails. As Takriti argues, despite the dynamism of the word revolution, it “is often viewed from a static lens, describing a moment when a particular order is completely overthrown. . . an act defined only by its climax” (2013, 4). The focus then, he adds, is placed upon the criterion of success, the overthrow of an order; while processes that fail to do so are placed in the limelight and given lesser designations—­”rebellion,” “revolt,” “uprising.” Takriti’s point is that that the conceptualization of revolution as end result, as in Charles Tilly’s influential definition, is reductive and is state-­centric, and by extension also, Western-­centric in overlooking s­ ubstantive elements in the revolutionary process (2013, 4). In fact, the meaning of the term revolution featured in Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) as a piercing response to the writings of the Orientalist historian Bernard Lewis. In an essay titled “Islamic Concepts of Revolution,” Lewis explains the word  thawra as  originating from the root th-­w-­r in Classical Arabic, which means

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“to rise up (e.g. a camel), to be stirred or excited, and hence, especially in Maghrebi usage to rebel. It is often used in the context of establishing a petty, independent ­sovereignty” (as cited in Said 1978, 314), such as in the rule of kings following the break-­up of the Caliphate of Cordoba in the eleventh-­century Iberian Peninsula. Said responds to Lewis’s c­ amel-­focused explanation of thawra by accusing him of bad faith. Said writes: Why introduce the idea of a camel rising as an etymological root for modern Arab ­revolution except as a clever way of discrediting the modern? Lewis’s reason is patently to bring down revolution from its contemporary valuation to nothing more noble (or beautiful) than a camel about to raise itself from the ground. Revolution is excitement, sedition, setting up a petty sovereignty—­nothing more; the best counsel (which presumably only a  Western scholar and gentleman can give) is “wait till the excitement dies down.” One wouldn’t know from this slighting account of thawra that innumerable people have an active commitment to it, in ways too complex for even Lewis’s sarcastic scholarship to comprehend. (1978, 314–315)

Lewis’s “essentialized description” sadly continues to resonate in academic and policy circles decades after Said wrote this rebuttal saying that Lewis considered “revolutionary stirrings among ‘the Arabs’ are about as consequential as a camel’s getting up, as worthy of attention as the babblings of yokels” (Said 1978, 315). In the contemporary Western academy, the deeper dynamic at play in ignoring the term revolution has to do with dominant paradigms about the Arab world, which either view the region from an Orientalist lens that explains enduring and entrenched authoritarianism by way of Arab culture (See Bellin 2012 for an explanation of dominant theories), or from a dogmatic anti-­imperialist lens that is also Western-­centric in its focus on the West as the only coherent transhistorical force, while Arab peoples are dismissed as non-­agentive and complicit (Andrawos 2021). In both cases, the focus on authoritarianism or imperialism gets conflated with a lack of will, desire, or ability of Arab peoples to overthrow despotic rule. Both lenses obscure the fact that revolutionary repertoire embedded in language and symbolism is historically entrenched in Arab political culture. Revolution continues to be a popular frame to evoke political activism and to imagine desired futures. Indeed, this has been a problem in general discussions of the 2011 Arab uprisings that project narrow, all-­or-­nothing references to revolution. As protests spilled into Arab cities and towns following Tunisia’s swift uprising in December 2010, culminating in the overthrow of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (in power 1987–2010), a parallel struggle was erupting through words about what to name this wave of protests. The importance of this struggle is in relation to the politics of naming, but also the historical conception of political agency in the MENA region. In terms of naming, Western media opted for the buzz term “the Arab Spring,” which is a reference to the 1968 Prague Spring – a period of political liberalization and mass protest in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. In the Arabic-­speaking world, those who participated in protests mostly opted for the more historically and politically relevant term of revolution (thawra). The term thawra was also used for subsequent protests in 2019 in Iraq, Sudan, and Lebanon.

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The term revolution/thawra has a long modern history in the region that harks back to anti-­colonial and anti-­imperial movements in the early and mid-­twentieth centuries. To name a few, the anti-­Ottoman armed Arab revolt in 1916, led by the Hashemite ­Al-­Sharif Hussein, was referred to as the Great Arab Revolution. In Palestine, the revolt against the British and the Zionists in 1936  was called Thawrat Filastine Al-­Kubra (the Great Revolution of Palestine) and in the beginning of the 1960s, Palestinian armed struggle was also called the Palestinian Revolution. In Egypt, there were the revolutions of 1919 (against the British) and 1952, which refers to the popular military coup to oust the monarchy. The coup against the monarchy in Iraq was also called the 14 July revolution (1958). The long struggle against French colonialism in Algeria (1954–1962) was referred to as “the Algerian liberation revolution” and is often dubbed in Arabic as “the million martyrs revolution” to commemorate the enormity of French crimes against Algerians. Military coups were also called revolutions in Syria (1963), Iraq (1968), and Libya (1969). Clearly, the word revolution dominated historic events over the twentieth century in the Arabic-­speaking world. It signified different kinds of movements from anti-­colonial struggles taking place over many years to single events such as overnight military coups. Some, then, are popular mass struggles; others are an overthrow of power that the wider public may have had little involvement in. Nonetheless, the word revolution dominated the political lexicon not only historically when those events were unfolding but also in the national commemorative culture that ensued. By the 1970s, several Arab regimes from Libya to Syria described themselves as revolutionary as they laid control over the word, and its anti-­colonial legacy, and used it to tighten their grip and establish dominance over their people by insinuating that revolutionary activity had now ceased. They devoted state communication to cannibalize the meaning of revolution and trumpet the notion that the authoritarian leaders themselves, whether in Baghdad or Tripoli, embody that revolutionary legacy. In 2010/2011, the word was reclaimed from ruling regimes and “revolution” again became about collective political action to achieve the desired outcome of overthrowing regimes in power. The new revolutions reflected the hope of what is to be achieved, and also acknowledgment of the extent and scope of political work required to achieve change. Calling protests revolution, then, taps into a revolutionary history in the region, expresses hope and commitment to achieve desired political goals, and reflects the belief that ruling Arab regimes cannot be reformed and must be eradicated. It is no surprise then that the slogan of the Arab uprisings “the people want to overthrow the system” (Al-­Sha’b yurid isqat al-­nizam) became the rallying cry of protests across the MENA region since 2010 until the present. The prevalence of the term revolution, however, instigated the debate of whether these protests were in fact a revolution or not. The criterion was based on whether this mass manifestation of anger and frustration led or could lead to a complete overthrow of power. At the beginning of protest activity, developments were framed as a confrontation between opposition protestors and ruling regimes, along with their supporters. By 2013, the political situation changed across Arab countries, with some states, like Syria, Libya, and Yemen, witnessing full-­on armed conflict, and others like Egypt and Bahrain, facing a crushing military response to protests and to democratic aspirations.

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In reaction, the political struggle over the meaning of revolution changed in each of these countries. In other places like Iraq, Sudan, and Lebanon, revolution as political action dominated again the political lexicon as a description of their protests in 2018–2019. Given this complex unfolding of events, clearly the word revolution cannot simply be understood as an overthrow of power. Writing about the Syrian revolution, Hajj Saleh (2019) offers a multilayered analysis of how revolution could be conceived. The first scale, he suggests, is understanding revolution as a chronological series of events, which in Syria can be divided into sub-­periods like the peaceful protest beginning, the militant phase, the Russian intervention, etc. He also argues that revolution should also be conceived as a set of practices, as personal experiences, as an underground movement, and as a global tradition. In my formulation, I focus on the temporal analysis of the different usages of the term revolution, which in turn take different forms according to country and context.

Revolutionary Typologies The following broad typologies seek to enrich our understanding of the political ­possibilities of the word revolution by relating its temporal sense to the power structure that gives it shape.

Revolution as Suspended in Time In the second half of the twentieth century, Arab regimes that came to power via military coups established their legitimacy by claiming to have executed a popular revolution. Discursively and semiotically, state communication co-­opted revolutionary political culture, particularly revolution’s anti-­colonial legacy. Affectively, the leader himself was said to embody the population’s revolutionary spirit and history. Fundamentally, the logic of legitimacy was reduced to the ruler’s embodiment (Kraidy 2016) – in the sense that as long as the leader was alive, the people were represented. Political messaging sought to establish a chain of equivalence between the leader, the nation, and the p­ eople, and that dominated speeches, school curricula, news and entertainment media, and national holidays and rituals. Muammar Al-­Qadhafi’s Libya is a good example of how ruling regimes capitalized on  the idea of revolution and conflated it with the persona of the leader. The late ­Al-­Qadhafi, who seized power in a 1969  military coup, established a near-­totalitarian regime that claims to be a form of direct democracy, a Jamahiriyya. Al-­Qadhafi dubbed himself “Brother Leader of the Revolution” as he claimed that he had no power beyond representing and embodying the people’s revolution. Rhetorically, the system was based on branding state institutions as popular committees (lijan sha’biya) as if they were comprised of ordinary Libyan citizens. The rhetorical and symbolic rationale for that form of governance was said to aim to protect and perpetuate the popular revolution.

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Revolutionary committees (lijan althawriya) presided over this system. This ­revolutionary rhetoric remained central to Al-­Qadhafi’s regime until its last days. In February 2011, and inspired by Tunisians and Egyptians, Libyan protestors reclaimed what the word revolution means and used it to strip Al-­Qadhafi of legitimacy by comparing him to colonial rule (Al-­Ghazzi 2016). In reaction, Al-­Qadhafi’s regime desperately held on to its tired repertoire and frantically tried to inject it with renewed energy. One of Al-­Qadhafi’s last speeches as leader, which was delivered on February 22, 2011, demonstrates this “revolutionary” desperation. In a last-­ditch attempt to project legitimacy and rouse support, Al-­Qadhafi delivered a speech that reflected a mix of denial, defiance, self-­victimization, and threats against protestors. The notion of revolution dominated that speech and was mentioned 32 times (Al-­Qadhafi 2011). The speech started with a greeting addressed to “the Libyan people who embrace the revolution,” by which Al-­Qadhafi means his supporters, as he said that he wishes them “a revolutionary morning tomorrow,” one that would see his enemies defeated. In one passage, he outlines what he means by revolution. “I am the head of the popular revolution,” he says, and “we will show them (the protestors/the West) what a popular revolution is.” Revolution is about awareness, construction, and respect of state institutions, he explains. “The revolution means all the material and immaterial gains. It means glory and honour. It means Muammar Al-­Qadhafi. It means the history of forefathers . . . the martyrs,” he says as he stretches the word and empties it of meaning. He then incites Libyans “to get out of your houses and show (the world) what a popular revolution is all about . . . from tomorrow onwards, the youths should organise in committees to defend the revolution” (Al-­Qadhafi 2011). Clearly, Al-­Qadhafi crafted his image based on the co-­optation of revolution. The meaning of revolution was inflated to encapsulate so much, and simultaneously shrank to simply signify the sovereign – the leader, whose rule and existence are presented as “the revolution.” In terms of its temporality, revolution refers to the time the leader came to power, yet at the same time, and despite the long years of rule, it is presented as always fragile and threatened by enemies. Revolution remains as much of a future project when Al-­Qadhafi seized power back in 1969, as it is in 2011 – days before he was overthrown and killed when militants found him hiding in a ditch. In the hands of authoritarians, the temporality of revolution is also stretched so that it is never fulfilled. Revolution is suspended in time as it remains always a possibility in need of protection by way of authoritarian rule. Given the centrality of revolution in Arab authoritarian repertoire, it is no wonder that activists sought to establish control of the word when they were presented with the political opportunity to do so.

Revolution as Future Goal If under authoritarian rule revolution was suspended in temporality, in the hands of activists the use of the term regained urgency. If we apply the definition of revolution as an already existing outcome (the overthrow of authority), it becomes difficult to use the term revolution to describe or capture an unfolding and necessarily unpredictable

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protest movement in the present. That definition of revolution as outcome can only be used in hindsight. That is why it is important to recognize the future tense of the term when deployed to describe protests happening now. In this latter temporal sense, revolution is strategically used as a mobilization tactic for the following reasons: (1) to reflect and project grandiosity on protest activity as it unfolds; (2) to mobilize others and convince them that joining the protest movement is worthy despite the risk; and (3) to give meaning to the threat to life and come to terms with the killings and deaths when ­protestors are met with brutal violence (in the sense that if there is a risk of dying in a protest, it better be conceived as a historic revolution rather than simply a protest). In its most basic sense, the term revolution here refers to protests. It describes bodies on the streets making demands of the state. Of course, the political system within which these protests are taking place matters, as revolution lends itself more to contexts where protests are not part of the political system, as in the case of the 2011 Arab uprisings. The protests of 2011 not only took academics, pundits, and politicians by surprise but also the protestors themselves (as an example on Syria, see Al-­Ghazzi 2023). In March 2011 Syria, for instance, when a few dozen activists protested in the heart of Damascus, the whole country knew that this was not only about those individuals but, in fact, what was happening was so exceptional that it was of historic significance. In this context, protests were eventually dubbed as revolution, and the word became attached to other words and places. In Syria, the southern city of Dara’a, where the first mass protests happened, became “the birthplace of the revolution,” while Homs became the capital of the revolution (Hajj Saleh  2019). Rebellious Syrians began describing themselves as revolutionaries and prominent figures were given names like “the revolution’s nightingale” (for a singer) or “the revolution’s icon” (an actress). A Facebook group called “The Syrian Revolution Against Bashar Al-­Asad” has been followed by millions since March 2011. It gained symbolic significance as if it were material evidence of the existence of said revolution. It was easy to forget questions about who was behind the Facebook group and how many of its followers were in fact in Syria. Its very existence fed into discussion of the revolution as an objective fact and an unfolding event. The affective here is a very important dimension as thawra has a distinctive ring to it when cried out loud by thousands in unison. The term revolution then forced itself into the political lexicon. Syrians began politically locating themselves in relation to it as in formulating their stance as with or against the revolution, or in introducing other terminologies such as the counterrevolution. Despite all the suffering and warfare that took place in Syria in the years after 2011, the term did not lose its allure in the region. In 2019, protests erupted in neighboring Lebanon against the warlords that have run the country since the end of its civil war in 1990. The spark was an attempt by the government to introduce a new tax on WhatsApp calls (“Lebanon protests” 2019). The backdrop was an economic crisis, exacerbated by the country’s collapsing banking sector and political frustration over a sectarian system that sustained the ruling elite. As protests escalated across the geography of Lebanon, and inspired people from different sects and economic backgrounds, it was clear that this wave of dissent had not been seen before in a country acclimated to political, sectarian, and geographic divisions. It was dubbed a revolution.

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Several of the most popular slogans in Lebanon invoked revolution. One was “Our revolution is not (merely a protest) action” (thawretna mish hirak). The slogan was partly influenced by language elsewhere in the region, and also a reaction against ­politicians who dismissed the protest movement by underplaying its exceptional scope and dubbing it “hirak”—­a word derived from movement that connotes a spontaneous, limited, and chaotic political action. For their part, protestors wanted to affirm that their protest activities, including actions that targeted state institutions, did not simply comprise an expression of frustration. Rather, they express a complete rejection of and an attempt to uproot the ruling warlords that were identified as a single regime. In these uses, revolution is in the future tense. It is deployed as a mobilization tactic, rather than a description of a political outcome.

Revolution in the Near Past The legacy of revolution as an experience in the near past is reflective, emotional, and highly contextual depending on how the protest movement unfolded, what it led to, what role foreign intervention played, and what reaction it instigated by the existing regimes. It is also personal as the meanings and recollections of revolution get e­ ntangled with continuously changing circumstances. In this way, revolution as past experience is sharply different from, but also a reaction to, the urgency of revolution as a future goal. Said differently, calling a protest a revolution raises the political stakes and allows for the counteraccusation that it is in fact not. And when political or security developments complicate activists’ neat narrative, which they need for mobilization, revolution splinters into different meanings. As time passes, revolution becomes reflective and metonymic. While it is impossible to account for all its uses, in its past tense, revolution is often invoked as a legacy, either as a mnemonic signal to recall revolutionary purity or a melancholic feeling that laments political energy that no longer exists. Revolution as past experience could also become a way to signify a supposedly already existing political actor, such as saying the revolution or the revolution’s community/supporters (jama’et al-­thawra) did such and such (Al-­Ghazzi 2023). It could also mark the generation that  believed in it as a future goal. In this sense, it could also become a political identity. This, of course, is highly contextual. In Syria, after 2013, the use of revolution/thawra in public discourse got consumed by the political binary of with/against (the revolution or the Bashar Al-­Assad regime). This binary of opposition/loyalism obscures what the revolution actually entails, or what those who believe in it have in common (and the same applies to regime supporters). While the time period of revolution is murky in Syria, in Tunisia, the country where protests started in 2010, the revolution 10 years on is an established event in the past that different political actors are invested in defining in different ways. In 2021, both the Ennahda movement and President Kais Saied (who sacked the Ennahda-­led government under corruption accusations) legitimize their actions and positions, as do their respective supporters, through claims either to be “­correcting the path of ” or protecting the revolution (“Qararat al-­rais al-­tunsi” 2021). Like Tunisia, in Egypt, the revolution is also seen as a defined event. References to the

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revolution often signify what happened within the course of 30 days in January 2011. However, the power dynamic in shaping the revolution’s legacy is obviously different as President Abelfatah El Sisi is invested in erasing the actual revolutionary legacy of the mass protests that led to the overthrow of former president Mubarak. In all cases, the use of the term revolution as a recent past event is a highly divisive and emotional undertaking, as it invokes personal experiences and feelings that ranged from the euphoria of revolt to crushing disappointment. In addition to the weight of collective disenfranchisement, recalling or invoking revolution may also be traumatic in bringing (often suppressed) memories of violence and/or of friends and comrades who lost their lives. Complex and often disappointing outcomes, though, should not be reduced to a binary of successful/failed revolution projected across the region without an analysis of the nuances of the term and the changing relation between meanings and temporality.

Resonance in the Field of Middle East Studies Taking the nuances of the word revolution seriously is not only a semantic exercise. It is easy to ignore the use of the term revolution in the MENA region, since authoritarianism seems to have triumphed over attempts for a meaningful political change since 2011. However, this dismissal is a political choice, as downplaying revolution evokes a deeper historic tension in the study of the Middle East between engaging with or overlooking the ­everyday practice of political action in the region (see Chapter 5). In Middle East studies, the most influential theory on representation and power is Edward Said’s Orientalism (1979). Said’s work was a paradigm shift in explaining how Western epistemology, discourse, and representation are based on a reductive imagined geography of the Orient, and how that drives Western imperialism (see Chapter 1). As I indicated earlier through Said’s exchange with Bernard Lewis, Orientalists have been typically dismissive of the dynamism of Arab culture and politics in their reliance on static and pseudo-­historic explanations of developments in the region. For his part, Coronil (1996) explains that Orientalism has a “dark side” which is Occidentalism – defined as the ensemble of representational practices that conceive the world as separate components, disaggregate their relational histories, turn difference into hierarchies, and reproduce them even if in the form of a critique (1996, 57). Coronil’s point can be applied to the adverse side of the conceptual purity of revolution when defined exclusively as an immaculate political outcome. In debates about the 2011 Arab uprisings, for example, the revolutionary self-­characterization of some protest movements was dismissed when they were seen as compromised by imperialist powers (see  Andrawos  2021). Yet, that supposed revolutionary orthodoxy often ends up as a conservative stance to discredit political protest, regardless that it comes at great risk to protestors’ lives and freedoms. My assertion is not meant to downplay the economic structures, class politics, and imperialistic interventions that prevent the revolutionary political outcome that Arab masses repeatedly express the desire for, e.g. as analyzed by Hanieh (2013) in his work on contemporary capitalism in the Middle East. Rather, it is to argue that there is value in

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taking seriously the way people navigate these structures and the ways their language shifts along with the difficult circumstances they encounter. Policing what gets called a revolution, as in the binary debate whether a protest movement is a revolution or not, rather than critically engaging with why and how people are deploying the term, undermines the ability to imagine and work toward actual political change. Part of that discrepancy between assumptions of what revolution means, and how the word is used and deployed in political discourse, stems from a failure to link language to political culture, and also to the affective – the embodied, on-­the-­g round positionality of making change. Dismissing the everydayness of politics, as expressed in language, not only fails to engage the present state of politics in the Arab world (Bayat 2020) but also perpetuates a blind spot that impacts conceptual and ­historiographical debates about the region (see Bardawil 2020 for a historiographical engagement with revolution). The conceptualization of revolution in relation to ­outcome then ends up failing to engage and to understand political action on the ground, whether in the present or in the past.

Conclusion A desire for an all-­out revolution, then, should not prevent engagement with different deployments of revolution to bring about political change. My intention is not to celebrate the use of the term revolution no matter the context or to downplay critiques. Rather it is a call to recognize the historic and contemporary resonance of revolution in the Arab world and the scope and breadth of the use of the term to describe a wide array of political actions. As Echchaibi (2022, 1) argues, the 2011 uprisings should be decoupled from a discourse of success and failure and rethought “as a persisting expression of a people’s demand for agency, dignity and possibility”. I have proposed a temporal typology, starting with authoritarian co-­optation of revolution and its suspension in time, revolution as activist future-­oriented mobilization, and revolution as a past reflective mnemonic endeavor. I have suggested that while calling a protest “revolution” galvanizes supporters, and both reflects and contributes to a longer Arab revolutionary history, it also introduces debates about success and failure. In that sense, revolution gets talked about as having a short temporal span. If protests do not immediately lead to an overthrow of power, they are dubbed a failure. Consequently, the deployment of the term may lead to different outcomes, including contributing to the burnout that protestors feel when their actions experience setbacks, state violence, and repression. Rather than dictating what revolution means, or when it should be used, the aim of the chapter is to open up debate on the conceptualization of revolution by applying Raymond Williams’s keywords approach as a method. As Moran (2021, 4) explains, Williams focused not only on the social and material conditions for language production, but also on the way in which language is a constitutive material activity. In his words, language is the articulation of active and changing experience; it is “a dynamic and articulated social presence in the world (1977, 37–38). It is up to scholars to engage with that social presence, in particular as it pertains to key terms such as revolution.

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References Al-­Ghazzi, O. 2021. “‘Forced to Report’: Affective Proximity and the Perils of Local Reporting on Syria.” Journalism. DOI: 1464884920984874 Andrawos, N. 2021. “We Need Better Analysis Than This.” Madamasr. (March 13). Retrieved from https://www.madamasr.com/en/2021/03/13/opinion/u/we-­n eed-­b etter-­a nalysis­than-­this/ Austin, J. L. 2013. “Performative Utterances” In Maite Ezcurdia and Robert J. Stainton (Eds.), The Semantics-­pragmatics Boundary in Philosophy. Broadview Press, 2013. Bardawil, F. A. 2020. Revolution and Disenchantment: Arab Marxism and the Binds of Emancipation (p. 280). Duke University Press. Bennett, T., Grossberg, L., and Morris, M. (Eds.). 2005. New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Oxford: Blackwell. Bayat, A. 2020. Revolution Without Revolutionaries. Stanford University Press. Bellin, E. 2012. “Reconsidering the Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Lessons from the Arab Spring.” Comparative Politics 44, no. 2: 127–149. Coronil, F. 2019. Beyond Occidentalism: Toward Nonimperial Geohistorical Categories (pp. 323–367). Duke University Press. Echchaibi, N. (2022). In praise of Arab ‘Defeat’: another reading of Arab struggle. Cultural Studies, 36(1), 1–20. Hajj Saleh, Y. 2019. “What Is the Syrian Revolution.” Al-­Jumhuriya. (November 14). Retrieved from https://www.aljumhuriya.net/ar/content/%D9%85%D8%A7-­%D9%87%D9%8A-­ %D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AB%D9%88%D8%B1%D8%A9-­%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3% D9%88%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%A9%D8%9F [Arabic] Hanieh, A. 2013. Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East. Haymarket Books. Kraidy, M. M. 2016. The Naked Blogger of Cairo. Harvard University Press. “Lebanon Protests.” 2019. BBC. (November 7). Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ world-­middle-­east-­50293636 Moran, M. 2021. “Keywords as Method.”  European Journal of Cultural Studies 24, no. 4: 1021–1029. “Qararat al-­rais al-­tunsi” 2021. BBC Arabic. ( July 26). Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/arabic/interactivity-­57972170 [Arabic]. Said, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Book. Takriti, A. R. 2013. Monsoon Revolution: Republicans, Sultans, and Empires in Oman, 1965–1976. OUP Oxford. Williams, R. (1976) 1983. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (2nd ed.). London: Fontana. Williams, R. 1977. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Alternative and Citizen Journalism(s) in the Middle East Marianna Ghiglia Aix-­Marseille Université/IREMAM

This chapter is about alternative and citizen journalism(s) in the Middle East during the last two decades. Theories of alternative and citizen journalism have been mostly produced by Western scholars working on advanced liberal-­democratic contexts. By focusing on a largely neglected area, this chapter aims to contribute to current debates on the topic. An increasing number of studies have been devoted to alternative and citizen media in the Middle East since the middle of the 2000s. Their methodological and theoretical frameworks are quite diverse, however, and no attempts have been made, as far as I know, to systematize knowledge on the subject. Building on the existing literature and on personal research, the present chapter intends to fill this gap. After (1) clarifying the notions of alternative and citizen journalism(s), I approach the subject from various perspectives, including (2) producers and disseminators, (3) the main functions performed by ACJs, and (4) the economic/organizational perspectives. I then conclude by examining the merits and gaps of existing studies and formulating suggestions for future research.

Alternative and Citizen Journalism(s) in the Middle East With the advent of digital technologies, research into alternative and citizen media in the Middle East has steadily grown since the middle of the 2000s (see Chapters 18, 29, 33). At first, scholars focused their attention on the rise of blogs, examining their impact on the transformation of public communication, while assessing their potential The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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implications for long term social and political changes (Allan et al. 2007; Al Malky 2007; Hamdy 2009; Haugbolle, 2007; Hunt 2008; Isherwood 2008; Khiabany and Sreberny 2007, 2010; Lynch  2007; Otterman  2007; Radsch  2008; Schleusener  2007; Taki 2010; Ward, 2007; Zayan and Carter 2009). In the aftermath of the Arab uprisings that took place in 2010–-­2011, a second wave of research into the subject started, putting social networking sites under the spotlight. Most studies conceptualized them as tools facilitating collective action, whereas a few focused more properly on their “journalistic role” (Khamis and Vaughn 2011; Ali and Fahmy 2013; Elsayed 2013). While blogging and social media have undoubtedly drawn the widest interest, scholars have not neglected the emergence of independent and alternative newspapers in several countries of the region (Douai  2009; Ghiglia 2015), along with other alternative online news platforms (Kejanlıoğlu et al. 2012). These empirical studies provide us with valuable information about media producers and practices, while revealing the unsuitability of existing theoretical frameworks1 to describe alternative and citizen journalism(s) in the Middle East (Alankuş 2009; Radsch 2013; Douai and Ben Moussa 2016). Among the problems underlined by scholars is the view according to which “alternative media” is situated in juxtaposition to “corporate news media dominated by an economic logic” (Radsch 2013, 159), whereas in the Middle East, mainstream media tends to be governed by political logics. Media researchers also question the dichotomy “activist journalist/professional journalist” (Douai and Ben Moussa 2016, 167), which is generally invoked to distinguish between alternative and mainstream media producers (Atton 2003). In the framework of this chapter, I argue that the terms “alternative journalism” and “citizen journalism” should be clearly distinguished and defined in relation to the Middle Eastern context. Drawing from definitions of alternative media provided by Alankuş (2009) and Akser and McCollum (2018), I consider alternative journalism as a form of counter-­hegemonic journalism that plays an essential role in disseminating news blocked by censorship, in resisting mainstream narratives and in giving a voice to underrepresented social and political groups. This definition focuses on the opposition to national mainstream media, which is seen to contribute, alongside other social and political institutions, to construct and sustain hegemony (Gramsci 1975). Seen in this perspective, the term alternative journalism is not confined to the radical, anarchist, and left-­wing media taken into consideration by Western scholars for its intrinsic anti-­capitalist nature (Atton  2003), but it encompasses other ideological leanings depending on existing hegemonic power blocs. Moreover, alternative journalism can be produced by professional or nonprofessional reporters, which contradicts established theories emphasizing the amateurism of alternative journalists (Atton and Hamilton 2008).2 I also regard citizen journalism as a form of journalism produced by nonprofessionals only. While sharing critical concerns about the inadequacy of the label (Bruns and

See, for instance: Atton 2003, 2009; Atton and Hamilton 2008; Allan Stuart and Thorsen Einar (eds.) 2009; Miller 2019. 2  Fuchs (2010) and Forde (2011) are among the rare scholars who contest this view and insist on the necessity to include “independent” professional reporters within the field. 1 

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Highfield 2012) and its application within a different sociohistorical context (Khiabany and Sreberny 2009), I define it as the act of an individual or a group of people – sometimes referred to as users – who play “an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analysing and disseminating news and information” (Bowman and Willis 2003, 9). Citizen journalism can be “alternative” to its mainstream counterpart, but also entertain with it more complex relationships, ranging from “hegemonic co-­optation” of UGC by corporate media giants (Kperogi 2011), to negotiated forms of collaborations where unpaid labor is compensated by the increased visibility of citizen journalists and/or their political messages (Palmer 2012). It should be noted, however, that studies of citizen journalism in the Middle East have tended to focus on alternative practices and neglect the issue of convergence with local mainstream media (see Chapters 11, 16, 17).

Between Professional Journalists and “Ordinary” People Inside and Outside Since the beginning of the twenty-­first century, a wide range of people have been involved in the production and dissemination of alternative and citizen journalism ­contents. From political and civil society activists to demonstrators, through “ordinary” people dissatisfied with the news coverage of mainstream media, individuals committing random acts of reporting and native reporters,3 the categories encompassed by the label “alternative and citizen journalists” are plentiful. What characterizes alternative journalism in the Middle East, however, is the active contribution made by professional reporters in the field. This is due to multiple factors. In several countries, mediascapes are so tightly controlled that independent journalists are obliged to turn to alternative channels to fulfill their role as informers. In Iran, for example, after the closure of reformist newspapers at the beginning of the 2000s,4 several reporters created blogs to disseminate news and commentary. In Turkey, an increasing number of professional journalists reacted to the government’s intensified crackdown on oppositional voices by opting for online alternative media such as websites and social networks to find “new ways of independent reporting” (Akser and McCollum 2019, 1). A similar trend has been observed in Egypt, where press freedom has been severely curtailed since the July 2013 military coup that brought Abdel-­Fattah al-­Sisi to power. Young journalists dissatisfied According to Atton (2002, 5), native reporters are “activist-­writers who write from a position of marginalization in order to attract power to the social movement to which they belong.” I argue that this definition should be expanded to include reporters who belong to marginalized local communities. 4  The Iranian reformist press was boosted by the election of President Mohammad Khatami in 1997, with dozens of new publications appearing in the following years. Reformist newspapers began to debate sensitive issues such as official corruption and the undemocratic behavior of the ruling clerics, prompting a reaction from conservative forces within the regime. The latter quickly used their control over the judiciary to target the press. Starting from 1999, dozens of dailies and weeklies were closed and several intellectuals and journalists imprisoned. 3 

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with the unprecedented repressive climate began to establish alternative websites, including Mada Masr, Qoll, Bawwabat Yanayr, Noon Post and al-­Manassa.5 In Syria, the reporting teams of Local Coordinating Committees6 created after the outbreak of the 2011 uprising relied on the contribution of both professional and amateur journalists (Wall and El Zahed 2014). Moreover, while most alternative news projects were launched in 2011 by ordinary citizens and activists, a remarkable professionalization process later occurred, involving both the training of nonprofessional journalists and the contribution of professional ones (Issa 2016). For instance, the founders of independent online radio stations that were established in 2012 and 2013 decided to hire professional reporters to improve the quality of their work (De Angelis 2014). Akser and McCollum (2018) distinguish two broad categories of users of alternative media in Turkey: professional reporters on the one hand, and ordinary citizens on the other. Although this may give the impression of two clearly separated groups, several studies show that boundaries and practices are blurred, giving birth to hybrid forms and categories. In the Egyptian context of the 2000s, several “activist-­bloggers”7 worked simultaneously as editors or correspondents for national and international mainstream media (Radsch 2013). Starting in the late 2000s, young cyberactivists were hired as editorial writers by local private newspapers and contributed to create a “new form of opinion journalism” (De Angelis 2015, 103), while building their reputation in the journalistic field. Lines and boundaries are indeed difficult to trace. An interesting question is to know whether professionals and amateurs engage in different or similar journalistic practices. No studies have focused on this subject, but the existing literature provides interesting information. When getting involved in alternative news projects, professional journalists tend to opt for more “traditional” formats, such as newspapers, news websites, and radio and TV channels. Nonprofessionals, on the contrary, often use blogs and social networking sites as exclusive dissemination tools. This line of demarcation, however, is not always operational. In Syria, most alternative news projects, including print newspapers, websites, and online radios, were launched by ordinary citizens. In Egypt, the latter have created a few online radio stations and news websites, and even a satellite TV channel (Ibrahim 2017). Are there any significant differences in journalistic contents and styles? While there is a lack of research addressing this question, some studies show that Arab professional reporters involved in alternative journalism consider the respect of universal journalistic norms as an integral part of their mission. They tend to criticize news made by “citizen journalists” for assorted reasons, notably its presumed lack of credibility (Douai and Ben Moussa 2016). This very issue has been notably discussed apropos information produced https://www.madamasr.com/en; https://almanassa.com/ar. As alternative websites were blocked starting from 2017, some of the previously mentioned platforms have since stopped working. 6  Local Coordinating Committees were “political groups made up of thousands of activists found in nearly every city and town who operated at the neighbourhood level” and who “prioritized creating media content” (Wall and El Zahed 2014, 5). 7  For a description of the category “activist-­bloggers,” see Lynch 2007. 5 

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by Syrian activists covering the uprising and later the civil war. As Assad’s regime banned international media from entering the country, activists and demonstrators played an essential role in reporting news from the ground. A few scandals occurred, however, revealing that information was sometimes exaggerated, recycled from previous events, and even fabricated. Beyond the ideological discourses of local professional reporters, however, empirical research shows that citizen journalists in the Middle East are not only aware of professional norms, but also willing to embrace them (Elsayed  2013; Radsch 2013; Wall and El Zahed 2014). Finally, an analysis of alternative journalism producers cannot neglect the role played by diasporas in the field. This has been particularly true in certain highly repressive countries such as Iran, Libya, and Syria. Several Iranian blogger-­journalists, some of whom are among the most read, were indeed based outside the country. In 2009, Iranian citizens abroad contributed actively to disseminate news about the protests over the reelection of presidential incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. For their part, Libyan websites based in the UK played a major role in publicizing alternative information about the situation in the country (Gazzini 2007). The role of Syrian exiled activists was also instrumental in disseminating news and reports about the Syrian uprising and later the civil war (Papadopoulos and Pantti 2013). By 2016, an increasing number of alternative news media were operated by people outside the country (Issa 2016). The contribution of diasporas to produce and disseminate alternative journalism(s) has also been remarkable in Bahrain, Lebanon, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Allan et al. 2007; Zayyan and Carter 2009).

Functions Performed by Alternative and Citizen Journalism(s) Alternative and citizen journalism(s) in the Middle East do perform a range of functions, the most important of which are: tackling sensitive issues that are unspoken for reasons of censorship; reporting news in times of political crisis; and giving a voice to the voiceless.

Tackling Unspoken Issues This function has been observed by scholars working on alternative journalism in the West (Harcup 2003), but it has assumed a vital role in the Middle East for various reasons. First and foremost is the widespread presence of censorial practices implemented by states and governments to control information flows. Among the major sensitive issues voiced by alternative and citizen journalists, I will mention human rights abuses and corruption. Cases of torture, police brutality, and other human rights violations have been reported since the beginning of the 2000s using different media. In Turkey, the news portal Bianet has been publishing, since the end of the 1990s, reports of abuses on underrepresented and oppressed citizens, including

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Kurds, Alevis, leftists, trade unionists, feminists, and students protesting globalization. Other alternative platforms have been used in recent years to spread news about arrests and detentions of political activists, journalists, and other civil society actors. In Bahrain, online forums and blogs have served as channels to publish critical human-­rights reports and to disseminate news of sectarian discrimination and police brutality. In Egypt, the media ecology was quite vibrant and allowed for the dissemination of news about torture and human rights violations via a number of independent newspapers, websites, blogs, and social networking sites. The renowned Facebook page “We are all Khaled Said” is a case in point (Saleh  2017). Interestingly, Said was arrested after publishing online a video documenting police corruption. This brings me to the second major unspoken issue tackled by alternative and citizen journalists in the Middle East: wrongdoing by political authorities. News about corruption at various levels has been widely reported since the 2000s, contributing to the emergence of anti-­corruption campaigns in Bahrain and Libya (Hamdy  2009; Gazzini  2007). More specifically, instances of electoral fraud and vote rigging were publicized by alternative and citizen journalists in several countries, including Kuwait and Egypt (Lynch 2007; Elsayed 2013). By tackling these unspoken issues, alternative and citizen reporters undeniably ­perform the watchdog role that mainstream media is not allowed to play in repressive environments. Their effort primarily aims at increasing accountability. At the same time, these reporters contribute to disseminate counter-­hegemonic discourses and critical views, with the aim of mobilizing people for change.

Reporting News in Times of War, Conflict, and Political Crisis Alternative and citizen journalists also play an essential role in reporting news in times of political crisis. Bloggers are known to have contributed to the coverage of the 2003 American-­led invasion of Iraq and the 2006 Israeli-­Lebanese war (Bailey et  al.  2007; Hunt 2008). As one scholar has argued: “the Lebanon War in 2006 has propelled internet-­ based journalism, which first appeared during and after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, from obscurity to the heart of the new Arab public sphere of transnational media” (Haugbolle 2007, 1). Subsequently, citizen journalists and cyberactivists would contribute in many ways to reporting news in times of conflict, such as during the repeated Israeli attacks on Gaza, or the Syrian civil war. It should be noted, however, that mainstream news organizations in the Middle East, including state-­owned media, also played a major role in reporting war and violations of international law in the region. From the point of view of Western audiences, this coverage undoubtedly represented an alternative to the one provided by global media hegemons such as CNN and BBC. The role played by alternative and citizen journalism(s) in covering protest movements around the world has been the subject of much investigation. Even before the so-­called Arab Spring, one of the primary functions of independent and citizen reporters in the Middle East was to disseminate news about street unrest. Egyptian cyberactivists made a vital contribution to report the Kifaya demonstrations (Al Malki 2007; Radsch 2013). Around the same time, Bahraini bloggers performed a similar function

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during pro-­democracy demonstrations at home (Schleusener 2007). The Lebanese blogosphere, for its part, developed during the 2005 “Cedar revolution” against the Syrian occupation (Haugbolle 2007), whereas the 2009 Iranian uprising was deemed the first “Twitter revolution.” The full potential of social media networks to cover protest movements was reached during the 2011 Arab uprisings and later the Gezi Park protests in Turkey. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube were widely employed to disseminate news about demonstrations in all countries shaken by revolts, but they certainly played a more vital role in contexts where international media had been banned, notably in Syria and Libya. While Social Media Networks allowed every protester to contribute to spread information from the ground, a few collective projects were launched at this very moment for the purpose of covering political unrest. In Egypt, Rassd provides an interesting example. Conceived as an alternative news agency, it was created in January 2011 in the form of a Facebook page by a group of young activists willing to report the expected demonstrations in a comprehensive and favorable way. Thanks to a network of volunteers based around the country, Rassd was able to report events happening in remote areas that were ignored by mainstream media (Elsayed 2013). Rassd’s example was later followed by Syrian activists, who established alternative news agencies to report their uprising from local areas employing Facebook and YouTube as dissemination channels (Wall and El Zahed 2014). In Turkey, a variety of alternative media were used to report the 2013 Gezi protest movement, including social networking sites, local community radios such as Açık Radyo (Bonini 2017), online streaming, and TV channels (Akser and McCollum 2018).

Providing a Voice for the Voiceless Alternative and citizen journalism(s) also provide a voice for the voiceless, enabling minorities and underrepresented social and political groups to express their concerns and identities. Among these categories, the most important are women, ethnic and religious minorities, political minorities and prisoners, youth and hyper-­local communities. Women-­related issues traditionally ignored by other media have been largely discussed and publicized on the web. In Egypt, women bloggers were instrumental in reporting news about the Eid al-­Fitr sexual assaults that took place in central Cairo in October 2006.8 In Saudi Arabia, feminists have used SMN sites, in particular Twitter, to express their concerns and advance their causes, as in the case of the “#Women2Drive Campaign” (Chaudhry 2014). Turkish feminists have maintained an online presence for years, establishing discussion forums and platforms (Aliefendioğlu  2018). Moreover, alternative media such as the portal Bianet have actively encouraged the participation of women’s rights activists in producing journalistic content and publicizing issues such as femicide and other forms of discrimination. On October 25, 2006, dozens of female passers-­by were sexually assaulted in downtown Cairo by bands of men while the police reportedly looked on without intervening.

8 

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Ethnic and religious minorities have also taken advantage of new media to express their views and identities. An interesting case is that of Baha’is in Egypt, who established an important presence in the blogosphere (Etling et al. 2009) to disseminate information about their community and their struggle concerning national IDs (Faris  2010).9 In Bahrain, the traditionally marginalized Shia community has employed blogs and other online platforms to publicize sectarian discrimination and disseminate alternative views of history and culture (Desmukh 2010). In Turkey, alternative news channels have given a focus on underrepresented ethnic communities such as the Kurdish and the Alevi. The label “human rights/peace journalism” was coined by media researchers to describe these practices. Although the Syrian Kurdish community remains underrepresented in the mediascape, the creation of an autonomous enclave in Rojava in 2011 led to the emergence of new Kurdish media outlets. Most of them were founded and controlled by political parties, but some “independent” news platforms also emerged, presenting themselves as tools for the expression of civil society movements (Badran and De Angelis 2016). Finally, some alternative news projects are conceived to give a voice to hyper-­local communities. Unlike other developing countries in Africa and Latin America, community radios have been historically absent from the Middle East. This was certainly due to the tight control of broadcasting by local governments. AmmanNet was the first radio station to be launched in early 2000s that served a platform of hyper-­local journalism focused on Jordan’s capital city (Pintak 2007). In Egypt, few initiatives were launched, such as Radio Tram and the website Karmoz in Alexandria, and the Welad al-­Balad ­project. Both Radio Tram and Karmoz were created by young journalists and activists who felt a need to provide the local public with news from and about Alexandria (Berger  2013; Hamama 2017). While the former also paid attention to broadcasting underground music and art, Karmoz featured a hyper-­local page dedicated to the Agami neighborhood. The Welad al-­Balad project, for its part, was launched and directed by a seasoned media professional willing to boost local journalism in underrepresented areas of the country by training groups of native reporters. By 2013, it had created weekly newspapers in several provincial towns (Berger 2013). Another interesting initiative in community journalism is the Bashkatib project. Launched in 2013 by a young journalist in two poor neighborhoods in Cairo, it aims to train teenagers in socially and geographically marginalized areas to report on their daily lives.10 In Syria, the national media scene has historically been extremely centralized, ignoring provincial areas outside Damascus and Aleppo. After the outbreak of the 2011 uprising, however, alternative news platforms founded by activists started to mushroom everywhere in the country, both at the local and hyper-­local level. Examples of these are the Douma City News and Lattakia News Network, operating in the homonymous towns; and the Baba Amro News Network, based in the Baba Amro neighborhood in Homs. Baha’is are a small religious minority present in several countries of the Middle East. In Egypt, their faith is not recognized by the state. As a result, they have been subject to different kinds of legal and illegal discrimination and persecution. During the 2000s, they engaged in a legal battle to have their entry for religious faith removed from national identity cards and they finally won it in March 2009. 10  https://www.bashkatibnews.com/ 9 

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In the words of two scholars, these underrepresented areas “were suddenly being reported on by activist reporters” (Wall and El Zahed 2014, 6). Moreover, online community radio stations started to appear in 2012–2013, with the aim of “providing a voice to Syrians living inside the country while trying to involve the silent majority who feel under-­represented by both the opposition media and the regime’s one” (De Angelis 2014, 45).

Economic and Organizational Perspectives A critical question about alternative and citizen journalism(s) in the Middle East concerns more specifically the economic and organizational perspectives. How are these news platforms funded, managed, and organized? As elsewhere in the world, alternative news projects in the region are faced with major economic challenges. Most of them employ the internet as a dissemination channel to lower distribution costs. Blogs and SMN sites have been particularly interesting in this respect, as they enable spreading information at zero cost. Despite the central position of the internet, however, traditional media have not disappeared and, in specific environments, alternative and citizen journalists have to resort to print news outlets. In the context of the Syrian civil war, for instance, new “independent” newspapers emerged in rebel-­controlled areas, as regular electricity cuts prevented local reporters from using the web (Issa, 2016). From a financial point of view, alternative news projects rely on two different strategies: self-­f unding, either individual or collective; and soliciting financial aid from foreign governments and NGOs. The first model seems to be the most widespread around the region, transcending national borders. Most news websites established by disenfranchised journalists, for instance, were started with personal funds. The use of foreign aid is less common and mainly concerns Syrian alternative platforms as well as Kurdish independent media in Rojava (De Angelis 2014; Badran and De Angelis 2016). International donors include the US Department of State for near Eastern affairs and several European governments (Issa 2016). There is also evidence that a few alternative media projects in Turkey were supported, during the 2000s, by NGOs and civil society organizations (Alankuş 2009). In other countries, such as Egypt, this financial model did not spread. Among the initiatives mentioned, only the Bashkatib project depends on financial aid provided by the British Council and NGOs such as International Media Support and the Arab Digital Expression Foundation (ADEF). Other alternative platforms were self-­f unded, either by individual journalists or by collective groups. This may seem odd, given that in the aftermath of the January uprising, international donors dramatically increased the funds allocated to local citizen journalism initiatives (Radsch 2013). The choice not to request financial aid may be ideological or dictated by the fear of being accused of collaborating with “hostile” foreign entities (Shams El-­Din 2014). Sustainability in the long run remains a big concern. Most alternative media founders hope to attract advertising revenues on the run, but only a few seem to be successful, due to the limits of the market and other external pressures. The lack of resources has a direct impact on the management of these projects. Several alternative media are

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operated in small offices – a two-­or three-­room apartment – while some are launched without establishing any physical workspace. This is the case, for instance, with the Rassd news network and the website Qoll, whose editors used to meet in public cafés and, in the case of Rassd, through FB closed groups. Furthermore, most news platforms are obliged to rely heavily on the contribution of unpaid volunteers. The latter can be friends, colleagues, comrades, or young wannabe reporters. Students and fresh university graduates often participate in these initiatives, as they have considerable time at their disposal and few family commitments. Finally, alternative media are generally managed by small teams. While the founders of some projects hope to set up crews of full-­time paid editors, this objective is often impossible to fulfill, because of difficulties in generating additional resources. Most outlets rely on a “traditional” business model based on advertising, although a few have developed alternative fundraising strategies such as online crowdfunding campaigns and the organization of ticketed events. Mada Masr, for instance, has organized regular fundraising events in Cairo since its start, while also offering membership options to readers. Different organizational models exist. Alternative platforms launched by professional journalists tend to feature hierarchically organized teams just like mainstream media. News work is supervised by an editor-­in-­chief, sometimes assisted by a managing editor, and “ordinary” editors tend to specialize in specific areas. Examples of these structures are found in Egypt-­based Mada Masr, Bawwabat Yanayr, and al-­Bedaya, for instance. Yet, other independent journalists have deliberately refused this model. The founders of Qoll, for instance, decided to set up an innovative editorial system to protect against ­self-­censorship: “we do not have a chief editor,” explains one of them, “but rather an editorial council composed of six editors. When we disagree over an article, we vote on whether to publish it” (Shams El-­Din 2014). This is reminiscent of the democratic management systems observed by specialists of alternative media around the world. Conversely, news platforms launched by activists and ordinary individuals are more likely to be loosely organized. This is not to say, however, that they lack any coherent structure. The founders of Rassd, for example, established an interesting system based on a vast network of volunteer reporters and a small core of volunteer editorial staff. Four committees were established to coordinate the entire work: one for editing the news, another for correspondents all over Egypt, a third for multimedia, and the fourth for public relations, development, and training (Elsayed 2013). In Syria, as I have already mentioned, citizen journalism underwent an institutionalization and professionalization process which entailed both the creation of work offices and the establishment of hierarchical professional crews.

Conclusion Building on a review of the existing scholarship and on this author’s own research, this chapter has made a general foray into the subject of alternative and citizen journalism(s) in the Middle East. As I said, the number of empirical studies has dramatically increased since the mid-­2000s, providing us with rich information about producers and journalistic

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practices. Research into the subject is still at the beginning, however, and multiple gaps remain to be filled. First, scholars have mainly focused their attention on a few countries, particularly those that experienced large-­scale protest movements such as Egypt, Syria, and Turkey. Conversely, other national contexts have been neglected. We still know very little about alternative and citizen journalism(s) in the Gulf or other countries such as Jordan. Second, some research aspects have not been given sufficient attention. For instance, few investigations have focused on how alternative journalism is concretely produced, how news work is organized and what strategies are adopted to make these initiatives sustainable (see Chapters 17, 18). Research into audiences is even less developed and with a few notable exceptions, scholars have overlooked the issue.11 Finally, more studies are needed to examine the phenomenon of citizen journalism beyond the alternative and activist practices generally taken into consideration by scholars, and to better understand the interplay between citizen journalists and national, Pan-­Arab, and international mainstream media. References Akser, Murat and McCollum, Victoria. (Eds.) 2018. Alternative Media in Contemporary Turkey: Sustainability, Activism, and Resistance. Rowman & Littlefield International. Alankuş, Sevda. 2009. “The Relationship Between Democracy and ‘Other Media’: An Attempt to Describe the Non-­Mainstream Media Environment in Turkey.” Online International Journal of Communication Studies 1: 1–19. Aliefendioğlu, Hanife. 2018. “Contemporary Feminist Media in Turkey: A Study of Online Feminist Platform Çatlak Zemin (Cracked Ground).” In Akser Murat and McCollum Victoria (eds.), Alternative Media in Contemporary Turkey: Sustainability, Activism, and Resistance (pp. 177–195). Rowman & Littlefield International. Allan, Stuart, Sonwalkar, Prasun, and Carter, Cynthia. 2007. “Bearing Witness: Citizen Journalism and Human Rights Issues.” Globalisation, Societies and Education 5, 3: 373–389. Allan, Stuart and Thorsen, Einar. (Eds.) 2009. Citizen Journalism: Global Perspectives (vol. 1). New York: Peter Lang. Andén-­Papadopulos, Kari and Mervi, Pantti. 2013. “The Media Work of Syrian Diaspora Activists: Brokering Between the Protest and Mainstream Media.” International Journal of Communication 7: 2185–2206. Atton, Chris. 2002. Alternative Media. London: SAGE. Atton, Chris. 2003. “What is Alternative Journalism.” Journalism 4, 3: 267–272. Atton, Chris. 2009. “Alternative and Citizen Journalism.” In Wahl-Jorgensen Karin and Hanitzsch Thomas (Eds.), The Handbook of Journalism Studies (pp. 265–278). New York: Routledge. Atton, Chris and Hamilton, James. 2008. Alternative Journalism. London: SAGE. Badran, Yazan and De Angelis, Enrico. 2016. “‘Independent’ Kurdish Media in Syria: Conflicting Identities in the Transition.” Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 9: 334–351. Bailey, Olga, Cammaerts, Bart, and Carpentier, Nico. 2007. Understanding Alternative Media. New York: McGraw-­Hill.

This is not very surprising, however, as Western specialists of alternative media have highlighted the “enduring absence of audience studies in this area,” to quote one of them (Atton 2009, 274). 11 

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Ibrahim, Dina. 2017. “The Birth and Death of 25TV: Innovation in Post-­Revolution Egyptian TV News Formats.” Arab Media & Society. https://www.arabmediasociety.com/the-birthand-death-of-25tv-innovation-in-post-revolution-egyptian-tv-news-formats/ Isherwood, Tom. 2008. “A New Direction or More of the Same? Political Blogging in Egypt.” Arab Media & Society. https://www.arabmediasociety.com/a-new-direction-or-more-ofthe-same/ Issa, Antoun. 2016. “Syria’s New Media Landscape: Independent Media Born out of War.” MEI Policy Paper 2016-­9. Kejanlıoğlu, D. Beibin, Çoban, Barış, Yanıkkaya, Berrin, and Köksalan, M. Emre. 2012. “The User as Producer in Alternative Media? The Case of the Independent Communication Network (BIA).” Communications 37, 2: 275–296. Khamis, Sahar and Vaughn, Katherine. 2011. “Cyberactivism in the Egyptian Revolution: How Civic Engagement and Citizen Journalism Tilted the Balance.” Arab Media & Society. https://www.arabmediasociety.com/cyberactivism-in-the-egyptian-revolution-howcivic-engagement-and-citizen-journalism-tilted-the-balance/ Khiabany, Gholam and Sreberny, Annabelle. 2007. “The Politics of/in Blogging in Iran.” Comparative Studies of South Asia Africa and the Middle East 27, 3: 563–579. Khiabany, Gholam and Sreberny, Annabelle. 2009. “The Iranian Story: What Citizens? What Journalism?” In Allan Stuart and Thorsen Einar (Eds.), Citizen Journalism: Global Perspectives (vol. 1). New York: Peter Lang. Kperogi, Farook. 2011. “Cooperation with the Corporation? CNN and the Hegemonic Co-­ optation of Citizen Journalism Through iReport.com.” New Media & Society 13, 2: 314–329. Lynch, Marc. 2007. “Blogging the New Arab Public.” Arab Media & Society. https://www. arabmediasociety.com/blogging-the-new-arab-public/ Al Malky, Rania. 2007. “Blogging for Reform: The Case of Egypt.” Arab Media &Society. https:// www.arabmediasociety.com/blogging-for-reform-the-case-of-egypt/ Miller, Serena. 2019. “Citizen Journalism.” Oxford Research Encyclopedias: Communication. https:// doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.786 Otterman, Sharon. 2007. “Publicizing the Private: Egyptian Women Bloggers Speak Out.” Arab Media & Society. https://www.arabmediasociety.com/publicizing-the-private-egyptianwomen-bloggers-speak-out/ Palmer, Lindsay. 2012. “‘iReporting’ an Uprising: CNN and Citizen Journalism in Network Culture.” Television & New Media 14, 5: 367–385. Pintak, Lawrence. 2007. “Huge Need for Independent Media in the Middle East: AmmanNet Founder Daoud Kuttab.” Arab Media & Society, March 2007. https://www.arabmediasociety. com/huge-need-for-independent-media-in-middle-east-ammannet-founder-daoud-kuttab/ Radsch, Courtney. 2008. “Core to Commonplace: The Evolution of Egypt’s Blogosphere.” Arab Media & Society. https://www.arabmediasociety.com/core-to-commonplace-the-evolutionof-egypts-blogosphere/ Radsch, Courtney. 2013. Digital Dissidence and Political Change: Cyberactivism and Citizen Journalism in Egypt. PhD dissertation in International Relations. American University, Washington DC. Saleh, Nivien. 2017. “When Pundits Fail: ‘We Are All Khalid Said’ and the Challenge of Democratizing Egypt.” In Çakmak Cenap (Ed.), The Arab Spring, Civil Society and Innovative Activism. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Schleusener, Lucas F. 2007. “From Blog to Street: The Bahraini Public Sphere in Transition.” Arab Media & Society. https://www.arabmediasociety.com/from-blog-to-street-the-bahrainipublic-sphere-in-transition/ Shams, El-­Din Mai. 2014. “Finding a Free Space.” Mada Masr, February 20.

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Sreberny, Annabelle and Khiabany, Gholam. 2010. Blogistan: The Internet and Politics in Iran, London: I.B. Tauris. Taki, Maha. 2010. Bloggers and the Blogosphere in Lebanon & Syria. Meanings and Activities, PhD dissertation in Philosophy. University of Westminster. Wall, Melissa and El Zahed, Sahar. 2014. “Syrian Citizen Journalism: A Pop-­up News Ecology In an Authoritarian Space.” Digital Journalism 3, 5: 720–736. Ward, Will. 2007. “Uneasy Bedfellows: Bloggers and Mainstream Media Report the Conflict in Lebanon.” Arab Media & Society. https://www.arabmediasociety.com/uneasy-­bedfellows-­ bloggers-­and-­mainstream-­media-­report-­the-­lebanon-­conflict/ Zayyan, Heba and Carter, Cynthia. 2009. “Human Rights and Wrongs: Blogging News of Everyday Life in Palestine.” In Allan Stuart and Einar Thorsen (Eds.), Citizen Journalism: Global Perspectives (vol. 1). New York: Peter Lang.

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A Revolution of Smiles? The Function of Humor in Algerian Media During the 2019–2020 Protests Ali Sonay Introduction Between February 2019 and 2021, Algerians in large numbers protested the political elite, demanding a more democratic and accountable system and an end to widespread ­corruption in the country. The protest movement, known as the Hirak (Arabic for “movement”) originally aimed to prevent the long-­serving President Abdelaziz Bouteflika from holding a fifth term in office. It succeeded; and in April 2019 the military urged Bouteflika to resign. Protests continued, however, as Algerians boycotted the newly elected President Abdelmajid Tebboune because he was considered the heir of the ­previous regime.1 Protestors also expressed their discontent with the government’s ­handling of the Covid-­19 pandemic. Meanwhile, the authorities’ clampdown on media outlets continued unabated and even increased. In May 2020, Algeria’s prominent satirical website El Manchar was closed as per the editorial team’s decision (Middle East Monitor 2020; El Manchar 2020a). The website was relaunched in August 2020 with the satirical headline, “President Tebboune Orders the Gradual Opening of El Manchar.” Editors explained their decision to return: “Has Algeria turned to the better? No. Has it become worse? Not much. Things are how they are. We have to deal with it” (El Manchar 2020b). Celebrated for its humorous commentary on politics, El Manchar was among the media outlets that contributed to an understanding of the protests as a revolutionary movement accompanied by humor. Indeed, a number of journalistic accounts in Arab and international media described  Tebboune served as the Prime Minister under Bouteflika.

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these protests as “humorous” stressing that the use of humor was an essential ­characteristic of the Hirak.2 This chapter asks what role humor plays or played as a rhetorical device for the ­protestors and in which media spheres these humorous takes were circulated. It focuses on how humor was used during the Hirak, and with what implications, while also ­contextualizing the topic in broader historical terms (see Chapters 6, 26). To this end, I use data from interviews I conducted with stakeholders in journalism and academia, as well as analysis of Facebook and Twitter posts, and Algerian websites. I begin the chapter with a theoretical discussion of the impact humor might have on social movements. I then examine the Algerian media system to contextualize the political humor that emerged during the protests. In doing so, I contextualize Algerian humor and the Hirak historically and elaborate on the ­presence of humor in media.

Theoretical Framework: Humor and Social Movements Humor has often been theorized as a “weapon of the weak” used during times of ­conflict and crisis (Bayat  2010; Goldfarb  2006; Scott  1985). It has been viewed as an instrument to alleviate stress, fear, and alienation. But humor also plays an important role in everyday protests. Protest waves are mostly upheld by social movements and the actors associated with them, including political parties, labor unions, as well as individuals. The  main aim of social movements is to achieve social, political, and economic change based on perceived grievances. In order to attract influential mobilization, social movements are interested in disseminating their messages through media. These ­messages are called frames, which diagnose the grievances and formulate solutions in a succinct and resonating way. Research on social movements show that humor plays a crucial role in framing processes. Kutz-­Flamenbaum distinguishes external and internal humor (2014, 297–301). Whereas external humor formulates frames addressing individuals and institutions seen as responsible for the grievances in question, internal humor is conducive to construct and sustain collective identity and the joint experience of fun (2014, 297–301). Similarly, Damir-­ Geilsdorf and Milich (2020) conceptualize humor in terms of superiority, incongruity, and relief (22). Whereas humor in the category of superiority implies a top-­down approach, incongruity implies humor revealing ambiguities in societies, and relief entails the discharge of tension and the building of group cohesion (22). It must be highlighted, though, that the revolutionary potential of humor is very much disputed in existing research. While some emphasize the immediate impact humor might have on mobilization, others see it as potentially safeguarding the status quo (22). Achille Mbembe, for instance, hints at  For further reading, see, Hiyem Cheurfa, “The Laughter of Dignity: Comedy and Dissent in the Algerian Popular Protests,” May 26, 2019, in Jadaliyya, https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/38495; Nadia Ghanem, “The Frame, the Sausage, the Oil: Humor and Politics in Algeria’s Protests,” March 10, 2010, in Arablit.org, https://arablit.org/2019/03/10/the-­ frame-­ the-­ sausage­the-­oil-­humor-­and-­politics-­in-­algerias-­protests/.

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the “violent” dimension humor may disseminate (Mbembe 1996). As we will see below, when used as a strategy of self-­ridicule, humor can entrench the opaque power ­relations and conspiracy theories as it did in Algeria during the tumultuous 1990s. Nevertheless, humor provides a repertoire of contention to be used during political conjunctures, such as during the Arab uprisings and the Gezi protests in Turkey in 2013.3 Political humor is a stylistic device with an established tradition in the region and can be evinced in various genres that range from traditional cartoons in print media to films, talk shows and street art (Damir-­Geilsdorf and Milich 2020, 18). In the Middle East and North Africa, three major themes dominate political humor: leaders, economic reforms, and lack of democracy and free elections (20). In general, however, it must be said, that the analysis of political humor in the Middle East is still in its infancy. In particular, the case of Algeria, not directly linked with the Arab uprisings, remains understudied. Before I discuss political humor during the Hirak protests, I first present a brief overview of the Algerian media system.

Algerian Media System The Algerian media system is ambivalent in nature. On the one hand, recent research acknowledges a trend toward an increase in freedom of speech. At the same time, official restrictions, such as those embedded in the constitution and media codes, enable the arbitrary usage of repression toward journalists and media outlets (see Chapters 10, 15). Consequently, detentions, imprisonments, financial penalties, and the shutting down of media companies are occurring regularly (Azeredo 2014; El-­Issawi 2017). After independence in 1962, the press was under the control of the single-­party state. The transition to a multiparty system in 1988 led to an opening of the media environment as well. A multitude of private newspapers were founded and the new constitution guaranteed freedom of speech. Audiovisual media remained under state authority. The Civil War (1991–2002), however, led to the adoption of emergency laws in 1992 which demanded the practice of a so-­called “patriotic journalism” meaning a severe restriction of what was possible to write and say and what was not, and thus deemed as “unpatriotic” (El-­Issawi  2017). Forbidden topics included sensitive information regarding the military and the security apparatus, questions of who really was in power, and in the last years of Bouteflika, the state of the president’s health (El-­Issawi 2017). Self-­censorship is therefore a very common phenomenon. A new impetus for media transformation happened in the course of the Arab uprisings. Although Algeria did not witness a popular uprising to the extent of the  See for example, Marwan Kraidy’s The Naked Blogger of Cairo: Creative Insurgency in the Arab World (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), especially Chapter III “Laughing Cow” and Chapter IV “Puppets and Masters.” In the Turkish context, see Yeşim Kaptan. “Laugh and Resist! Humor and Satire Use in the Gezi Resistance Movement.” Perspectives on Global Development and Technology 15(5), 567–587.

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neighboring countries (precisely due to widespread fear that protests could lead to the unrest of the 1990s), the regime was still under pressure to substantiate its response by legal adjustments (see Chapters 11, 16). Thus, in 2012 a new audiovisual code was legislated which allowed for the first time commercially owned television and radio stations. In 2016 a new constitution and penal code were adopted; the former allowed freedom of speech, but the latter threatened media practitioners anew with imprisonment in cases of publications against state officials. A new penal law eventually was adopted in April 2020 in the course of the new protest waves; it reinforced charges against journalists working in the online sphere who potentially spread “fake news” (Mena Rights Group, 2020). This media system is thereby obviously used as a political and economic leverage tool in order to sustain existing power relations. Besides the legal texts delineating the political framework of the mediascape, the private media outlets are in most cases dependent on the state in terms of public advertising and printing houses. There are only a few newspapers that use their own printing facilities as opposed to the state’s. Online media outlets have more leeway in organizing their infrastructure and financial resources (Azeredo 2014; El-­Issawi 2017). What becomes evident when looking at the framework outlined here is that there is a balance of power of certain state institutions that react sensitively to certain content. These institutions are the presidency, the military, and the security apparatus/­intelligence services. A look at the latest statistics on Algeria from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) shows that journalists working online are increasingly the main target of state actions (CPJ 2020). Two key conclusions can be drawn: (1) Despite privatization in the media sector, a dependency on the state is ongoing, and (2) the privatization of  the  media sector meant a liberalization also in legal terms while maintaining the ­infrastructure to suppress the media.

Protest and Humor in Algeria: Historical Contextualization The protests in Algeria since early 2019 may appear unique in character particularly due to the length of the protest wave; however, they must be seen in a wider historical context. Algeria, after its independence from France 1962 following a long War of Independence, was governed until 1988 by a single party, the National Liberation Front (FLN). Already in the 1980s, waves of protests occurred in the country. In 1988, the so-­ called bread riots, which were directed against price increases for food in the wake of falling oil revenues, led to the opening of the political system and its transformation into a multiparty system. The subsequent victory of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), first in the local elections in 1990 and subsequently in the first round of the general elections in 1990, challenged the entrenched political system and led to the annulment of the general elections in 1992 – and eventually to the Algerian Civil War between various militant Islamist organizations and the Algerian military and security apparatus. The war

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was fought very brutally and lasted until the beginning of the 2000s when it was ended through an amnesty legitimized by a referendum. The Civil War with a death toll of hundreds of thousands and continued lack of transparency regarding the process of transitional justice, haunts Algerian politics, media, social movements, and in short political culture up until today ( Joffé 2020a; Ouaissa 2010; Willis 2012; Zeraoulia 2020). The trauma associated with political upheavals is regarded as one of the main factors that previous mobilizations in the recent years have been relatively smaller in scale. The case of the Arab uprisings furthermore shows that the sociopolitical dynamics may overlap with regional processes, but each country faces its own specific issues. Political humor has an important place in modern Algerian history, a history from which the current manifestations of the Hirak draws on (Dahak  2018, Kharfi  2019). There has been, for instance, the tradition of oral satiric poems during the rules of the Ottoman Empire and the French colonial period (Khelladi 1995). Since the French colonial rule (1830–1962), the genre of self-­deprecating humor has also become a cornerstone (Khelladi 1995). After independence, under the new political system of a single party rule, the FLN, an “official” humor was constructed directed against the opponents of the party and the ruling class itself was not targeted (Khelladi 1995, 229). Against this backdrop, popular jokes, (hkayāt) deriding politicians became very popular (Khelladi 1995, 232; Kharfi 2019). The protests in 1988, for instance, mocking the then President Chadli Benjedid, had the slogan “Jazā’ir bilādunā, Chadli himārunā” (“Algeria is our country, Chadli our donkey”) (Khelladi 1995, 229.). Bachir Dahak, an expert on Algerian humor, describes the Hirak as a continuation of those times when he says “today the YouTubers, the parodists play the same role as that of the anonymous authors of the 60s, 70s and 80s” (Kharfi 2019). With the opening of the political system in the aftermath of the protests, new platforms for the articulation of political humor emerged. Platforms such as El-­Manchar attracted journalists and cartoonists who previously were part of the “official” humor genre, such as the well-­known Slim (Menouar Merabtène) (Khelladi 1995). The civil war, however, was a caesura not only for political humor, but also for the political system and Algerian society itself. The polarization and severity of the conflict narrowed the possibilities for humoristic expressions, as they could be interpreted as taking a sides. Consequently, platforms such as El-­Manchar had to close in 1991 (Aubouard 2019).4 As it did during the War of Independence, political humor during the civil war unfolded in a self-­mockery way. Elizabeth Perego illustrates that jokes played a role in reproducing the intractability of the conflict by normalizing the discourse about it (Perego  2018). Alluding to both the regime’s and the Islamist terrorists’ dealing with media practitioners, the following joke was told: “What has the same lifespan as a fruit fly? An Algerian journalist” (Perego 2018, 193). In the following section the protest movement and the use of political humor will be analyzed in more detail.

 The El-­Manchar mentioned at the very beginning eventually is a new online platform started in 2013 and named after the journal in the 1990s (Aubouard 2019).

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The Genealogy of the 2019 Protests and the Role of Humor As discussed, the Hirak is a social movement that is linked to waves of protests in Algeria in the previous decades. The main aim of the Hirak is a renegotiation of the “social ­contract” formulated in the wake of the civil war, which was built on the premise that political stability was guaranteed by the regime  – the military, the ruling political ­network around the President, and the security apparatus  – in return for what Amel Boubekeur describes perfectly as “depoliticization” that is “impunity and informal control of Algeria’s politics and oil revenues” (Boubekeur 2020, 4). While the military has emerged as the major power in organizing the transition, the main argument of this chapter builds on Boubekeur’s observation that the heterogeneous protest movement has successfully constructed “an autonomous political culture that reclaims the idea of the state from the regime” (Boubekeur 2020, 5). The use of humor in the protests can thus be observed in both ways: external and internal. The Hirak developed as a heterogonous entity composed of individuals, political parties, and organizations including unions and the opposition parties, such as the Socialist Forces Front (FFS), the Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD), the Rassemblement Action Jeunesse (RAJ), as well as the more Islamic-­oriented Rashad-­Movement. The movement bases its media presence mainly on social media and independent newspapers, such as El-­Watan, radio stations such as Radio M, and online discussion platforms such as Nida 22 (Rachidi 2021). The owner of Radio M was arrested for two days in June 2021 during a new crackdown on the media around the Hirak (El Watan 2021) along with one of Hirak’s representatives and a freelance journalist (IFJ 2021). Radio M was blocked in 2020 for “spreading false news” based on an amendment of the penal code (CPJ 2020). Other media used during the demonstrations included leaflets, posters, and songs, whereby many slogans became popular and were circulated on social media. Some examples of humorous slogans targeting Bouteflika were: “You cannot subdue a people which has watched 450 episodes of Conan” (Benabbes  2020, 7) and “All  iPhone and Samsung generations are already out, but you are still there” (Benabbes  2020, 7). “Conan” here is a reference to the popular Japanese manga series Detective Conan. We see already that humor is expressed externally and assumes mainly the function of relief and incongruity. It is also clear that both national and international elements of  popular culture play an important role in the framing process of the movement messages. The possibilities of the internet have enabled many protest participants with further disseminating and mobilizing options. Puns and memes were created containing subversive messages and as seen earlier, aligning both national and international elements of popular culture. Memes resonated with the protestors on the ground because they incorporated the themes that were significant to the Hirak: commentaries on politicians, corruption, and mismanagement. What made humor stand much more out in 2019 than in the 1980s and 1990s is that platforms and archives for its documentation are much more decentralized and widespread through the internet. Websites, blogs, memes,

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and cartoons played an important role in attracting mainstream media’s attention to the protests, particularly in the first weeks and until Bouteflika resigned.5 An example would be the well-­known cartoonist Nime (Abdelhamid Amine). On December 19, 2019, he published on his social media accounts a cartoon on the election of new President Tebboune which went viral and was also shown during the protest marches. The cartoon depicts the President crowned metaphorically by the Chief of the  General Staff Ahmad Gaid Salah with a golden shoe reminiscent of Cinderella (@Nime_BD, 2019). Another example is the memes of the prominent Hirak activist Walid Kechida. As mentioned, memes are widely shared on social media and Walid Kechida has been one of the most prolific creators.6 Figure 28.1 hints at the steadiness of the political conditions in Algeria, that is, the resilience of the regime. The adoption of a formal political transition process, and the effects of the Covid-­19 pandemic, however, led temporarily to a gradual crackdown on the Hirak, a process that is still ongoing. Nime was already arrested for one month in December 2019 for “insulting the state” based on the aforementioned meme (Cartooning for Peace 2021). In addition, a new penal law in April 2020 had implications for freedom of speech, particularly on social media (Balaa 2020; Mena Rights Group  2020). This also led to the arrests of  online journalists as mentioned earlier, such as the prominent memes creator and activist Walid Kechida in April 2020 (Middle East Eye 2020). Consequently, the free space

Figure 28.1  Meme on Hirak Memes, Created by Meta.

 For further references on these online productions, see M. Ben Moussa, S. Benmessaoud, and A. Douai, 2020. “Internet Memes as ‘Tactical’ Social Action: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis Approach.” International Journal of Communication, 14; M. Lesmana,  2021. “A Critical Reading of Arabic Internet Memes against Patriarchal Systems.” Journal of International Women’s Studies, 22(5), 333–346. 6  https://www.facebook.com/groups/HirakMemes/ 5

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for journalists and online activists to using humor has become narrower, as compared to the beginning of the Hirak when the momentum put the regime on the defensive. The deployment of humoristic elements in the Algerian protests since February 2019 has been interpreted in the international media as one of its most characteristic features (Cheurfa 2019; Ourahmoune 2019). Humor has been identified as both a tool to challenge authoritarianism at home and a signifier to align with global currents of protest and brands of popular culture. Cheurfa, for instance, hints at the similarities to the protests in Egypt in 2011, which was also named as the “Laughing Revolution” due to the carnivalesque spirit on Tahrir Square.7 She identifies that most of the political jokes are centered around the themes of Bouteflika’s invisibility, his health crisis, and the symbolism of the number five, alluding to his wish to run for the fifth time for the presidency.  The popular awareness of the potential international reach of the movement through different media outlets is also a contributing factor in orienting the slogans towards a global, target audience (Cheurfa 2019). The much-­cited Algerian journalist Hamdi Baala, for instance, has a more nuanced approach regarding the scope of time when assessing the importance of humor during the protests. In my interview with him, he acknowledged that indeed the role of humor was not exaggerated in the international media. On the contrary, it is an important ­element of the protests because humor has a relieving aspect after all the humiliations ordinary Algerians suffered from the regime. This public condition of humiliation (hogra) has built up for decades. As a reaction, the “Revolution of Smiling” both symbolized and challenged this “marginalized” aspect vis-­ ­ à-­ vis humiliation. Baala ­(interview, 2020) emphasizes the historical roots of humor today. The culture of humor in everyday life was there already before social media. There were, for instance, as shown earlier, jokes about the former President Chadli Benjedid in the 1980s. Thus, as mentioned, I stress that humor was already part of established culture; that is, it was not a new c­onscious decision to turn to humor as a completely new element of protest. Echoing Hadj-­Moussa and Bayat, Baala states that the decision to turn to humor was individualistic, rather than a deliberate decision of the protest movement; nevertheless, the ­process resulted in a collectively built and enjoyed experience. What becomes evident is that humor has been used specifically to target a regime to demand genuine democratic change. Humor has thus displayed both external and internal properties. On the external side, humoristic frames have been disseminated that delegitimized the ruling political system as oppressive, corrupt, and anachronistic. This external dimension can also be determined as establishing a position of superiority (“Superiority Theory” of humor introduced earlier, Damir-­Geilsdorf and Milich 2020). At the same time, by using humor the Hirak contributed significantly to constructing and sustaining the specific movement culture prefiguring a new culture of societal  In the context of the Arab uprisings, concepts to describe political humor have been introduced. Marwan Kraidy’s idea of “creative insurgency” for instance, alludes to the combination of ­activism and art (Kraidy  2016). Another example is Lisa Wedeen’s monograph Authoritarian Apprehensions: Ideology, Judgement, and Mourning in Syria in which she illustrates how Syrian television series produced by state TV were used to reproduce legitimacy toward the regime by employing satire as a technique of critiquing both the regime and society at once (Wedeen, 2019).

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interaction, solidarity, fun, and hence a collective identity. Humor here very much ­functions internally and can be understood in the framework of “Relief Theory” ­(Damir-­Geilsdorf and Milich 2020).

Conclusion The protest movement Hirak was a significant challenge to the regime in the first months. As I have argued in this chapter, the dissemination of content from (social) media in the public sphere has played a crucial role in terms of sustenance and visibility, not least due to the brevity and appeal of humoristic interventions. First, it has been shown that while it is not possible to reduce the Hirak to the moment of humor, humor played an important function in creating agency for the movement by framing the demands in an appealing and resonating way sustained by a limited but still more diverse media environment. Second, by contributing to a culture of commonality, humoristic icons and their creators were able to merge heterogenous groups into a single movement under a meta-­frame challenging the regime narrative. Third, by infusing a dimension of fun and relief into a challenging wave of mobilization over an extended period. Together, both an external and internal dimension of humor can be observed. The effects of these interventions can be seen first in the legitimation of the formal political process. Whereas turnout in the parliamentary elections in 2017 was 35.7%, in June 2021– which the Hirak had boycotted – it reached only 30.2% (El-­Watan 2021; France24 2021). Second, the curbing of freedom of expression, particularly in relation to social media and its legal framework and the persecution of cartoonists, underscore the impact that humor has: Journalists and activists who have been participating in the Hirak, such as Nime and Walid Kechida, were temporarily arrested. There were also comedy series that were recently suspended as it was assumed they mocked President Tebboune (Cheurfa 2020). It must be highlighted, though, that many Algerians still fear systemic change due to the trauma of the civil war and do not participate in the Hirak (Boubekeur 2020, 16–18; Zeraoulia 2020). In a final assessment of the Hirak and the efficacy of its media instruments, humor included, two experts on Algeria, George Joffé and Hugh Roberts, conclude that despite the first weeks’ success in framing the political narrative of the country, ultimately it was the military’s narrative that prevailed (interview with Georg Joffé 2020b; Roberts 2019). Algeria is still passing through a process of transition, despite Bouteflika having resigned and the election of a new president, Abdelmajid Tebboune. The condition of humiliation sensed in many parts of Algerian society does continue. Therefore, the Hirak regards the constitutional change as another step by the regime to revive its legitimacy by cosmetic adjustments and tended to vote no in the referendum in 2020. Hence, the public discussion on a new social contract acceptable to the protest movements continues, and a new wave with new manifestations of humor – as seen before in the protest waves– will certainly revive.

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Ghanem, Nadia. 2010. “The Frame, the Sausage, the Oil: Humor and Politics in Algeria’s Protests.” (March 10). Arablit.org. https://arablit.org/2019/03/10/the-­frame-­the-­sausage­the-­oil-­humor-­and-­politics-­in-­algerias-­protests/ Goldfarb, Jeffrey C. The Politics of Small Things: The Power of the Powerless in the Dark Times. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Hadj-­ Moussa, Ratiba. 2019. “Youth and Activism in Algeria. The Question of Political Generations.” The Journal of North African Studies. DOI: 10.1080/13629387.2019.1665289 Joffé, George. 2020a. “Shame-­faced No Longer?” The Journal of North African Studies. DOI: 10.1080/13629387.2020.1709329 Joffé, George. 2020b. Professor Emeritus at the Centre for the Study of the International Relations of the Middle East and North Africa at the University of Cambridge and King’s College London. Telephone Interview (May 19, 2020). Lesmana, Maman. 2021. “A Critical Reading of Arabic Internet Memes Against Patriarchal Systems.” Journal of International Women’s Studies 22, no. 5: 333–346. Mbembe, Achille. 1996. “La ‘chose’ et ses doubles dans la caricature camerounaise.” Cahiers D’Études Africaines 36, no. 141/142: 143–170. Kharfi, Sara. 2019. “Bachir Dahak, auteur du recueil Les Algériens, le rire et la politique: Les blagues, une invention du peuple qui se les raconte.” Reporters: Quotidien National d’Information. ( January 31). https://www.reporters.dz/bachir-­dahak-­auteur-­du-­recueil-­les-­algeriens-­le­rire-­et-­la-­politique-­les-­blagues-­une-­invention-­du-­peuple-­qui-­se-­les-­raconte/ Khelladi, Aïssa. 1995. “Rire quand même: l’humour politique dans l’Algérie d’aujourd’hui.” Revue  du monde musulman et de la Méditerranée 77–78. L’humour en Orient: 225–237. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3406/remmm.1995.1723; https://www.persee.fr/doc/remmm_0997­1327_1995_num_77_1_1723 Kraidy, Marwan M. 2016. The Naked Blogger of Cairo: Creative Insurgency in the Arab World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kutz-­Flamenbaum, Rachel V. 2014. “Humor and Social Movements,” Sociology Compass 8, no. 3: 294–304. Mena Rights Group. 2020. “Algeria: Penal Codes Amendments Restrict Freedom of Expression and Association.” ( July 2). https://menarights.org/en/articles/algeria-­penal-­code-­amendments­restrict-­freedoms-­expression-­and-­association Middle East Eye. 2020. “Algeria Arrests Meme Creator for Criticizing President.” (April 29). https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/algerian-­a uthorities-­a rrest-­m eme-­c reator­criticising-­president Middle East Eye. 2020. “Algérie: l’humour politique, arme d’un hirak pacifique et joyeux.” (February 18). https://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/en-­bref/algerie-­lhumour-­politique-­arme­dun-­hirak-­pacifique-­et-­joyeux Middle East Monitor. 2020. “Algeria: El Manchar Shuts Down.” (May 16). https://www. middleeastmonitor.com/20200516-­algeria-­el-­manchar-­shuts-­down/ @Nime_BD. 2019. “Dans ma Bulle.” (November 4). https://twitter.com/Nime_BD/status/ 1191339435574661120 Ouaissa, Rachid. 2010. La classe-­état algérienne 1962–2000: Une histoire du pouvoir Algerien entre sous-­ developpement, rente pétrolire et terrorism [The Algerian State Class 1962–2000: A History of the Algerian Power Between Under-­Development, Oil Rent and Terrorism]. Paris: Publisud. Perego, Elizabeth. 2018.“Laughing at the Victims: the Function of Popular Jokes During Algeria’s ‘Dark Decade,’ 1991–2002.” The Journal of North African Studies 23, no. 1-­2: 191–207. DOI: 10.1080/13629387.2018.1400773

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Rachidi, Ilhem. 2021. “Helpless Hirak: Democratic Disappointments in Algeria.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (10 June). https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/84739 Roberts, Hugh. 2019. “Algeria: The Hirak and the Ides of December.” Jadaliyya (November 19). https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/40266/Algeria-­The-­Hirak-­and-­the-­Ides-­of-­December. Scott, James C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Willis, Mark. 2012. Politics and Power in the Maghreb. London: Hurst. Wedeen, Lisa. 2019. Authoritarian Apprehensions: Ideology, Judgment, and Mourning in Syria. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Zeraoulia, Faouzia. 2020. “The Memory of the Civil War in Algeria: Lessons from the Past with Reference to the Algerian Hirak.” Contemporary Review of the Middle East 7, no. 1: 25–53.

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Creating Emotional Echo-­Chambers Activism and Self-­Expression on Social Media Hande Eslen-­Ziya Introduction There is an emotional component to how people come together and take part in social movements, and decide to stay or to leave. As Jasper argues (1997, 127) it is through emotions, ideas, and ideologies that identities are shaped and transferred into collective claims. This is what Papacharissi (2016, 311) calls the affective public, where people are “mobilized and connected, identified, and potentially disconnected through expressions of sentiment.” Emotions serve as a driving force in the mobilization of social movements both online and offline (see Chapters 7, 8, 9). This chapter explores the significance of emotions during online mobilization through the study of echo-­chambers of emotions (Eslen-­Ziya et al. 2019). The emotional echo-­chamber theory resonates from “the concept of echo-­chambers existing within the social media where one is exposed only to opinions that agree with their own” (Eslen-­Ziya et al. 2019, 1). Focusing on the relationship between emotions and  social protests, this theory explicates how participants’ beliefs, motivations, and opinions bring forth changes in emotions. Once intense affective ties are formed within the social movement in action, emotions enable solidarity and even collective identity across different boundaries. The expressive public ritual during a protest helps create an emotional echo-­chamber, where shared emotions are expressed back and forth among the protestors that have different backgrounds and identities. Hence, while emotions exist in  every stage of political protest, they transform as the protest evolves and continues.

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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This chapter examines social media–facilitated activism during the Istanbul mayoral elections in 2019. On March 31, the opposition party candidate from Republican People’s Party (CHP) – Ekrem Imamoğlu – won the mayoral contest, effectively bringing an end to the AKP’s ( Justice and Development Party) two-­decade long control of Istanbul municipality. Riled by losing Turkey’s largest city to the opposition, the AKP claimed voter fraud and strong-­armed the Turkish Supreme Court to cancel and repeat the ­election. This decision created a political environment where many voters felt betrayed and upset at first, but later coalesced around a movement expressing hope and self-­confidence. This chapter analyzes Twitter posts shared under the #herseycokguzelolacak (trans. #everythingwillbefine) hashtag between June 19 and 23, 2019, a few days before the repeat elections. My goal here is to unpack the emotional expressions of activists in this hashtag campaign and explore if and how emotions are transformed into action. I study the emotions expressed on Twitter and unearth the self-­expressive tools that activists use. By employing social constructionist approaches to emotions, I discuss how protestors build solidarity across different groups and whether they create a ­collective identity. I discuss the role of anger, love, and belonging in forming intense affective ties among activists toward achieving a particular cause. I also discuss how participants are influenced by beliefs and opinions about change and bring forth the transformations of emotions during such processes and help create an emotional echo-­chamber. Here, I  adopt Massumi’s (2002) line when talking about emotions in protest (and not affect). Because the tweets analyzed in this study are individualized and expressed in a rational and conscious way, I argue that they include a certain amount of reflection on the part of the users (see Chapters 4, 26, 40). Having said that, I am fully aware that it is challenging to separate between emotion and affect, as they are tightly interwoven. In the following pages I link the activism that emerged during the 2019 repeat election to the “Gezi Spirit” born out of the 2013 Gezi Park protests. Gezi Park protests initially started as a reaction to the AKP’s government’s plans to build an Ottoman-­style military barracks and a shopping mall in central Istanbul. It was also a reaction to the AKP and its restrictive policies concerning personal freedoms, a general discontent with state politics, police violence, and the attitudes of then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (Konda  2014, 18–19). Gezi protests brought together an estimated three and a half million protestors in over more than 5,000 demonstrations across Turkey. The protestors crafted what scholars referred as the “Gezi Spirit,” which involved listening to and respecting different views, and working in solidarity ( Jenzen et al. 2020; McGarry et al. 2019). This chapter is based on the argument that this spirit continues to this day, and attempts to study the latest civic initiative – the social media activism during the Istanbul repeat elections. I argue that six years after the Gezi Park protests, social media activism around the Istanbul repeat elections not only helped focus the conversation on injustices, but also made the invisible issues visible, bringing a change in the language of politics. I demonstrate that Twitter in particular allows for forming intense affective ties among activists toward a certain cause, helps them perform expressive public rituals (such as, the use of a common hashtag), and helps create an emotional echo-­chamber.

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Role of Social Media in Turkey Do you understand why we are against social media like YouTube, Twitter, Netflix? To eliminate these immoralities. For this reason, we want to bring them to our parliament and be completely removed and controlled.1 —­President Erdoğan, 2020 In Turkey financial and political control of media outlets provides a rich example of how the ruling elites exert rule over the flow of information. Such control in return allows them to regulate content in favor of the government, through what Korkut and Eslen-­Ziya (2016, 1) refer to as discursive governance; where “the norms embedded in political discourse and circulated for public deliberation generate the discursive ­governance of population politics, politicians advance governance even without introducing major policy changes.” Hence, media serves as the platform where the ideologies are disseminated as well as legitimated (Burul and Eslen-­Ziya 2018), and most opposition is blocked. Once the mainstream media fails to provide nonpartisan news, social media is used as an alternative source of information ( Jenzen et al. 2020). For instance, with the Turkish authorities’ efforts to control the content of mainstream media, the opponents of the government turned to Twitter, blogs, and YouTube as sources for news and information. This became especially evident since the Gezi Park protests in 2013  where the AKP government sought loyalty from the mainstream media (Burul and Eslen-­Ziya 2018, 183) leading to an ever-­increasing polarization between the AKP supporters and the others. Such polarization also serves their right-­wing populist governance where anti-­pluralist discourses embodied in conservative and nationalist ideologies are crucial for their electoral success (Öniş and Kutlay  2020). For instance, President Erdoğan has used the Sunni-­Muslim nationalism as a means to divide opposition and continue being the ruling after the first decade of 2000s (Esmer 2019, 124). Such “exclusionary identity politics based on polarization of society along national, ethnic and religious lines” according to Öniş and Kutlay (2020, 7), aids the “foundation of the illiberal-­authoritarian right-­wing populist nomenclature” of the AKP governance. As the polarization deepens and the “us vs. them” distinction between the AKP supporters and so-­called others (feminists, LGBTQI groups, non-­Muslims, Kurds, non-­Sunnis, etc.) is made stronger, right-­wing populism thrives on politics and the fear of “the other.” The sense of insecurity and the notion of foreign enemies protects the status of constant fragility. Gezi Park protests were a very good example of what happens when the so-­called categorical other is left outside the coalition: they take action and protest. The Gezi Park protests were informed not only by environmental but also political concerns. During the protests, the demonstrators were confronted with police brutality, tear gas, rubber bullets, and water cannons (Eslen-­Ziya and Erhart  2015; Atak  2013),   https://www.duvarenglish.com/politics/2020/07/01/erdogan-­seeks-­to-­shut-­control-­social-­ media-­platforms-­in-­turkey (accessed on July 1, 2020). 1

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leaving 11 dead and close to 8,000 wounded. Even when the demonstrations ended, the protestors left the park with the “Gezi Spirit.” According to Eslen-­Ziya et al. (2019) the Gezi Spirit was composed of emotions, such as anger and frustration channeled toward  the government and/or the police brutality as well as solidarity and hope. According to the protestors, “they belonged to a cause, to a group” by taking part in the ­demonstrations (Eslen-­Ziya et al. 2019, 4). The beliefs, motivations, and opinions impacting the formation of the Gezi Spirit and the collective identity help create an emotional echo-­chamber. Eslen-­Ziya et al. (2019, 2) discuss how protestors build solidarity as well as collective identity, and how the intense emotional ties they form, and their expressive rituals, enable the creation of emotional echo-­chambers. These emotional echo-­chambers, in return, allow for ideologically different groups to come together and remain united during the protests. Here the use of social media becomes a powerful facilitator not only to inform the protestors of the events taking place in the park, but also to serve as a tool that transforms emotions from inside to outside the park. Social media then becomes a platform where texts, videos, and images activate emotions and implore supporters of a given cause to come together. Once the emotions are triggered, they are shared among the protestors and then they change. According to the emotional echo-­chamber theory, emotions like anger and frustration lead to hope and solidarity and eventually to protest action. In other words, by transforming the collective emotion of anger into a collective emotion of solidarity and hope, protest behavior is maintained. In the case of the Gezi Protests, once the protests were over, this Gezi Spirit – loaded with its emotions of solidarity and belonging as well as anger toward the AKP government – continued to exist outside the Gezi Park, in neighborhood forums or people’s assemblies. Protestors “debated on current policies and tried to come up with strategies for systematic political change” (Eslen-­Ziya and Erhart 2015, 476). Hence, the emotional echo-­chamber continued to exist outside the park. In the following sections my goal is to link the emotional-­echo chamber created during the Gezi Park protests to the emotions triggered during the social media activism at the second round of the Istanbul local elections.

Method This research is based on the analyses of tweets collected between June 19 and 23, 2019 containing the hashtag #herseycokguzelolacak (#everythingwillbefine in English) via Twitter’s API with Webometric Analyst. The data was compiled into large spreadsheets that were later converted into comma-­separated value (csv) format. Once the data was reformatted, the spreadsheets were broken down into smaller, more accessible files. Data retrieval operations were performed on these files using Bash, PHP, and Python programming languages. Duplicate tweets were eliminated, leaving 66,811 tweets which were subsequently coded through the rhetoric they expressed (Martin 2013). Tweets on social media are “artifacts of engagement” where individuals identify with the “expressions of a movement’s goals” (Clark 2016, 235). Therefore, tweets act as a

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Table 29.1  The categories emerging from the captured tweets. Imamoğlu as a leader

Narrator just like Imamoğlu

Ideologies

Emotions

• Trustworthy • Honest • Emotional • One of us

• Just • Youthful • Energetic • Trustworthy

• Women’s rights • Democratic • Republican • Future oriented

• Anger • Hope • Solidarity • Joy

political expression where activists’ voices and visions are shared. Twitter serves as a space of protest, where tweets are composed for engaging others and organizing social movements. Because Twitter is a social platform that allows for networked protests (Tufekci  2017) and social mobilization by digitally connecting people and activating them toward a common goal, it is important to study what is expressed. By studying these expressions, I gather the dominant discourses of opposition activists on Twitter. The dialogues as well as emotions expressed under the #everythingwillbefine hashtag, will help highlight the expressive public rituals performed by different individuals. As Korkut et al. (2016) argue, discourses both form representations and actively construct reality by ascribing meanings to our world, identities, and social relations. In this case, the expressions and narratives all represent utterances of political desire, or ­statements that the user desires to reach an audience. In these tweets, I trace the users’ emotions as well as their construction of the future of politics. Once the coding was done, the tweets were translated from Turkish to English and the personal identifiers were removed to protect the anonymity of the users. When the tweets were studied by using thematic analysis a total of four main categories materialized (see Table 29.1). Each category was composed of sub-­themes. For instance, the tweets that were first coded as hope, joy and/or anger, were later brought together under the category of emotions. These categories formed the basis for the organization of the following section. These themes that emerged from the analysis in return allowed me to connect to the emotional echo-­chamber theory, where protestors build solidarity as well as a collective identity, and ask how the intense affective ties they form and their expressive rituals enable the creation of emotional echo-­chambers.

Gezi Spirit Is Alive! #everythingwillbefine, it has to be. 19 June 2019 On March 31, 2019, Turkey’s ruling party AKP lost the municipal election to opposition parties in several major cities. Istanbul was one of them. For the AKP, Istanbul had a crucial significance, both for its economic and political importance but also sentimentally for Erdoğan. Istanbul was where Erdoğan’s political career started when he became a mayor in 1994 (Esen and Gumuscu 2019). When the AKP lost the office to the opposition candidate Ekrem Imamoğlu, they first asked for a recount of votes. But when the recounts failed to secure a victory for the ruling party, they cited electoral fraud and irregularities in

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an effort to remove Imamoğlu from the office (Wuthrich and Ingleby 2020), leading to a rerun election on June 23, 2019. Before the rerun, a lively battle took place not only between Imamoğlu and his main rival, former Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım, but also between their supporters. This section will bring forth the social media activism of Imamoğlu supporters via Twitter. Here I will show how Twitter is used as “the public square, a digital replica of the democratic public square that Taksim Square could not be” (Jenzen et al. 2020, 19). In this section, by analyzing the tweets I document how expressions of activism on Twitter resonate with those during the Gezi Park protests. First, I  demonstrate that the tweets created a leader with certain characteristics and virtues, something that previous oppositional leaders and their forerunners did not possess. Second, I highlight that the virtues that this new leader, Imamoğlu, represented were later internalized by Twitter users, turning them into just and understanding citizens. I show that the use of love and justice analogies by the CHP campaign also supported such a concept. Then, I discuss the third main category emerging during the analysis of the tweets: the emotions of hope and solidarity as well as anger toward the AKP g­ overnment. I study these emotions by comparing them to the ones emerged during the Gezi Protests.

From Leaderless Leadership to the Creation of an Alternative Post-­Heroic Leader The first category of tweets is about Imamoğlu, constructing him as the calm and respectful leader. Although most of the social movements facilitated by social media lacked a single leader, here Imamoğlu was presented as a leader who will overcome the long-­standing political polarization. Thus, it was different from the Arab Spring, or the Gezi Park protests where, according to Eslen-­Ziya and Erhart (2015, 483), these protests “featured a horizontal, and leaderless configuration . . . coupled with the use of new media technologies (Facebook/Twitter/blogs) and alternative forms of organising,” along with democratic, collaborative, all-­inclusive, and transformational characteristics. Construction of such an alternative form of leadership was also evident in the tweets, though this time they did not point to a leaderless leadership but to Imamoğlu. In other words, seven years after the Gezi Park protests, the Gezi spirit guided by the emotions – which I will describe further in this chapter – endorsed the emergence of a powerful leader. He embraced the differences, while at the same time acknowledging the ­polarization that AKP government had been fueling: They will want confrontation from us, they will want to hear harsh words from us. But we, the people who do not want this nation to fight, who want this nation to embrace, we will unrelentingly embrace each other. (Haberturk 2019)

This attitude was also evident in the following tweet Imamoglu sent just a few days before the elections: We will surprise the ones who expect a fight, unrest, and actions (from us) supporting their aims through other actors in the name of the country. #everythingwillbefine 19 June 2019

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Over the past 10 years, Turkey has been going through a major transformation – what the AKP government refers as the New Turkey (Eslen-­Ziya and Kazanoglu 2020). Under the New Turkey, by adopting authoritarianism, and populist discourses of nationalism and conservatism as many scholars have suggested, society is polarized into two extremes: conservative vs. secular elites – those who support President Erdogan and those who do not.2 Despite this polarized atmosphere, after the elections Imamoğlu returned to his campaign with a message to combat such polarization. Imamoğlu introduced a new party strategy entitled “The Book of Radical Love” – Radikal Sevgi Kitabi – where, according to Wuthrich and Ingleby (2020, 25), he brought “a message of inclusiveness, an attitude of respect toward AKP supporters, and a focus on bread-­and-­butter issues that could unite voters across opposing political camps.” The booklet offered a list of suggestions to help CHP activists to communicate in a patient and inclusive way. The activists were advised to talk less and listen more, and to support and love AKP supporters unconditionally. A similar trend was also observed in the tweets sent out by the supporters of Imamoğlu under the #everythingwillbefine hashtag. Such campaign and Twitter activism, along with the electorate’s simmering discontent with the AKP in general and with widespread corruption in Istanbul brought electoral success to Imamoğlu, who was again elected as the mayor of Istanbul. Similar to Yılmaz and Karakaş’s (2019) findings on the analyses of social media accounts of the party leaders during the elections, an emphasis on responsibility, social justice, honesty, social power, success and equality was found. For this Imamoğlu was depicted as a role model, someone everyone loves and respects, and as an emotional, honest, and good person: You are a very beautiful human being. You, beautiful man with a child’s feelings. #everythingwillbefine 19 June 2019 Ekrem Imamoğlu I love you so much, you are a perfect human being. @ekrem_Imamoğlu #everythingwillbefine. 19 June 2019

He portrayed the virtues of a trustworthy leader, who did not infringe others’ rights, he was hopeful and determined: Why.  .  . because he is a human being, because he is honest, because he is not a thief because he is not a rapist #everythingwillbefine. 19 June 2019

These characteristics attributed to Imamoğlu and his leadership by his followers were qualities also used to define themselves, in this case the people who were the  front-­runners of this social movement, the tweet narrators. Hence, they not only  attributed positive characteristics to their leader  – Imamoğlu  – but also to themselves.   https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/03/turkey-­erdogan-­kurds-­pkk-­isis-­ syria-­coup-­gulen/521487/ (accessed on: July 1, 2020).

2

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Tweet Narrators Tweet narrators were the activists who followed the virtues of Imamoğlu. I call them narrators because as they were sending out Tweets, they were unfolding the political context around them along with their emotions. These tweet narrators defined ­themselves as crusaders fighting for justice. I won’t infringe on other’s rights! But also, I won’t let my rights be infringed. We will never give up the justice struggle for everyone living in this city #everythingwillbefine. 23 June 2019

Being young was another attribute by which they defined both themselves and Imamoğlu: Our way is long, excitement is high, we have our youth!! We are Turkish youth thirsty for justice, with complete faith in democracy. #everythingwillbefine. 19 June 2019

They believed in the power of the elections to bring forth democracy, freedom, and  brotherhood. They also associated this election with the Republican values and secularism: On Sunday we will call democracy, freedom, fraternity, republic, secularism! You will crack and burst. #everythingwillbefine. 19 June 2019

The emphasis on the Republican values were a reaction to the heavily centralized presidential system that came into effect with the June 2018 elections, and Erdoğan’s election as the first president. According to many, this change in the government system is a threat to the foundation of the Republic. According to Kirişçi and Toygür (2019), the new system, by entrenching Erdoğan’s “one-­man authoritarian rule, had profound implications for the making and substance of Turkish foreign policy as well as Turkey’s relations with the West” and will further regress democracy. The tweets supporting the values of the Republic included women’s rights and democracy, and they were written with an emphasis on patriotism. This is a struggle for democracy, a struggle for democracy against those who infringe our rights. #everythingwillbefine. 19 June 2019

Hence, while the characteristics of the tweet narrator were similar to those of Imamoğlu, the virtues belonged to the Turkish Republic, and this election was a way to reconfirm just that.

Anger, Hope, Joy, and Solidarity Like the emotions associated with Gezi Park protests, joy, solidarity, and hope along with anger were identified as the most common sentiments used in these analyzed

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tweets. According to Jasper (1997) the unexpected happenings that cause “moral shocks” lead to anger, which in return motivates people to participate in social movements. In this case, the cancellation of the elections and the false accusations of the AKP served as one of the main facilitators. The feeling of anger toward the AKP governance and its polarization was repeated in the tweets: You polarised the society with lies, wrong statements, made them enemies, we see that! #everythingwillbefine. 19 June 2019

But this time they said they had a solution, namely Imamoğlu: On Sunday we will vote either for a screaming, insulting, always and every time patriarchal politics or for a loving, respecting mentality that regards equality, fair distribution of public resources and participation of the public in the decisions. That is why Imamoğlu will win and #everythingwillbefine. 19 June 2019

As this tweet stated, this was a time when the patriarchal governance of AKP and its  polarization was coming to an end with love, respect, and equality  – the virtues ­attributed to Imamoğlu as well as the narrators of these tweets, the discriminated other. Such a vision in return brought upon resistance, and a way of confrontation. This was done via tweets such as: Enough! #everythingwillbefine. The protestors said “enough” because they were concerned about both their and their children’s future. They said they owed this to their children and to their future, and Imamoğlu was the one to make it possible: We owe the children. . . #everythingwillbefine you will close a period and write the most beautiful history. 20 June 2019

Once the ruling party was confronted with love and respect and equality, this vision in return brought out such positive emotions as hope. #If there is Imamoğlu there is hope. 19 June 2019

Similarly, Imamoğlu tweeted that no one should lose hope but keep on smiling: Never lose your smiles. Never lose your hope in your hearts. Be together with me. I love you. And you will see, everything will be fine. #everythingwillbefine 22 June 2019

The feeling of hope and recognizing that there is a leader – Imamoğlu – who feels, reacts, and talks like them, marked the transformation of emotions: from anger to hope and later to solidarity. Being together with others and being represented by someone who has similar values made these Twitter activists once more united under the Gezi Spirit that was created long before. This in return fostered additional positive emotions including feelings of joy and hope for the future: We are going to see better days, sunny days. . . #everything will be fine! #becauseImamoğlu 21 June 2019.

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Hope transformed with Imamoğlu’s presence, leadership became the major guiding force of this activism, and it was reflected in the hashtag #everything will be fine. Similar to emotions triggered during the Gezi Park protests, here too, opinions were blended with facts and emotions (Papacharissi and de Fatima Oliveira 2011, 24). Expressing these emotions on social media not only brought protestors together but also allowed them to perform their activism, turning “affective statements into political” ones (Papacharissi and de Fatima Oliveira 2011, 24).

Conclusion This chapter was an attempt not only to tackle the emotional component regarding how citizens come together and take part in social movements, but also to show how these emotions enable continuation of such protests in different forms or platforms. By looking at Twitter data, I explored the significance of the echo-­chamber of emotions (Eslen-­Ziya et al. 2019) involved in social media protests. The decision of the Turkish Supreme Court to cancel Istanbul local elections and rerun the vote that was held on March 31, 2019, where the opposition party candidate – Ekrem Imamoğlu – won the mayoral position, resulted in major criticism and reaction from the opposition. It created a political environment where many voters felt betrayed and upset at first, but later turned into a movement where hope and self-­confidence were expressed. The analyses were composed of  tweets shared under the #herseycokguzelolacak (#everythingwillbefine) hashtag between the period June 19–23, 2019, a few days before the Istanbul local rerun elections. The emotional trajectories of activists during this period as well as their involvement were unpacked to answer: How are emotions transformed into action? The data revealed that by following a certain moral order – in this case being honest and protecting others’ rights and loving unconditionally – helped promote change by strengthening the public sphere and building trust. Building on the emotional echo-­chambers, Twitter activism on behalf of Imamoglu achieved unity and enabled a shift from polarization to a uniting effect from social media in the public sphere. In other words, the social media activism during the Istanbul rerun elections was a continuation of the Gezi Park protests, where social media was used as a self-­expressive tool by the activists (see Chapters 26, 29, 36).

Acknowledgments Special thanks to Simon Lindgren and his lab DIGSUM at Umeå University for capturing the data used in this chapter. My sincere gratitude goes to the editors whose suggestions were exceptionally useful for the revisions. References Atak, K 2013. “From Malls to Barricades: Reflections on the Social Origins of Gezi.” Paper ­presented at the symposium titled “Rebellion and Protest from Maribor to Taksim Social Movements in the Balkans.” Graz, Austria. December 12–14, 2013.

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Burul, Y., and Eslen-­Ziya, H. 2018. “Understanding ‘New Turkey’ Through Women’s Eyes: Gender Politics in Turkish Daytime Talk Shows.” Middle East Critique 27, no. 2: 179–192. Esen, B., and Gumuscu, S. 2019. “Killing Competitive Authoritarianism Softly: The 2019 Local Elections in Turkey.” South European Society and Politics 24, no. 3: 317–342. Eslen-­Ziya, H., and Erhart, I. 2015. “Toward Post-­heroic Leadership: A Case Study of Gezi’s Collaborating Multiple Leaders.” Leadership 11, no. 4: 471–488. Eslen-­Ziya, H., McGarry, A., Jenzen, O., Erhart, I., & Korkut, U. 2019. “From Anger to Solidarity: The Emotional Echo-­chamber of Gezi Park Protests.” Emotion, Space and Society 33: 1–8. Eslen-­Ziya, H., and Kazanoğlu, N. 2020. “De-­democratization Under the New Turkey? Challenges for Women’s Organizations.” Mediterranean Politics 27, no. 1: 1–22. Esmer, Y. 2019. “Identity Politics: Extreme Polarization and the Loss of Capacity to Compromise in Turkey.” In U. van Beek (Ed.), Democracy Under Threat? (pp. 121–146). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Haberturk. 2019. “Son dakika. . . Ekrem İmamoğlu’ndan YSK kararı sonrası açıklama.” https:// www.haberturk.com/son-­dakika-­istanbul-­buyuksehir-­belediye-­baskani-­ekrem-­imamoglu-­ ndan-­tek-­kelimelik-­yorum-­2453800. (Accessed on May 24, 2021). Jasper, J. M. 1997. The Art of Moral Protest. Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Jenzen, O., Erhart, I., Eslen-­Ziya, H., Korkut, U., and McGarry, A. 2020. “The Symbol of Social Media in Contemporary Protest: Twitter and the Gezi Park Movement.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 27, no. 2: 1–24. Kirişçi, K., and Toygür, I. 2019. “Turkey’s New Presidential System and a Changing West: Implications for Turkish Foreign Policy and Turkey–West Relations.” Turkey Project Policy Paper 15. Konda. 2014. “Gezi Park Public Perception of the ‘Gezi Protests’: Who Were the People at Gezi  Park?” ( June 5). Retrieved from http://konda.com.tr/en/raporlar/KONDA_Gezi_ Report.pdf Korkut, U., Bucken-­Knapp, G., Cox, R. H., and Mahendran, K. 2016. Discursive Governance in Politics, Policy, and the Public Sphere. Palgrave Macmillan. Martin, J. 2013. Politics and Rhetoric: A Critical Introduction. Routledge. Massumi, B., 2002. “The Autonomy of Affect.” In Brian Massumi (Ed.), Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (pp. 23–45). Durham & London: Duke University Press. McGarry, A., Jenzen, O., Eslen-­Ziya, H., Erhart, I., and Korkut, U. 2019). “Beyond the Iconic Protest Images: The Performance of ‘Everyday Life’ on Social Media During Gezi Park.” Social Movement Studies 18, no. 3: 284–304. Öniş, Z., and Kutlay, M. 2020. “The Global Political Economy of Right-­ wing Populism: Deconstructing the Paradox.” The International Spectator 55, no. 2: 1–19. Papacharissi, Z., and de Fatima Oliveira, M. 2012. “Affective News and Networked Publics: The Rhythms of News Storytelling on #Egypt.” Journal of Communication 62, no. 2: 266–282. Papacharissi, Z. 2016. “Affective Publics and Structures of Storytelling: Sentiment, Events and Mediality.” Information, Communication & Society 19, no. 3: 307–324. DOI: 10.1080/ 1369118X.2015.1109697 Tufekci, Z. 2017. Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Wuthrich, F. M., and Ingleby, M. 2020. “The Pushback Against Populism: Running on ‘Radical Love’ in Turkey.” Journal of Democracy 31, no. 2: 24–40. Yilmaz, M., and Karakaş, O. 2019. “Siyasal değerler açısndan 23 haziran 2019 istanbul büyükşehir belediyesi seçiminin analizi.” Kocaeli Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, no. 37: 145–160.

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Mnemotechnics Digital Epistemologies and the Techno-­Politics of Archiving a Revolution Anthony Downey We were, then we were defeated, and meaning was defeated with us. But we have not ­perished yet, and meaning has not been killed. – Alaa Abd El-­Fattah1 In the lead-­up to and aftermath of the revolution in Egypt in 2011, cultural practitioners produced, archived, and disseminated information relating to political ­protests unfolding across the country. Often working from the front lines of conflict and unrest, they established alliances with lawyers, political activists, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), digital technologists, programmers, and humanitarian workers. These collaborations yielded expanded forms of multidisciplinary practice that encompassed fields as varied as data visualization, digital verification, social and networked media analysis, surveillance technologies, evidence gathering, and human rights legislation. Through these activities, frequently described as cultural activism, archives of images, text, and data were produced and stored on popular social networking websites (such as Facebook), microblogging and networking services (including but not limited to Twitter), and video-­sharing platforms (in particular, YouTube). As digitized responses to the events of 2011 developed, these archival processes formulated, crucially in retrospect, critical frames of reference for questioning the function and functioning of online social media platforms – specifically the lat-

 Alaa Abd el-­Fattah, “A Portrait of an Activist Outside His Prison,” in You Have Not Yet Been Defeated (Fitzcarraldo Editions: London, 2021), pp. 305–309 (309); emphasis in original. This article was written from Torah Prison in Cairo, and first published in Mada Masr on March 27, 2017.

1

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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364 Mnemotechnics ter’s proficiency, if not reliability – as viable repositories of memory and information.2 In the relative absence of more traditional forms of mainstream media (and in direct defiance of state-­sanctioned accounts), these activities were also de facto acts of witnessing that have since become indispensable to how we understand and interpret the events of the Egyptian revolution. Foregrounding the evidentiary potential of digital archives, the indiscriminate expurgation of online material, the relationship between social media networks, censorship, and state surveillance, and the algorithmic rationalizations of “news,” these practices effectively foreshadowed numerous debates that have since become ubiquitous in critiques of information and communication technologies (see Chapters 14, 26, 43).3 To add to these increasingly prevalent reservations, in 2011 the social media platforms used by cultural activists – that is, individuals and collectives who adopted and adapted creative practices to question the prevailing, invariably state-­sanctioned, interpretation of events  – to archive data were developed and underwritten, then as now, by the motivations of venture-­capital and privately owned companies. These corporations routinely operate from within opaque mandates that include the indiscriminate harvesting of data (regularly achieved through covert means), the extraction of metadata (to predict future user/consumer behavior), and the obdurate pursuit of market growth (often at the expense of user privacy).4 These activities are often in conflict with the emphasis placed on independent forms of witnessing and archiving undertaken by cultural and political activists alike. While these conflicts of interest and corporate intentions were evident in 2011, it has become all the more obvious that the unbound freedom to communicate, share, and “like” information – be it in the form of personal updates, informal messages, pronouncements, photographs, or snippets of video – came with a significant downside inasmuch as it provided, as we now know, the data for an unaccountable social media apparatus to mine, propagate, and thereafter substantiate itself globally. To these already significant qualms, we should likewise observe how these privately owned systems have, as a by-­product of an operative logic that is founded on data extraction, effectively normalized the dissemination of disinformation (or “fake news”); galvanized the deployment of online surveillance (both corporate and state-­sanctioned); contributed to ever-­increasing levels of social and political anxiety (the often polarized debates around the COVID-­19 pandemic would be one obvious recent example); undermined public trust in governments and elections (not to mention the judiciary

 For a discussion of contemporary cultural critiques of the function of the archive, see Anthony Downey, “Contingency, Dissonance and Performativity: Critical Archives and Knowledge Production in Contemporary Art,” in Dissonant Archives: Contemporary Visual Culture and Contested Narratives in the Middle East, edited by Anthony Downey (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015), pp.13–42. 3  For an overview of concerns relating to algorithms and news data, see Anthony Downey, “The Future of Protest in a Post-­Digital Age,” in The Protest and the Recuperation, edited by Betti-­Sue Hertz and Sreshta Rit Premnath (Eds.). (Columbia University, 2021), pp. 31–48. 4  See Bruce Schneier’s Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World (Norton, 2015). 2

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and legislative bodies more broadly); and institutionalized global forms of digital authoritarianism (in countries such as China, Saudi Arabia, and Russia). To the degree that information was harvested, scraped, stored, applied, and monetized by social media platforms in 2011, the viability of the online archives produced by cultural activists throughout that period and thereafter – specifically, the epistemological “value” of the information that was extruded, if not corrupted, through such systems – remains a source of considerable apprehension today. Although predisposed to removing material without prior warning or indeed explanation, social media and video-­sharing platforms are nonetheless routinely unresponsive to what are considered to be gross breaches of their terms and conditions. They are equally reluctant to address, in the name of market expansion, the consistent abuse of their platforms by political agents, so-­called “bad actors,” and autocratic governments.5 Such inaction undermines the long-­term sustainability of social media platforms as a provisional means to effectively archive material, be it evidentiary or otherwise. These misgivings are further compounded if we draw attention to how online archives, in the lead-­up to 2011 and beyond, were regularly documenting and verifying witness statements, social unrest, violence against protestors, widespread torture, human rights abuses, state-­ sanctioned methods of quashing protests, and government-­dictated narratives of the Egyptian revolution.6 Such processes, to take but one example, were core to the work of the collective Mosireen who, in 2011, released an edited video on YouTube of the notorious Maspero massacre. This video included footage from the event in question and its aftermath (shot by participants in the peaceful march that precipitated the massacre), interviews with various protestors, and a compiled list of all those who died, mostly Egyptian Copts, as a result of a state-­sanctioned massacre of over two dozen people and over 200 injuries.7 In 2014, Mosireen collectively began a process of considering what to do with the footage they had collated of the Egyptian revolution, which involved exploring how to future-­proof it in terms of archival access. The result of those deliberations was “858: An Archive of Resistance” which is housed on the

 See Jason Burke, “Facebook ‘Lacks Willpower’ to Tackle Misinformation in Africa,” The Guardian, April 18, 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/18/facebook-­ accused-­of-­lacking-­willpower-­to-­tackle-­misinformation-­in-­africa [Accessed April 20, 2022]; Sophie Bushwick, “Russia’s Information War Is Being Waged on Social Media Platforms,” Scientific American, March 8, 2022. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/russia-­is-­having-­ less-­success-­at-­spreading-­social-­media-­disinformation/ [Accessed March 10, 2022]. 6  In the context of Egypt, I would note here the work of Misr Digital (Egyptian Awareness), an online site administered by Wael Abbas. A member of Kefaya, established in 2004 and also known as Egypt’s National Association for Change, Abbas was a leading proponent, alongside the 6 April Youth Movement, in calls for protest in the country in 2010 and 2011. From 2005 until 2008, Misr Digital published torture documents, images and videos that were regularly received from anonymous sources. See, Linda Herrera, Revolution in the Age of Social Media: The Egyptian Popular Insurrection and the Internet (Verso: London, 2014), pp. 19–23. 7  See Omar Robert Hamilton, “Six Moments from a Revolution: A Mosireen Video Timeline,” Ibraaz, July 4, 2017. See: https://www.ibraaz.org/channel/169 [Accessed January 13, 2021] 5

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366 Mnemotechnics open-­source tool Pandora, the latter having been designed to support access to archives that are mostly composed of text-­annotated video material.8 Despite the fact that such digital records could be potentially used to prosecute human rights abuses or other injustices, the undoubted importance of such records and accounts is rendered moot when companies, acting unilaterally and often without warning, censor or expunge online material.9 Privately owned concerns such as Facebook, based on often subjective if not idiosyncratic interpretations of ever-­evolving terms and conditions, can also, more bluntly, block user access to their site’s pages and content. In the lead-­up to the Egyptian revolution – to take but a single, admittedly high-­profile, example  – the company suspended administrative access to the “We Are All Khaled Said (Kullena Khaled Said)” webpage, the latter site having been viewed by many as a key factor in bolstering support for the January 2011 protests.10 In light of these by no means exhaustive reservations about social media platforms and their impact on protests and conflict in general, we need to more fully understand how such events are recorded and disseminated in the first place and to what ends. We need to ask how we now understand  – against the backdrop of the multiple and multiplying concerns raised about social media platforms – the online archives that were produced both during and in the wake of the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Given that cultural activists produced knowledge from within the context of opaque apparatuses, whose procedures and methods both facilitate the dissemination of information, for the most part, and simultaneously undermine the stability (if not epistemological veracity) of online archives, how, in short, do we access and interpret digitized information associated with events in Egypt in 2011? To more fully explore this question, throughout this essay I will discuss Heba Y. Amin’s Project Speak2Tweet (2011–ongoing) and how it assumed – through the archiving of a selection of voices first recorded as part of the Speak2Tweet initiative launched on January 31, 2011 – responsibility for digitally preserving and representing

 See, https://858.ma. See also, Mosireen, “Revolution Triptych,” in Uncommon Grounds: New Media and Critical Practices in North Africa and the Middle East, ed. Anthony Downey (I.B. Tauris: London, 2014), pp. 47–52 (51). 9  See, “‘Video Unavailable’: Social Media Platforms Remove Evidence of War Crimes,” Human Rights Watch Report, September, 2020. Available here: https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/ files/media_2020/09/crisis_conflict0920_web_0.pdf [Accessed July 7, 2021]. See also, Avi Asher-­ Schapiro, “YouTube and Facebook Are Removing Evidence of Atrocities, Jeopardizing Cases Against War Criminals,” The Intercept, November 2, 2017. Available here: https://theintercept. com/2017/11/02/war-­crimes-­youtube-­facebook-­syria-­rohingya/ [Accessed April 20, 2020]. See also, Sarah El Deeb, “History of Syria’s War at Risk as YouTube Reins in Content,” AP News, September 13, 2017, https://apnews.com/d9f1c4f1bf20445ab06cbdff566a2b70 [Accessed April 21, 2021]. 10  Administered by Wael Ghonim, who was at the time employed as the head of marketing for Google Middle East and North Africa, and the Egyptian political activist Abdul Rahman Mansour, the “We Are All Khaled Said” Facebook page was widely credited with mobilizing significant elements of the protests that led to the downfall of Mubarak. It is notable that it regularly showed images and video clips of torture, some of which were sourced from Misr Digital. See, Wael Ghonim, Revolution 2.0 (Harper Collins, 2012), pp. 63–64. 8

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Figure 30.1  Project Speak2Tweet, 2011–ongoing. Source: Installation at The Mosaic Rooms, London, 2020/21. Photo: Andy Stagg.

revolutionary voices.11 Throughout the shutdown and thereafter, the original Speak2Tweet initiative, the creation of a collective of programmers, allowed Egyptians with access to landline communications – that is, the majority of citizens – to post links on its Twitter page. Thereafter, anyone could click on the link in the Twitter feed to access the sound file and hear the voice message in full.12 Incorporating a small selection of these voices into a multichannel video installation, Amin’s Project Speak2Tweet (figure 30.1) was initiated with the intention of sustaining the original archive and ensuring access to it in the future. In doing so, Project Speak2Tweet, a platform that is both intimately connected and yet independent of the Speak2Tweet initiative, is not solely an

 Born in Egypt, Heba Y. Amin is a is a multimedia artist based in Berlin. Throughout her work she focuses on politics, technology, and architecture. In the interests of transparency, I curated Amin’s first UK solo show (“When I See the Future, I Close My Eyes”) at the Mosaic Rooms in London in 2020. I am particularly grateful to Amin for numerous conversations related to her work in general, which took place from 2019 onwards, and for her subsequent fact-­checking of this essay. See also, Heba Y. Amin: The General’s Stork, ed. Anthony Downey (Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2020). 12  The original project emerged from a start-­up called SayNow, an online service co-­founded by Ujjwal Singh that enabled fans to share voice messages with their celebrity idols. Google bought the start-­up a week before it announced the launch of Speak2Tweet on their blog on January 31, 2011. See also, Heba Y. Amin “Voices From The Revolution: A Speak2tweet Project,” 2012. Available here: http://www.hebaamin.com/documents/Amin_VoicesfromtheRevolution.pdf [Accessed February 24, 2020]. See also: “Egypt’s 2011 Internet Shutdown: Digital Dissent and the Future of Public Memory: Heba Y. Amin, Anthony Downey, Abdelkarim Mardini, and Adel Iskandar in Conversation,” Camera Austria, 153, 43–54 (2021): https://camera-­austria.at/en/ zeitschrift/153-­2021/ [Accessed February 24, 2020], and Heba Y. Amin (2011): https://www. hebaamin.com/works/project-­speak2tweet/. For a broader discussion of the Speak2Tweet platform, see Anat Ben-­David, “Speak2Tweet,” in Encyclopedia of Social Media and Politics (vol. 1), ed. by Kerric Harvey. Sage, 2014, pp. 1195–1196 (1196). 11

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368 Mnemotechnics archive as such; it is, rather, a mnemotechnical device – a technology of recall in its own right – that questions how memory is digitized, archived, retrieved and, thereafter, subjected to a digital apparatus that ultimately determines (and undermines) how we come to garner historical knowledge through online platforms.13 In what follows, I will ask whether the digital methodologies that evolve out of such practices can question the substance of an online social media archive – in its compromised capacity as a “container” of meaning – while also productively extending its potential as an effective means to address past events in the present. This will involve recalling the events of January 2011  in more detail and observing the degree to which Amin’s intervention augured many of the issues outlined here, including the ascendancy of digital authoritarianism and the degree to which the Egyptian state now functions on the basis of widespread, prevalent, and insidious networks of online surveillance.

Many Unhappy Returns: The Egyptian Internet Shutdown and Digital Counter-­Practices To the extent that debates about the role of social media in the revolutionary events of 2011 continue to this day, having taken their cue from the unsubstantiated assumptions embedded in terms such as “Facebook Revolution” and “Twitter Revolution,” it is important to observe that throughout the first week of the revolution – that is, from January 25 until February 2, 2011 – Egyptians’ everyday access to the internet was essentially disrupted and for the most part nonexistent.14 Following instructions from the government of Hosni Mubarak, issued in response to nationwide protests, the Egyptian State Security Investigations Service (Amn El Dawla) shut down the internet through the deployment of a so-­called “kill switch.”15 Corresponding as it did with the momentous event of a full-­scale revolution that was rapidly spreading across the squares and streets of Egypt (and involving the de facto suspension of all access to online networks and, for a time, cell phone service in a country with over 80 million people), the magnitude

 Amin has noted how Project Speak2Tweet “explores the emergence of the imagined city from internal monologues and investigates historical narratives via glitches in digital memory.” See https://www.hebaamin.com/works/project-­speak2tweet/ [Accessed April, 18, 2020]. 14  For critical overviews of social media and protests across the Middle East from 2010 onwards, see Paolo Gerbaudo, Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism (Pluto Press, 2012); Philip N. Howard and Muzammil M. Hussein, Democracy’s Fourth Wave: Digital Media and the Arab Spring (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Linda Herera, Revolution in the Age of Social Media: The Egyptian Popular Insurrection and the Internet (Verso, 2014), and Zeynep Tufecki, Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest (Yale University Press, 2017). 15  Matt Richtel, “Egypt Cuts Off Most Internet and Cell Service,” New York Times, Jan 28, 2011, https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/29/technology/internet/29cutoff.html [Accessed June 21, 2020] 13

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of this shutdown was unprecedented.16 Although rapid in its execution, the process was somewhat uneven in its application: access to Twitter, for example, was blocked on January 25. On the same day, network coverage for Tahrir Square was suspended alongside mobile access for activists in the vicinity.17 The only exception to this shutdown rule was Noor, an ISP with a reported 8% share of the online communications market in Egypt. Reserved for government use and to continue access for privately owned businesses with connections to the regime, industrious protestors would later use it to transmit footage from Tahrir Square before it was terminated on January 31.18 Following this unrivaled countrywide shutdown, full access to internet services was not resumed until 12:30 p.m. local time on February 2, 2011, with SMS services returning at 12:35 p.m. on February 5, 2011. For over a week, access to the internet, SMS services, and, for the whole of January 28, mobile networks were essentially proscribed, leaving the entire country – which was in the midst of the most significant historical events to have taken place in a generation – cut off, nationally and internationally, from the digital sphere of information and communication technologies. The decision to shut down the internet and mobile network services – to dissuade dissent mutating from on-­to off-­line venues – would appear to produce, based on similar attempts to quash dissent in Tunisia the previous year, precisely the opposite effect. Popular protests against internet shutdowns and the suspension of online access tend, in the first instance, to encourage more support for already existing protest campaigns.19 For those already protesting, internet shutdowns seem to merely serve to steel their resolve and provoke ever more direct confrontation with the state apparatus. In Egypt, following the shutdown, digital activists and programmers immediately effected avenues of online communication that facilitated the spread of information and data transmission. In the aftermath of the January 25 disruption of services, citizens from across a broad sphere – including those from the field of cultural, legal, and human rights activism – physically mobilized in Tahrir Square to maintain a digital hub and transmit video and image-­based material. For the activist Wael Ghonim, the shutdown of the internet meant that every citizen who had not heard of the uprising “now realized that a major challenge to the regime must be underway. Huge numbers of people decided to take to  For a comprehensive report on the global impact of subsequent internet shutdowns on freedom of speech, journalism, and the rights of refugees and others, see Hernandez et al. (2021): https://www.accessnow.org/who-­is-­shutting-­down-­the-­internet-­in-­2021/ [Accessed November 30, 2021] 17  A complete timeline relating the various suspensions of service is adapted here from an informative and useful graphic compiled by Ramy Raoof. The original document was produced on June 8, 2011, and can be accessed here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Egypt_timeline_ of_communication_shutdown_during_jan25revolution.jpg [Accessed June 21, 2020]. 18  See Juillian C York, “Arab Spring,” in Encyclopedia of Social Media and Politics, op cit., pp.72–76 (73). 19  In October 2019, popular protests in Lebanon erupted when the government announced a tax on WhatsApp services. In Sudan, more recently, an internet shutdown following the coup by General Abdel Fattah al-­Burhan on October 25, 2021, provoked further protests and a number of court orders demanding the countrywide resumption of online access. 16

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370 Mnemotechnics the streets, some for no other reason than to just find out what was happening.”20 For some observers, however, the scope and sheer scale of the Egyptian internet shutdown heralded nothing short of an existential crisis, with Jim Cowie, the chief technology officer of Renesys (a company that tracks internet traffic), suggesting that in “a fundamental sense, it’s as if you rewrote the map and they [Egyptians] are no longer a country.”21 Putting to one side the hyperbole at work here (Egypt as an entity obviously did continue to exist, as did the Egyptian people), the termination of internet access, mobile phones, and all SMS services in the lead-­up to the “Day of Rage” on January 27, 2011, was profound in its impact. This exceptional shutdown also offers, in the context of the questions raised in my introductory comments, a singular template for understanding what, if any, communications continued to exist under such conditions and how information – in the form of digital images, videos, recordings, and other media – was successfully produced, archived, and disseminated despite the ongoing circumstances. From there, we can build a picture of how digital frames of reference and epistemological systems  – specifically, the methods, validity, and scope of the online information being produced – were evolving and how, from the vantage point of today, we endeavor to access and interpret such information in factual and evidentiary terms. Announced through Google’s official blog on January 31, that is, six days after the shutdown of the micro-­blogging site, the launch of Speak2Tweet ensured that callers to a designated landline number could automatically post a message to a Twitter account that could be then accessed by users of the latter platform to listen to the original voice recording.22 The #Speak2Tweet hashtag did not have a large following at the time and, in the days following its launch, the account posted voice-­tweets from Egypt at a rate of just over 100 a day.23 Although a small number of these recordings defended Mubarak, the overwhelming majority sought to make sense of the events unfolding and, in turn, articulate their support for the protestors who had taken to the streets across Egypt. Interestingly, as we will see, how the Speak2Tweet platform was used at the time and was thereafter largely forgotten is, in part, precisely what attracted Amin to the substance of this precarious archive. Supporting the posting of thousands of phone m ­ essages from Egyptian civilians, the resourcefulness of Speak2Tweet’s programmers not only facilitated the articulation of hopes, condemnations, and fears to the outside world, it captured a unique archive of a collective psyche at a pivotal juncture in Egyptian, if not world, history. Developed coextensively with Speak2Tweet, Amin’s Project Speak2Tweet is a multichannel video installation that continues to evolve. Substantial elements, in the form of the original voice recordings from the Speak2Tweet library, have since been adopted into Amin’s project, so much so that she has assumed a significant, if not vital, responsibility for its preservation. Through its display and other means, Amin’s project also  See Ghonim, op cit., p. 212.  Jim Cowie, quoted in Matt Richtel, op cit. [Accessed June 21, 2020]. 22  The announcement of the launch was posted by Abdelkarim Mardini, the Middle East and North African product manager for Google, and Ujjwal Singh, the cofounder of SayNow. For fuller details, see “Egypt’s 2011 Internet Shutdown” op cit. [Accessed February 24, 2020]. 23  Anat Ben-­David, op cit., p. 1195. 20 21

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draws attention to the original initiative, further engaging audiences with the on-theground realities of the Egyptian internet shutdown in 2011. In drawing our attention to this oral archive, and thereafter maintaining access to the diversity of dissenting voices, Amin also uses other discursive means, such as talks, lectures, workshops, and performances, to present aspects of the Speak2Tweet archive that have not become formal elements in Project Speak2Tweet overall. The fact that the calls to the original Speak2Tweet platform were made from a domestic rather than a public space introduces a notable distinction in the historical record of the Egyptian revolution that involved, for the most part, the live and recorded relay of digitized images from public spaces such as squares and streets but not, notably, interior or residential settings. The footage that has since become largely associated with the 18  momentous days of protest in Egypt, broadly speaking, tends to depict the spectacle of revolution that was transmitted through global media outlets at the time. Those same outlets had and continue to have editorial priorities largely disposed toward more easily consumable and image-­led narratives. Any coverage within Egypt, which was highly censored by state media, did not dwell on dissent during this period, be it voiced from a domestic setting or otherwise. As an audio initiative collating voices from landlines which, we can speculate, were usually located within homes but not entirely, the voices we hear in Project Speak2Tweet are therefore notable for their restraint and contemplative tone. Stripped of the spectacle we associate with, say, news images from Tahrir Square in 2011, Project Speak2Tweet captures an interiorized, highly personal if not domestic dimension to the Egyptian revolution. Including as they did calls for the overthrow of the government that echoed and reflected off-­line protests, the messages recorded in the original Speak2Tweet initiative encompass accusations of systemic corruption, details of rampant injustices, complaints about the absence of due legal process, the ongoing fact of endemic unemployment, precarious forms of labor, and how entrenched forms of inequality undermine the Egyptian state and diminish, if not immiserate, its citizens. These voices clearly and unequivocally articulate the foundational reasons for the revolution that was then taking place in the country. In one recording, a woman’s voice implores, “What would have happened, Mubarak, if you had invested in your children . . . in your youth . . . if you were compassionate with your men . . . if one day you had thought about your grave.”24 The tone of often passionate proclamations in these recordings range from singing and the recitation of poetry to forthright expressions of hopefulness and heartfelt concerns for the future. First recorded on February 8, 2011, a man’s voice communicates a series of conflicting emotions (figure 30.2), claiming as it does that the speaker’s “love for you Egypt, increases by the day . . .You know that I live and die for you . . ., so be happy and proud of your children and martyrs. . . . Be happy, because the next regime that will rule over you will be worthy of that responsibility.” Another voice, recorded on February 5, 2011, is of a man who, having been incarcerated in Natrun Prison in 1994, claims to have been “the youngest ideological prisoner” ever

 All transcripts are courtesy of the original Speak2Tweet archive and Heba Y. Amin’s Project Speak2Tweet.

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Figure 30.2  My Love for You, Egypt, Increases by the Day, 2011. Source: Voice recording: February 8, 2011. Video (b/w, sound), 6´18´´. Courtesy of Heba Y. Amin.

held in Egypt.25 Given the anonymity of most but not all of the voices (some callers to the platform gave their full names and locations), there is no way to fully verify his claims, but there is equally no reason to doubt them. The one-­time prisoner of Natrun goes on to dedicate his words to the “heroes of Tahrir Square” and movingly recites a poem he had chanted when imprisoned. Recounting how he was held in 10 different prison complexes and regularly saw others being tortured, he says his wounds are passing, his trauma healing, but, as he witnesses events in Tahrir Square, he feels his energy return and is moved to assert his allegiance to its motivations and goals (figures 30.2, 30.3): “I am the son of the Nile – listen to my reciting and hymns. . . . Crying from the ruins of our glory – with bitter tears deeply saddening me. . . . I wonder if the past will come back for my singing and music.” This plaintive question becomes a motif of sorts for Amin’s project: To what extent does the past of these voices, recorded in 2011, return to question if not usurp any prescriptive assumptions about the causes and aftermath of the revolution in Egypt? To this, a further question needs to be asked: Do we have a responsibility – in our roles as researchers, activists, cultural practitioners, observers – to therefore preserve these voices for future generations? Developed from within the context of creative interventions, and on the invariably problematic foundations of social media platforms, how can digital methodologies safeguard these voices for future generations? How can we, from the present-­day context of rampant online misinformation, understand such voices as a potential means to more fully appreciate the historical moment of revolution? The revenant-­like return of almost forgotten declarations and pronouncements, in the context of Project Speak2Tweet,  An Egyptian prison complex located in the Beheira Governorate, north of Cairo, the Wadi el-­ Natrun Prison was developed in 2021 to house over 25% of Egypt’s prison population in one place.

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Figure 30.3  I’m the Son of the Nile, 2013. Source: Voice recording: February 5, 2011. Video (b/w, sound), 2´43´´. Courtesy of Heba Y. Amin.

s­ ummons forth a series of anxieties about responsibility and responsiveness that is not so much concerned with the past per se as it is with the future viability of an online archive. In this context, and to return to my earlier point, as a platform that is independent of and yet intimately connected to the Speak2Tweet initiative, Amin’s Project Speak2Tweet is not just an archive; rather, it is a mnemotechnical device that critically questions how forms of digitized memory are consumed by time and rendered technologically obsolete in the name of progress.

Momentous Ruins and Spatialized Memories The term used earlier by the one-­time inmate of Natrun prison complex – namely “ruins of our glory”  – offers a counterpart of sorts to the visual components of Project Speak2Tweet. Across multiple monitors, which vary in number according to the installation, we can see the ruined facades of buildings long forgotten and abandoned. This onscreen footage, taken by the artist over a period of time in the lead-­up to 2011, reveals dilapidated edifices that seem to speak – in their modernist guise – of a past that once existed as a potential vision of the future. Shot in black-­and-­white Super-­8 analog film, there is a sense of stoic resolve to these remnants, as if they have physically endured their own misplaced hopes and unfulfilled promises. Juxtaposing these highly personal, reflective, and affective accounts of the growing protests – which gives further visual, if not emotive, resonance to the voices we encounter – with footage of abandoned structures, Project Speak2Tweet discloses a historical fact: rather than being abandoned as such, these buildings were never actually sustainable or, indeed, habitable. Stymied by the corruptions of a bureaucratic system based on nepotism and bribes, and often developed by corrupt agents as a means to launder money, they were destined to ruination from their inception. Revealing as they do an architecture that bespeaks of abandonment

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374 Mnemotechnics and ruination, these fragments of another time haunt the present moment of both 2011, when the recorded voices were first enunciated, and, as we will see, the present-­day moment of viewing the Project Speak2Tweet installation and, indeed, its future iterations in time and space. Implying as it does the root causes behind the revolution, the visual components of Project Speak2Tweet affords a frame of reference for reading voices that were first recorded in 2011, not least the profound impact of corruption and how it metastasized across an entire social and political landscape. It was base corruption, on behalf of interests aligned with the Egyptian state and the National Democratic Party (the ruling political party in Egypt from 1978 to 2011), in conjunction with widespread economic hardship, the absence of due legal process, and prevailing disillusion, that provoked and consolidated dissent in the lead-­up to 2011 revolution. It was precisely systemic corruption, economic stagnation, and scandalous levels of nepotism, set against historical concerns about freedom of the judiciary and petitions for suffrage, that had fueled both the off-­and online activities of the April 6 Youth Movement (Haraket Shabab 6 April) in 2008, which many consider the historical precursor to the events of 2011.26 The visualization of deep-­ rooted political corruption and social malaise, as opposed to, say, a factual and historical account of it, provides a means to more fully understand the historic anxieties impacting the psyche of the Egyptian people in the decade or so leading up to 2011. Surrounded by failure, personified in the constant reminder of the forsaken hope once (mistakenly) placed in these now derelict buildings, it seems that large parts of the population readily, if not understandably, had succumbed to despair. For Amin, writing in 2012, there was something shameful about the presence of these buildings and their continued blighting of the landscape, nowhere more so than when we consider, from the vantage point of the present, how they historically impacted upon the ecology of the social environment. “My fascination with these structures lies not necessarily in their particular history but in the reality they represent in the present time. The deterioration and, in some cases, the complete collapse of the urban environment attests to the failure of the political system.”27 Reflecting upon the aggregate impact of corruption and authoritarianism, in combination with the undermining of the social, political, and civil institutions that eroded human rights, justice and claims to equality, the visual evidence of decay becomes, in short, emblematic of a failed state and the death of hope. Recorded on January 31, 2011, in the aftermath of the “Day of Rage,” one of the recorded voices in Project Speak2Tweet laments how the Egyptian government has disconnected him from “all forms of communication,” including telephone, internet, and social media services. The voice summarily announces that he is going to Tahrir Square and “because I don’t know what could happen,” this is possibly his final farewell. We do not know what happened to this person: Did they go to Tahrir Square and, if so, were  One of the founders of the April 6 Youth Movement, the activist Asmaa Mahfouz, has been regularly cited as being fundamental in provoking support, through a video blog posted one week before the start of the 2011 protests, for the Egyptian revolution. See Mona El-­ Neggar (2011): https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/world/middleeast/02iht-­letter02.html [Accessed December 2, 2021] 27  Heba Y. Amin, “Voices from the Revolution,” op cit., p.7. [Accessed May 22, 2020] 26

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they arrested; were they injured, jailed, tortured, killed, or did they survive to recount the experience of revolution and its aftermath? Moreover, if they did endure, has their testimony been preserved? Although we know, through Amin’s footage, what happened to the ruined buildings we see on the monitors, we are nevertheless left listening to voices with a suspended sense of unease as to what happened to these almost, but not entirely, forsaken articulations of hopefulness and despair. Given how many voices across Egypt have been occluded, silenced, and marginalized since 2011, to raise this concern here is to inquire into what happened to these people post-­revolution. This is, of course, a conditional if not existential question: for the most part, we simply do not know.28 However, this is also a question concerning technology inasmuch as it implicates the digitization and online archiving of memory as an evolving, if not oscillating, process of contiguous recuperation and loss. We return here to the mnemotechnical functioning of Project Speak2Tweet and how it highlights the erosion of digitized archives over time (through digital obsolescence, for example), while simultaneously reifying the reality of voices and experiences that would have been otherwise lost were it not for the technologies of recall repurposed here to conserve them. How, thereafter, do we engage with these voices through the technologies at our disposal today, and to what ends? To this, we must ask what forms of digital obsolescence threaten the very existence of these voices in the future. In their current incarnations as digital revenants subject to various terms and conditions – not least those of the Twitter platform upon which they still reside – and the material compression of data for the purpose of transmission, this raises concerns about methodology: What digital methods, in qualitative and quantitative terms, can cultural practices extend to the field of social media archives – containing as they do the latent potential of unheard voices – to not only make them more accessible to a broad audience but to also understand the coextensive mediation and annihilation of memory through such apparatuses? Whereas the Speak2Tweet platform was facilitative, Amin’s adoption of it produced a framing device – through archiving, preservation, and re-­presentation – to interpret the historical, political, social, and cultural circumstances through the critical contexts and digital methodologies of creative practice. This involved thinking from within the apparatus of sense-­making produced by online archives. To this end, Project Speak2Tweet proposes a creative methodology that explores the historical and digital substance of an online platform (Speak2Tweet), while also raising a further series of enquiries about how the digitization of historical data recalibrates our understanding of the past and, just as importantly, our ability to imagine the future. The act and event of archiving, I would argue, is never just an attempt to fasten the past to the political exigencies of the present (and thus render the past amenable, if not reducible, to the demands of the here and now); it is, more accurately, a chronic enterprise  – located in the intersections between power and control  – that remains focused on and preoccupied with the  In 2019, Human Rights Watch estimated that at least 60,000 people were incarcerated on political grounds. This includes writers, journalists, artists, and political and human rights defenders jailed for their peaceful criticism of the government. See Human Rights Watch (2019): https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/01/07/egypt-­l ittle-­t ruth-­a l-­s isis-­6 0-­m inutes-­responses [Accessed April, 12, 2021].

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376 Mnemotechnics future.29 Through Project Speak2Tweet, alongside other creative and critical interventions, we can analyze how digital methodologies and counter-­practices propose interrogative methods to define the epistemological impact of digital technologies on the production of historical meaning under conditions of conflict. All of which leaves us with an admittedly broad question that has less to do with how online archiving  – be it on social media or more generally  – impacts on our present-­day understanding of historical events and more to do with how we will, if at all, come to understand and access, through the digital apparatuses in use today, the realities of the present in the future. Listening to these voices in 2021, as I and others did on the 10th anniversary of the Egyptian Revolution, was a very different experience than the reality of hearing them for the first time.30 The passage of time, a decade or so in total, and the authoritarian realities of modern-­day Egypt lend a poignancy to these voices as we consider the fate of what remains, in theory if not practice, an unfinished revolution that, despite its original propitiousness, has seen a form of repression emerge in Egypt that surpasses the totalitarianism associated with Mubarak’s regime.31 Through listening today, we experience an admonition from the past: made available and yet encased within an online apparatus, the otherworldliness of these voices augurs a reckoning of sorts with the legacy of Mubarak’s ouster and the aftermath of the Egyptian Revolution. To the extent that our attention is focused on the original context within which these voices were recorded and archived – that is, the domestic, relatively private spaces from whence they originated – their replay in the present brings to the fore a series of comparisons. These reckonings, however, are not only concerned with comparing the circumstances of then and now, but the extent to which digital platforms – through their technologies of monitoring and surveillance – have provided the very tools needed for the retrenchment of authoritarian control and further intrusion into the personal lives of Egyptians.32 The relative optimism of the one-­time inmate of the Natrun prison complex, whose voice we encountered earlier, eventually gives way to a sense of cathartic “bloodletting” and the potential of retribution being visited upon “Mubarak and his dogs.” Such sentiments would have no doubt registered differently in 2011 than they do today, nowhere more so than when we consider the contemporary landscape of oppression, persecution, and attacks on  For a fuller discussion of the future-­oriented priorities of an archive, see Anthony Downey, “Contingency, Dissonance and Performativity: Critical Archives and Knowledge Production in Contemporary Art,” op cit., pp.13–42. 30  I am drawing here on the comments made by panelists and Amin herself as part of panel held in March 2020. See “Egypt’s 2011 Internet Shutdown,” op cit., passim. 31  See Human Rights Watch (2020): https://www.hrw.org/world-­report/2021/country-­chapters/ egypt [Accessed April, 12, 2021]. See also Madeline Roache (2021). https://www.aljazeera.com/ news/2021/7/16/abuse-­and-­torture-­in-­egyptian-­prisons-­fuels-­isis-­recruitment [Accessed April, 12, 2021]. 32  Hossam el-­Hamalawy (2019), “Egypt’s Dirty War (Part II): Surveillance for all”; https://english. alaraby.co.uk/english/Comment/2019/2/1/Egypts-­d irty-­war-­p art-­I I-­S urveillance-­for-­a ll [Accessed April 21, 2020] 29

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freedom of speech that mark sociopolitical discourse in Egypt, not to mention the use of torture and incarceration to quell dissent, be it on-­or off-­line, and protest in the country.33

The Future of (Online) Memory A decade or so after the uprising, and in light of escalating digital surveillance and censorship, Project Speak2Tweet underscores the extent to which the utopian promise of democratic expression often disguises totalitarian advances in communication technologies. As the artist notes in conversation, listening to voices recorded in 2011 continues to inform our sense of the historical events in question and draws attention to our present realities. “The [Project Speak2Tweet] installation takes us back to that moment in time – that snapshot of the emotional psyche represented within a city falling apart – as a spatial experience. Today, it raises important questions about accountability and democratic expression: Who has the power to eliminate voices of dissent, and what consequences ensue as a result?” Sadly, as Amin further observes, “we’ve discovered that under their current frameworks, digital tools of expression in a global context are neither democratic nor safe.”34 The promise of online platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, to effect political change, evidenced throughout by a significant amount of commentary on revolutions in the Middle East, has long since dissipated and been replaced, in some circles, by a profound questioning of these apparatuses and their impact upon societal and political orders. Given how the Egyptian government attempted to quell dissent by shutting down the internet before relenting, we are left, for one, with an inquiry into the actual efficacy of an internet blackout (Mubarak was eventually ousted 10 days after online services were resumed).35 From there, we can enquire into what function internet and digital communications ultimately, as opposed to theoretically, performed in 2011 and beyond. For Alaa Abd el-­Fattah, the Egyptian blogger, software developer, technologist, and political activist, whose writing provides the epigraph to this essay, these questions are far from abstract, encapsulating as they do the potential fate of those in Egypt who seek to form an oppositional political imaginary. Incarcerated since May 2006, el-­Fattah has been subject to arbitrary and highly punitive parole periods, and, more recently, torture  See Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) (2019). Available here: https://cihrs.org/ wp-­content/uploads/2019/10/Final_UPR_On-­torture.pdf [Accessed November 10, 2021]. See also Amnesty International (2021): https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-­release/2021/01/ egypt-­abused-­and-­denied-­heath-­care-­prisoners-­lives-­at-­risk/ [Accessed November 10, 2021]. 34  Heba Y. Amin and Anthony Downey, “Contesting Post-­Digital Futures: Drone Warfare and the Geo-­Politics of Aerial Surveillance in the Middle East,” Digital War, 1, 65–73 (2020), p.71. https:// doi.org/10.1057/s42984-­020-­00021-­y [Accessed December 8, 2021] 35  For some commentators, the use of Facebook and Twitter in these revolutionary events was negligible. See Chonghyun Christie Byun and Ethan J. Hollander, “Explaining the Intensity of the Arab Spring,” in DOMES (Digest of Middle East Studies) 24, 1, Spring 2015, pp. 26–46. 33

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378 Mnemotechnics at the hands of the Egyptian state security services.36 El-­Fattah’s experience is far from unique, insofar as countless others have suffered similar fates, including his one-­time lawyer Mohamed el-­Baqer and his sister Sanaa Seif. His fate, however, appears enduring under the current political climate in Egypt where the harassment, imprisonments, and maltreatment of prisoners, despite an international outcry, continues with impunity.37 In a prescient keynote speech, delivered in 2011 to the RightsCon conference in Silicon Valley, el-­Fattah acknowledged that he did not expect Twitter or Facebook – or mobile technologies more broadly – to change their business models, based as they are on the monetization of our online transactions and the extraction of private data. As a result of this obduracy, el-­Fattah proposed that a number of points need to be taken into consideration: “When you design products that help me to assert my agency, but then interfere in how I get to assert my identity, then you are denying me something very important. . . . This is about who I am. This is about how I express myself. This is about how I communicate with the world.”38 Implicit within el-­Fattah’s plea we find a number of fundamental points relating to both 2011 and, just as crucially, our present day: drawing attention to the social,

 In December, 2021, Fattah was sentenced to five years in prison, according to his sister and a judicial source, after being tried on charges of purportedly spreading fake news. His codefendants, the blogger Mohamed “Oxygen” Ibrahim and Fattah’s one-­time lawyer Mohamed El-­Baqer, who both faced the same charges, were sentenced to four years each. See Al Jazeera (2021): https://www. aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/20/egypt-­jails-­leading-­activist-­alaa-­abdel-­f attah-­for-­f ive-­years [Accessed December 21, 2021].The historical details leading up to his most recent trial can be found here: “Alaa Abd El Fattah and his lawyer recount humiliation and beatings in maximum-­security prison,” Mada Masr (2019) https://www.madamasr.com/en/2019/10/10/news/u/alaa-­ abd-­ el-­ fattah-­and-­his-­lawyer-­recount-­humiliation-­and-­beatings-­in-­maximum-­security-­prison/ [Accessed November 23, 2021]. According to a recent report, his original arrest on other charges in September 2019 was part of a wider campaign which “has seen over 4,400 people detained or disappeared since 20 September [2019] following demonstrations calling for President al-­Sisi to step down.” See: https://euromedrights.org/human-­rights-­behind-­bars-­in-­egypt/ [Accessed November 23, 2021]. See also Office for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (2019): https://www.ohchr.org/ EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25164&LangID=E [Accessed November 23, 2021]. For a comprehensive list of recent activists currently imprisoned in Egypt, including details of Mohamed el-­Baqer and Fattah’s sister Sanaa Seif, see “The Situation of Human Rights Defenders And Activists In Egypt: 24 October  – 29  November 2021,” EuroMed Rights (2021): https:// euromedrights.org/human-­rights-­behind-­bars-­in-­egypt/ [Accessed December 9, 2021]. 37  On 19 November 2020, as reported by Amnesty, the Cairo Criminal Court added Fattah and others to a “terrorist list” for five years without any due process. This was a precursor to the 2021 court judgement which led to his current five-­year sentence for spreading “fake news.” See Amnesty International (2021a). Retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/ news/2021/10/egypt-­stop-­trials-­by-­emergency-­courts/ [Accessed November 23, 2021]. On 2 April 2022, Fattah began a hunger strike—­in protest at, amongst other things, his continued solitary confinement—­and, at the time of writing (September 2022), it has been reported that the hunger strike is continuing and he is convinced that he will not leave his Egyptian jail alive. See Trew (2022). https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-­east/celebrities-­liz-­truss-­ briton-­egypt-­jail-­b2101579.html?amp [Accessed September 6, 2022]. 38  El-­Fattah, ibid., p. 80. 36

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political, and historical impact of the online communications technologies that were ­operating (and not operating) in 2011, he effectively highlights the degree to which these platforms were steadily, if not stealthily, eroding his political agency and ability to narrate the realities of his personal experience in both the present and, indeed, future. While profoundly and solely his own, el-­Fattah’s experiences reflect the historical realities of countless Egyptians as they strove to overturn an authoritarian system of government and instigate political, social, and historical agency. That such agency was, in part, prefigured and declared through the affordances of social media lends further purchase, if not urgency, to el-­Fattah’s lament about the impact of social media networks on how his identity and ability to connect with the world were compromised, if not usurped, by the commercial exigencies driving privately owned social media companies. To this already substantial concern, we must further consider how models of digital authoritarianism were stimulated, if not sustained, through the initial and subsequent surveillance of online users’ activity on various social media platforms. All of which raises further pressing questions about the efficacy and pitfalls inherent in such networks when it comes to future political and social assertions of individual and collective agency in countries such as Egypt.39 To the extent that social media undoubtedly played a part in the logistical support of protests, the anxieties raised in 2011 have become all the more urgent when we consider how the archiving of revolutionary protests and political opposition on online platforms went hand in hand with the harvesting of data for commercial gain, the insidious assimilation of online surveillance, the deployment of global forms of digital authoritarianism, and the spread of targeted disinformation.40 In light of the uncertainties that followed the 2011 revolution, we need to repeatedly ask, as Project Speak2Tweet demonstrates, how we can develop methods and practices that operate beyond the prescriptiveness of online networks and, going forward, critically engage with the ascendancy of online censorship and digital authoritarianism in contemporary Egypt, if not globally. References Abd el-­Fattah, Alaa. 2021. You Have Not Yet Been Defeated. London: Fitzcarraldo. Amin, Heba. 2011. Project Speak2Tweet. Retrieved from https://www.hebaamin.com/works/ project-­speak2tweet/ Amin, Heba Y. 2012. “Voices From The Revolution: A Speak2tweet Project,” Retrieved from here: http://www.hebaamin.com/documents/Amin_VoicesfromtheRevolution.pdf Amin, H. Y. and Downey, A. 2020. “Contesting Post-­Digital Futures: Drone Warfare and the Geo-­ Politics of Aerial Surveillance in the Middle East.” Digital War, 1: 65–73. Amin, H. Y, Downey, A., Mardini, A, and Iskandar A. 2020. “Egypt’s 2011 Internet Shutdown: Digital Dissent and the Future of Public Memory.” Camera Austria, 153: 43–54.  Adrian Shahbaz and Allie Funk, “The Global Drive to Control Big Tech”, Freedom on the Net 2021, Freedom House, September 22, 2021, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-­ net/2021/global-­drive-­control-­big-­tech [Accessed September 25, 2022]. 40  See: Freedom House (2021). https://freedomhouse.org/country/egypt/freedom-­ net/2021 [Accessed: 12 November 2021]. 39

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380 Mnemotechnics Amnesty International. 2021a. “Egypt: Stop Trials by Emergency Courts.” October 31. Retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/10/egypt-­stop-­trials-­by-­emergency-­courts/ Amnesty International. 2021. “Egypt: Abused and Denied Heath Care, Prisoners’ Lives at Risk.” January 25. Retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-­release/2021/01/ egypt-­abused-­and-­denied-­heath-­care-­prisoners-­lives-­at-­risk/ Al Jazeera. 2021. “Egypt Jails Leading Activist Alaa Abdel Fattah for Five Years.” December 20. Retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/20/egypt-­jails-­leading­activist-­alaa-­abdel-­fattah-­for-­f ive-­years Asher-­Schapiro, Avi. 2017. “YouTube and Facebook Are Removing Evidence of Atrocities, Jeopardizing Cases Against War Criminals.” The Intercept. Retrieved from https:// theintercept.com/2017/11/02/war-­crimes-­youtube-­facebook-­syria-­rohingya/ Ben-­David, Anat. 2014. “Speak2Tweet.” In Kerric Harvey (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Social Media and Politics (vol. 1) (pp. 1195–1196). London: SAGE. Burke, Jason. 2022. “Facebook ‘Lacks Willpower’ to Tackle Misinformation in Africa.” The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/18/ facebook-­accused-­of-­lacking-­willpower-­to-­tackle-­misinformation-­in-­africa Bushwick, Sophie. 2022. “Russia’s Information War Is Being Waged on Social Media Platforms.” Scientific American. Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ russia-­is-­having-­less-­success-­at-­spreading-­social-­media-­disinformation/ Byun, Chonghyun, Christie and Hollander, Ethan J. 2015. “Explaining the Intensity of the Arab Spring.” DOMES 24, 1: 26–46. Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS). 2019. “The Universal Periodic Review of the Arab Republic of Egypt – 3rd Cycle: Joint-­submission on the Right to Be Free from Torture and Ill-­ treatments.” Retrieved from https://cihrs.org/wp-­ content/uploads/2019/10/ Final_UPR_On-­torture.pdf Downey, Anthony. 2015. “Contingency, Dissonance and Performativity: Critical Archives and Knowledge Production in Contemporary Art.” In Anthony Downey (ed.) Dissonant Archives: Contemporary Visual Culture and Contested Narratives in the Middle East. London: I.B. Tauris. Downey, Anthony (Ed.). 2020. Heba Y. Amin: The General’s Stork. Berlin: Sternberg Press. Downey, Anthony. 2021. “The Future of Protest in a Post-­Digital Age.” In Betti-­Sue Hertz and Sreshta Rit Premnath (Eds.), The Protest and the Recuperation (pp. 30–49). New York: Columbia University Press. El Deeb, Sarah. 2017. “History of Syria’s War at Risk as YouTube Reins in Content.” AP News. Retrieved from https://apnews.com/d9f1c4f1bf20445ab06cbdff566a2b70 El-­Hamalawy, Hossam. 2019. “Egypt’s Dirty War (Part II): Surveillance for All.” Al Araby. Retrieved from https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/Comment/2019/2/1/Egypts­dirty-­war-­part-­II-­Surveillance-­for-­all El-­Neggar, Mona. 2011. “Equal Rights Takes to the Barricades.” New  York Times. February 1. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/world/middleeast/02iht-­letter02. html EuroMed Rights. 2021. “Human Rights Behind Bars in Egypt: Human Rights Defenders and Activists at Risk.” November. Retrieved from https://euromedrights.org/human-­rights­behind-­bars-­in-­egypt/ Freedom House. 2021. “Freedom on the Net: Egypt.” Retrieved from https://freedomhouse. org/country/egypt/freedom-­net/2021 Gerbaudo, Paolo. 2012. Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism. London: Pluto Press. Ghonim, Wael. 2012. Revolution 2.0. New York: Harper Collins.

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Hernández, M. D., Nunes, R., Anthonio, F., and Cheng, S. 2021. “#KeepItOn update: who is shutting down the internet in 2021?” AccessNow. June 7. Retrieved from https://www.accessnow. org/who-­is-­shutting-­down-­the-­internet-­in-­2021/ Herrera, Linda. 2014. Revolution in the Age of Social Media: The Egyptian Popular Insurrection and the Internet. London: Verso. Howard, Philip N. and Hussein, Muzammil M. 2013. Democracy’s Fourth Wave: Digital Media and the Arab Spring. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Human Rights Watch. 2019. “Egypt: Little Truth in Al-­Sisi’s ‘60 Minutes’ Responses.” January 7. Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/01/07/egypt-­little-­truth-­al-­sisis-­60-­minutes-­responses Human Rights Watch. 2020. “Egypt: Events of 2020.” Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/ world-­report/2021/country-­chapters/egypt Mada Masr. 2019. “Alaa Abd El Fattah and His Lawyer Recount Humiliation and Beatings in Maximum-­security Prison.” October 10. Retrieved from https://www.madamasr.com/ en/2019/10/10/news/u/alaa-­a bd-­e l-­f attah-­a nd-­h is-­l awyer-­recount-­h umiliation-and-­ ­beatings-­in-­maximum-­security-­prison/ Mosireen. “Revolution Triptych.” In Anthony Downey (Ed.), Uncommon Grounds: New Media and Critical Practices in North Africa and the Middle East (pp. 47–52). London: I.B. Tauris. Office for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. 2019. “Press Briefing Note on Egypt”. October 18. Retrieved from https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-­ briefing-­ notes/2019/10/ press-­briefing-­note-­egypt?LangID=E&NewsID=25164 Raoff, Ramy. 2011. “Egypt Timeline of Communication Shutdown During jan25revolution.jpg” Uploaded to Wikipedia, June 9, 2011. Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:Egypt_timeline_of_communication_shutdown_during_jan25revolution.jpg Richtel, Matt. 2011. “Egypt Cuts Off Most Internet and Cell Service.” New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/29/technology/internet/29cutoff.html Roache, Madeline. 2021. “Abuse and Torture in Egyptian Prisons Fuel ISIL Recruitment.” Al Jazeera. July 16. Retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/16/ abuse-­and-­torture-­in-­egyptian-­prisons-­f uels-­isis-­recruitment Robert Hamilton, Omar. 2017. “Six Moments from a Revolution: A Mosireen Video Timeline,” Ibraaz. Retrieved from https://www.ibraaz.org/channel/169 Schneier, Bruce. 2015. Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World. New York: Norton. Shahbaz, Adrian and Funk, Allie. 2021. “The Global Drive to Control Big Tech.” Freedom on the Net 2021, Freedom House. September 22. Retrieved from https://freedomhouse.org/ report/freedom-­net/2021/global-­drive-­control-­big-­tech Trew, Bel. 2022. “‘The Hunger Strike May Be His Last Act: Celebrities Urge Liz Truss to Secure Release of Briton in Egypt Jail.” June 15. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/ news/world/middle-­east/celebrities-­liz-­truss-­briton-­egypt-­jail-­b2101579.html?amp Tufecki, Zeynep. 2017. Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest. London: Yale University Press. “‘Video Unavailable’: Social Media Platforms Remove Evidence of War Crimes.” Human Rights Watch Report, September 2020. Available here: https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/ media_2020/09/crisis_conflict0920_web_0.pdf York, Juillian C. 2014. “Arab Spring.” In Kerric Harvey (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Social Media and Politics (pp. 70–76). London: Sage.

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31

Media Technologies and Politics in Iran Mehdi Semati Northern Illinois University

Introduction Writing about media and communication technology has become fraught with ­difficulties. For one thing, the speed of academic publishing is no match for the speed at which media and communication technologies are changing. Moreover, recent changes in communication technologies have destabilized the objects of our study and the vocabulary we use to study them. What constitutes “media” in the age of platforms, networked publics, and internet -­distributed content is no longer a given (see Chapters 12, 13, 14). Writing about Iranian media and communication technologies has its own challenges. Contemporary perception of Iran in English-­language writings is firmly tied to the image of the ­political system of Iran and its geopolitical positioning in the current world order. The characterization of Iran’s political system or the nation as “Islamic” tends to involve additional assumptions, leading to a mystification of its politics and its people. The news about the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) tends to produce a grim narrative of a closed society in the grip of backward religious fanatics. That Iran is in the headlines for its advancements in nuclear technology under severe sanctions does not seem to diminish the power of that narrative. However, for the astute observers of the news from Iran the existence of a world-­class cinema and other cultural productions tends to belie an easy characterization of Iran as a backward religious society. The coexistence of a nominal religious theocracy with its claims to an “Islamic culture” and a popular culture in tune with global, secular, popular cultures – created by a cosmopolitan population with access to the latest communication technologies – produces cultural dynamics that defy conventional analytical tools. Labels such as “state-­run” media do not explain the dynamics of the media ecosystem in which

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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legacy media coexist with other media in both adversarial and mutually accommodating relations. These relations, made possible by the state’s social, economic, and cultural policies, establish a media ecosystem that includes social media platforms, networks, and apps, providing means of self-­expression that flout state restrictions. To advance these arguments, I place the legacy media in their historical contexts in the first ­section. In the following two sections, I account for the ways the newer media technologies have challenged legacy media’s monopoly, including satellite television, direct-­to-­video, the internet, and the arrival of streaming services. In the last section I argue that the state’s own developmentalist policies have created the communication space in which Iranians bypass the state’s monopoly over the control of information and means of self-­expression. Pursuing a different conceptualization of  citizenship, I argue that the performance of citizenship is facilitated by the ­technological affordances of new media and legacy media embedded in the same social space, where acts of self-­expression and unstructured, impromptu, and textual media activism serve as entry points to politics. I argue that such an approach is more effective in explaining social change, as compared to conventional approaches that see media as agents of mobilization and protest tied to the calendar of electoral ­politics and the institutional practices associated with formal politics. Finally, I argue that although the state has started to lose its monopoly in media narratives and ­production, it is using legacy media to maintain its regulatory control over the new private media services such as IPTV.

Communication Technologies and Iranian Media in Context Technologies of mass communication are invariably tied to the formation of the modern state. Iran has had the same experience. Although the notion of “state-­run” media in much popular and academic discussions is usually grounded in views about censorship and state prohibition, it is the state as an organizing and productive power that has shaped and created the modern media ecosystem in Iran. Today’s “alternative media,” however conceived, are defined against the legacy media. Legacy mass media in Iran are, for the most part, broadcasting and its infrastructures. Although television in Iran started as commercial operation by a businessman in 1958, the government of Reza Pahlavi took over a decade later, forming National Iranian Television. Radio and television were incorporated in 1971 to form a national broadcasting system, National Iranian Radio and Television (NIRT) (Tehranian 1982). Understanding television as a national industry and a national market has been an axiom for much of its history. Straubhaar (2007) has argued that “cultural industries of television are often best understood historically as national industries that worked within national markets defined in a reciprocal relationship with government policy and national identity” (Straubhaar  2007, 55). Television, Chalaby (2005) has argued, “was often tied up with the national project and no other media institution was more central to the modernist intent of engineering a national identity” (p. 1).

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In Iran, despite lofty claims by NIRT in terms of its objectives to contribute to national development, national culture, national unity and even democracy (Tehranian et  al.  1977, 3–4), broadcasting technologies, including satellite technologies in the 1970s, were used by the authoritarian monarchy to consolidate power and to project an image of the Shah for internal and external audiences (see Sreberny-­Mohammadi and Mohammadi  1994; Khiabany  2009). The 1971  media spectacle of the 2,500th ­anniversary of the Persian Empire in the celebratory coverage of the extravagant ­festivity of the “King of Kings” reveals how broadcasting was deployed in the interests of the monarchy. Furthermore, during the Shah’s reign, “television in Iran, as in many developing countries, was dominated by imported programs from the West, especially the United States” (Malek and Mohsenian Rad  1994, 83). Soap operas and sitcoms were the main offerings during prime time. The broadcasting system that supported the Shah’s regime was overwhelmed by “small media” in a popular mobilization during the 1979 “big revolution” that toppled the repressive monarchy. In Iran, as Sreberny-­Mohammadi and Mohammadi put it, “new technologies of communication also helped to open up a potential public sphere of dissent. Small media such as audiotapes became electronic extensions of the religious institutions and its political discourse, and photocopied leaflets were the preferred weapon of the secular groupings, giving voice to what was to become an enormous popular movement” (1994, 26). The circulation of leaflets and xeroxed copies of Ayatollah Khomeini’s speeches distributed via traditional networks proved potent. In the words of one Tehran University professor, it was a struggle “against autocracy, for democracy, by means of xerocracy” (quoted in Tehranian 1980). The Iranian revolution of 1979 changed the political system of the country, transforming Iran from an ally of the United States awash in Western culture to an adversarial state that positioned itself against Western imperialism. In the immediate aftermath of the revolution, religious factions managed to dominate the liberal-­ secular elements of the revolutionary movement, leading to the creation of the Islamic Republic. What followed the establishment of the Islamic Republic was a program of “cultural revolution,” designed to cleanse (pak-­sazi) the social space of “secular” and “decadent” elements of the monarchy. Iranian broadcasting witnessed the removal of staff, content, and all symbols assumed to be associated with the monarchy. In “cleansing” cinema, as Naficy (1992) has written, “The first stage in transforming the Pahlavi’s cinema (dubbed by Islamists “cinema of taqut”) into an Islamic cinema, was the cleansing of the Pahlavi movie houses by means of what in retrospect turned out to be a baptism by fire of sorts,” when about 180  cinemas were burnt, destroyed, or shut down (p. 126). The post-­revolution Iranian media and cultural policies have been invariably entangled with the vagaries of the factional politics of the Islamic Republic. The place that broadcasting occupies within the Iranian regulatory regime and the governing structure of the Islamic Republic reveals much about its status within the political imagination of the ruling class in Iran. The 1979 revolution inaugurated the “Islamic Republic,” a hybrid political structure that combines features of republicanism, direct democracy, and theocracy. The ultimate authority over issues of the state is the Supreme Leader, who appoints, among others, the Director-­General of the IRIB (the Islamic Republic of Iran

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Broadcasting). Although Iran’s political structure is far from the democracy for which Iranians have been struggling since its constitutional revolution of 1905, it has created a contradictory terrain in which media play an important role.1 The constitution of the IRI recognizes freedom of the press and freedom of expression. While article 24 of the Constitution states that, “Publications and the press have freedom of expression,” it is qualified by adding, “except when it is ­detrimental to the fundamental principles of Islam or the right of the public.” Article 175 states, “The freedom of expression and dissemination of thoughts in the Radio and Television of the Islamic Republic of Iran must be guaranteed,” but must be “in keeping with the Islamic criteria and the best interests of the country.”2 Such a language is inadequate as a legal framework to guarantee a free media, but its inclusion reflects a basic contradiction of a state that wishes to navigate and to reconcile modern institutions such as mass media and religious mandates to produce “Islamic subjects” (see Semati 2017). From the immediate aftermath of the revolution to the end of Iran-­Iraq war (1980– 1988), broadcasting was used to mobilize support for the war efforts. The IRIB offered only two national television channels until 1993. Its programming was fairly limited to military music, religious programming, and talking heads. Today the IRIB is a vast organization employing over 50,000  individuals,3 boasting over 20  national television channels, external satellite broadcasting beaming content to every continent in multiple languages, and 34 provincial and local television channels. The IRIB operates 9 national radio channels with stations in 34 locations across the country, with a provincial radio channel in each province. Broadcasting has been deployed in the dynamics of contentious politics in Iran between the “hardliners” and the “reformists,” to use a broad brushstroke. Given the centrality of broadcasting to the state, the IRIB is firmly in the hands of the hardliners, as the Director-­General of the IRIB is appointed by the office of the Supreme Leader. Even if its staff and rank-­and-­f ile managers are ideologically diverse, the upper echelon of the organization sets policy in line with the views of the office of the Supreme Leader (see Chapter 23). Although the IRIB produces and airs popular entertainment programs (e.g. sports, drama, comedy, talent shows, talk shows), it has faced a crisis of legitimacy. That crisis is reflected in the discourse of the IRIB ever since it began to refer to itself as the “national medium” (rasaneh melli) in response to criticism that it neglected the views of the majority of the population. The play on the Persian words rendering “national medium” to “arbitrary medium,” substituting “national” (melli) with “arbitrary” (meyli) in popular parlance, is a sharp rebuke of the IRIB for its claiming the mantle of “the national medium.”

 For more on Iran’s democracy movement see Gheissari and Nasr (2005). For more on media and pro-­democracy movement in Iran, see Semati (2007). 2  The text of the constitution of IRI is available here: https://tinyurl.com/3daf8eju 3  Although accurate information about the number of employees is difficult to establish, this number strikes me as reasonable (see Azizi 2014). 1

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Challenges to the State’s Communication Monopoly: Satellite Television The IRIB started facing considerable competition beginning in the 1990s with the arrival of free-­to-­air satellite technology and the internet. The 1990s and 2000s are arguably the golden age of satellite television in Iran. Satellite television usage in post-­revolution Iran started in the border regions where geolinguistics proximity had made it possible for audiences to consume transborder content. Iranian audiences in  Northwestern Iran had access to Turkish-­language content, and those in the areas  near Persian Gulf had access to Arabic programs (Alikhah  2008). Beginning in 1990s Tehran and other urban centers witnessed a proliferation of relatively inexpensive satellite dishes and FTA receivers (free-­to-­air receivers designed to receive unencrypted satellite transmission). Although the parliament had passed a law in 1995 declaring satellite equipment illegal, banishing satellite dishes from rooftops or balconies or removing receivers from living rooms proved too impractical and challenging for the authorities in Iran. By the late 2000s, there were more than 40 Persian-­language channels beaming signals to Iran. Not unlike the moral panic over the VCRs and home video equipment of an earlier era (Shahabi 2008), the rhetoric against satellite technology depicted it as immoral, a threat to the Islamic culture, and cultural aggression. However, the content made available to Iranians via satellite was far more potent as a threat to the Islamic Republic and its broadcasting system. The “illegal” satellite channels provided programming in music (video), film, fashion, shopping, religion, and education. More threatening, in the eyes of the authorities, were channels exclusively devoted to politics and public affairs. Except for those from England, Germany, and Sweden, the majority of these channels were based in the United States. Among these are BBC Persian Television and Voice of American Persian, both of which are government-­funded media channels that bypass Iranian authorities to reach audiences inside Iran. For the first time the IRIB and the political system it supports faced a situation in which mass audiences were presented with alternative views. The reception of a political satire program ridiculing Iranian authorities, produced by Voice of America Persian, for example, was a source of irritation for Iranian ruling class during its run (Semati 2012). Although the impact of the so-­called “opposition” residing outside Iran has not been significant in terms of geopolitics and formal politics, the real impact might be properly captured in the politics of culture, and the global Iranian diasporic culture(s). One potent example of such cultural formation, facilitated by satellite channels based in the United States, is what one ethnomusicologist calls “Tehrangeles” (Hemmasi  2020). Here diasporic popular culture facilitates “practices and forms of identification that respond to, but are not circumscribed by, the nation-­state and its political transformations” (2000, 4). These identifications and the affective mobilization they engender often come into conflict or challenge the state’s ideology and its efforts to produce ideal “Islamic” subjects. Despite years of efforts by the state at preventing Iranians from exposure to diasporic cultural productions, they remain a part of Iran’s popular culture. For decades since the revolution, Iranians have had access to cultural productions by

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Iranians who do not face the restrictions experienced by those living inside Iran. In a way, Iranians have been able to imagine, via diasporic cultural productions, what it would be like to live without such restrictions. In short, they have contributed to a deterritorialized subjectivity that transcends the nation-­state’s geography or the state’s jurisdictional boundaries. The waning influence of “Tehrangeles” makes clear the golden age of satellite television in Iran is behind us. The factors that contribute to that diminishing influence, according to Hemmasi (2020), include changes internal to media industry (e.g. changes in the music industry) and other factors such as generational changes (second-­and third-­generation Iranians prefer to work in the mainstream music industry). However, I would argue that one of the most important factors is the proliferation of pop music in Iran. Since the legalization of pop music almost two decades after the revolution (Nooshin  2009), popular music concerts have been among the few permissible joyful public experiences, creating a lively music scene in Iran. Even more significant has been the role played by radio, with its round-­the-­ clock airing of pop music. In addition, film and television programs aired on the IRIB have popularized many pop musicians and bands. That a Persian pop musician might now have a more financially secure future making music inside the Islamic Republic is a testament to the contradictory and complex nature of media space and cultural policies in Iran.4 The declining significance of “Tehrangeles” as a music scene or a pop industry should not imply the end of satellite television in Iran. Nor should the diminishing influence of Tehrangeles as a diasporic cultural formation mean that the remaining actors and entities that broadcast to Iran could indiscriminately be lumped together under the label of “diasporic media.” It is true that the changing dynamics of media technologies with the coming of the internet, online and mobile devices, and the proliferation of entertainment and sports content from Iran via streaming services and platforms have contributed to the decline of satellite television. However, channels such as BBC Persian, VOA, Iran International, and Manoto remain among the well-­ funded voices that break through as alternative sources of information in the Iranian media ecosystem. While the sources of funding for VOA and BBC Pasian are known, Manoto and Iran International are said to be owned by UK-­based venture capitalists, though it is widely assumed that the latter has ties to the Saudi Arabia’s royal family. Turkey-­based GEM TV’s group of channels provides a range of programming that are popular in Iran. The presence and longevity of these services connected to rich and powerful countries with their critical coverage of the Islamic Republic make it clear that media and geopolitics are intertwined in the region.

 Hemmasi (2020) recalls an encounter between one of the founders of Tehrangeles and a newcomer, when the newcomer is warned “against the seductions of Tehrangeles dreams” by the old guard (p.  199). Her point, that a musician might have a more secure financial future in Iran, clearly establishes the diminishing influence of Tehrangeles.

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Challenges to the State’s Communication Monopoly: The Internet Other structural factors have played their role in the decline of satellite consumption in Iran. If satellite television is the last mass media, then social media and the networked publics they make possible facilitate a move from mass politics toward “participatory culture” (Burgess and Green 2009), which in turn allows for the performance of citizenship in alternative ways. Iran is not an exception in this regard even if the state spends much effort and resources in maintaining control over when and who has access to such technologies and the internet (e.g. extensive filtering and censorship mechanisms, issuing or denying permits to internet service providers). The much-­celebrated Persian blogosphere was one of the first communication spaces that provided Iranians a means to engage in acts of self-­expression on a wide range of topics (Alavi  2005). The state’s ambivalent embrace of the telecom sector for its own economic and ideological reasons, and the restrictions on other forums for self-­expression, provided the conditions for the expansion of the Persian “Blogistan” (Sreberny Khiabany 2010). Although the Persian blogosphere declined substantially during the last decade, an extensive communication space has been created via other online forums, platforms, and venues, where opportunities for acts of self-­expression and the performance of citizenship have multiplied considerably. While the context for this proliferation is discussed in the next section, a brief explanation should highlight how everyday life in Iran is lived with mobile and online media. As of 2020, according to the World Bank data, 84% of Iranians use the internet. Of the 85 million population, 76% live in urban areas. In 2016, the overall literacy was 86%. In 2020, there were about 29 million fixed telephone subscriptions, about 9.5 million fixed broadband subscriptions, and approximately 128 million mobile cellular subscriptions.5 Among social media networks and instant messaging and voice-­over-­IP services, the following table shows the most popular services.6 The numbers for the domestic apps and services might be inflated in the sense that some of these apps are either encouraged or required to be used by employers in the public sector. That some apps are filtered is not necessarily a deterrent against their use as anti-­filtering software and subscription-­based VPN services are cheaply and widely available. Moreover, most officials, including the Supreme Leader, have Facebook and Twitter pages even as they insist on filtering these services for ordinary Iranians. However, there is a consensus that filtering Telegram helped WhatsApp to surpass Telegram. Another reason for WhatsApp’s wider penetration is that it has more utility for small business for transmitting documents (receipts, invoices, etc.). Soroush (aka Soroush Plus app) is the state’s answer to Telegram as the choice of app for engaging in online political and cultural discourses. After Soroush was released, many Iranian  The data for the Islamic Republic of Iran is available here: https://data.worldbank.org/.  The data for this table is drawn from an official report by Donya-­e Eghtesad, which is generally considered a credible source in Iran. “The most popular Iranian social networks” (August 4, 2021). From: https://bit.ly/3QhZwmU.

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Table 31.1  Most Popular Messaging Apps and Social Networks in Iran (2021) Service

# of users

Service type

Origins

Status

WhatsApp

+50 million

Messaging, voice-­over-­IP services

Foreign

Telegram Instagram

+49 million +47 million

Foreign Foreign

Rubika Soroush Facebook Bale

+26 million +22 million +7.2 million +7 million

Domestic Domestic Foreign Domestic

N/A N/A Filtered N/A

Gap Eta LinkedIn Twitter

+5 million +3 million +2.7 million +2 million

cloud-­based instant messaging service Photo/video sharing social networking service A super-­app (umbrella app) Instant messaging app Social networking service Instant messaging (banking services included) Instant messaging Instant messaging Social professional networking Social media and networking

Not filtered Filtered Not filtered

Domestic Domestic Foreign Foreign

N/A N/A Not filtered Filtered

authorities, including the Supreme Leader, shut down their public channels on Telegram and migrated to Soroush. Although Table 31.1 mixes instant messaging services with social networks, it begins to show how domestic services, some backed by the state, coexist within the overall dynamics of telecom sector in Iran. To give the reader a broader perspective about this dynamism, I should mention some of the more popular apps that are local versions of their global counterparts: Aparat is Iranian YouTube; Snapp is Iranian Uber; Snapp Food is Iranian Uber Eats; Digikala is Iranian Amazon (which claims to be the largest online retail store in the Middle East); and AliBaba is Iranian Travelocity (selling airplane tickets), etc. There is no shortage of apps or super-­apps, online mobile platforms that house multiple apps for multiple functions in banking and money transfer, travel, toll and car services, health, bill payment, SIM charges, internet connection packages, etc. The start­up scene in Iran, despite the state’s meddling and imprudent mismanagement of the regulatory environment, is a remarkably vibrant scene. The sign on the entrance to a technology innovation hub near Azadi Square in Tehran, Technology Park, refers to itself as (in English), “Technology Park, Iran Silicon Valley.” Out of this context has emerged a surge of internet-­distributed content, platforms, and various audio-­video services such as VOD (Video-­on-­Demand), SVOD (Subscription Video-­on-­Demand), BVOD (Broadcast Video-­on-­Demand), and other forms of IPTV (Internet Protocol Television). Streaming services are enjoying a booming market and represent an alternative to the IRIB in terms of original content creation and a sprawling library of entertainment content. Telewebion is Iran’s first BVOD service, boasting more than 20 million active users. It started as a platform offering IRIB’s live programs but added IRIB’s archive later. Its brand has belonged to the IRIB, though Rahnema, a pioneering tech company, acquired

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the founding company of Telewebion and invested in it. The IRIB was initially skeptical and even limited their offerings, only to learn not to fear but to acquire Telewebion given the booming streaming market. In some respects, this venture represents the legacy media’s attempt to have an online presence and compete with the rise of privately owned, produced, and distributed television and film. The sociopolitical contexts of these developments in relation to the politics of communication technologies in Iran are addressed in the next section.

Communication Policies, Networked Publics, and Citizenship The context for the creation of an extensive communication space is a set of social and economic policies that the Islamic Republic has pursued. Beyond favorable demographics (e.g. a relatively young and mostly urban population), we could point to, for example, schooling and educational policies of the Islamic Republic. As Malekzadeh (2016) has argued in the context of the proliferation of institutions of (higher) education in Iran, “universities have increasingly become part of the state’s strategy for securing the quiescence of Iranian youth” and a growing middle class. Moreover, the privatization of schooling “presents an opportunity for the state to consolidate its authority over members of society” (p.  101). In areas such as social insurance and health care, to offer other examples, the state has been relatively successful (Harris 2017; Abu Sharkh and Gough 2010). Indeed, as Harris has argued (2017), the Islamic Republic has utilized welfare delivery as the primary vehicle for state building. Such policies are not without their contradictory and unintended effects. As Farhi (1998) argues, the Islamic Republic “has incorporated developmentalist and culturalist postures vis-­à-­vis women. These two postures have by no means been in opposition to each other all the time.” However, she adds, “At the same time, the requirements of a development-­ oriented liberalization policy invariably come into conflict with interests that justifiably worry about cultural liberalization as an unintended consequence of economic liberalization” (p. 7). The communication and media technology sector, as a capital-­intensive arena, has not been immune from such contradictions. As a “hybrid regime,” the Islamic Republic relies on state-­managed conflict and competition (Brumberg and Farhi  2016), even if financial arrangements and stakeholders often remain opaque as they are being managed. The challenge for the state has been to “reap the modernizing economic potential of these rising middle classes while limiting the latter’s capacity to challenge the fundamental institutions and rules of the political system” (p. 4). The robust expansion of the telecom sector and the proliferation of social media networks, platforms, and apps have moved Iranians into a communication space that is significantly different compared to the era of mass communication. This expansion and the increase in access to venues for self-­expression and the performance of citizenship that is critical of the ruling class have led the state to pursue, broadly speaking, three sets of policies beyond the traditional means of physical violence and arrest.

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First, the state has established extensive censorship mechanisms, including blocking access to websites by filtering them. However, anti-­filtering software and other ­circumvention tools are widely available. Second, to control the flow of information, and separate the global from the domestic internet traffic, the state has been trying to launch what it calls “National Information Network,” or “national internet.” Since it was announced in 2005, this goal has proven difficult to achieve, and the project, according to a report by Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, has cost over $6 billion thus far.7 Third, upon realizing that it is no longer able to monitor popular entertainment content on the mushrooming streaming ­services, the state has created a new regulatory scheme to benefit its own media ­operation by granting the IRIB a major regulatory authority. Created in 2015 under a directive from the office of the Supreme Leader by the IRIB, SATRA (Iranian Audiovisual Media Regulatory Authority) has been charged with regulating what is called “interactive TV” services (or VOD). Granting the IRIB regulatory authority is not simply a matter of controlling for inappropriate content. It is more a vehicle for providing the broadcasting behemoth a competitive edge as it competes with new rivals. For “dumping” its vast archive free of charge to promote its platform (Telewebion Plus) and to compete with the newcomers in the VOD market, the IRIB was called out for being a player and a regulator at the same time. Over the last decade the direct-­to-­video market, which has functioned as de facto private media in Iran, has turned into an investment vehicle for wealthy investors and holding groups. The state has not been shy about embracing neoliberal policies, and now it is embracing such policies in cultural affairs as well. In January 2017, the Iranian parliament ordered the Ministry of Culture to hand over state-­run cultural enterprises to the private sector.8 Making entertaining serials and TV series has become a lucrative business, and the IRIB wants to have a role in this development for political, cultural, and financial reasons. Some of the investors have connections to “semi-­private” entities and players with connection to the state enterprises. To justify the privatization of television production, some have invoked notions such as “cultural invasion.” To justify the privatization of television production, for example, an investor in a massively successful TV series offered his show as an alternative to Turkish TV dramas (dizis) popular in Iran, which he ludicrously characterized as the “Zionist lobby.”9 It is noteworthy that “cultural invasion” has always been used by the Iranian state as an extension of “cultural imperialism” to argue for making more state-­run or public media. That position is now turned on its head in this context where it is used to argue for media privatization, a cultural policy of the imperial powers. Much writing on Iranian media and politics has emphasized aspects of media or politics that do not adequately explain the intersection of politics and media embedded in social relations. Among these are conceptualizations of media, politics, and the approach taken to address their dynamics. Media, and especially social media in the present

 For more details, see the report here: https://cyber.harvard.edu/node/100145  For a report on the parliament’s action, see https://rc.majlis.ir/fa/news/show/1004841 9  For a report on this investor’s views, see https://tinyurl.com/3vupdka6 7 8

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context, are often conceived as agents of mobilization and protests in terms of social movements as forms of collective action. Much enthusiasm about the fate of the political system in Iran in relation to Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, and other social media platforms has run into the cold reality of an intransigent state with increasing authoritarian tendencies. In the absence of organizational structure, leadership, and a coherent and cohesive ideological anchor, media do not topple a state, especially one with the means and the willingness to use violence. Such an approach is based on a specific conceptualization of politics and citizenship that might not apply to the present conjuncture, and even more so in the context of Iran. Referencing singular political events to write about long-­term social, political, and cultural struggles runs the risk of creating a narrative of success or failure in a Western-­ centric perspective. For example, as Echchaibi (2021) argues, viewing the 2011 Arab uprisings in such a framework is reductive and a poor substitute for reading the rich archive of which the uprisings were only a moment. Similarly, the standard focus on the widespread protests in the bloody aftermath of the disputed presidential election in Iran in 2009 to discuss (social) media in Iran inevitably leads to the narrative of failure. Moreover, conceptualizing politics in terms of large-­scale collective actions, electoral campaign cycles that happen every few years, and other institutional manifestations of formal politics misses everyday politics on a quotidian scale. Additionally, a modernist notion of citizenship, tied to concepts such as “critical rational actor” and conventional political organizations, structures, and ideologies ( Jones 2005), is not capable of capturing the range of activities that are considered performance of citizenship in today’s media-­saturated lives and participatory culture with its user-­generated contents. Today’s citizenship is more textual than organizational, more performative than formal affiliation, and more expressive of individual preferences than party membership ( Jones 2005). Politics nowadays is inserted into our social relations and interactions, amplified and extended across time and space by technologies of citizenship enabling “DIY citizenship” (Ratto and Boler 2014). In today’s Iran, from early forms of SMS on mobile phones to smartphones, laptops, iPads, desktops, numerous social media networks, platforms, and apps, all have been used for circulations of jokes, memes, images, drawings, songs, signs, video and audio clips, and manipulated images that bypass the state’s media and often challenge its discourses on a range of topics. In this framework, the state’s cultural, media, and social policies create a context in which popular culture, performed in everyday practices, engages and challenges politics on the very terms set forth by the state. Here the performance of citizenship is facilitated by the affordances of the technologies of citizenship, a “citizenship” that is constrained, manipulated from within and without, accommodated, subversive, and at times joyful. Every one of these “textual” incursions is an entry point to politics but embedded in everyday life and in mediated lived social relations in ways that defy conventional notions of private and public spheres. Asef Bayat’s scholarship over the years has challenged the existing scholarship on the  Middle Eastern societies and its conventional social science categories for the way it  ignores bottom-­up politics. His concept of social nonmovement, for example, explains  agency and politics outside the conventional literature on social movements. Although the type of activism he theorizes “falls short of developing legal, financial,

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organizational, and even moral support,” as a “fluid and unstructured form of activism,” it has the “the advantage of flexibility and versatility” (Bayat  2010, 93–94). His notion of “quiet encroachment” is not about protest and or the politics of demand-­making. Rather, it is about generating a new reality on the ground. Writing about “reclaiming youthfulness,” he argues that the state’s fear of fun “is not necessarily about diversion from the higher powers or noble values as such, but about the fear of exit from the paradigm that frames and upholds the mastery of certain types of moral and political authorities, be they individuals, political movements, or states” (2010, 155). Acts of self-­expression by women, youth, or other nonconformist groups – be they joyful, sorrowful, or furious – as performance of citizenship, are not about toppling political structures, but creating social and cultural change on a scale different from conventional notions of political transformations (see Chapters 7, 27, 35). It is this type of conceptualization of agency and everyday life that allows us to account for the intersection of media technologies and politics in Iran.

Conclusion Contrary to popular perceptions, Iran has a complex and dynamic media ecosystem, including the latest developments in streaming services. Although broadcasting has had a similar fate in both pre-­and post-­revolution periods in terms of state’s monopoly, it has expanded considerably during the last three decades. The state’s monopoly over the flow of information and entertainment has been challenged by free-­to-­air satellite television channels beaming to Iran from abroad. The internet has surpassed satellite television as internet-­distributed content became widely accessible via desktop and various mobile devices, although some satellite channels remain powerful voices in the Iranian media ecosystem. These developments have been possible because of the expansion of information and communication technology sector, which in turn became feasible thorough the state’s developmentalist projects in other sectors such as education and telecommunication. The contradictions of pursuing developmentalist projects include the expansion of communication space and thus venues for self-­expression and the performance of citizenship that is critical of the ruling class. With the arrival of IPTV, the state has granted legacy media (the IRIB) regulatory authority over the mushrooming of streaming service. In the context of embracing more neoliberal policies in cultural productions by allowing the private sector to enter cultural enterprises via streaming service, the state is not simply aiming to control for undesirable content. It is providing a mechanism for the legacy media to have more financial and administrative advantages, where the IRIB remains a player and a regulator simultaneously. Writings on Iranian media and politics have tended to focus on mobilization, protest, and resistance to the state, often in the language of the literature on social movements. Such views have invariably been tied to the calendar of electoral politics, various election campaigns, and other elements of formal politics and its institutional practices. Studies of Iranian media that focus on everyday politics and media embedded in social relations will prove more fruitful in addressing politics compared to studies that focus on large-­scale political transformations. The power of the contemporary communication

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space in Iran is not its potential for another political revolution but for enabling a new subjectivity, for transforming the horizon of expectations, and for reimagining another sociopolitical space. This is precisely what the state fears most, for it recognizes the loss of legitimacy and even of religious and moral authority. The task of studying Iranian communication space is to account for these dynamics on a granular scale to show what ordinary folks do every day to assert their agency. References Abu Sharkh, M., and Gough, I. 2010. “Global Welfare Regimes.” Global Social Policy 10, 1: 27–58. Alavi, N. 2005. We Are Iran. Soft Skull Press. Alikhah, F. 2008. “The Politics of Satellite Television in Iran.” In M. Semati (Ed.), Media, Culture and Society in Iran: Living with Globalization and the Islamic State (94–110). Routledge. Azizi, A. 2014. “Can Iran’s New TV Chief Bring IRIB, Rouhani Closer?” Al-­Monitor, November 16. Accessed https://www.al-­monitor.com/originals/2014/11/iran-­irib-­sarafraz-­press-­tv. html#ixzz4ZOlC5fLs. Bayat, A. 2010. Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East. Amsterdam University Press. Brumberg, D., and Farhi, F. 2016. “Introduction: Politics of Contention and Conciliation in Iran’s Semiautocracy.” In D. Brumberg and F. Farhi (Eds.), Power and Change in Iran: Politics of Contention and Conciliation (pp. 1–33). Indiana University Press. Burgess, J., and Green, J. 2009. YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture. Polity. Chalaby, J. K. 2005. Transnational Television Worldwide: Towards a New Media Order. I.B. Tauris. Echchaibi, N. 2021. “In Praise of Arab ‘Defeat’: Another Reading of Arab Struggle.” Cultural Studies, DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2021.2006732 Farhi, F. 1998. “The Contending Discourses on Women in Iran.” Third World Resurgence 94. Accessed May 15, 2022, from https://www.hurights.or.jp/archives/focus/section2/1998/ 03/the-­contending-­discourses-­on-­women-­in-­iran.html Gheissari, A., and Nasr, V. 2009. Democracy in Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty. Oxford University Press. Harris, K. 2017. A Social Revolution: Politics and the Welfare State in Iran. University of California Press. Hemmasi, F. 2020. Tehrangeles Dreaming: Intimacy and Imagination in Southern California’s Iranian Pop Music. Duke University Press. Jones, J. P. 2005. Entertaining Politics: New Political Television and Civic Culture. Rowman and Littlefield. Khiabany, G. 2009. Iranian Media: The Paradox of Modernity. Routledge. Malek, A. and Mohsenian Rad, M. 1994. “Iran.” In Y. Kamalipour and H. Mowlana (Eds.), Mass Media in the Middle East: A Comprehensive Handbook (pp. 74–95). Greenwood Press. Malekzadeh, S. 2016. “Education as Public Good or Private Resource: Accommodation and Demobilization in Iran’s University System.” In D. Brumberg and F. Farhi (Eds.), Power and Change in Iran: Politics of Contention and Conciliation (pp. 101–132). Indiana University Press. Naficy, H. 1992. “Islamizing Film Culture in Iran.” In S. Farsoun and M. Mashayekhi (Eds.), Iran: Political Culture in the Islamic Republic (pp. 123–148). Routledge. Nooshin, L. 2009. “Tomorrow Is Ours”: Re-­imagining Nation, Performing Youth in the New Iranian Pop Music.” In L. Nooshin (Ed.), Music and the Play of Power in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia (pp. 245–268). Ashgate.

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Ratto, M., and Boler, M. 2014. (Eds.). DIY Citizenship: Critical Making and Social Media. The MIT Press. Semati, M. 2007. “Media, the State, and the Pro-­democracy Movement in Iran.” In I. A. Blankson and D. Murphy (Eds.), Globalization and Media Transformation in New and Emerging Democracies (pp. 143–160). SUNY Press. Semati, M. 2012. “The Geopolitics of Parazit, the Iranian Televisual Sphere, and the Global Infrastructure of Political Humor.” Popular Communication 10, 1-­2: 119–30. Semati, M. 2017. “Iran, Media and the Discourse of Human Rights.” In H. Tumber and S.  Waisbord (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Media and Human Rights (pp. 158–168). Routledge. Semati, M., Cassidy, W. P., and Khanjani, M. 2021. Iran and the American Media: Press Coverage of the “Iran Deal” in Context. Palgrave Macmillan. Shahabi, M. 2008. “The Iranian Moral Panic over Video: A Brief History and a Policy Analysis.” In M. Semati (Ed.), Media, Culture and Society in Iran: Living with Globalization and the Islamic State (pp. 127–145). Routledge. Sreberny-­Mohammadi, A. and Mohammadi, A. 1994. Small Media, Big Revolution: Communication, Culture, and the Iranian Revolution. University of Minnesota Press. Sreberny, A., and Khiabany, G. 2010. Blogistan: The Internet and Politics in Iran. I.B. Tauris. Straubhaar, J. 2007. World Television: From Global to Local. Sage. Tehranian, M. 1980. “Communication and Revolution in Iran: The Passing of a Paradigm.” Iranian Studies 13, 1-­4: 5–30. Tehranian, M. 1982. “Iran: Broadcasting and Revolution.” Media Information Australia 23, 1: 54–60. Tehranian, M., Hakimzadeh, F., and Vidale, M. L. 1977. “Preface.” In M. Tehranian, F.  Hakimzadeh, and M. L. Vidale (Eds.), Communications Policy for National Development: A Comparative Perspective (pp. 1–14). Routledge.

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Reframing Jihadism Deciphering the Identity, Politics, and Agenda of Hay’at Tahrir al-­Sham in Northwest Syria Ines Khalifa Barnard and Charlie Winter Introduction For years, the Organization for the Liberation of the Levant – Hay’at Tahrir al-­Sham (HTS) – has sought to “re-­invent” itself, promoting itself as a legitimate local source of authority that has the capacity to rival the Assad regime.1 HTS is a militant Islamist group with roots in al-­Qa’ida and the Islamic State that now dominates Northwestern Syria and controls Idlib city, the last rebel stronghold remaining in the country. Presenting itself as a moderate Syrian Islamist group fighting for the liberation of its country, the leader of the group, Abu Muhammad al-­Jawlani, has actively advocated for HTS to be removed from the “Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (SDN).”2 Published by the US Department of Treasury, the SDN list includes groups and individuals who are identified and sanctioned for their part in illicit or terrorist activities under Executive Order 13224. Appearing on this list constrains HTS in several ways, in terms of both resources and communication and the way it interacts with the international community and local Syrian population.3  Saeed, A., 2021, “Analysis: The Syrian Jihadist Campaigning for International Recognition,” BBC Monitoring. Drevon, J. and Haenni, P., 2021, How Global Jihad Relocalises and Where It Leads: The Case of HTS, the Former AQ Franchise in Syria. European University Institute: 1–34. 2  U.S. Department of the Treasury,  2021, U.S. Department of the Treasury Specifically Designated Nationals List (SDN): 61. 3  Mironova, V. G., 2019, From Freedom Fighters to Jihadists: Human Resources of Non-­State Armed Groups, Oxford University Press. 1

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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HTS’s efforts to distance itself from the global jihadist movement in recent years have included a number of major interviews that al-­Jawlani gave with Western journalists and analysts; including with the International Crisis Group in late January 2020 and, a year later in February 2021, with Martin Smith, an American journalist for PBS Frontline.4 These interviews were aimed at demystifying HTS’s intentions regarding its rule of Idlib and broader agenda for Syria. In each of them, al-­Jawlani used careful rhetoric to frame HTS as a capable, people-­centric security actor that was chiefly concerned with governing the region and addressing its humanitarian crisis while remaining open to reconciliation and even collaboration with nongovernmental organizations. The al-­Jawlani interviews sparked a debate among journalists, politicians, and experts on Syria as to the way HTS should be identified. Some suggested that his willingness to engage in open dialogue was symbolic of his ideological moderation,5 while others stressed the “chameleon” nature of him and his group and, thus, the continuing threat it presents to regional and international security.6 In this chapter, we study HTS’s communication strategy with a view to better determining what it is that actually drives this group; not just what it says is driving it (See Chapter 2). The way HTS builds and propagates its strategic brand reflects its outlook on internal and international affairs, and should inform on the group’s organizational identity and self-­image. “Organizational identity” here is best understood as the combination of cultural, social, and personal factors that form principles of collectivism, roles, and symbols, all of which shape and bind a group together through social interactions and experiences.7 Ultimately, we argue that HTS frames itself as a credible and legitimate security actor and provider in Northwest Syria, one that anchors its actions in a domestic political agenda that is shaped by local needs and demands while also resting on Islamist aspirations. HTS’s multifaceted organizational identity and approach in local governance are mutually reinforcing, intrinsically constitutive of each other. We demonstrate this through discourse analysis of the “opinion articles” published by the Iba’ News Agency, which until 2021 was HTS’s official propaganda outlet, data that we support with relevant secondary data. The chapter proceeds as follows. First, we provide some context on the civil war in Syria and the origins of HTS. Second, we briefly outline HTS’s overall approach toward outreach and strategic communications. Third, we describe the analytical methodology we employed in order to explore it, setting out its overarching results. After that, we  Khalifa, D., 2020, “The Jihadist Factor in Syria’s Idlib: A Conversation with Abu Muhammad a­ l-­Jolani,” International Crisis Group: 1–4; al-­Jolani, A. M., 2021, The Jihadist, 2020, documentary, directed by Martin Smith and Marcela Gaviria, Boston: Frontline. 5  Saeed, A., 2021, “Analysis: The Syrian Jihadist.” 6  Ajjoub, O., 2021, “HTS Is Not al-­Qaeda, But It Is Still an Authoritarian Regime to Be Reckoned With,” Middle East Institute; Zelin, A.Y., 2021, “Hanging on in Idlib: Hayat Tahrir al-­Sham’s Expanding Tribal Engagement,” The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. 7  Arena, M.P. and Arrigo, B. A., 2006, The Terrorist Identity: Explaining the Terrorist Threat. New York University Press; Mead, G. H., 1967, Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist, University of Chicago Press; Schwartz, S. J. et  al., 2009, “Terrorism: an Identity Theory Perspective,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 32, 6: 537–559. 4

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examine and discuss our findings in detail in three thematically grouped sections; (1) Revolution; (2) Politics; and (3) Society. The chapter concludes with a summary of our key observations; we also weigh in on the complexities that must be accounted for when external actors engage with HTS, a “violent extremist” organization that, whatever its ideology, provides for a significant proportion of the Syrian population.

Context and Origins of HTS Since its outbreak in 2011, Syria’s civil war has been characterized by several competing non-­state actors vying for power and legitimacy. This led to the country’s gradual territorial fragmentation.8 However, as of January 2020, which is the start of the data collection period for this chapter, the regime, and its allies – principally Russian and Iranian forces – had regained control of the majority of the country, with control of northern Syria divided between the rule of two groups not aligned with the regime, the Kurdish-­ led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and HTS. The former, with the support of the United States (US), rules northeast Syria via its own Kurd-­dominated government, known locally as the “Autonomous Administration,” while the latter presides over much of northwest Syria, which it administers via the self-­appointed “Salvation Government”.9 HTS’s ascendance in Syria was the result of its pragmatic strategy of cooperation with global jihadist and local Islamist groups. This saw it colluding with the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI), from which it initially emerged in 2012, and al-­Qa’ida, as well as a host of non-­jihadist Islamist groups, before going on to carve out its own independent path once it had established a robust enough political base.10 By 2016, the movement, then known as Jabhat al-­Nusra (“The Support Front”) had become more or less self-­sufficient; a year later, it reincarnated itself as Hay’at Tahrir al-­Sham, an expansive umbrella organization that incorporated both the original Jabhat al-­Nusra core and a panoply of smaller violent Islamist groups that opposed the regime.11 This reincarnation marked its withdrawal from the global jihadist scene, which to this day remains dominated by the Islamic State and al-­Qa’ida.12 Since 2017, HTS has managed to control and accumulate essential natural resources and financial capital by holding a monopoly over the gasoline and diesel fuel trade in northwest Syria.13 These resources have enabled the group to develop a sophisticated model of governance, which is embodied in the “Salvation Government” it launched  Lister, C. R., 2015, The Syrian Jihad: Al-­Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Evolution of an Insurgency, Oxford University Press; UNSC, 2021, Letter dated 21 January 2021 from the Chair of the Security Council Committee pursuant to resolutions 1267 (1999), 1989 (2011) and 2253 (2015). 9  Stein, A. and Burchfield, E., 2019, “The Future of Northeast Syria,” Atlantic Council: 1–16. 10  Furlan, M., 2020, “Rebel Governance at the Time of COVID-­19: Emergencies as Opportunities for Rebel Rulers,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism: 1–24 11  Drevon, and Haenni, How Global Jihad Relocalises and Where It Leads. 12  Zelin, “Hanging on in Idlib.” 13  UNSC. 2021. Letter dated 21 January 2021, p.7. 8

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in 2017.14 Acting as a “civilian front” for the group, this has allowed HTS to invest in various statelike capabilities, such as civil administration, a judicial system applying shari’a (or pseudo-­shari’a law), as well as the provision of services and public goods.15 With the experience it has gained both on the battlefield and in local governance, HTS has become the most complex and sophisticated Islamist group operating in Syria today – a compelling image that it works to entrench through its strategic communications activities.

Strategic Communications in Syria: Methods and Objectives HTS uses strategic communications to compound, amplify, and crystallize its target audiences’ already-­held political beliefs, ultimately seeking to turn thoughts, whether positive or negative, into actions.16 French propaganda theorist Jacques Ellul writes that such communications are most effective when their target audiences have been “encircled” and are being told things to which they are already predisposed.17 If this condition of encirclement has been met, concepts that were once abstract can be normalized so that, eventually, the target audience member finds themselves “becom[ing] another person and obey[ing] impulses foreign to [them].”18 Crucially, this behavioral dividend does not materialize if propaganda is only being consumed “in sporadic fashion and at random.”19 To be truly effective, it should be “total,” making constant use of as many channels of interaction as possible (i.e. media-­based, interpersonal, and atmospheric communication).20 To this end, insurgent groups the world over – HTS among them – work to immerse their audiences in propaganda that is either strategic or tactical in intent. Per Ellul, the former “establishes the general [ideological] line, the array of arguments, the staggering of the campaigns” and “the latter seeks to obtain immediate results within that framework.”21 Crucially, tactical propaganda, which seeks to incite specific actions or behaviors, only “works” if it emerges in the context of ideas already established by strategic, brand-­building outreach.

 Saeed, “Analysis: The Syrian Jihadist.”  Mehchy, et al., 2020, “Assessing Control and Power Dynamics in Syria: De facto Authorities and State Institutions,” Chatham House: 1–35; Cook, J. et al., 2020, “Jurisprudence Beyond the State: An Analysis of Jihadist ‘Justice’ in Yemen, Syria and Libya.” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism: 1–20. 16  Ellul, J., 1962, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, London: Vintage: 166. 17  Ibid., p. 17. 18  Ibid., p. 169. 19  Ibid., p. 9. 20  Ibid., p. 9. 21  Ibid., p. 62. 14 15

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In the specific context of HTS, outreach efforts manifest in three ways: media-­based, performative, and demonstrative.22 Media-­based communications comprise audiovisual content like radio programs, videos, magazines and photo-­reports that are broadcast by HTS on-­and offline – including the Iba’ News Agency’s opinion articles. Performative communications involve direct interpersonal engagement with HTS’s outreach units (e.g. hisbah patrols, da’wah caravans, public punishments, and town fairs). Demonstrative communications are propaganda of the deed-­driven acts of violence geared toward signaling intent and upholding organizational brand, not territorial or material gain.23 Generally speaking, HTS deploys these efforts with a view to achieving one of three strategic objectives: propagation, legitimization, and intimidation.24 The first refers to efforts to attract recruits, draw in donors, and expand the reach of its ideology. The second refers to efforts to justify violence and situate the actions of the movement within a broader Islamic-­historic context. The last refers to efforts to scare and provoke adversaries. It most often manifests in propaganda of the deed and propaganda of the virtual deed. These objectives are usually leveraged simultaneously, with the relative prominence of each fluctuating in accordance with situational context.

Methodology In order to better understand the image that HTS has crafted via its use of strategic communications in recent years, we use thematic networks analysis (as described here) to decipher a body of opinion articles that were published by the Iba’ News Agency during the 18 months between 9 January 2020 and 14 June 2021. This time frame corresponds with HTS’s effort to “open up” to the rest of the world by holding interviews with Western media and meetings with officials.25 As their labeling suggests, Iba’ News Agency opinion articles are equivalent to “­op-­eds”; they are written by individuals who are ostensibly members of HTS but feature a subjective style of writing that contrasts with the rest of its outputs, which are more factual or clearly produced to bolster HTS’s image. Based on grounded theory, thematic networks analysis offers researchers a way to iteratively identify themes and concepts within complex datasets by distancing themselves from the data itself, breaking corpuses down into their component parts and  Raafat, L. and Lister, C., 2018. “From Goods and Services to Counterterrorism: Local Messaging in Hay’at Tahrir al-­Sham’s Propaganda,” Jihadica; Winter, C. and Haid, H., 2018, “Jihadist Propaganda, Offline: Strategic Communications in Modern Warfare,” Middle East Institute; Winter, C., 2018, “Totalitarian Insurgency: Evaluating Daesh’s In-­theater Propaganda Strategy,” Naval War College. 23  For more on propaganda of the deed, see: Bolt, N., 2012, The Violent Image: Insurgent Propaganda and the New Revolutionaries, London: Hurst; Mackinlay, J., 2009, The Insurgent Archipelago: From Mao to Bin Laden, London: Hurst. 24  Winter, C., 2019, “Making Sense of Jihadi Stratcom,” Perspectives on Terrorism 13, 1: 55; Winter, C., 2020, “Redefining Propaganda: The Media Strategy of Daesh,” RUSI Journal 164, 7: 38–42. 25  Saeed, A., 2021, “Analysis: The Syrian Jihadist.” 22

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arranging them into codes.26 The approach used for this project was adapted from Jennifer Attride-­Stirling’s methodology, which, she writes, is geared toward “unearthing the themes salient in a text [or group of texts] at different levels [and] facilitating the structuring and depiction of these themes.”27 Specifying what is meant by “different levels,” Attride-­Stirling notes that: Thematic networks [analysis] systematize[s] the extraction of: (i) lowest-­order premises evident in the text (basic themes); (ii) categories of basic themes grouped together to summarize more abstract principles (organizing themes); and (iii) super-­ordinate themes encapsulating the principal metaphors in the text as a whole (global themes]).28

When applied to our archive of opinion articles, we were able to classify all 78 texts according to their thematic focus. In the course of doing so, we identified three clear content clusters, which we labelled as follows: i) Revolution (46%); ii) Politics (23%); and iii) Society (30%). We analyze each of these in detail in the following sections.

Promotion Defensive Jihad Military Affairs Commemoration of the Arab Spring

Victimisation IDPs

Resilience (29)

Victimhood (7)

Syrian Revolution 46.15%

Political Outlook 23.08%

Public Health Education Technological Advice Effects of Economic Crisis

Provision of Services (14)

Religious Advice Religious Activity

Islam as a Culture (10)

Global Position (14) Local Position (4)

Israel/Palestine Russia Iran Lebanon Afghanistan France The West National Elections Systemic Change

Society 30.77%

Figure 32.1  Thematic Networks of HTS opinion articles, January 2020 to June 2021. Global themes are indicated in orange, their constituent organizing themes in grey, with basic themes as text. The number of articles including in each organizing theme is indicated in brackets.

 Charmaz, K., 1983, “The Grounded Theory Method: An Explication and Interpretation,” in R. Emerson, (Ed.), Contemporary Field Research: A Collection of Readings, Long Grove: Waveland Press, 111. 27  Attride-­Stirling, J., 2001, “Thematic Networks: An Analytical Tool for Qualitative Research,” Qualitative Research 1, 3: 385–405. 28  Attride-­Stirling refers to themes as “basic themes,” discourses as “organizing themes” and narratives as “global themes.” For simplicity’s sake, this report refers only to themes, discourses, and narratives. “Thematic Networks,” p. 388. 26

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Global Theme 1: Revolution The Syrian Revolution is the raison d’être of HTS and is mentioned or alluded to in almost every publication available on the Iba’ News Agency website. Given the context in which HTS operates – a continuous state of war – it is unsurprising that its content perpetually strives to reinvigorate the will of the “resistance” and maintain its members’ dedication to the Syrian cause, especially in relation to overthrowing Assad and freeing Syria from Russian and Iranian “occupations.”29 (Importantly, per its official line, any effort to put an end to tyranny is a form of legitimate, and “defensive,” jihad.) In total, 36 of HTS’s opinion articles between January 2020 and June 2021 focused above all else on the Syrian Revolution. They were characterized by two organizing themes, Resilience and Victimhood.

Resilience The mujahid realizes that continuing is his only option. . . he will fight as long as he is alive. . . and resist. —­Anonymous, 2020a30 Content focusing on this organizing theme praises the endurance of HTS’s soldiers while repeatedly bringing to mind the tenth anniversary of the Arab Spring to convey the broader resilience of HTS as a military power that will eventually triumph in the Syrian war. In this context, HTS would glorify and idealize its fighters a mujahidin, portraying them as God-­fearing militants following the path of “the battlefield, politics, and human fields [society].”31 This framing bestows them with the qualities of reason, sensibility, and sensitivity, at once toning down and legitimizing the violence in which they engage. Similarly, the broader notion of jihad is recurrently referenced, associated as it is with the fighters’ search for “truth” and fulfilment, a “noble” cause which the mujahidin are purportedly honored to carry out, acting in God’s way.32 By rooting violence within Islamic doctrine, these articles enhance the credibility of HTS’s actions and attempt to coax

 Anonymous, 2020f, “From the Womb of Affliction, We See the Conquest of Damascus!” Iba. 30  Citations inserted in italic are extracted directly from Opinionated Articles, 46.15% of which are written anonymously, such as this one. 31  Anonymous, 2020a, “Why Do We Fight?” Iba. 32  al-­Omar, Z. A., 2021a, “The Gaza Battle Thwarted the Normalization Plans,” Iba; al-­Rayyan, H., 2020b, “The Revolution Has Nothing But Its Children. Trump Orders the Killing of Bashar al-­Assad!” Iba; al-­Saif, “From the Womb of Affliction.” 29

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their readers into adopting the “group mind,” dispossessing the self to embrace the group identity, conducive to self-­sacrifice.33 The notion of jihad against the Assad regime and its allies is complemented by other forms of military activity, chief among them operations against the Islamic State.34 These are framed as “counterterrorism” operations that pit HTS against Islamic State “extremists,” implicitly distancing HTS from its historic terrorist pedigree (it was, after all, an offshoot of al-­Qa’ida and the Islamic State). This idea plays directly into its efforts to be removed from the SDN list. What’s more, it underlines its ambitions to deter s­ecurity threats in Idlib and its environs for the benefit of local citizens, something that fundamentally discredits Assad’s claims of wanting to intervene in Idlib to counter terrorism; simultaneously, it allows HTS to frame itself as an alternative power broker to the regime.35 Through these materials, HTS works to justify its selective use of violence, framing it as a regrettable but necessary outcome of its persistent desire to protect the civilians over which it rules against both the Assad regime and the Islamic State.36

Victimhood ‘[T]he fire of vengeance that lurks under the ashes of oppression soon rises with its red embers. . . shak[ing] the trunks of sorrow and the branches of anguish over the separation of the homes, the departure of loved ones, the alienation of homelands and the domination of enemies.’ —­Alois, 2020b This subset of articles frames HTS’s military campaign as something that is driven by a belief in justice and the need to address the crimes that were committed against the Syrian people by the Assad regime. Over the last 10 years, the Syrian people have experienced unprecedented levels of instability and witnessed countless crimes against humanity. HTS’s discourse of victimhood plays upon these experiences, reframing them with militant Islamist and sometimes jihadist undertones and littering its accounts with references to “martyrs” and the  Akhtar, S., 2017, “The Tripod of Terrorism.” International Forum of Psychoanalysis 26, 3: 139–159; Lindemann, T., 2018, “Agency (Mis)recognition in International Violence: The Case of French Jihadism,” Review of International Studies 44, 5: 922–943. 34  Berti, B., 2020, “From Cooperation to Competition: Localization, Militarization and Rebel ­Co-­Governance Arrangements in Syria,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism: 1-­19; Mampilly, Z. C., 2011, Rebel Rulers: Insurgent Governance and Civilian Life During War, Cornell University Press; al-­ Rayyan, H., 2021a, “The Ship of Revolution and Bitter Reality,” Iba. 35  Raafat, L. & Lister, C., 2018, “From Goods and Services to Counterterrorism: Local Messaging in Hay’at Tahrir al-­Sham’s Propaganda,” Jihadica; Zelin, “Hanging on in Idlib.” 36  al-­Khatib, K., 2021, “The Syrian Revolution: In Our Hands We Build Our Glory,” Iba; Martínez, J. C. and Eng, B., 2018, “Stifling Stateness: The Assad Regime’s Campaign Against Rebel Governance,” Security Dialogue 49, 4: 235–253; Schlichte, K. and Schneckener, U., 2016, “Armed Groups and the Politics of Legitimacy,” Civil Wars 17, 4: 409–424. 33

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“jihad.”37 The jihad, in this context, is emphasized as necessary to end suffering and ­enabled internally displaced persons (IDPs) to return to their homes.38 This framing is exceptionally prominent in Islamist and jihadist propaganda, aimed as it is at galvanizing young Muslims to join revolutionary movements.39 The idea of innocent civilians being tortured in abominable ways, starving in sieges, and afflicted by unspeakable violence, is commonly deployed with a view to activating a sort of humanitarianism in the observer, something with which anyone can sympathize.40 It is this powerful narrative that initially shaped the upheaval in Syria, as factions across the country, including the Free Syrian Army, called for defensive jihad.41 HTS’s framing of the collective need for Muslims to answer calls for help from their “brothers” echoes the “martial role” that Arena and Arrigo conceptualized in 2006 – that is, the idea of jihad as a means with which to take justice into one’s own hands.42 In the context of Syria, this was particularly salient from an Islamist perspective as the West initially refrained from intervening. Interpreted as placid “inaction,” this reinforced the idea that “Muslims are merely objects of Western domination.”43 Although the West has since been heavily involved in Syria, it has done so in a limited manner, one that has left the Assad regime as the dominant military actor. Per its official line, as espoused in the Iba’ News Agency’s opinion articles, it is this asymmetry that necessitates the very existence of HTS, which wholeheartedly admits that it is militarily inferior to its adversaries while at the same time claiming to be more determined and committed. Such determination, it holds, has been similarly exemplified by the unfailing tenacity of the Palestinian people, “brothers” to the Syrian people in claiming their land.44

Global Theme 2: Politics As a violent non-­state actor, HTS does not appear to actively engage in conventional national Syrian political affairs. However, the political undertones that are expressed in its opinion articles are plain to see, a way to decipher and inform on its broader political outlook in the context of both local and international issues.

 Alois, M. 2020c. “Thoughts on the Anniversary of the Revolution.” Iba; Anonymous.  2021. “Martyrs on the Soil of Jabal al-­Zawiya.” Iba. 38  Al-Ahmad, A. K. 2021. “The Jasmine Revolution, in Its Tenth Year, Will Remain Until Our Souls Embrace Freedom.” Iba. 39  Hamid, S., 2015, “Radicalization After the Arab Spring: Lessons from Tunisia and Egypt,” in N.  Burns and J. Price (Eds.), Blind Spot: America’s Response to Radicalism in the Middle East (pp. 45–59), Aspen Institute; Lister, C. R. 2015. The Syrian Jihad; Zelin, A.Y. 2020b. Your Sons Are at Your Service: Tunisia’s Missionaries of Jihad. Columbia University Press. 40  Hamid, S., 2015, “Radicalization After the Arab Spring”: 46. 41  Lindemann, “Agency (Mis)recognition in International Violence”: 939. 42  Arena, M. P. and Arrigo, B. A., 2006, The Terrorist Identity: 234 43  Lindemann, “Agency (Mis)recognition in International Violence”: 939. 44  Anonymous, 2020c, “The ‘Right of Return’. . . Syrians Without Homes,” Iba. 37

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In total, 18 of HTS’s opinion articles between January 2020 and June 2021 focused on setting out its Political Outlook. They were characterized by two organizing themes, Local Positioning and Global Positioning.

Local Positioning “Bashar al-­Assad” is only one link in an integrated and regular chain of tyrants who must be held accountable and brough to justice on earth before justice in heaven’ —­Anonymous, 2020a HTS’s uncompromising stance on what the Syrian revolution should culminate in – i.e. an Islamically governed state – determines how it communicates about local politics. On multiple occasions during the period in question, its officials set out to dispel the idea that the last 10 years’ worth of demands for revolutionary change can be addressed by simply replacing Assad with another elite figure, whether Shia or Sunni.45 Rather, HTS insists that Syrians’ freedom of expression and movement will still be curtailed if the state system is preserved, their rights infringed upon due to the endemic corruption that is built into its political and institutional systems. Per HTS, the national elections that were held in May 2021 exemplified these systemic forms of corruption.46 When the electoral campaign was heating up across mainly regime-­held territories in Syria, HTS urged its members and subjects to refrain from participating in the elections, which would ultimately just serve to legitimate the rule of Bashar al-­Assad. Even if one votes against him, one of HTS’s authors held, the vote endorses the system and, by proxy, the regime.47 From his perspective, the most effective form of contestation is political apathy complemented by war. Indeed, while promises of greater democratic power-­sharing within the Assad government may appeal to the Syrian citizens, these “crumbs” of satisfaction cannot compare with “the victories of the mujahidin.”48 Unsurprisingly, in the aftermath of the election, HTS rejected the results, which had Assad allegedly winning 95% of the vote. Notably, much of the international community also claimed them to be “fraudulent” as well.49 Consequently, HTS asserted that its jihad will not be renounced until a completely new system has been implemented. Importantly, the Islamic “state” envisioned by HTS is not intended to be as authoritarian as that of the Islamic State’s caliphate – and this is not just per HTS’s official communications. Miranova, for one, notably holds that HTS is less extreme than both the

 Anonymous, 2020b, “Will Bashar al-­Assad Step Down?” Iba; al-­Omar, Z. A., 2021b, “Bringing the Regime and Symbolic Institutions Down Is the Solution,” Iba. 46  al-­Rayyan, H., 2021b, “Our Freedom Is More Important Than Their Elections,” Iba. 47  al-­Rayyan, H., 2020a, “A Revolution That Has Lasted Ten Years, Can Withstand Another Ten,” Iba. 48  Hakim, S. A., 2020, “Is Putin Apologising to the Syrian people?!” Iba. 49  al-­Rayyan, “Our Freedom Is More Important”; Reuters, 2021, Syria’s Assad Wins 4th Term with 95% of Vote, in Election the West Calls Fraudulent,” Reuters. 45

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Islamic State and al-­Qa’ida. For example, during interviews she conducted with former militants of another Syrian jihadist group, Jaysh al-­Muhajirin w-­al-­Ansar, several respondents asserted that “it was obvious that locals [in HTS’s territory] were supporting democracy.”50

Global Positioning The battles against Islam are many, even if the enemies differ between the Jews, the Russian occupier and the Safavid Shiites. Their goal is to fight and extinguish the flame of Islam along with the spirit of jihad; but the truth is victorious —­al-­Omar, 2021a HTS’s political pragmatism is most evident in the context of its authors’ interventions on international affairs. On the one hand, it maintains a clear hostile stance toward specific states – including Russia, France, Arab states cooperating with Israel, and most explicitly, the Israeli state.51 Aside from Russia and Iran (the “Safavid Shiites” as referred to in the preceding quote), these countries are said to have been blinded by Western ideologies and influences and playing into a colonial game of domination, with the Arab states in particular becoming complicit “puppet states” – a common narrative in jihadist discourse.52 On the other hand, the group’s position toward the United States and its allies (aside, that is, from France) is more ambiguous. Indeed, HTS appears to have warmed up to certain Western actors, especially nongovernmental and humanitarian organizations, over the past year.53 Both locally and abroad, al-­Jawlani’s increased presence and prominence in the public sphere, including Western media outlets, is framed as serving “their cause,” even if it is opposed by HTS’s more doctrinaire supporters.54 HTS has made a concerted effort to respond to these critiques through the Iba News Agency’s opinion pieces, which see its officials explaining and defending al-­Jawlani’s position of openness. Importantly, given the group’s stated national political agenda – i.e. its intent to establish an Islamic state – al-­Jawlani’s exchanges with the West seem to actually confirm the “chameleon” nature of HTS and its leader.55 By reaching out to the West, HTS appears to be seeking to revive Western support for anti-­Assad factions in Syria, all while it works toward the implementation of a mode of governance that would, by definition, oppose Western institutions and political systems.56  Mironova, V. G., 2019, From Freedom Fighters to Jihadists, 219.  Anonymous, “From the Womb of Affliction; al-­Omar, Z. A., 2021a, “The Gaza Battle Thwarted the Normalization Plans,” Iba. 52  Carenzi, S. 2020. “A Downward Scale Shift? The Case of Hay’at Tahrir al-­Sham.” Perspectives on Terrorism 14, 6: 91–105; Muhammad, S. 2020. “‘Normalization’ and an Excuse to Stay on the Throne.” Iba. 53  al-­Abdullah. F. 2021. “Breaking Isolation Is a Revolutionary Duty.” Iba. 54  Ibid. 55  Boghani, P. 2021. “Syrian Militant and Former al-­Qaeda Leader Seeks Wider Acceptance in First Interview with U.S. Journalist.” Frontline. 56  Drevon and Haenni, How Global Jihad Relocalises and Where it Leads. 50 51

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Global Theme 3: Society Issues pertaining to social matters constitute the main focus of the third cluster of HTS’s opinion articles from January 2020 to June 2021. These materials are transparently geared toward garnering local support for it and fostering a sense of governance legitimacy and credibility. On the one hand, HTS shows itself to be providing services and public goods to address its constituents’ basic needs, which are mainly funded through a system of taxation. In the course of doing so, the group secures “pragmatic” legitimacy. On the other hand, it anchors its relevance and credibility in its ability to defend Islam and Muslims, thereby seeking to establish a sense of “moral” legitimacy.57 In total, 24 of HTS’s opinion articles between January 2020 and June 2021 focused on the Society global theme. They were characterized by two organizing themes, Services Provision and Islam as a Culture.

The Provision of Services The virus can spread between humans directly, and it appears that its infection rate has recently increased. The World Health Organization classified it on March 11th, 2020, as a global pandemic. —­Anonymous, 2020f Over the past two years, HTS has invested heavily in what it frames as social welfare, positioning itself as a humanitarian-­minded political actor that cares for its civilian population. These efforts have to date been facilitated by the HTS-­backed Syrian Salvation Government (SGG). Made up of 10 government “ministries,” including health, education, economy, agriculture, and justice, the SSG serves to maintain a social and political order within HTS’s territory, something that it does through a layered bureaucratic system.58 This was most noticeable with its performance during the outbreak of the COVID-­19 virus in Syria.59 While the Syrian government only reported its first cases of COVID-­19 in late March 2020 and largely dismissed early warnings of the pandemic’s gravity, HTS had already issued warnings via the Iba’ News Agency on the virulence of the virus, detailing its symptoms, incubation periods, and sanitation measures that

 Terpstra, N., 2020, “Rebel Governance, Rebel Legitimacy, and External Intervention: Assessing Three Phases of Taliban Rule in Afghanistan,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 31, 6: 1143–1173. 58  Saeed, “Analysis: The Syrian Jihadist.” 59  Anonymous, 2020f, “How Do You Protect Yourself from the Corona Virus (Covid 19)?” Iba; Shire, M. I., 2020, “More Attacks or More Services? Insurgent Groups’ Behaviour During the COVID-­19 Pandemic in Afghanistan, Syria, and Somalia,” Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression: 1–24. 57

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should be adopted as to avoid catching it.60 Through this and similarly oriented efforts (both communications-­based and otherwise), HTS was able to further enhance its credibility and legitimacy as a governing actor in Northwest Syria as a result of COVID-­19, providing food and medical assistance to hundreds of thousands of people.61 The particular way that HTS conceptualized the virus – which was emblematic of its broader approach to governance and services – distinguished it from other violent extremist movements in Syria, such as the Islamic State and the al-­Qa’ida-­aligned Hurras al-­Din. While the latter interpreted COVID-­19 as a punishment from God against the kuffar (nonbelievers), HTS responded to it as a genuinely lethal virus that would harm Muslims as much as it would non-­Muslims,62 thereby debunking popular conspiracy theories around it.63 Indeed, it explicitly stated that even its mujahidin would be adversely affected. Notably, this overarching messaging was occasionally contrasted with by a certain opinion article author who could not help but analyze COVID-­19 through the lens of global jihadism.64 In his eyes, COVID-­19 is a “wind from the trenches of war” that comes to afflict the enemy of the mujahidin and purify Muslim lands, thus heralding the “era of glory and empowerment for Muslims and mujahidin.”65 These conflicting views on COVID-­19 hint at internal doctrinal differences within HTS as well as the flexibility of its organizational identity, which can adapt to appeal to and maintain support from two communities simultaneously, one doctrinally Islamist and the other less so.66

Islam as a Culture and Way of Life The tyranny coming from money and power, and perhaps the epidemic of closed thoughts, is more severe than the epidemic of Coronavirus, and the infection in it is more deadly. —­Alois, 2020a The last subset of opinion articles was overtly religious in its parsing of social and ­political life in Northwest Syria. This is borne of the fact that HTS is always working to demonstrate its legitimacy and suitability as a morally authoritative provider.

 Anonymous, “How Do You Protect Yourself ”; Sweidan, A., 2020, “Pandemic  .  .  .  Not April Fools’ Day!” Iba. 61  Furlan, “Rebel Governance at the Time of COVID-­19”; Shire, “More Attacks or More Services?” 62  This is based on empirical evidence Mohammed Ibrahim Shire (2020: 1; 5) gathered for a comparative study he published in December 2020, on the behavior of violent non-­state actors during the outbreak of COVID-­19. 63  Anonymous, 2020e, “Misinformation Spread About Corona Virus,” Iba; Sweidan, “Pandemic . . . Not April Fools’ Day!” Iba. 64  al-­Farghali, Y., 2020b, “Corona and the Wind of the Trench,” Iba. 65  Ibid. 66  Morrison, J. F., 2017, “Splitting to Survive: Understanding Terrorist Group Fragmentation,” Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice 3, 3: 222–232. 60

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One of the ways it does this is by emphasizing the importance of shari’a law as the basis upon which all social, political, and juridical decisions should be made.67 Being uniquely focused on furthering “that which God wills,” HTS has asserted frequently that it can only yield the best results for Northwest Syria by remaining “true to Islam” and resisting the deceitful Western lifestyle.68 This could be taken to suggest that the system HTS aims to implement in Syria will be rooted solely in Islamic values and principles, thereby following al-­Jawlani’s early stated aspirations of achieving the fusion of al-­din wa-­l-­dawla (religion and the state).69 These Islamist projections are also a way of reinforcing a sense of collectivism within society.70 By providing these moral and normative guidelines for its subjects, it seemingly hopes to foment the rise of a united and single-­ minded community. In this way, its references to jihad conjure the ideas of social justice and solemn obligation in direct response to Westernized conceptions of modernity. While the group remains unclear about the role of violence in its proposed ideal system, some of its current efforts to implement corporal and capital punishments could be taken to indicate that, were it to achieve its desired end state of establishing full Islamic rule, it would be characterized by brutal implementation of law and order. Interestingly, this is entirely omitted from its opinion articles, a move that may be aimed at improving its standing among non-­Islamist audiences (as has been seen with al-­Qa’ida in Tunisia and Yemen in particular).71

Conclusion Retracing 18 months’ worth of HTS’s written communications, as published by the Iba’ News Agency, affords us a window into its political agenda and ideological pragmatism. Systematically, HTS has framed itself as having an all-­encompassing statelike role that is based on a multifaceted organizational identity combining military affairs, local security, and social welfare into one comprehensive strategy. This multidimensional local governance framework is continually bolstered and promoted through strategic outreach in order to reinforce its pragmatic and moral legitimacy. By continually anchoring its communications in the broader context of the Syrian Revolution and the nomenclature of jihadism, HTS frames itself as a rebel group whose violence is constrained by the environment it operates in, rather than its organizational identity and ideology. Its fighters, while by definition furthering the agenda of the broader opposition, are positioned as an invincible Islamic vanguard of the Syrian revolution, its political officials as jihadist idealists maintaining law and order, and its security and welfare offices as extensions of its aspirational Islamic state. Through these  al-­Farghali, F., 2020a, “The Genius Behind Decision-­Making Is Its Greatest Pillar,” Iba.  Ibid; Anonymous, 2020d, “In Light of ‘Corona’ . . . How Do Muslims Receive the Month of Ramadan?” Iba. 69   al-­Jolani, The Jihadist; Cook, “Jurisprudence Beyond the State.” 70  Haid. H., “HTS Offline Propaganda.” 71  Cook, “Jurisprudence Beyond the State”: 8. 67 68

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materials at least, HTS has attempted to embed itself into the fabric of Northwest Syrian society while holding aloft the banner of defensive jihad, something that testifies to the violent Islamist identity that remains at its core. These complex organizational dynamics and ideological influences complicate the issue of engagement with HTS at both a state and non-­state level. Despite its violent rhetoric, which remains close in tone to that of the Islamic State and al-­Qa’ida, it remains, per US diplomat James Jeffrey, “the least bad option of the various options on Idlib.”72 Recognizing that this is in many ways the case given the alternatives (the Assad regime, lawlessness, or Turkish occupation to mention but three), it is critical that a more robust effort be made to decipher HTS’s political ambitions, especially as they relate to its utterances on jihad and “statehood.” The extent to which these are “just” rhetorical mechanisms for it is the basis on which decisions around formal engagement should be made. References al-­Abdullah, F. 2021. “Breaking Isolation Is a Revolutionary Duty.” Iba. 9 Feb. Available from: https://ebaa.news/opinion-­article/2021/02/73490/ (Accessed 20 July 2021). Al-­Ahmad, A.K. 2021. “The Jasmine Revolution, in Its Tenth Year, Will Remain Until Our Souls Embrace Freedom.” Iba. 20  March. Available from: https://ebaa.news/opinion-­article/ 2021/03/73778/ (Accessed 16 July 2021). Ajjoub, O. 2021. “HTS Is Not al-­Qaeda, But It Is Still an Authoritarian Regime to Be Reckoned With.” Middle East Institute. Alois, M. 2020a. “Reproducing Consciousness in the Time of Corona.” Iba. 19 April. Available from: https://ebaa.news/opinion-­article/2020/04/67177/ (Accessed 15 July 2021). Alois, M. 2020b. “Class Boys or Cave Boys?” Iba. 3 Feb. Available from: https://ebaa.news/ opinion-­article/2020/02/64529/ (Accessed 16 July 2021). Alois, M. 2020c. “Thoughts on the Anniversary of the Revolution.” Iba. 24 March. Available from: https://ebaa.news/opinion-­article/2020/03/66916/ (Accessed 15 July 2021). Akhtar, S. 2017. “The Tripod of Terrorism.” International Forum of Psychoanalysis 26, 3: 139–159. Anonymous. 2020a. “Why Do We Fight?” Iba. 11 August. Available from: https://ebaa.news/ opinion-­article/2020/08/70794/ (Accessed 12 July 2021). Anonymous. 2020b. “Will Bashar al-­Assad Step Down?” Iba. 18 July. Available from: https://ebaa. news/opinion-­article/2020/07/69988/ (Accessed 16 July 2021). Anonymous. 2020c. “The ‘Right of Return’. . . Syrians Without Homes.” Iba. 21 May. Available from: https://ebaa.news/opinion-­article/2020/05/68267/ (Accessed 16 July 2021). Anonymous. 2020d. “In Light of ‘Corona’ . . . How Do Muslims Receive the Month of Ramadan?” Iba. 15 April. Available from: https://ebaa.news/opinion-­article/2021/04/73952/ (Accessed 12 July 2021). Anonymous. 2020e. “Misinformation Spread About Corona Virus.” Iba. 3 April. Available from: https://ebaa.news/opinion-­article/2020/04/67069/ (Accessed 12 July 2021). Anonymous. 2020f. “How Do You Protect Yourself from the Corona Virus (Covid 19)?” Iba. 17  March. Available from: https://ebaa.news/opinion-­article/2020/03/66775/ (Accessed 12 July 2021).

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Anonymous. 2020g. “From the Womb of Affliction, We See the Conquest of Damascus!” Iba. 30 January. Available from: https://ebaa.news/opinion-­article/2020/01/64120/ (Accessed 13 July 2021). Anonymous. 2021. “Martyrs on the Soil of Jabal al-­Zawiya.” Iba. 14 June. Available from: https:// ebaa.news/opinion-­article/2021/06/74461/ (Accessed 25 July 2021). Arena, M.P. & Arrigo, B.A. 2006. The Terrorist Identity: Explaining the Terrorist Threat. New York University Press. Berti, B. 2020. “From Cooperation to Competition: Localization, Militarization and Rebel Co-­ Governance Arrangements in Syria.” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 46, 2: 1–19. Boghani, P. 2021. “Syrian Militant and Former al-­Qaeda Leader Seeks Wider Acceptance in First Interview with U.S. Journalist.” Frontline. 2 April. Braddock, K. 2020. Weaponized Words: The Strategic Role of Persuasion in Violent Radicalization and Counter-­Persuasion. New York: Cambridge University Press. Carenzi, S. 2020. “A Downward Scale Shift? The Case of Hay’at Tahrir al-­Sham.” Perspectives on Terrorism 14, 6: 91–105. Cook, J. et al. 2020. “Jurisprudence Beyond the State: an Analysis of Jihadist ‘Justice’ in Yemen, Syria and Libya.” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism. 1–20. Drevon, J. and Haenni, P. 2021. “How Global Jihad Relocalises and Where It Leads: The Case of HTS, the Former AQ Franchise in Syria.” European University Institute: 1–34. Droogan, J. and Peattie, S. “Reading Jihad: Mapping the Shifting Themes of Inspire Magazine.” Terrorism and Political Violence 30, 4: 684–717. Droogan, J. and Peattie, S. “Mapping the Thematic Landscape of Dabiq Magazine.” Australian Journal of International Affairs 71, 6: 591–620. al-­Farghali, F. 2020a. The Genius Behind Decision-­Making Is Its Greatest Pillar.” Iba. 28 April. Available from: https://ebaa.news/opinion-­ article/2020/04/67622/ (Accessed 20  July 2021). al-­Farghali, Y. 2020b. Corona and the Wind of the Trench. Iba. 7 April. Available from: https:// ebaa.news/opinion-­article/2020/04/67079/ (Accessed 20 July 2021). Furlan, M. 2020. “Rebel Governance at the Time of COVID-­19: Emergencies as Opportunities for Rebel Rulers.” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 1–24. Haid. H. 2019. “HTS Offline Propaganda: Infrastructure, Engagement and Monopoly.” ICSR: 3–28. Hakim, S. A. 2020. “Is Putin Apologising to the Syrian People?!” Iba. 14  May. Available from: https://ebaa.news/opinion-­article/2020/05/67838/ (Accessed 21 July 2021). Hamid, S. 2015. “Radicalization After the Arab Spring: Lessons from Tunisia and Egypt.” In N. Burns and J. Price (Eds.), Blind Spot: America’s Response to Radicalism in the Middle East (pp. 45–59). Aspen Institute. International Crisis Group. 2020. “The Jihadist Factor in Syria’s Idlib: A Conversation with Abu Muhammad al-­Jolani.” International Crisis Group: 1–4 al-­Jolani, A. M. 2020. The Jihadist. Documentary directed by Martin Smith and Marcela Gaviria. Boston: Frontline. al-­Khatib, K. 2021. “The Syrian Revolution: In Our Hands We Build Our Glory.” Iba. 30 January. Available from: https://ebaa.news/opinion-­article/2021/01/73421/ (Accessed 18 July 2021). Mead, G. H. 1967. Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. University of Chicago Press. Lindemann, T. 2018. “Agency (Mis)recognition In International Violence: The Case of French Jihadism.” Review of International Studies 44, 5: 922–943. Lister, C. R. 2015. The Syrian Jihad: Al-­Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Evolution of an Insurgency. Oxford University Press.

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Mampilly, Z. C. 2011. Rebel Rulers: Insurgent Governance and Civilian Life During War. Cornell University Press. Martínez, J. C. and Eng, B. 2018. “Stifling Stateness: The Assad Regime’s Campaign Against Rebel Governance.” Security Dialogue 49, 4: 235≠253. Mehchy, Z. et al. 2020. “Assessing Control and Power Dynamics in Syria: De facto Authorities and State Institutions.” Chatham House: 1–35. Mironova, V. G. 2019. From Freedom Fighters to Jihadists: Human Resources of Non-­State Armed Groups. Oxford University Press. Morrison, J. F. 2017. “Splitting to Survive: Understanding Terrorist Group Fragmentation.” Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice 3, 3: 222–232. Muhammad, S. 2020. “‘Normalization’ and an Excuse to Stay on the Throne.” Iba. 28 Sept. Available from: https://ebaa.news/opinion-­ article/2020/09/71951/ (Accessed 20  July 2021). al-­Omar, Z. A. 2021a. “The Gaza Battle Thwarted the Normalization Plans.” Iba. 25 May. Available from: https://ebaa.news/opinion-­article/2021/08/70794/ (Accessed 20 July 2021). al-­Omar, Z. A. 2021b. “Bringing the Regime and Symbolic Institutions Down Is the Solution.” Iba. 27 Mars. Available from: https://ebaa.news/opinion-­article/2021/03/73832/ (Accessed 20 July 2021). Raafat, L. and Lister, C. 2018. “From Goods and Services to Counterterrorism: Local Messaging in Hay’at Tahrir al-­Sham’s Propaganda.” Jihadica. al-­Rayyan, H. 2020a. “A Revolution That Has Lasted Ten Years, Can Withstand Another Ten.” Iba. 30  November. Available from: https://ebaa.news/opinion-­ article/2020/11/72732/ (Accessed 21 July 2021). al-­Rayyan, H. 2020b. “The Revolution Has Nothing but Its Children. Trump Orders the Killing of Bashar al-­Assad!” Iba. 18 September. Available from: https://ebaa.news/opinion-­ article/2020/09/71679/ (Accessed 21 July 2021). al-­Rayyan, H. 2021a. “The Ship of Revolution and Bitter Reality.” Iba. 5 Feb. Available from: https://ebaa.news/opinion-­article/2021/02/73461/ (Accessed 18 July 2021). al-­Rayyan, H. 2021b. “Our Freedom Is More Important Than Their Elections.” Iba. 23 Feb. Available from: https://ebaa.news/opinion-­article/2021/02/73597/ (Accessed 21 July 2021). Reuters, 2021. “Syria’s Assad Wins 4th Term with 95% of Vote, in Election the West Calls Fraudulent.” Reuters. 28  May. Available from: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-­ east/syrias-­president-­bashar-­al-­assad-­wins-­fourth-­term-­office-­with-­951-­votes-­live-­2021-­ 05-­27/ (Accessed 22 July 2021). Saeed, A. 2021. “Analysis: The Syrian Jihadist Campaigning for International Recognition.” BBC Monitoring. al-­Saif, H. 2020. “From the Womb of Affliction, We See the Conquest of Damascus!” Iba. 30 Jan. Available from: https://ebaa.news/opinion-­ article/2020/01/64120/ (Accessed 23  July 2021). Schlichte, K. and Schneckener, U. 2016. “Armed Groups and the Politics of Legitimacy.” Civil Wars 17, 4: 409–424. Schwartz, S. J. et  al. 2009. “Terrorism: An Identity Theory Perspective.” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 32, 6: 537–559. Shire, M. I. 2020. “More Attacks or More Services? Insurgent Groups’ Behaviour During the COVID-­19 Pandemic in Afghanistan, Syria, and Somalia.” Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression 14, 4: 1–24. Stein, A. and Burchfield, E. 2019. “The Future of Northeast Syria.” Atlantic Council: 1–16. Sweidan, A. 2020. “Pandemic  .  .  .  Not April Fools’ Day!” Iba. 18  March. Available from: https://ebaa.news/opinion-­article/2020/03/66789/ (Accessed 22 July 2021).

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Beyond the Arab Uprisings Politics of Rap in the Middle East Stefano Barone

Introduction For many Western observers, the Arab uprisings of 2010/2011 put Middle Eastern rap on the map. The global resonance of songs such as Rayes Lebled (Head of State) by Tunisian rapper El General consecrated rap in the area as a veritable ideoscape of revolt, one that sparked and mobilized popular unrest all over the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and inspired international movements such as the Indignados and Occupy. In turn, the revolutionary character of Middle Eastern rap has been understood as a natural development of the original spirit of hip-­hop. For instance, Sean O’Keefe, a blogger who extensively covered Arab Spring rap during the time of the revolts, observes that Hip hop is a fundamentally subversive genre. It has become a universal medium of social and political expression for young, dissident, and marginalised people everywhere. What Arabic hip hop has given the Arab world is a widely accessible and unfiltered medium for disseminating revolutionary ideas. (O’Keefe 2011)

This chapter investigates the political uses and potential of rap in the Middle East and North Africa, going beyond the somewhat sensationalistic accounts that circulated at that stage and the essentialism on rap and hip-­hop present in analyses such as O’Keefe’s. I problematize the political uses and understandings of rap in the region, confronting their diversity with the narratives produced, in particular, by Western observers (see Chapters 1, 4, 41). I compare and contrast insights from my fieldwork on Tunisian rap (Barone 2019a; Barone 2019b; Golpushnezad and Barone 2016) with existing scholarship

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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on rap across the MENA.1 I first discuss rap scenes before the Arab uprisings, then explore the effects and discourses of that period of mobilization, and finally discuss political conditions and uses of the genre in more recent years. The accessibility and the unfiltered character of rap, as described earlier by O’Keefe, are indeed important conditions of its worldwide circulation and of critical potential. Rap is a translocal grammar of exciting beats, brain-­feeding rhymes, visionary production and sampling techniques, and grooves that are at once hardcore and sexy. But its compelling character is further enhanced by specific conditions of production and dissemination that made it a highly adaptable music genre, and a highly malleable instrument of expression, communication and – when needed – protest (see Chapters 4, 40). Rap rests on a paradoxical blend of mainstream relevance and ghetto knowledge. It is an inexpensive form of expression, at least by line of principle: it only takes a microphone, a beat (that nowadays can be easily downloaded), and possibly a phone with a camera to shoot videos and circulate one’s music all over the world. This makes it ideal for disadvantaged youth in the global South,2 as it allows them to bypass some material and sociopolitical constraints on making music – from the high cost of musical instruments to the availability of performance spaces and a vibrant music industry. Rap’s emphasis on the local is another central aspect of its globalization. Rap often highlights a locality, in particular dispossessed quarters and “ghettoes” (Bennett, 2004; Forman, 2002; Osumare, 2001); it also encourages the use of local languages and dialects, which make it a perfect glocal medium, ready to be adjusted to specific situations and to be reinvented from below (see Terkourafi 2010). Furthermore, rap and hip-­hop’s representation of the disadvantaged are paradoxically powered by the culture’s mainstream success and availability. Rap is among the best-­ selling music genres in the world; the styles and aesthetics of hip-­hop have been inspiring global youth for decades, going well beyond the niche of “hip-­hop heads” and influencing vast masses of youth, who may just borrow their most mainstream signifiers or embrace those aspects of hip-­hop culture that match their local lifestyles. Such features are central in understanding why rap and hip-­hop became important means of expression for Middle Eastern youth after  – and in some cases before  – the Arab uprisings. However, many critics have challenged simplistic associations between the “natural” protest spirit of rap and its alleged centrality in social movements across the MENA region. First, the supposed political essence of rap has been a matter of contention for rappers, fans, and scholars since the genre’s global diffusion. It is beyond dispute that hip-­hop culture emerged from a context – 1970s parties held by African Americans and Puerto Ricans in South Bronx, NYC – an area socially constructed by structural racism, urban abandonment, and mass youth unemployment (Rose  1994; Chang  2005). The cultural elements of hip-­hop – rapping, DJing, writing, breakdancing – offered Black and

 In the course of my research on Tunisian music scenes, I interviewed 28 members of the rap scene – rappers, beatmakers, producers, DJs, members of crews, and event organizers. Interviews were carried out in 2014, 2015, and 2018. 2  For a specific analysis of the Arab world, see Khalil (2019). 1

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brown Americans the means for grassroots entertainment, for building a community as an alternative to gangs, and for the articulation of their experience of exclusion and violence (both structural and physical) within white America. While rap has since produced its own tradition of explicit protest music  – from Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five’s The Message (1982), to the works of Public Enemy, and to Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy-­winning To Pimp a Butterfly (2016) – it could be argued that most rap is not directly political, and is more concerned with themes relating to street life, violence, luxury, sensual pleasures, and sometimes existential introspection. Many scholars that study rap, however, would contend that rap and hip-­ hop carry a political significance per se, usually understood as resistance against the social and racial order. A sophisticated resistance framework informs Tricia Rose’s pioneering work on rap and hip-­hop (1994), and many subsequent analyses have highlighted the (sometimes implicitly) political character of rap and hip-­hop, as it emerges from the context of social struggle in which these cultural forms have been developed (see Martinez  1997; and Osumare  2007, among others). Other scholars criticize such an emphasis on resistance for several reasons, including the essentialization of black people’s “soul” and struggle (Kelley 1997), rap’s ambiguous relations to the music industry (Krims 2000), and its ambivalent intersectional aspects – for instance, the reproduction of machismo and homophobia within the genre (Perry 2004; Pough 2015). While these debates (both within rap scenes and in the academia) have contributed to complexify the narratives about rap in the United States, and to some extent in Europe, rap in the global South is still understood as inherently resistance-­focused, almost as if it were the “natural heir” to US politically conscious rap (Moreno-­Almeida 2017). In the following section, I will look at rap in the Middle East before the Arab uprisings, discussing the diverse conditions of development of local rap scenes, and their complex political entanglements.

Before Arab Uprisings Can we talk about a Middle Eastern rap scene? Surely, gatherings of regional rap talents exist, together with transnational spaces of cooperation and competition. However, rappers’ networks seem to be area-­specific, with collaborations mainly involving artists from neighboring countries (see Wiedemann  2019). In some cases, cross-­border relations and movements directly contributed to the development of national rap scenes. For instance, some Tunisian rappers told me they developed their passion for rap music thanks to cassettes being smuggled through the Algerian frontier, including the music of the Algerian group Double Kanon (Barone 2019b). The construction of local scenes needs, then, to be related to further translocal networks, overlapping with the intra-­regional Middle Eastern rap network; such is the case of the diaspora, instrumental in circulating MENA rap and providing opportunities for its members (Isherwood 2014), and of Muslim rap networks (see Aïdi 2014). Still, it can be said that most of the relevant dynamics of local rap scenes, including the political uses and causes of rap, develop within national borders, which renders Middle Eastern

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rap an asymmetric field. Local rap artists started appearing around the late 1980s and early 1990s in countries such as Algeria (Miliani 2002) and Tunisia (Bouzouita 2013). It can be argued, however, that proper rap scenes have emerged all across the region since the late 1990s, with rap gaining momentum at the turn of the millennium. In most cases, these local scenes were marginal niches, mainly frequented by passionate hip-­hop heads. Thus, they were still far from being templates for the political expression of a generation or a social class, as they often came to be interpreted during the Arab uprisings. That initial scenario was sometimes regarded with nostalgia in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings, as expressed by a Tunisian rapper: “You would rap for an audience of rappers, which meant that you couldn’t afford to be lame.” Still, it can be said that those niche scenes testified to some wider power shifts and transformations of social expression. As Hadj Miliani (2002) points out, in the case of Algerian rap, the genre’s diffusion was originally due to the encounter between the growing demographic weight of local youth and their appropriation of the (informational and audiovisual) instruments of technological modernity. Similarly, Joe Khalil (2019) situates the making of Saudi and Tunisian rap within translocal rhizomes of media artifacts produced from below. Such a shift in the appropriation of technology has been considered by Muneer Saidani (2017) as instrumental for the affirmation of rap in the post-­revolutionary cultural field: the availability of cheap home recording technology contributed to the redesigning of power relations within the music industry, which used to exclude rap and the social classes that ideally produced and consumed it. Those scenes were already wrapped up in networks of political governance, both at the level of music industries and at a broader societal level. In countries such as Morocco and Tunisia, rap could exist within government-­sanctioned spaces, for instance, youth centers and, in some cases, state-­sponsored events. Rappers were relatively more acceptable if compared to other youth cultures3 that sparked moral panics across the region during the 2000s, such as heavy metal, often represented as Satanic and westernizing (Barone 2019b; LeVine 2008; Moreno-­Almeida 2017). For instance, by singing in breakdance shows, Tunisian rappers had access to public spaces controlled by the ruling party. Such a compromise was, however, always precarious, and rappers constantly faced the threat of exclusion, censorship, and repression. Songs would not automatically avoid all political references, but political expression was sanctioned by an implicit pact with governing institutions; rappers such as Balti (who became, in the 2000s, the “godfather” of the Tunisian scene) limited political references to themes such as Palestine, migration, and more generic narratives of social disadvantage (Baoueb 2020). In Morocco a flourishing “alternative” cultural panorama, and the festivals that catered such culture, have been at the same time conjured and instrumentalized by the Makhzen. Rap thus became a representation of the country’s image of openness, although some artists were sponsored in order to become mouthpieces for the royal ideology. In such a landscape, the rise of patriotic rap (as proposed by groups such as Fnaïre) signified at once wider acceptance of rap as a legitimate “Moroccan” – and not westernized – music style, and of the political use of rap to serve nationalist discourses (Moreno-­Almeida 2016, 2017).  For a contextualization of the debate on youth cultures to the MENA, see Kraidy and Khalil 2008.

3

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A different case illustrating the governance of rap through its embedding in networks of power comes from Palestine. While Palestinian rap has been considered the quintessential music of struggle (Swedenburg 2013), its origins do not necessarily embody the uncompromising spirit of resistance against Zionist occupation. DAM, the most famous Palestinian group, was part of the Israeli rap scene before becoming politicized after the Second Intifada. Well before they began to stick to politics only, they sang about drug dealing and street malaise and at times even collaborated with Jewish right-­wing rappers (Swedenburg 2013). The preceding examples show that the political character of Middle Eastern rap has less to do with the direct expression of its essence than it does with unstable equilibriums of power, constant negotiations, and subtle social transformations. In Tunisia, Balti was despised as “Ben Ali’s rapper” (Last Night in Orient, 2009) due to his access to the local music establishment and appearances before the president. But when the first remarkably anti-­regime song came out, his position was revealed to be frailer than it seemed. 3bed fi Tarkina (People in the Corner, 2005) was composed and published by Ferid el Extranjero, a Tunisian rapper living in Spain. Still, unable to find out the identity of the rapper, the Tunisian police violently interrogated the most popular rappers, including Balti, and tried to compare their voices with the one in the song to identify the culprit. Balti’s involvement in this episode demonstrates how being “a part of the system” was always an unstable condition (Bouzouita 2013). This helps to clarify the risks run by rappers who overtly defied power in 2010/2011; their efforts not only transformed the political narrative and role of rap in the MENA region, but also opened a wide range of ways in which rap could be now used politically.

Rap, Arab Uprisings and the Paradigm of Struggle Rayes Lebled was published by Tunisian rapper El General in November 2010 amid a cyberactivism campaign against the corrupt reign of president Zine el-­Abidine Ben Ali, which by December 2010 merged with the protests hailing from the country’s inland region. Those protests followed the self-­immolation of Tarek Mohammed Bouazizi, a street vendor who set himself on fire after his fruit and vegetable cart had been confiscated by the police. Bouazizi’s act resulted in the uprising that, by January 14, caused the departure of Ben Ali. Rayes Lebled sought to interrogate the president about the conditions of misery and poverty experienced by Tunisians; in the days immediately preceding Ben Ali’s escape from the country, the song earned its author an arrest, and international celebrity status. The song came to be considered the inspiration for the Arab uprisings, and El General even made it to Time magazine’s list of the 100  most influential people of 2011 (Gana 2012). It is perhaps surprising that El General was not at all a popular rapper within the Tunisian rap scene; other rappers and members of the scene generally despised him, considering him an outsider and somebody who was only famous because of the revolutionary trend powered by Western media. Still, the worldwide fame of El General, the

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Arab Spring, and some other consequences of Ben Ali’s departure – for instance, the end of censorship on media such as YouTube – did an enormous service to local rap. In the post-­revolutionary panorama, rap was one of the most popular music genres among Tunisian youth (Zegnani 2019); its subversive capital (Nooshin 2017), inexpensive nature of production, and its adherence to the lifestyles and ideals of disadvantaged youth – those who had sparked the revolution, and who had been silenced so far – made it the perfect post-­revolutionary genre. Rayes Lebled sparked a wave of rap songs celebrating (or aiming to inspire) revolts across the region.4 While Western media established rap as the music of the Arab Spring, it actually coexisted with a diverse array of music expressing the protest values in each country. In the case of Egypt, the song Irhal (Go Away) by rock singer Ramy Essam (LeVine 2012) and genres such as Mahragan (Swedenburg 2012; Sanchez-­Garcia 2018) were central in the landscape of street protests. It has furthermore been argued that rap and non-­rap songs commenting on protests, or discussing their causes, constituted only a very limited portion of the actual use of sound within the uprising;: chanting during demonstrations, making noise, and playing percussive instruments were all uses of sound aimed at maintaining enthusiasm and courage among protesters (McDonald 2019). This has been visible in the recent Algerian Hirak protest, in which rap hymns such as Franco-­Algerian rapper Soolking’s Liberté joined a complex soundscape of charivaris and football chants (Aggoun 2021). The centrality of rap and its roles during Arab uprisings have been polemically debated. According to Mark LeVine (2012), songs such as Rayes Lebled “bleed history”: their musical form embodies the history of vexations suffered by the societies in which they were composed. Discussing Tunisian rap, Ilyana Ovshieva (2013) argues that although rap did not “make” the revolution, it channeled a sense of emotional resolve, reworking the theme of dignity and contributing to turn it into a collective value and a source of political demands. Other authors have been more critical of Western narratives on “Arab Spring Rap,” considering it a case of the “struggle paradigm.” Ted Swedenburg (2013) identified such a discursive paradigm through the case of Palestinian rap, criticizing how scholars and development organizations only praised local rap insofar as it expressed political values, thus ignoring the genre’s complexity. For some of these authors, the emphasis on rap was a way of framing the Arab uprisings as the result of Western cultural influences (see McDonald  2019). Others (see Gonzalez-­Quijano 2013) signaled the orientalism at play in the banalization of Arab rap. Such an orientalist gaze arguably simplified local rap scenes, dismissing the differences and conflicts between their members, and produced a rhetorical image of rappers as modern, secular artists – which did not match the complex reality of Middle Eastern rap scenes. In any case, the protest scenario, and the global coverage about it, transformed the conditions of existence of rap scenes across the Middle East, thus changing both their governmentality and their political potential. In the next section, I explore these two intertwining aspects in the case of the post-­uprisings rap. 4

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 See McDonald (2019) for some examples.

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The Politics of Post-­Uprisings Rap The fortunes and struggle of post-­Arab uprisings rap scenes varied from country to country. The subversive capital of rappers became embedded in local forms of governmentality. Rappers had to adjust to such governmentality, or to try to transform it from within – alternatively, they would suffer exclusion and sometimes violence. The cases of Tunisian and Moroccan rap are illustrative here. In post-­revolutionary Tunisia, the rap scene came to be hugely successful, albeit mostly in the virtual realm, as the country did not have a solid music industry that could effectively professionalize the careers of rappers, except for a few prominent “mainstream” artists. The shortcomings of the music industry were somewhat compensated by the extremely fragmented political establishment, parts of which could integrate (and hire) rappers, and profit from their subversive capital in order to grant themselves revolutionary legitimacy. Political parties started to collaborate with rappers, who sang at political rallies and during election campaigns, much to the criticism of other, more independent, rappers who blamed their colleagues for “touching the money” (of politics). However, this dichotomy was less sharp than one can imagine. Rappers often oscillated between these two positions, needing to compromise with the establishment (or parts of it) in order to make a living, and being sanctioned  – ­marginalized by the industry, or even arrested by the police  – when practicing their independence from “the system” (intended as a multitude of different agencies and ­powers) (Golpushnezad and Barone 2016). In Morocco, hegemony and cultural patronage by the King and the Makhzen has been a focal node of the entanglement between political authoritarianism, the control of the music industry, and the commodification of resistance discourses. Indeed, Cristina Moreno-­Almeida (2017) reputes the resistance paradigm as limiting to understand Moroccan (and Middle Eastern) rap, as it flattens a complex landscape in which many important rappers compromised with the Makhzen-­hegemonized establishment in order to be politically accepted and commercially successful. For Moroccan rappers, being politically accepted also meant being able to publish music and to gain commercial attention. As in the Tunisian case, this governmentality was also exercised through exclusion – commercial exclusion, and even violent repression, as testified by the case of  rapper El 7a9ed, whose songs such as the anti-­police and anti-­regime Kleb Dawla (Dogs of the State, 2010) cost him multiple arrests (Boum 2021).5 A further aspect of the governance of Middle Eastern rap scenes is the influence provided by foreign agencies and organizations – be it NGOs, cooperation agencies, or cultural diplomacy institutes such as the Institut Français or the Goethe-­Institut. These actors provide funding to rappers, promote events in the destination countries, and invite musicians to events and artistic residencies abroad. Such collaborations often happen under the banner of the struggle paradigm; rappers are invited as ambassadors of human rights or forebearers of political causes, as Thomas Burkhalter (2014) observed  A case that echoes the arrest of Tunisian rapper Weld el 15, caused by his song Boulicia Kleb [Cops Are Dogs, 2013]. See Zegnani, 2019.

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in the case of Lebanon, where artists from the Palestinian camps were favored over Lebanese ones. The discourses of these agencies were often based on a loose range of values inspired by the principles of liberal democracy and democratic transitions  – Middle East rappers “played the game,” collaborating and compromising with these platforms, but were often critical of their initiative, at times perceived as postcolonial, as evidenced in the case of Tunisian rappers (Golpushnezad and Barone 2016). While these were the conditions of existence for rap scenes in (some) post-­ revolutionary scenarios, it cannot be said that the political uses of rap in those scenarios were absolutely determined by such conditions, although it is necessary to consider them in order to understand the politics of rap in the region. Rap as protest music continued to exist in Middle Eastern countries, and its vitality was evidenced by the frequency of arrests of rappers in the region, often motivated by indirect accusations, such as drug-­related matters (as happens often in Tunisia). In the most violently authoritarian cases, such as in Egypt, it has been argued that the climate of repression disciplined the rap scene by depoliticizing it; that is, artists started pursuing sonic and linguistic experimentation, or reinvented their subversive capital away from straightforward protest (Sprengel 2020). In other cases, the voice of protest rap artists kept resonating from the diaspora, as a safer way of giving voice to political battles.

Islam and Rap Besides anti-­regime protest, a tradition of rap that has always been prominent in the region is the Islam-­inspired one (at least since the rise of Lotfi Double Kanon, one of the Algerian rap pioneers). Rather than thinking of a generic, regionwide Islamic rap scene, this should be considered as a very diverse public sphere, composed of rappers embracing different forms of Islam and using Islam in different ways. Tunisia alone sported a complex interchange between rappers, from artists such as Guito’n and C.A.S.A., who not only wore their religion on their sleeve but also wrote songs to dismiss Salafi Islam, to rappers such as L’Islamiste, who allegedly ended up joining the jihad in Syria, to generally “gangsta” rappers such as Redstar Radi, who claimed to be a nonpracticing Muslim but still sang bars praising fundamentalist Islam. Many further elements complicated the uses of Islam in rap; for instance, some cases (e.g. C.A.S.A) claimed to draw inspiration from Muslim diaspora rappers, or second-­ generation rappers such as French MCs Kery James and Médine. In Tunisia, some rappers (e.g. L’Islamiste) joined the wave of foreign fighters traveling to Syria or Libya to fight with Islamist armies. A notable case was gangsta rapper Emino, who converted to Salafi Islam while in jail for marijuana use, and then quit rap and went to fight (and preach on social media) with Isis in Syria (Boukhars, 2017). Another interesting aspect concerns the criticism received by Islam-­inspired rappers. This criticism was very rarely of “secular” fashion within the rap scene, and was more oriented toward attacking rappers who compromised themselves with political parties such as (Islam-­inspired party) Ennahdha, or had to do with those rappers’ use of rap as a mere instrument. They were, indeed, accused of emphasizing their “message” at the expense of rap artistry. As a Tunisian rapper told me, “Rap is subject, flow, technique,

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feeling: if you want to convey a message, just write a letter!” (Barone 2019, 110). This position was quite common in the scene and demonstrated distaste for the whole “protest rap” subgenre.

Marginalized Identities A form of social critique that has always been central in local rap scenes, and which gained further prominence in the post-­Springs period, is the rap that “represents” marginalized youth and dispossessed neighborhoods. This subgenre draws its vitality and importance on what Halifu Osumare (2001) has termed the “connective marginalities” of hip-­hop – the ability of the culture to make different and distant forms of life “resonate” on the basis of their marginality. Hence, rappers from irregular neighborhoods in the Middle East can reappropriate the ghetto poetry and sentiment of American rap by talking about similar issues. These connective marginalities are arguably a fundamental aspect of the popularity of rap in the region – not only those connecting “ghettoes,” but also those distilling an ideoscape of “youth” as a generational force of rebellion. In North Africa, rap (with other genres such as Mahragan and other sha’bi music) became the voice of so-­called hittistes, an Algerian term identifying those who “hold the walls” and spend their time doing nothing in disadvantaged areas of the cities. The Tunisian hit Houmani (2013), by Hamzaoui Med Amine and Kafon, became a sensation as it crystallized the daily struggle of Tunisians from the houma – that is, “traditional” neighborhoods. While youth from the houma have been recognized as the protagonists of the Tunisian revolution, their history of marginalization was hardly shaken by democratization. Rap kept denouncing their social marginality, everlasting poverty, and daily harassment by the police (Barone 2019a). Elsewhere, connective marginalities have taken on further signifiers, for example, ethnic and racial ones. Such is the case of Palestinian rap in the camps, or rap in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Here, rap becomes the expressive language of the huge mass of noncitizen children of migrant workers. Rappers such as Abu Dhabi’s Freek (of Somali origins) or Jeddah’s Qiyadat emphasized, through their aesthetics (lyrics, videos, and even use of language), their migrant origins, their global connections, and their position of rebellion against the social order that casts them as “slaves.” Such “noncitizen” rappers receive backlash from so-­called “citizen” rappers. In these states, rap then turns into a field of conflicts where themes of race, ethnicity, migrant status, and gender were put into play (see Isoke 2013; Kareem 2020).

Gender and Sexuality Hip-­hop is often polemically associated with its assertion of strong masculinities affirming themselves in oppressive social contexts (Rose 1994; Perry 2004). While it has produced a diverse gallery of female personas, often defying the canons of (racialized) femininity, generic media still cast it as an overwhelmingly macho and sexist culture.

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However, one of the most interesting political uses of hip-­hop in the Middle East is the polyhedric anti-­patriarchal stance it has taken when used by female and LGBTQ+ a­ rtists. As emphasized by Angela Selena Williams (2017), among others, female rappers across the region engage in forms of representation that claim their right to life and safety vis-­ à-­vis local and global patriarchal orders. It would probably be imprecise to talk about a “Middle Eastern female rap scene,” but it is true that networking infrastructures connected female rappers across the region and in the diaspora – think of the cosmopolitan careers of MCs such as Anglo/Palestinian Shadia Mansour and Algerian/Lebanese Malikah. Some of these infrastructures originated from the earlier mentioned involvement of international NGOs and state agencies in promoting Middle Eastern rappers as a voice of democratization in the area, one example being the 2014 compilation Sawtuha sponsored by the NGO MICT and the German Federal Foreign office. If, as discussed, these operations have been criticized by local rappers, they provided female rappers the advantage to flee the patriarchal bias often present in local rap scenes and reach translocal networks and publics. For all its machismo, hip-­hop has also been seen to provide spaces for the affective and kinesthetic expression of LGBTQ+ people in places such as Palestine/Israel (Karaman 2018) and Iran (Golpushenzhad 2014).

Language Finally, the use of Arabic and its dialects can be understood as a gesture of resistance itself. Rappers’ shift toward Arabic has been interpreted as a move of reappropriation of one’s local identity (see Fischione 2019 on Levantine rap) and as a way to connect with local publics and situations. On the other hand, the choice of language in the Middle Eastern rap scene reveals multiple fields of conflicts highlighting artistic, class, and even ethnic tensions (see Kareem 2020).

Conclusion This chapter has presented an overview of rap music in the Middle East including its political uses, relationships with networks of power, and the global discourses that politicize and depoliticize it. I examined the state of rap in the region prior to 2010/2011 and its transformation thereafter. Following the call to problematize the view that inherently links Middle Eastern rap to resistance (see Moreno-­Almeida  2017; Nooshin 2017), I nonetheless focused on the politics of music, going beyond the face-­value politics of explicit protest music. Political uses of rap thus may also entail the representation of marginalized youth and marginalized neighborhoods, the expression of women and alternative sexualities, the construction of Islam-­inspired rap narratives in and out of the region, and even the struggle over languages. These political uses are, however, embedded in complex governmentalities, linking local governments, music industries, and global networks; these governmentalities do not define musicians and their practices,

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but provide contexts within which those practices (and music in general) are negotiated and constructed (see Chapters 20, 34, 37). There is need for more research on contemporary Middle Eastern rap. Translocal networks need to be explored at the regional level, such as rap battles between rappers from different countries that take place both online and offline. The genre’s evolutions and confrontations between different generations of rappers (see Barone 2019b) need further study. Another interesting pathway of research regards the “normalization” (or lack thereof ) that followed the Arab uprisings, its mythology, and the subversive capital that the local rap scene acquired because of it, but also its failures in the countries where revolutionary impulses were nipped in the bud, and where rap scenes needed to coexist with the reconstruction of authoritarianism (see Sprengel 2020). These future analyses could recount the various developments and contentious power relationships in the region, and further illustrate the importance of rap for its population. References Aggoun, A. 2021. “Le Hirak ou la fête dans la contestation.” Pouvoirs 176, no. 1: 41–52. Aïdi, H. 2004. Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture. New York: Vintage. Bennett, A. 2004. “Hip-­hop am Main, Rappin’ on the Tyne: Hip-­hop Culture as a Local Construct in Two European Cities.” In M. Forman and M. A. Neal (Eds.), That’s the Joint! The Hip-­hop Studies Reader. New York: Routledge. Baoueb, S.L.B. 2020. “Tunisian Hip-­hop Music Discourse: Linguistic, Socio-­cultural and Political Movements from the Local to the Global or Vice Versa? A Case Study of Balti’s Songs.” Language & Communication 75: 1–20. Barone, S. 2019a. “Feeling So Hood. Rap, Lifestyles and the Neighbourhood Imaginary in Tunisia.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 46, no. 1: 88–103. Barone, S. 2019b. Metal, Rap, and Electro in Post-­Revolutionary Tunisia. A Fragile Underground. Oxen and New York: Routledge. Boukhars, A. 2017. “The Geographic Trajectory of Conflict and Militancy in Tunisia.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace ( July). https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/resrep12842.pdf ?acceptTC=true&coverpage=false&addFooter=false Boum, A 2021. “5 Poets of the Revolutions: Authoritarians, Uprisings, and Rappers in North Africa, 1990s–Present.” In J. Gelvin (Ed.), The Contemporary Middle East in an Age of Upheaval (pp. 91–105). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bouzouita, K. 2013. “Music of Dissent and Revolution.” Middle East Critique 22, no. 3: 281–292. Burkhalter, T. 2014. Local Music Scenes and Globalization: Transnational Platforms in Beirut. New York: Routledge. Chang, J. 2005. Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-­Hop Generation. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Fischione, F. 2019. “Untranslatability as Resistance. The Case of Levantine Arabic Rap in the Aftermath of the 2011 Uprisings.” Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 12: 282–302. Forman, M. 2002. The ’Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-­Hop. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. Gabsi, Z. 2020. “Rap and Mizoued Music: Claiming a Space for Dissent and Protest in Post-­Arab Spring Tunisia.” Sociological Research Online 25, no. 4: 626–643. Gana, N. 2012. “Rap and Revolt in the Arab World.” Social Text 30, no. 4: 25–53.

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Golpushnezhad, E. 2014. “Queering Tehran: Discovering Gay Rap in Iran.” In S. Mazzarella (Ed.), The Mediated Youth Reader (pp. 81–92). New York: Peter Lang. Golpushnezhad, E., & Barone, S. 2016. “On n’est pas à vendre. L’économie politique du rap dans la Tunisie postrévolution.” Politique Africaine 1, no. 141: 27–51. Gonzalez-­Quijano, Y. 2013. “Le nouvel orientalisme et les jeunes rebelles: les rappeurs de la scène arabe.” Contretemps (August 8). https://www.contretemps.eu/le-­nouvel-­orientalisme-­et-­ les-­jeunes-­rebelles-­les-­rappeurs-­de-­la-­scene-­arabe/ Isherwood, G. 2014. “The Hip-­Hop Resistance: Forging Unity in the Arab Diaspora.” Review of Middle East Studies 48, no. 1–2: 24–33. Isoke, Z. 2013. “Women, Hip Hop, and Cultural Resistance in Dubai.” Souls 15, no. 4: 316–337. Karaman, A. 2018. “Going Out, Not Coming Out: Queer Affects, Secluded Publics, and Palestinian Hip-­Hop.” Gramma: Journal of Theory and Criticism 25: 78–92. Kareem, M. 2020. “From Rap to Trap: The Khaliji Migrant Finds his Aesthetic.” Arabian Humanities [En ligne] 14. http://journals.openedition.org/cy/6285 DOI: https://doi. org/10.4000/cy.6285 Kelley, R.D.G. 1997. “Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America.” Boston: Beacon Press. Kraidy, M. M., and Khalil, J. F., 2008. “Youth, Media and Culture in the Arab World.” In K. Drotner and S. Livingstone (Eds.), International Handbook of Children, Media and Culture (pp. 330–344). London: Sage. Khalil, J. F. 2019.“Neo-­Tajdeed? Rap in Saudi Arabia and Tunisia.” In T. Sabry and J. F. Khalil (Eds.), Culture, Time and Publics in the Arab World: Media, Public Space and Temporality (pp. 113–136). London: I.B. Tauris. Krims, A. 2000. Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Last Night in Orient 2010. “Balti, le rappeur official du gouvernement Ben Ali.” Last Night in Orient blog. (April 30, 2009). http://musique.arabe.over-­blog.com/article-­30883685.html LeVine, M. 2008. Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam. New York: Three Rivers Press. LeVine, M. 2012. “Music and the Aura of Revolution.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 44, no. 4: 794–797. Mangialardi, N. 2019. “Deciphering the Egyptian Rap Cypher.” Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 12, no. 1: 68–87. Martinez, T. A. 1997. “Popular Culture as Oppositional Culture: Rap as Resistance.” Sociological Perspectives 40, no. 2: 265–286. McDonald, D. 2019. “Framing the ‘Arab Spring’: Hip Hop, Social Media, and the American News Media.” Journal of Folklore Research 56, no. 1: 105–130. Miliani, H. 2002. “Culture planétaire et identités frontalières. À propos du rap en Algérie.” Cahiers d’Études africaines 168: 763–776. Moreno-­Almeida, C. 2016. “The Politics of Taqlidi Rap: Reimagining Moroccanness in the Era of Global Flows.” The Journal of North African Studies 21, no. 1: 116–131. Moreno-­ Almeida, C. 2017. Rap Beyond Resistance. Staging Power in Contemporary Morocco, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Noohsin, L. 2017. “Whose Liberation? Iranian Popular Music and the Fetishization of Resistance.” Popular Communication 15, no. 3: 163–191. O’Keefe, S. 2011. “Hip-­hop and How Arab Youth Interact with Revolution.” Revolutionary Arab Rap blog. (December 16). http://revolutionaryarabrap.blogspot.com/2011/12/hip-­hop-­ and-­how-­arab-­youth-­interact.html Osumare, H. 2001. “Beat Streets in the Global Hood: Connective Marginalities of the Hip Hop Globe.” Journal of American & Comparative Cultures 24, no.1–2: 171–181.

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Osumare, H. 2007. The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-­Hop: Power Moves. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Ovshieva, I. 2013. “Stomping for Tunisia: Liberation, Identity and Dignity in Tunisian Rap Music.” Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 6, no.1: 36–54. Perry, I. 2004. Prophets of the ‘Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip-­Hop. Durham: Duke University Press. Pough, G.D. 2015. Check It While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip-­hop Culture, and the Public Sphere. Lebanon: Northeastern University Press. Rose, T. 1994. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Cultural Expression in Contemporary America. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press. Saidani, M. 2017. “Post-­Revolutionary Tunisian Youth Art: The Effect of Contestation on the Democratization of Art Production and Consumption.” In E. Oinas, H. Onodera, and L.  Suurpää (Eds.), What Politics? Youth and Political Engagement in Africa (pp. 111–122). Leiden/Boston: Brill. Sanchez-­Garcia, J. 2018. “Cairo Nights: The Political Economy of Mahragan Music.” In J. Nofre and A. Eldridge (Eds.), Exploring Nightlife Space, Society and Governance (pp. 99–113). New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Sprengel, D. 2020. “Neoliberal Expansion and Aesthetic Innovation: The Egyptian Independent Music Scene Ten Years After.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 52, no. 3: 545–551. Swedenburg, T. 2012. “Egypt’s Music of Protest: From Sayyid Darwish to DJ Haha.” Middle East Report 42: 265. http://www.merip.org/mer/mer265/egypts-­music-­protest Swedenburg, T. 2013. “Palestinian Rap: Against the Struggle Paradigm.” In W. El Hamamsym and M. Soliman (Eds.), Popular Culture in the Middle East and North Africa: A Postcolonial Outlook (pp.17–32). London: Routledge. Talty, A. 2018. “Meet the Middle East’s Battle Rap Gods, Roads & Kingdoms.” (November 11, 2018). https://roadsandkingdoms.com/2018/arab-­rap-­battle/ Terkourafi, M. (Ed.). 2010. The Languages of Global Hip Hop, London: Continuum. Wiedemann, F. 2019. The Local and the Global in Networks of Lebanese and Algerian Rappers, Open Library of Humanities 5, no. 1: 26, 1–40. Williams, A. S. 2017. “(W)raps of Consciousness: Articulating Women’s Rights Through Hip-­hop in the Middle East and North Africa Region.” Unpublished PhD thesis. University of Illinois at Urbana-­ Champaign. https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/99303/ WILLIAMS-­DISSERTATION-­2017.pdf ?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Zegnani, S. 2019. “Le Rap Tunisien, Miroir d’une Societé en Pleine (R)évolution.” Nectart 8, no. 1: 134–143.

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Egyptian Graffiti Collective Action and Institutionalization Mohammad Abdel Hamid Communication Information Médias, CIM, Sorbonne Nouvelle Université

Introduction More than 10 years after the Arab uprisings, political systems do not seem to have changed much. Nonetheless, modalities of collective action have been considerably reconfigured (see Chapters 26, 30, 32). In this chapter, I examine these reconfigurations through the lens of graffiti in Egypt. I argue that the political movement of 2011 gave graffiti visibility and, in turn, graffiti offered visibility to the Revolution (Lennon 2014; Abdel Hamid 2017; Monfleur 2021). For many Egyptians, graffiti started to make sense thanks to the popular mobilization, even though it had existed long before.

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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The analysis presented in this chapter draws on a corpus of four Facebook communities (“Mad Graffiti Week,”1 “Graffiti in Egypt,”2 Keizer,3 and “We Are All Khaled Saïd”4), 1,775 pictures of graffiti, and over 100,000 comments collected between 2011 and 2016. This rich body of material paves the way for discussion of the circulations and peregrinations of these signs, which are of an artivist nature (blend of the words “artist” and “activist”). Methodologically, the chapter applies a socio-­semiotic analysis of political sociology to provide insights into graffiti in an unstable region of the world during the upheaval of the 2010s. The chapter begins with a brief history of Egyptian graffiti, placed in its regional and historical context, followed by a discussion of political protest and graffiti as a result of the inclusion of this “communicative act” (Kraidy 2013, 9) within the repertoire of collective action (Tilly 1975). Finally, the evolution of graffiti under harsh repression will be discussed, with attention paid to how graffiti navigates between institutionalization and resistance as a guerrilla tool. The digital dimension of graffiti will form the basis of the chapter. At the beginning of the Revolution, graffiti was used strictly “as a canvass for

 On January 12, 2012, Ganzeer, one of the most notorious artists in Egypt and the Arabic world, launched a new activist campaign with a new Facebook page called Mad Graffiti Week (https://www.facebook.com/MAD.GRAFFiTi.WEEK/) as follows: “An Appeal to Artists Everywhere: This is an appeal to help save lives. The Egyptian Military Council has unleashed a brutal crackdown on peaceful protests by the Egyptian people, calling for the resignation of the military council and a cancellation of the sham elections that they’ve been running under their supervision. Soldiers have shown us no mercy, hitting fallen women with their batons, stomping on skulls with their boots, and shooting unarmed civilians dead. I’ve seen this happen with my own eyes and was unable to stop it. It’s a soul-­shattering pain like no other. . . . Our only hope right now is to destroy the military council using the weapon of art. From January 13 to 25, the streets of Egypt will see an explosion of anti-­military street art. If you are a street artist elsewhere in the world, please do what you can in your city to help us.” 2  Graffiti In Egypt (https://www.facebook.com/Graffiti.in.Egypt/) was a Facebook page gathering people, artists or profanes, who collect and publish pictures of graffiti all around the country and their motto is clear enough regarding their aims: “HipHop, Ultras, REV, and other graffiti in Egypt.” 3  Keizer (https://www.facebook.com/KeizerStreetArt/) is one of the most famous graffiti artists in Egypt. So often called “the Egyptian Banksy” due to his style inspired by the British artist, he is one of those who cannot remember whether he became an artist thanks to the Revolution, or became revolutionary because he was an artist (interview with the artist on July 25, 2013). 4  The history of a young man from Alexandria crystallised all the anger against the Old Regime from the summer of 2010, because of his assassination by two police informers on June 6. On June 10, a Facebook page was created in honor of Khaled Saïd (https://www.facebook.com/ ElShaheeed – the URL’s Arabic word means literally “the Martyr”) and calling for the arrest of his murderer and militating for human rights. This Facebook page was the most visited during January–February 2011 in Egypt. On the January 1, 2011, 500,000 people were members of the page out of less than 5 million Facebook accounts in the country. The first call to a Revolution took place on this Facebook page and the idea of a demonstration on January 25, National Police Day, came from its members. 1

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the political expression” (Kraidy 2016, 109), and later it earned its stripes as an “ordinary” and/or “legitimate” practice in a social-­political-­artistic digital field. One can wonder what the difference is between graffiti, tagging, street art, urban art, and calligraffiti. The objective of this chapter is not to discuss terminology,5 examine the historical origins of graffiti, or debate the evolution of styles.6 For our purposes, the definition of graffiti is as follows: exhibition, demonstration, or intentional installation of a visual, material, human nature, essentially ephemeral and/or volatile, taking place in a public place potentially accessible to everyone. This anti-­disciplinary practice, which challenges the monopoly and absolute control that the State exercised over physical public space, overturns constraints – that is, walls experienced as barriers are used as a medium to turn a disadvantage into an advantage. Added to this is the expression of aesthetic and artistic desires that are deployed in support of politics.

Graffiti as Marginalized Visibility Marginalized visibility sounds like an oxymoron, yet it deals with graffiti reality on the ground. Graffiti can be accessible for anyone and not so visible, and its existence can fluctuate from peripheric places to central ones. This depends on the practice nature and the sociopolitical context.

The Marginality of an “Impure Genre” To discuss visibility, it is necessary to define primarily the environment in which the discourse appears, that is, public space. Here, “public space is understood to mean physical space that can be used, contested and controlled by humans, and has, therefore, a narrower scope than ‘public sphere’” (Kraidy 2016, 108). Generally, two graffiti traditions live together: one focalizes on politics, and the other on aesthetics. Very often, these two aspirations intersect. Sometimes, they merge completely, and one can no longer know which aim precedes the other. In both cases, some observations can be applied. Public space is primarily an investment of a social and political character (Lefebvre 1974). Because it is produced by society, public space is a subject of power, struggles, and conflicts. Of course, graffiti recreates alterity, friction, and resistance, whatever its purpose is (Kokoreff 1988, 88). Accordingly, it is always considered a “sign insurrection”7 (Baudrillard 1976, 118–128). Finally, graffiti, whether it is “spontaneous or

 Regarding this terminology issue, among others, I refer to Genin (2008), Ganz (2006), Don Karl and Hamdy (2014), Abdel Hamid (2017), Kraidy (2013), and Lennon (2014). 6  It is recommended to read Naguib (2017), Genin (2013), Don Karl and Zoghbi (2012), and Klemenz and Villiaume (2014). 7  All the quotations coming from another language are translated by the author. 5

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on command, whether activist, traditionalist or progressivist,” represents an interface for a look at our time’s “tectonics” (Genin 2013, 167). Kraidy conceptualizes public space in a four-­dimensional way: (1) as a space of communication and collective action; (2) as a canvas for political expression; (3) as the field of action for politicized, communicating bodies; and (4) iconic public spaces as symbolic of political struggles. Kraidy includes a fifth feature that articulates cyberspace with a four-­ dimensioned public space. Throughout the chapter, these will serve as the frame for our analysis. Unlike abstract art, which developed in galleries and had a valuable place in the art market, graffiti, the purest “impure genre,” (Kraidy 2013, 6), did not receive recognition or legitimacy in public spaces. From 1987 to 2011, Farouk Hosny, an abstract artist, served as the Minister of Culture in Egypt. Taking advantage of his position, he painted (or ordered to have painted) numerous walls, institutional buildings, and even buildings with abstract murals. Therefore, these walls have never been perceived as public art or graffiti because the work did not violated any rules; instead, it was institutionalized. In the MENA region, graffiti has traditionally been driven by periods of political unrest. Lebanon’s Civil War (1975–1990), Intifadas (1987–1993) (Slitine  2015; Toenjes 2014), early stages of the Iranian Revolution (1978) (Tripp,  2013), Separation Wall Between Israel and Palestine,8 and the so-­called Arab Spring are all moments of intensive graffiti work. In all those places, graffiti preexisted but experienced a turning point that coincided with political upheavals. Traditionally, calligraphy, calligraffiti, and graffiti competed on walls to advertise many services or personal events: shops, real estate agencies, teachers commercializing private lessons, people returning from the Hajj,9 new births, and electoral displays.10 Even if the issue only involves political graffiti, it seems perfectly justified to postulate that graffiti in the MENA region has developed due to its anonymity and political propensity, as it has everywhere else. The muralism tradition has been expanding worldwide since the Mexican Revolution of the 1910s. In Western societies, there were also some marks on walls left during World War II, during the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s and 1970s in the United States, and during other historical political mobilizations (Ganz 2006). Almost every political movement creates its graffiti, and this trend is evident in the MENA region.

Visibilization Process and Political Upheaval Graffiti is common in some Arab countries, but the “visibility regime,” the structures and dynamics of public exposure, is restricted to “public invisibility.” That latter expression seems like an oxymoron, but it fits perfectly with the situation. As Dominique Cardon (2010) points out, accessibility and visibility are often separated. There is a  It could refer to the 2007 “Ich bin ein Berliner” graffiti or Banksy’s seven murals in 2005.  Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the five pillars of Islam. 10  Tolerated by authorities, or even required when it runs for the unique party candidate, and quickly erased when it comes to any dissident. 8 9

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p­ ossibility that graffiti can be exhibited in a public space and not be seen because it stands in spots that are secluded or invisible to the public. The invisible is not the opposite of the visible, either. In Maurice Merleau-­Ponty’s words (1964, 278–279), it is located “in the hollow.” The visible and invisible are naturally connected through a virtual cord. As a result, they are both linked, forming a unified whole that is necessarily transverse, being the alpha and the omega of the “visibility regime.” The notion of visibility revolves around what “is worth seeing,” as Hannah Arendt describes it (Voirol 2005, 25). A person does not recognize the relevant features in the “worlds of visibility,” and “the profane remains blind” (Voirol 2005, 13). The “Capital of Visibility”11 (Heinich 2012a) varies based on the intrinsic value of art, its location, and its significance to the spectator. So, it is worthwhile to question the role of the mobilized media, urban walls  – “the oldest medium of communication” (Kraidy 2016, 109) – and/or digital walls in these processes of visibility and invisibility. Here lies the fundamental question of marginality and centrality. When graffiti stands in a marginal physical or digital place, it can be public and invisible, whereas when it is accessible in a central location, it necessarily monopolizes visibility. Urban walls and digital walls feed on each other. Reciprocally, they sidestep the constraints and limits of one another. When urban walls are limited in their capital of visibility, digital walls earn a broader exposure to different publics and last longer. If urban walls are scrutinized by authorities and graffiti is treated as an illegal practice, digital walls offer anonymity and controlled risk. Urbanity compensates for digitality’s loss of materiality. When digital walls cannot transgress a precise location, material walls can balance this aspect, such as when an artist puts a “Tahrir Square” sticker at the entrance to the office of the Minister of Health (Abdel Hamid 2017, 205–206). All those possibilities meld and become a graffiti ecosystem. It is no longer possible to study graffiti on urban walls without observing digital walls, and vice versa. It is a combination of local concreteness and ephemerality that has become increasingly prevalent and diffused by “the advent of the Internet as a repository of graffiti” (Kraidy 2013, 2). Consequently, urbanity and digitality are constantly correlated. It is essential to underscore how the political aspect has given graffiti public visibility. MENA revolutions of the early 2010s have seen graffiti in the most central places of such cities as Tahrir Square, Kasbah, old town Cairo, Tunis, and Damascus. In parallel, graffiti occupies the “most prominent spaces” of social networks. The discourse was significant, with enough symbolic power to raise or maintain rebellion. From June 2010 to June 2013, activists posted 145 pictures of graffiti on Egypt’s most dynamic group, “We Are All Khaled Saïd” before and during the Jan25 Revolution, offering a snapshot of the Facebook community. The graffiti movement, whether at Tahrir Square or Mohammad Mahmoud Street Downtown, or via the slogan “We Are All Khaled Saïd,” gained legitimacy thanks to “anger reterritorialization” (Pagès-­El Karoui 2014, 277). The Revolution occupied physical and digital spaces and covered them with (videos and photos) of graffiti. At that point, graffiti integrated the repertoire of collective action (Tilly 1984) and

 The asymmetry between the known and the unknown creates a difference assimilated to a capital.

11

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became visible and intelligible through political struggle. Therefore, graffiti has played its part in the mobilization; in return, the Revolution has served graffiti as one of the forms to express its ideology.

The Outburst of Political Graffiti in Egypt Taking its inspiration from Charles Tilly and his sociology of social movements’ conceptualization,12 Béatrice Fraenkel stated that “Writing political graffiti is a part of ‘collective action,’ especially when the activists are located at the boundaries of legality” (Fraenkel 2007, 102). The uprising in 2011 saw Egypt adopt a new regime of graffiti visibility. Mobilization has become part of the campaign, where posters or murals were displayed behind clubs on vacant lots or advertised as marketing. Graffiti, seen as an unreadable speech until then, became evident support of the most legitimate rhetoric at the time. Artivists started to defend the people and stood with them as they expressed their demands for bread, freedom, and social equality. It turned out to be a revolutionary particle accelerator because the “deliberate flouting of convention has a particular power to disturb, disrupt and to mobilize” (Tripp 2013, 258). Graffiti, therefore, tended to have a positive representation in the demonstrator’s mind. The battle against authorities and the fight for every inch in physical and digital public spaces were met with revolutionary speech.

Communicative Act as Transgression Graffiti has given a touch of art and aesthetics to a rough discourse. Little by little, it sacralized and sanctified the cause and granted some urban and digital spaces a touch of the sacred. “Writing sanctuaries”13 (Fraenkel 2002, 98) emerged thanks to this process of a new political religion. Since people have died, their roles have been assigned to them permanently. In the revolutionary archetypal narrative, everyone knows who is good and evil. Blood has been shed with a sanctified attribute that represents the cause.

 Founded on a theatre or music metaphor, the “repertoire” consists of deliberate choices of actors, a panoply and a model of actions experimented with conviction by mobilized publics. The repertoire is composed of modalities inherited from the nineteenth century and is regularly enhanced by new practices (Tilly, 1984). 13  A sort of “microcosm of all writings” dedicated to a “compensatory ritual,” the September 2001 sanctuary of writings consisted in consecrating a memorial place, material or imaginary, as a tribute to the victims of the attacks. This place, endowed with polyphony and polygraphy, is “adorned with all the attributes of a national myth” (Fraenkel, 81–87) and is thus sanctified by the essence of the reasons for its foundation. 12

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Political martyrdom established the revolutionary cause and all the speeches that ­support it as a noble cause that deserves spaces to be dedicated and commemorated. Mohammad Mahmoud Street14 and the Facebook page “We Are All Khaled Saïd” are parts of those. They are erected as altars awarded by an indisputable sacrality. Graffiti converts to the “ennobled bastard,” as Christophe Genin asserts it (2013, 65). The digital sanctuaries confer new spatialities, temporalities, meanings, and effects to graffiti that can target new audiences thanks to a reticular and sometimes uncontrolled circulation. Thanks to its digital mediation, graffiti can reappear later in different contexts that can have many  representations through photography, point of view, and the textual messages ­surrounding the picture. To sum up, the message is semantically remotivated, creating new effects. Revolution and graffiti became intimately linked, and this link allows us to observe a duplication and extension between physical and online public spaces. Both destinies and trajectories are interdependent. For instance, it is notable when artists and activists seem to be mixing their profiles. For example, the graffiti artist Omar Mostafa expresses this way: “I don’t know if I’m a revolutionary because I’m a street artist, or if I’m a street artist because I’m a revolutionary . . . I prefer the second; I like them both. Revolution and art . . .” (Boraïe 2012, 9). Ammar Abu Bakr, one of the most prominent graffiti artists in Egypt, says that the “Revolution liberated” him (Gröndahl 2012, 124). Another indication of the Golden Age of graffiti in Egypt between 2011 and 2013 is the number of books published about graffiti in the world.15 More important, some works of art acquire iconic status. The famous “Puppeteer”16 (Abdel Hamid 2017, 349) and the “One who delegates doesn’t die” (Abdel Hamid 2017, 343–345) are widely available online and were regularly enhanced by artists when there was any news in the political context, or repainted and improved when authorities decided to erase them. For instance, the puppeteer mural was first drawn representing the military power controlling many candidates in the 2012 presidential election. Before the second round of the election, the candidates were Mohamed Morsi and Ahmed Chafik, surrounded by skeletons representing eliminated candidates (Abdel Hamid 2017, 348–350). But even more moving was the graffiti on Mohammad Mahmoud Street in November 2011 (Abdel Hamid  2017, 255), unofficially renamed “Eyes of Freedom Street” after many demonstrators lost an

 The street connecting Tahrir Square to the Ministry of Interior was a field of battle between demonstrators and security forces. Protestors wanted to reach the building to express their anger and security forces had to arduously defend one of their ministers. The street became the synecdoche of the opposition between revolutionaries and the security apparatus. 15  Gröndahl, Hamdy and Don Karl, Zoghbi and Don Karl, Boraïe, and Klemenz and Vuilliaume have all published books dedicated to graffiti in Egypt or in the Arabic world between 2012 and 2014. 16  All the graffiti mentioned can be seen in the PhD thesis of the author that is accessible online (Abdel Hamid, 2017; available at https://tel.archives-­ouvertes.fr/tel-­01578116). Even if it is written in French, the reader can easily find the pictures taken from Facebook pages as “We Are All Khaled Saïd,” “Graffiti in Egypt,” “Mad Graffiti Week,” and Keizer. 14

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eye during that month.17 By February 2012, after the tragedy of Port Saïd Stadium,18 the Mohammad Mahmoud wall was renamed “Martyr Wall” and many graffiti were dedicated to Ultras Ahlawy, who passed away. They were depicted as Ultras-­Winged-­Martyr (Abdel Hamid 2017, 296; 308–311; 316).

Martyrdom Ennobling the Cause and the Social Practice Political martyrdom has driven graffiti to the summit of public visibility. Instantaneously, the new murals are mediated by such Facebook pages as “We Are All Khaled Saïd,” and other pages like “Graffiti In Egypt” or “Mad Graffiti Week” inform their audiences about any news regarding any – erased, modified, repainted – graffiti. Thanks to this mediation, any artefact devoted to a martyr is immediately instituted and recognized as a sanctified form of discourse, generating expectations and public attention. Mohammad Mahmoud Street, the actual sanctuary of the Revolution, especially political martyrdom, was the harbinger of its cause and the center of the struggle. The street was established as a symbol and a place to conquer and defend as gateway to the Interior Ministry building. On that street, many demonstrators have lost their eyes or even their lives, turning it into an altar of martyrdom memory. Political “martyrdom involves actively opting for death rather than abandoning a belief, the martyr publicly embraces a political, ideological or religious position that puts him or her in opposition to powerful institutions” (DeSoucey, Pozner, Fields, Dobransky, and Fine 2008, 101). This sacrifice for a belief or a cause builds a reputation based on “a degree of heuristic value on which to focus emotion and sentiment (Zerubavel, 1995), an embodiment of a collective memory” (DeSoucey et al. 2008, 102). And many graffiti honored those victims and became an active part of the collective memory. Graffiti is expected, any new mural provokes an event, and countless people rush to see the innovation of a mural both physically and digitally. Graffiti develops from the writing that conveys an event to an event-­writing activity (Abdel Hamid 2018). At that time, 2011–2013, it is at the heart of public visibility and legitimacy. Hence, it is “in place” (Cresswell  1996): the location, the locale, and the sense of the place become  During the events of November 2011, dozens of people lost one or both eyes in clashes with the regime’s forces, which used snipers to target the eyes of demonstrators, a method dating back to the January–February events. Despite systematic rebuttals by the authorities, snipers were ordered to aim mainly at the eyes. In January–February 2011, many demonstrators became one-­ eyed, including Ahmad Harrara who lost his first eye on January 28 in Tahrir Square and his second on November 19 in Mohammad Mahmoud Street. Two symbolic and synecdochic dates and places of the Egyptian Revolution make him a sacrificial “hero” and often represented in these places by street artivists. 18  In February 2012, the group of supporters of the al-­Ahly club (Ultras Ahlawy), which contributed greatly to the success of the occupation of Tahrir Square at the end of January 2011, was attacked by the supporters of the al-­Masry club in Port Said under the impassive eye of the security forces. More than 70 people died in this incident, which the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces probably ordered in order to take revenge on this politically active group of supporters. 17

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meaningful and attached to a public, as a transgressive expression mode within a transgressive period. Therefore, graffiti in Egypt has been on the side of the sacrificed and vulnerable people. Another cause that gave notable credibility to graffiti was feminism. The famous Blue Bra stencil of Bahia Shehab (2011) spread all around Cairo, and other cities after a viral video in December 2010 showed a military police officer dragging an unconscious woman, stripping her clothes, beating her very harshly, and leaving her blue bra visible. Her blue bra developed into a symbol of women’s rights. Graffiti designer Keizer addressed the feminist question by portraying many women as potent threats to the regime (Abdel Hamid 2017, 275). Women are often represented as powerless members of society; in Keizer’s graffiti, they look powerful, often carrying weapons (Kalashnikov, sword, or grenade) at pivotal moments, painted with latent violence and anger that could imminently explode. To mobilize and encourage people to demonstrate on January 25, 2012 (Abdel Hamid 2017, 277), Keizer posted on his Facebook page a stencil representing the African American activist Angela Davis surrounded by the following warning: “If you don’t let us dream, we won’t let you sleep.” Another stencil was posted the same day, illustrating a hooded and motionless woman with a very dark face to warn the regime that her “Anger can be so bad.” To sum up, graffiti has benefited from heterotopia. Graffiti “can be described as heterotopia (Foucault 1984; Klaus 2019; Kraidy 2013) a space of otherness in its physical, symbolic and political dimension” (Monfleur 2021, 17). This notion, conceptualized by Michel Foucault in 1966, seems very useful in the case of graffiti as it considers the spaces’ discontinuities and otherness. It creates alterity enclaved in topoï and provokes new behaviors, norms, constraints – and above all – new freedoms. Heterotopia can be applied to urban and digital spaces to get around authorities’ repression. However, this heterotopia, which seemed to be “in place” during a sacralized period, turned out to be “out of place” (Cresswell 1996) after the 2013 military coup.

Institutionalization of Graffiti and the Evacuation of Political Issues? In July 2013, the Chief of Staff and the Minister of Defense, Abdel Fattah al-­Sisi, led a coalition to remove the elected President of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi. The Army officially took back the reins of power, and a new political era started. Many artists and activists had to leave the country due to repression. Since then, graffiti has had two trajectories that seem contradictory but can complement each other: institutionalization, usually involving an aesthetic quality, and guerrilla graffiti, generally founded on a political basis. Starting in 2011, graffiti was parallelly inscribed in heterotopias and was accessible in galleries. An ethics debate erupted on that occasion. Graffiti, which in essence is available to anyone on the streets and thus pretends to discard market rules, has integrated, in a classic process of artification (Heinich 2012b), all the norms that this art has always

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fought. Is it a necessary trajectory from reversing constraints and public space norms to accepting social boundaries? Initially rebellious and transgressive, does the “artification” tendency make graffiti obedient?

Legitimization of Graffiti as an Art According to Diallo, graffiti became a legitimate art form in the West because it is governed by a “redefinition [that] could express itself insofar as it met precisely the expectations of an avant-­garde fraction probably inclined to appreciate this expressive form on the grounds of its irreverent and transgressive character, of its formal closeness to classical painting” (Diallo 2014, 5). Graffiti’s institutionalization is related to its combined alternative and conventional properties. It is sold on the contemporary art market, yet it is still new due to its rebellious character. Graffiti has the advantage of fitting into a classical and well-­known frame, but also breaking social norms. Since 2011, there have been several Egyptian Revolution–themed graffiti exhibitions. As early as September 2011, the exhibition “This Is Not Graffiti”19 in Cairo inaugurated a new era of graffiti legitimization. As Diallo points out, graffiti’s “irreverent and transgressive” (2014, 5) dimensions elevated graffiti’s status as an art form. Sad Panda, one of the most famous Egyptian artists, spray-­painted a wall on this occasion and commented: “Graffiti is street art, and this is not a street.”20 The art was still new in 2011, but it began to stabilize in a sustainable manner. The exhibition entitled “7orreya” was held in Cairo in 2014. Burullus Festival in north Egypt demonstrated how social issues are overtaken by political issues and were accepted by their citizens. Graffiti gained even more legitimacy by having some artists exhibit abroad, for example, in Frankfurt in 2012, regardless of their political affiliations. However, graffiti in Egypt denied its rationale, ideology, and essence by being displayed in galleries, but it simultaneously continued to act and struggle on the streets. Moreover, its legitimacy grew in both cases.

The Continuing Relevance of the Struggle: “Extolling Resistance” After 2013, graffiti had to survive and resist clandestinely on the streets. Authorities reclaimed their monopoly on the public space – physically and digitally – which, once central, enclosed little by little to the margins. Despite losing visibility, its legitimacy and intelligibility were never challenged. After walls in downtown have been repainted, covered, or destroyed, graffiti is forced to seek new locations. However, digital worlds were increasingly being monitored despite their welcoming nature. This new political

  https://suzeeinthecity.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/this-­is-­not-­g raffiti-­opens-­at-­townhouse­factory-­space-­cairo/ 20  Ibid. 19

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c­onfiguration was adapted to graffiti within temporary autonomous zones (TAZ) (Hakim Bey 1991).21 Unstable, ephemeral, immaterial, erratic, volatile, furtive, fleeting, malleable, visible, and invisible all at the same time, graffiti appeared and disappeared to play ­hide-­­and-­seek with authorities. Graffiti set up a guerrilla operation, thus freeing itself from injunctions, surveillance, and limits, to create new freedom of expression methods by investing in new enclaves of speech. Those spaces cannot be perennial, and any TAZ’s discourse or action has to assault and occupy space, act, then flee and destroy this space. Afterward, it can only reappear in a new area to surprise its opponent. That has been the new modus operandi of graffiti in Egypt since 2013. Ex and post situ, graffiti had to flee abroad, “extolling resistance” (Tripp 2013, 262), to organize resistance and stay reactive and proactive (Tilly 1975). New spaces emerged as a sanctuary for this political and ideological speech. Mohammad Mahmoud Street was duplicated, or extended, online and physically in other cities. A small wall was renamed Mohammad Mahmoud Street of Berlin and covered with graffiti that could no longer stand in Egypt. On the fifth anniversary of the Revolution, the regime forbade anyone to occupy Tahrir Square. Sanaa Seif decided to override this rule; a picture was taken while she was wearing a vest on which is written: “It’s still January Revolution.” Thanks to the “translocal spatiality” (Kraidy  2013, 18), this picture of her hanging on Cairo streets inspired a mural on Mahmoud Mahmoud Street in Berlin. The strategy of bypassing prohibitions by relying on a base abroad to serve a local cause proved efficient since it allowed graffiti to reappear inside national borders again. It went viral on social networks within Egypt. Among the best examples there are Tiran and Sanafir. The surrender of these two islands to Saudi Arabia was not acceptable to many Egyptians. So, in April 2016, Mad Graffiti Week offered on Facebook a stencil saying, “Awad has sold his farmland.” It was inspired by a radio show mocking Awad, a character who sold his land, which is considered shameful in Egypt’s countryside, comparing it to the decision of the president to disapprove of them. Afterward, many pictures of the stencil spray-­painted  – in situ again  – on Egyptian streets were displayed on digital networks to demonstrate how active and dynamic protests still are. To conclude, graffiti existed before the Revolution but was publicly invisible and not meaningful to any uninitiated people. Its main objectives were to market goods and services and share salient everyday life moments. But Egyptians were largely unfamiliar with the word. Eventually, graffiti became a method of expression to sustain the Revolution. Little by little, graffiti acquired intelligibility and legitimacy. It conquered and occupied the heart of Egyptian public spaces – urban and digital– it defended a “noble” cause, that is, it reclaimed bread, freedom, and social equality while endorsing the role of martyrs and women’s rights defenders. Integrating the repertoire of collective action and aligning with the revolutionary narrative helped make graffiti acceptable.

 “The TAZ is like an uprising which does not engage directly with the State, a guerrilla operation which liberates an area (of land, of time, of imagination) and then dissolves itself to re-­form elsewhere/elsewhen, before the State can crush it” (Hakim Bey 1991, 80).

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During that process of legitimacy, “artification” followed the same pattern. In the years since it became eligible to enter galleries, graffiti proved to be art like no other, and seductive for its transgressive and irreverent dimensions (see Chapters 4, 30, 39). After the 2013 coup, graffiti followed two compatible ways: institutionalization and guerilla modus operandi. The first was possible through the processes of legitimacy and “artification” that have taken place since 2011. The second was easy to bear, benefiting from the heterotopia that developed during the era of the Revolution and the TAZ method that perfectly suits the spirit and ideology of graffiti. Now, graffiti peregrinates between institutionalization and guerilla or articulating both. Actually, “it is reasonable to argue that graffiti as a genre remains more autonomous than most other media for the influence of economics and politics” (Kraidy 2013, 17). Even when displayed in galleries and institutions, political issues are still the most important driving force behind graffiti. This art is supposed to be accessible in public space, and the public space is, in essence, socially and politically invested. It is possible that graffiti self-­exiled abroad to continue its resistance function and sometimes stings by coming back to remind everyone that it continues to present a transgressive and rebellious speech. References Abdel Hamid, M. 2017. “The Sociodigital Mediation of Street Artivism in Egypt (2010–2013) and Its Contribution to the Rise of a Political Public: Semiotic Approach of an Aesthetic Revolutionary Experience.” PhD Thesis, Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3: https://tel.archives-­ ouvertes.fr/tel-­01578116 Abdel Hamid, M. 2018. “Le street artivisme en Egypte, de l’écriture au cœur d’un événement à l’écriture-­événement,” “Ecritures en événement.” Communication & Langages, no. 197. Baudrillard, J. 1974. “Kool Killer ou l’insurrection par les signes.” L’échange symbolique et la mort. Paris: Gallimard. Boraïe, S. 2012. Wall Talk: Graffiti of the Egyptian Revolution, Cairo: Zeitouna. Cresswell T. 1996. In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology, and Transgression. University of Minnesota Press: NED – New Edition. DeSoucey, M., Pozner, J.-­E., Fields, C., Dobransky, K., and Fine, G. Alan. 2008. “Memory and Sacrifice: An Embodied Theory of Martyrdom.” Cultural Sociology 2, no. 1: 99–121. Diallo, D. 2014. “From the Street to Art Galleries: How Graffiti Became a Legitimate Art Form.” Revue de Recherche en Civilisation américaine: 1–7. Foucault, M. 1984. “Des espaces autres. Hétérotopies.” Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité 5: 46–49. Fraenkel, B. 2002. Les écrits de septembre: New-­York 2001. Paris: Editions Textuel. Ganz, N. 2006. Graffiti World: Street Art from Five Continents. New York: Abrams. Genin, C. 2013. Le street art au tournant: Reconnaissances d’un genre. Bruxelles: Les Impressions Nouvelles. Genin, C. 2008. “Tag et graff.” Images et études culturelles. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne: 65–79. Gröndahl, M. 2012. Revolution graffiti, street art of the new Egypt. Cairo/New York: The American University in Cairo Press. Hakim Bey. 1991. T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. Available at: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/hakim-­bey-­t-­a-­z-­the-­temporary-­ autonomous-­zone-­ontological-­anarchy-­poetic-­terrorism.pdf

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Heinich, N. 2012a. De la visibilité: Excellence et singularité en régime médiatique. Paris: Gallimard. Heinich, N. and Shapiro, R. 2012b. De l’artification: Enquêtes sur le passage à l’art. Paris: Editions de l’EHESS. Karl, Don and Zoghbi, P. 2012. Le Graffiti arabe, Paris: Eyrolles. Karl, Don and Hamdy, B. 2014. Walls of Freedom. Berlin: From Here to Fame. Klemenz, L. and Vuilliaume, L. 2014. Graffiti baladi: Street art et Révolution en Egypte. Montreuil: Ominiscience. Kokoreff, M. 1988. “Des graffitis dans la ville.” Quaderni 6: 85–90. Kraidy, M. 2013. “A Heterotopology of Graffiti: A Preliminary Exploration.” Orient-­Institut Studies 2: https://perspectivia.net/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/ploneimport_derivate_00012334/ kraidy_graffiti.doc.pdf Kraidy, M. 2016. “Public Space, Street Art and Communication in the Arab Uprisings.” In M. Zayani and S. Mirgani (Eds.), Bullets and Bulletins: Media and Politics in the Wake of the Arab Uprisings (pp. 107–125). New York: Oxford University Press. Lefebvre, H. 1974. La production de l’espace. Paris: Editions Anthropos. Lennon, J. 2014. “Assembling a Revolution. Graffiti, Cairo and Arab Spring.” Cultural Studies Review 20, no. 1: 237–275. Monfleur, L. 2021. “Walls as Interstitial Combinations: Security Infrastructure and Practices in Revolutionary and Post-­Revolutionary Downtown Cairo.” User Experience & Urban Creativity 3, no. 2: 10–23. Naguib, S. 2016. “Engaged Ephemeral Art: Street Art and the Egyptian Arab Spring.” Transcultural Studies 2016, 2: 53–88. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315847726 Pagès-­El Karoui, D. 2014.:”L’odyssée de l’espace public égyptien.” In D. El Karoui, M. Oualdi, and C. Verdeil (Eds.), Les ondes de choc des révolutions arabes (pp. 269–291). Beyrouth: Presses de l’Ifpo. Slitine, M. 2015. “Gaza: Quand l’art remplace les armes.” Moyen-­Orient 25: 86–91. Tilly, C. 1975. “Major Forms of Collective Action in Western Europe, 1500–1975.” CRSO Working Paper, #123. Available from: https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/50899/ 123.pdf ?sequence=1 Tilly, C. 1984. “Les origines du répertoire d’action collective contemporaine en France et en Grande-­Bretagne.” Vingtième Siècle, revue d’histoire no. 4:89–108. Toenjes, A. 2015. “This Wall Speaks: Graffiti and Transnational Networks in Palestine.” Jerusalem Quarterly 61: 55–68. Tripp, C. 2013. The Power and the People. Paths of Resistance in the Middle East. New York: Cambridge University Press. Voirol, O. 2005. “Présentation. Visibilité et invisibilité: une introduction.” Réseaux 129/130: 9–36.

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Quiet Queer Activism in Repressive Contexts in the Middle East Through the Stories of Three Egyptian Women Shaimaa Magued Introduction This chapter examines individual pathways of advocacy in support for the LGBTQ cause within authoritarian contexts in the Middle East by shedding light on three Egyptian queer women – Sarah Hegazi, Malak al-­K ashif, and Shorouk al-­Attar – who became iconic figures in the LGBTQ transnational cyberadvocacy against state repression. Relying on Social Movements Theory’s (SMT) scholarly writings addressing the impact of individual emotions on self-­conscious engagement into action, this study dwells on SMT’s transformative events as turning points in individuals’ lives that result from negative personal encounters with state repression. Doing so, this study breaks with LGBTQ scholarship’s overemphasis on collective activism as a conventional form of mainstream advocacy in the Middle East echoing earlier gender movements in the United States starting in the 1970s (see Chapters 7, 36). Unlike the literature emphasizing the persistence of adaptive forms of collective advocacy against authoritarian regimes’ violation of LGBTQ activists’ rights, “quiet activism” refers to individual militancy in reaction to state repression and social disdain that impeded the metamorphosis of an LGBTQ collective advocacy. Psychological traumas induced by personal encounters with torture and public defamation served as transformative events that fueled negative emotions among victims, prompting them to develop an individual form of advocacy that circumvented the state intimidation of collective advocacy in support of the LGBTQ rights in the Middle East. The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Based on a close follow-­up of the three queer women’s social media accounts, this study tracks the metamorphosis of negative emotions from traumatic encounters during imprisonment into independent pathways of struggles that filled the vacuum in the public sphere resulting from the state’s intimidation of collective advocacies. Rather than focusing on normative dependency on historical accounts of the US gender movements’ advocacies in the 1970s, this study depicts individual life stories of three queer women from Egypt by highlighting their quiet activism via their personal social media accounts as the only way LGBTQ communities in the Middle East have in expressing their identity and supporting their cause (Ahmed 2014; Blackman 2021). The study’s novelty lies in focusing on three Egyptian queer women’s micro-­level engagement fueled by individual negative emotions that bypassed the state intimidation of massive engagement into collective advocacies around a common and public cause. The study highlights quiet activism as an individual publicly sharing life stories, personal events, and public encounters on social media as a dominant form of resistance that would develop into collective action and public mobilization. The chapter will start with a short overview on quiet activism followed by the examination of scholarship addressing the LGBTQ activism in the Middle East and research methodology. It will shed light on SMT’s conception of transformative events that will guide the study’s contribution on individual pathways of quiet activism through the stories of three queer Egyptian women.

Quiet Activism and State Repression Against the Egyptian LGBTQ Community Quiet activism refers to LGBTQ activists’ personal choice to highlight suffering under state repression, via their personal social media accounts, with the aim of increasing public awareness about the right to express sexual identity. It emphasizes an unorganized pattern of advocacy that departs from collective engagement and mass mobilization in the defense of a cause vis-­à-­vis ruling authorities. With the state’s rising repression against political opponents and civil society, in addition to the enactment of laws prohibiting public protest in Egypt, activists’ survival depends on personal detachment and the individualization of advocacy pathways as a result of negative imprisonment and torture experiences. Quiet activism underpins activists’ mobilization of autobiography – including advocacy history, accounts of suffering, and the accompanying negative emotions – in order to increase public awareness about members’ suffering, and with an eye toward improving their living conditions under a repressive context. By shedding light on the importance of the LGBTQ advocacy for the right of self-­expression, quiet activism capitalizes on the public manifestation of personal feelings of pain, anger, sadness, and despair resulting from torture, beating, and violation of personal rights during periods of incarceration. Following the January 25 Revolution, state repression escalated against LGBTQ groups in Egypt, particularly since 2014 under the rule of President Abdelfattah al-­Sisi. Although former President Hosni Mubarak (1980–2011) had targeted queer citizens as a

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means of diverting public attention from the regime’s political and economic failures in the 1990s, al-­Sisi launched unprecedented and extensive arrest campaigns against gays on the basis of the promiscuity law 10 of the year 1961 that lacks explicit reference to homosexuality. “Solidarity with Egypt LGBTQ” and “Rainbow Egypt” Facebook pages disclosed the state’s initiation of lawsuits, long imprisonment sentences, and forced medical examinations against LGBTQ members. The same pages reported 114 cases of criminalization and violence against members and highlighted the state’s tracking of 210 homosexuals and 64 transgender people throughout social media and dating apps, accusing them of deviant and immoral sexual behavior, and sentencing them to prison for 3–12 years. Human Rights Watch (2017) documented the riot police’s large arrest campaigns against LGBTQ members that started raiding parties from 2013 onwards. In 2013, 36  men were arrested in parties and bathhouses, 8 grooms were charged of debauchery and indecency for videotaping a gay marriage in 2014, 100 men were tracked on dating apps and sentenced to a lengthy period of incarceration for inciting “sexual perversion” in 2015, and finally partygoers to Red Hot Chili Peppers and Mashrou’ Leila concerts in Cairo were arrested and tried before military courts for waving the rainbow flag in 2017 (“Solidarity with Egypt LGBTQ” and “Rainbow Egypt” Facebook pages, 2019). Also, citizens undergoing gender transformation surgeries met administrative and political obstacles in getting the state and al-­Azhar’s official approval for their surgeries and for changing their identity in official documents. In debate since 2017, in 2019 two new bills were enacted on “the fight against debauchery” and “combating prostitution” that explicitly criminalize the practice of or the sponsorship of artistic works and social activities related to homosexuality that would be punished by imprisonment and fines (Bernstein 2017).

LGBTQ Advocacy and Collective Action in the Middle East Scholarly writings have addressed LGBTQ advocacy in the Middle East as a form of ­collective activism in terms of its dynamics of survival within repressive contexts such as Egypt, the Sudan, Iraq, Algeria, and Morocco (Habib 2016; Bosia et al. 2020; Bridal, 2020). Building on the history of LGBTQ activism in the United States, this scholarship focused on collective cyberadvocacy and transnational activism of the LGBTQ cause that involved activists and supporters working against social disdain and the state’s systematic violation of individual rights. This focus lead them to overlook individual pathways of quiet activism through the exposure of daily life practices and beliefs on social media accounts (see Chapter 29). Scholars addressed states’ common perception of the LGBTQ community’s collective advocacy as a widespread national and regional threat advanced by global agendas for the destruction of societies’ national fabric (Bahgat 2001; Bridal 2020; Bosia et al. 2020). These scholars emphasized that within a restricted social context and an authoritarian political environment, massive arrests for affiliation with terrorist groups or for instigation of disturbing actions prompted mobilization in defense of LGBTQ rights. State

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repression has forced ordinary LGBTQ citizens to turn into collective activism as a form of protest. Other writers depicted the state’s framing of the LGBTQ identity and sexual practice as a security threat as the main reason behind its metamorphosis into a public cause in defiance of security limitations and systematic violations of human rights (Habib  2016; Rahman  2020; Warner  1993). This framing associated with the LGBTQ community prompted the formulation of a swift and wide collective action to support victims who experienced deplorable humiliating imprisonment conditions. Scholars with a special focus on LGBTQ advocacy in Arab and Muslim countries have correlated the rising numbers of imprisoned activists with the authoritarian renewal of the ruling regime since 2011. These restrictive conditions favored the formulation of sympathetic advocacies against the state’s rhetoric capitalizing on protecting society’s mainstream heteronormativity against LGBTQ sexual practices and norms that go against traditional gendered roles. Scholars indicated how authoritarian rulers have publicly depicted LGBTQ activists as groups seeking to rally mass support to weaken national cohesion, thus distorting the state’s social fabric. Further contributions opted for a cultural perspective in discussing the LGBTQ collective dynamic of advocacy. Dwelling on historical and sociological accounts of Arab and Turkish societies in the nineteenth century, scholars emphasized the presence and visibility of LGBTQ individuals as members of entertainment and sexual industries (prostitution) (Massad  2007). On the other hand, literature examining the LGBTQ groups’ cultural aspects argued against associating homosexuality with the West, because the LGBTQ community had long been socioculturally embedded in the region. They argued that diverse sexual identities have always existed in countries like Egypt and Turkey, as evidenced by citizens who exhibited queer traits. In line with this argument, debates emerged around homosexuality as either an instinctive human drive or an individual choice that should be protected from the state’s systematic violations in compliance with the principles of human rights and freedoms (Amar and Shakry 2013). Through this cultural prism, scholars emphasized collective advocacies addressing social norms and beliefs from sociological and anthropological perspectives derived from the perception of homosexuality as an endogenous practice (Bosia et  al. 2020; Doan 2010). In addition, scholars have extensively approached LGBTQ collective advocacy from diverse SMT theories. They have explored the LGBTQ cause by framing it as an issue of public and common concern in Egypt since the 1990s, when global and national NGOs and civil society began advocating for human rights (Magued 2021a, 2021b). Building on Western LGBTQ movements’ struggles since the 1970s, scholars borrowed various approaches of mobilization theories in examining supporters and advocates’ dynamics of activism in support for the cause. Edited volumes have recently been published on the LGBTQ collective advocacies in the global south against state repression (Bridal 2020; Beinin and Vairel 2011; Barany, 2013; Duyvendak and Krouwel, 1999). Advocates used the tools of adaptation and recruitment to increase public awareness, and spread the cause in spite of state repression and social disdain. These tools ranged from transnational cyberadvocacy, coordination with civil society and global NGOs to the adoption of cultural means for disseminating the cause in order to legitimize their presence and allow rights of identity expression and practice.

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While scholars’ cultural, security, and SMT approaches have captured the LGBTQ cause’s multifaceted aspects within repressive contexts, they have mainly focused on ­collectivity as a way to orient activists’ actions, without examining individual pathways of quiet militancy as a way of resisting against violations and imposed limitations on collective activism.

Study Methodology This study is based on a meticulous examination of Facebook pages and YouTube ­channels addressing LGBTQ rights in Egypt in addition to the Twitter and Facebook accounts of Malak al-­Kashef, Sarah Hegazy, and Shorouk al-­Attar from 2017 to 2019. For the Facebook pages and YouTube accounts, the study method consisted of following up on LGBTQ community members’ and followers’ comments, posts, and interactions on different topics related to LGBTQ affairs in general and on conditions in Egypt in particular, in order to become familiar with the LGBTQ advocacy’s campaigns and slogans. On the other hand, the examination of the three queer women’s Facebook and Twitter accounts aimed to identify emotional patterns vis-­à-­vis personal encounters with state repression, strategies of action, and goals. Relying on personal observations and a ­follow-­up of the three activists’ accounts, I conducted a content, narrative, and discourse analysis that focused on dissecting words, symbols, images, slogans; interpreting meanings and the significance of personal stories, encounters, and feelings; and identifying activists’ perception of the cause within an unfavorable socioeconomic and political context. Data was organized and summarized into two categories and themes. The study manifested significant patterns related to online advocacy, encounters with state repression, the freedom and right of self-­expression, and the lack of public awareness about LGBTQ rights. Findings revealed two main categories – the absence of LGBTQ advocacy due to state repression, and individual expression of emotions as a discursive strategy to resist degrading living conditions – and two themes related to activists’ encounters with state violence and recourse to social media for ensuring public awareness.

Micro-­Level Engagement: Transformative Events and Individual Emotions To understand how the three queer Egyptian women have individually engaged into quiet activism on Facebook and Twitter, we turn to SMT’s transformative events and the ensuing emotions to help unpack the dynamics of this micro-­level advocacy. Living in a restrictive context, the three women resisted state repression through public display and expression of their queer identity on personal social media accounts. Their means of resistance was to publicly condemn traumatic personal encounters with the state and to express (1) their negative emotions in response to individual suffering in prisons, and/or (2) their feelings of solidarity with incarcerated members as a means of resistance.

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The recourse to individual pathways of activism highlights activists’ personal e­ ncounters and life stories depicted throughout their narratives on their social media accounts. The study sheds light on how the three women perceived and conducted their daily individual advocacy spurred by their own ideological shifts caused by transformative events they experienced related to torture, beating, physical and sexual violation, and arbitrary imprisonment. This scope of analysis addresses micro-­level engagement in the LGBTQ advocacy in the Middle East by using SMT’s notion of transformative events (The concept of transformative events means that negative encounters shape activists’ pathways of action toward either sociopolitical public engagement in defense of their cause or isolation as a result of their experienced traumas) that shaped the three w ­ omen’s perceptions of their relation to the state and society and elicited emotions that, because of state repression, could not be channeled through collective means of action, namely protests. State repression led the three women to develop a politicized gender identity in defiance of their restrictive context. This individual framework of analysis confirmed the centrality of macro-­level sociopolitical struggles in shaping personal emotions and actions. SMT scholarly writings emphasize the significance of personal and individual choices in support of a particular cause. In this vein, Della Porta (2018) stated that contexts shape individual choices and strategies of action that are mainly affected by the state’s policies toward collective actions, especially those supporting controversial causes. In line with this argument, Volpi and Jasper (2018) stressed how agency can shape interactions among different levels of action where identity and emotions are dominant factors in defining individuals’ action and framing their interactions with the state and/ or perceived enemies within spheres of contention. Constituting the core of collective action and the main vector of change, the individual level reveals cultural particularities and specificities related to arenas of contention. McCauley and Moskalenko (2008) focused on individuals’ motivations in terms of triggering group affiliation, delineating their position vis-­à-­vis opponents, and identifying accounts of personal suffering and relationship to other groups. In light of the salience of individual activism especially within restrictive contexts, transformative events are theoretically conceived by SMT scholars as the emotional and psychological backlash of state repression against individuals’ expression for or against a specific issue (Francisco 2004; Earl 2003). Transformative events produce a moral shock among individuals and incite political solidarity among the group on the basis of common suffering. Constituting an emotional burden for individuals, repression is perceived as a force that triggers a particular pathway to action depending on the type of emotions elicited – such as fear, anger, or frustration – that fuel individual actions, shape individual perception of the cause, and inform calculations regarding existing opportunities and costs for action or inaction (Godwin and Jasper 2004; Goodwin and Polletta 2001). Due to the significant impact of transformative events on activism, scholars emphasized the variability of the emotional impacts on individual pathways of action, depending on the nature of these emotions. Emotions acted as either amplifiers or deterrents to enhance or inhibit individuals’ engagement toward the cause. The focus on individual emotions led to establishing a politicized collective identity and solidarity, especially within repressive contexts that witness escalation against the state authority. Thus, whereas positive feelings generate an optimistic assessment of the situation and risk

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acceptance, negative emotions lead to pessimistic perceptions, risk aversion strategies, and a low sense of control (Pearlman 2013). Further writings asserted the varying impact of negative encounters and resulting emotions on individuals’ engagement. They indicated that, although negative encounters with repressive events increase moral outrage, instigate anger, and lead to the development of a politicized political solidarity, they would either incite or intimidate individuals from publicly acting against repression. In this vein, Van Stekelenburg and Klandermans (2013) distinguished between anger from one side and despair and shame from the other in shaping individuals’ reactions vis-­à-­vis threats. Along with other scholars, they argued that by turning suffering into transformative events and acting as instigators of change, negative emotions are responsible for individuals’ developing a politicized collective identity, self-­conscious engagement, and decisions that risk their own advantages (Klandermans and Simon 2001; Magued 2018; Klandermans and Van Stekelenburg, 2013). On the other hand, investigative studies by Brian (2009) and Francisco (2004) on massacres indicated that negative emotions in response to transformative events may deter individuals from public mobilization due to the limited media coverage of repression. According to both authors, the state’s systematic devaluation campaign against victims and embrace of a demeaning narrative toward them (1)  deemphasize its responsibility for criminal acts, (2) consolidate its legitimacy, and (3) justify its recourse to intimidating security tools. This situation results in the fall of strong leadership among advocates, the weakening of public sympathy toward the cause, and the lack of incentives for incurring losses as a result of engagement.

Individual Pathways of Activism in the Defense of the LGBTQ Cause Based on SMT analysis of transformative events and resulting emotions, we now shed light on the personal stories of three Egyptian queer women – Shorouk al-­Attar, Malak al-­K ashif, and Sarah Hegazi – who opted for quiet activism in support of the LGBTQ cause against state repression and social disdain. This activism has been manifested through various repertoires of action involving identity exposure on social media, ­fund-­raising campaigns, and disclosure of personal suffering. This section provides details about how the three queer women developed an individual advocacy via their personal accounts on social media following traumatic experiences in prisons and how this quiet activism, aimed at increasing public awareness about the LGBTQ cause, served as an alternative to mass protests in Egypt and the MENA region. Although NGOs were actively engaged in defending LGBTQ rights since the 1990s, the Arab uprisings marked the starting point in the metamorphosis of a visible LGBTQ advocacy in the MENA region (Human Rights Watch 2001, 2017). As active participants in protests calling for the regime’s ouster, Sarah Hegazi, Shorouk al-­Attar, and Malak al-­K ashif each formed a strong politicized queer identity thanks to exposure to different ideological and political currents that encouraged them to publicly express and practice their identity and beliefs. Until her suicide, Sarah took part in ideological discussions

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among leftist groups advocating for the realization of the Egyptian Revolution’s slogan of equality, freedom, and dignity through the fair redistribution of resources among workers, farmers, impoverished, and marginalized classes. Similarly, Malak, prior to her gender confirmation surgery, witnessed sociopolitical changes after the 2011 upheaval that allowed public expression of diverse gender identities and sociopolitical affiliations in spite of the existing limitations related to the unwillingness of the elderly generations, radical religious movements, and ruling elite to condone expression of homosexual identity. As active human rights supporters, Malak and Sarah were deeply inspired by the Revolution to follow a career pathway in human rights’ advocacy as freelance researchers and affiliates to prominent Egyptian think tanks with leftist inclinations. While Sarah embraced a socialist worldview as both a lifestyle and a means of advocacy in favor of disenfranchised groups, Malak defended the LGBTQ community and political opponents’ right to self-­expression. On the other hand, Shorouk, in spite of being outside Egypt since her childhood, has supported the ongoing changes following the January 25 Revolution and joined public calls for LGBTQ rights and freedom by performing entertainment activities to support fund-­raising for transnational LGBTQ advocacy in Arab countries. Although the January 25 Revolution had introduced hopes in the region for democratization and sociopolitical openness with regard to rights and freedom of public expression, the authoritarian revival and clampdown on political activism constituted a significant obstacle for these three women. As a result, they were genuinely devoted to human rights advocacy as a professional career and a public cause through their personal Facebook and Twitter accounts. The state’s launch of repressive campaigns against LGBTQ members as well as political opponents and activists in 2013 has incited these women to develop a self-­awareness about their identity and, accordingly, engage in public advocacy in defense of LGBTQ rights in Egypt and the MENA region (Amnesty International 2019; El-­Guindy 2013; Human Rights Watch 2017). Although they have embarked on an outspoken campaign in defense of workers’ rights and political opponents’ freedom, the return of authoritarianism was a turning point in the development of an individual quiet activism due to their personal imprisonment, which induced negative emotions of anger and despair. In 2017, Sarah was arbitrarily arrested at her house by the state security forces on charges of instigating public unrest and being a member of a terrorist organization following her attendance of Mashrou Laila’s concert in Cairo. As an admirer of the unconventional Lebanese rock band whose hit singer is openly gay, Sarah Hegazi incurred these accusations for publicly waving the rainbow flag with her colleague, Ahmed Alaa. They were both incarcerated in a police station for months without trial. Hegazi has experienced strong feelings of anger and frustration due to sexual harassment and physical aggression by inmates who were spurred on by policemen. A personal observation of her Facebook account before its closure shows that Hegazi expressed deep emotions of sadness and anger with authorities for inflicting suffering on her for raising a rainbow flag, which was, in her words, “a simple and unharmful act of self-­expression” (Knipp and Mellouk 2020). Having been raised in a religiously conservative environment, Sarah’s reconsideration of her ideological and religious background evolved into an open expression of being lesbian. The public display of this private testimony on her Facebook account, accompanied by her bareheaded pictures,

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signified an unprecedented turn against social norms and customs, which instigated public resentment. Receiving followers’ and friends’ hateful and angry comments on her posts condemning her act of publicly raising a rainbow flag, Sarah experienced violent flashbacks of her experience in the police station and considered seeking asylum in Canada following her release for fear of enduring similar encounters in the future. In a similar vein, Malak al-­K ashif has been speaking up against her suffering during encounters with the state bureaucracy and public disdain over her request for surgery for gender reassignment to become a female. On her Facebook (Malak ElKashif ) and Instagram (@elkashifmalak) accounts, she has openly mentioned that although her issue is not religiously forbidden by al-­Azhar, she has been struggling in her administrative pursuit for official documentations approving her surgery and recognizing her new gender identity. Following the 2019 fire incident at the Ramses train station in Cairo that led to the death of 19 people, al-­K ashif called for public protests against the state’s corruption and inertia vis-­à-­vis citizens’ safety and well-­being on her Facebook account, which led to her arrest under charges of instigating public disruption. Through her Facebook account, al-­K ashif revealed that following a demeaning forced medical examination of her body at a public hospital, officers mistreated her at the police station and incarcerated her in a men’s prison, where she was subjected to physical abuse and sexual harassment. Al-­K ashif has widely and publicly shared her fury with followers on Facebook. She also shared about her repressive upbringing in a conservative environment, which she had to abandon and do low-­skilled jobs in order to sustain a humble and safe lifestyle away from harmful parents, and to acquire the necessary funding for her gender correction surgery. In contrast with Sarah and Malak, Shorouk had the chance to come out as a lesbian in a safe environment in the UK where she sought asylum away from her family for fear of retaliation. Having a high profile as an IT engineer with a strong educational ­background, Shorouk developed an effective public advocacy for her peers in Egypt and Arab countries by speaking up about their risky living conditions through video briefs on Twitter and calling for restitution of the LGBTQ rights across the region (@shroukELA). Being away from a restrictive environment and able to openly lead a lifestyle compatible with her sexual identity, al-­Attar has capitalized on her educational skills and social status in leading an individual advocacy in support for the LGBTQ community. She dedicated her Twitter account to the defense of the LGBTQ cause against state repression and developed an entertaining drag queen show to raise funds to support LGBTQ prisoners and advocates in captivity across Arab countries. A review of the three young women’s Facebook and Twitter accounts shows their quiet activism revolved around two main themes: the right to publicly express one’s sexual identity, and the release of LGBTQ prisoners. Once she received asylum in Canada, Sarah’s posts on her Facebook account manifested a quiet activism that went viral on social media after her suicide in mid-­2020. Her writings were saturated with despair, anger, and astonishment at society’s hypocrisy and cruelty toward her; despite being a peaceful human, she was persecuted because of her sexual identity. In her posts, she lamented her situation and questioned the incoherent, illogical correlation between her simple act of self-­expression and her shocking experience of torture in prison, events that seemed totally unrelated to her. Controversial comments on posts addressing her

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suicide emphasized the close relation between her traumatic imprisonment experience and negative feelings of helplessness, victimhood, and despair on one hand and the decision to take her life on the other. Such Facebook groups as “Pride for Sarah Hegazi,” “Sarah Hegazi’s Mural in Brighton,” and “In the 1st Memory of Sarah Hegazi” have widely relied on Hegazi’s posts to design online campaigns portraying popular Arab figures in support of LGBTQ rights that paid tribute to her struggle while upholding the “RIP Sarah Hegazi” hashtag. Similarly, Malak al-­K ashif has advocated for the respect of sexual and identity differences within society and for the release of LGBTQ prisoners since 2013, following the state’s crackdown on opponents. Al-­K ashif ’s feelings of outrage and contempt were alleviated by achieving her corrective surgery and ensuring her well-­being and safety away from a harmful environment. Through her Facebook and Twitter accounts, she frequently shared personal pictures and stories emphasizing her success story as a transgender woman who, in spite of restrictive conditions and upbringing, managed to reach her goals and lead a normal living (@ElkashifMalak). The self-­display of a “role model” building on an average citizen’s negative encounter with the state bureaucracy regarding official recognition of her reassigned gender manifested a quiet activism. Malak became an iconic figure in the LGBTQ transnational advocacy in the MENA region. Advocates focused on her case in their advocacy for LGBTQ rights and called for prisoners’ release by designing online campaigns bearing “free Malak” hashtags and slogans such as “you are not alone” and “your smile is stronger than their hatred” that went viral on LGBTQ Facebook pages from Egypt, the Sudan, Algeria, Lebanon, and Morocco (YouTube 2017, 2018). Coining the label of the M society, mogtama’ al-­meem, in reference to the LGBTQ acronym in Arabic, the cause evolved into a transnational advocacy thanks to activists outside Egypt, such as Shorouk al-­Attar, who highlighted LGBTQ suffering in the Arab world and the urgent need to release prisoners through an individual fund-­raising initiative via a drag queen performance to support prisoners’ legal cases in Arab countries (@shroukELA). Shorouk’s Twitter account acted as a platform to condemn the state’s incarceration of the LGBTQ prisoners who experienced deplorable conditions in their cells, and to increase awareness of the cause through the display of videos showing her drag queen performance. Although the three women were personally unrelated and geographically separated, they coalesced into a common effort of silent advocacy consisting of public display of personal emotions, queer individual lifestyles, and traumatic experiences in an attempt to defy state repression, unjust practices, and social disdain as an alternative means to mass protests.

Conclusion Based on SMT’s analysis of transformative events and emotions, this study argues that individual advocacy emerged in reaction to the state’s tight security measures and repressive mechanisms against the LGBTQ community in Egypt and across the region. Unlike the literature addressing LGBTQ advocacy in the Middle East as a collective activism,

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this study argues that the LGBTQ activists’ personal encounters with the state’s r­ epressive practices generated negative emotions that impeded the metamorphosis of a visible and effective advocacy. Based on examination of the three queer Egyptian women’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, this study presented the storyline of Shorouk al-­Attar, Malak ­al-­K ashif, and Sarah Hegazi in order to track their individual activism capitalizing on feelings of despair, frustration, and anger against state repression and violation of human rights and freedom. Sharing common negative emotions associated with traumatic personal encounters with state repression of their belief in the right of self-­ expression and practice of homosexuality as an inherent human right and freedom, the three women developed an individual form of activism in defense of LGBTQ rights in Egypt and Arab countries via their social media accounts. Although the Arab uprisings enabled more sociopolitical rights to flourish and stronger claims to be made against the state authority, the LGBTQ community suffered deeply from the state’s authoritarian renewal following the ouster of dictator rulers. The authoritarian regime has not only restricted means and forms of expression and limited personal rights but has also inflicted a wide range of suffering on political opponents and human rights advocates (see Chaoters 10, 26, 27). As staunch defenders of human rights and freedoms, al-­Kashif and Hegazi’s traumatic experience in Egyptian prisons and their negative encounters with public defamation on charges of upholding derogatory practices prompted them to develop an individual advocacy on their social media accounts in support for the right and freedom of self-­expression against state repression. By examining their public posts detailing personal encounters with authorities and ensuing negative emotions, this study argued that although state repression has intimidated advocates from developing an effective form of collective advocacy to support the LGBTQ cause, transformative events experienced by individuals have degenerated into feelings of despair and anger, which prompted them to develop an individual self-­conscious engagement to support LGBTQ rights as a personal cause. In light of the state repression of collective activism, the three women’s individual experiences have addressed state repression as transformative events that fueled negative emotions, thus establishing quiet activism as an adaptive form of advocacy. References Adam B., Duyvendak, J., and Krouwel, A. (Eds.). 1999. The Global Emergence of Gay and Lesbian Politics: National Imprints of a Worldwide Movement. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Amar, P. and El-­Shakry, O. 2013. “Introduction: Curiosities of Middle East Studies in Queer Times.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 45, no. 2: 331–335. Amnesty International. 2019. “Egypt: Forcibly Disappeared Transgender Woman at Risk of Sexual Violence and Torture.” Available at: www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/03/ egypt-­forciblydisappeared-­transgender-­woman-­at-­risk-­of-­sexual-­violence-­and-­torture/ Bahgat, H. 2001. “Explaining Egypt’s Targeting of Gays.” Middle East Report Online. Available at https://merip.org/2001/07/explaining-­egypts-­targeting-­of-­gays/ Barany, Z. 2013. “After the Arab Spring: Revolt and Resilience in the Arab Kingdoms.” Parameters 43, no. 2: 89–101. Beinin, J. and Vairel, F. (Eds.). 2011. Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

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Simon, B. and Klandermans, B. 2001. “Politicized Collective Identity: A Social Psychological Analysis.” American Psychologist 56, no. 4: 319–331. Van Stekelenburg, J. and Klandermans, B. 2013. “The Social Psychology of Protest.” Current Sociology 61, no. 6: 886–905. Volpi, F. and Jasper, J. (Eds.) 2018. Microfoundations of the Arab Uprisings: Mapping Interactions Between Regimes and Protesters. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Warner, M. 1993. “Introduction.” In M. Warner (Ed.), Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory (pp. 3–17). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. YouTube. 2017. “Omar al-­Sharif Jr. Speaking Out for LGBT Youth in Egypt.” Video. Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzjA9EBlSC4 YouTube. 2018. “Activists Discuss Being LGBTQ in the Arab World.” Video. Available at: www. youtube.com/watch?v=aSURhPfYuwc

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Social Media and Fourth Wave Feminism in Morocco Naziha Houki, Alka Kurian, and Kenza Oumlil

Introduction This chapter explores the rise of fourth wave feminism in Morocco. While building on previous frames of feminist engagement, this new feminist activism stems from a heightened sense of disenchantment with the culture of misogyny and the politics of repressive and corrupt governance. We examine how the development of internet technology and the Arab Spring protest culture provided the language, modalities, and means of protest to activists in the country (see Chapters 26, 29, 35). At the core of fourth wave is the use of social media that has fundamentally altered the manner of knowledge-­construction around gender and social justice issues and their dissemination, bypassing traditional gatekeepers, and in the process, transforming the meaning and modality of feminist engagement in unprecedented ways. In a country that censures freedom of expression, dissent, and social mobilization, social media offers a safe, anonymous, noninstitutionalized, nonhierarchical, and borderless space to citizens and activists for public engagement. Rather than a means to an end, the speed and immediacy of digital technology for communicating messages enable new ways of thinking and modes of operating (Chamberlain 2017). Unlike in the past where women relied on the law or the state to seek redress for structural and systemic inequities, they now share their personal stories of abuse on social media (see Chapter 29). This shifting of the burden from the perpetrators of inequities to their victims is seen by some as replicating a neoliberal feminist framework whose focus is more on women individually working toward their own empowerment, rather than on dismantling systemic gender inequities (Rottenberg 2018, Ghadery 2019). The sheer volume of the stories shared by a multiplicity of voices using hashtags (e.g. #MeToo), however, dispels accusations of individualistic self-­promotion by women. It enables consciousness-­raising, spotlights the

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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depth of the problem, displays “collective experiences of structural inequality” (Ghadery, 261), and in the process, promotes solidarity among individuals. Given the endemic nature of gendered restrictions placed on women’s freedom of expression and dissent, the growth in digital presence in Morocco, its anonymity, accessibility, and flexibility provided them a valuable alternative space for organizing and mass mobilizing. Social media has become a “new frontier for Moroccan civil society’s long-­ standing struggles over human rights” (Iddins 2018, 3582), creating the right kind of technopolitical (Tazi and Oumlil 2020) and social conditions for the growth of fourth wave. A few clicks online can turn local events into global, and the personal into political forums for public debate, snowballing online conversation into an international internet outrage at a staggering speed (Chamberlain 2017). While digital access contributes to an increased democratization of voices and opinions, state-­led internet censorship, cyber-­ policing, and the law end up muzzling freedom of speech (Arif Hussain Nadaf 2020). This, along with the problem of online backlash or internet trolling, means that it would be naïve to see social media as a utopian space of free expression but instead, a mirror image of the real world. As a result of its embrace of women’s perspectives that are non-­hegemonic, contextualized, and inclusive, the fourth wave can be understood as a transnational movement (see Chapter 7). It promotes a “multilocational and multinational approach to feminist theory” (Grewal and Kaplan 1994, 19) leading to transnational solidarity and cooperation and attention to local stakeholders and knowledge (Ghadery, 267–268). Central to its concerns are rape culture, street sexual harassment, sexuality, and art. Further, it is not only a social moment but also a political and legal one. Sexual misconduct accusations, for example, have led to the firing or forced resignation of powerful men, changes in sexual harassment policies, and legislative reforms carried out across the world.

Moroccan Feminist Waves Women in Morocco have long played an important role in the process of building democratic culture. A quick glance at the history of the feminist movement surfaces its parallel – and yet different – growth with that in the Western world. If the first Euro-­American feminist wave focused on the question of women’s suffrage, women in Morocco fought shoulder to shoulder with men in the country’s anti-­colonial movement. The second feminist wave in the West spotlighted the rights of women of color, while that in Morocco emphasized equal rights for women in the social and political spheres. What brought feminist concerns from the two geopolitical regions closer together were the issues of inclusion and intersectionality, which in the case of Morocco could be seen along the lines of class, language, rural/urban divide (Lambert 2017), and postcolonial identity that helped dismantle Orientalist images of Arab and Muslim women as passive victims of race and gender (Tazi and Oumlil 2020). The fourth wave in Morocco first emerged in the shape of the 2011 Arab Spring– inspired February 20th (M20) movement which signaled a major break from previous modes of feminist activism in three ways (Lambert 2017). First, like the new generation of American feminists, the Moroccan youth distanced themselves from the existing

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feminist organizations. Second, unlike the third wave NGOized feminists who sought legal and political patronage to lobby for change (Kurian interview ADFM, Sept 2021), M20 activists chose to work outside the country’s legal and political gatekeepers’ spaces as that’s where the rot lay. Instead, they introduced a new framework of “gender parity” (Lambert, 98) and worked directly at the grassroots level to dismantle social, economic, and patriarchal barriers to bring about gender equality and social justice for all. And third, they abandoned legacy media in favor of social media, a space where the existing mainstream feminist organizations had no representation. Over time, the M20 movement petered out due to internal differences and opposition from feminists for having colluded with the conservative sections of the society. Further, critics have accused it of embodying a “Watered-­down Feminism” (Lambert 2017) by not centering gender as its organizing principle. However, thanks to M20s origins in the technopolitical moment of the Arab Spring that focused on social media–led popular antiauthoritarian political activism, it created the conditions for fourth wave feminism to break out. In addition to the political restrictions imposed on freedom of speech and dissent, the centrality of Islamic law and social norms in Morocco further curtail women’s lives. They are denied access to public spaces and the autonomy of their bodies that are policed and disciplined in the name of honor. Despite the adoption in 2004 of the progressive new family code – the Moudawana – that guarantees women greater freedoms, women’s bodies and their movement in public spaces continue to be policed, disciplined, regulated, and violated in the name of tradition, religion, and family and community honor. The rise to power of the conservative Islamic Justice and Development party (PJD) in the immediate aftermath of the M20  movement revived women’s fears and brought back to the table fundamental questions about women’s freedom and the autonomy of their sexualized bodies.1 Younger Moroccan feminists’ slogan “My body belongs to me” (Atifi and Touati 2020, 184) is a deliberate intervention in the mainstream ideology about women’s nontraditional dress code and presence in public spaces as a justification for sexual harassment and rape. If feminism is an inquiry into the ways in which patriarchy affects our personal lives, then central to that inquiry is the idea of “personal is political” (Chamberlain 2017, 109) as the essential politics of feminism. Sexual violence experienced by women at an individual and personal level, for example, has the potential to become a political platform of debate, an equation whose impact is quadrupled when shared on social media. It is in this context that one sees deeper parallels across feminist concerns in the West and in non-­Western around the trope of the female body. Social media provided young Moroccan women a new platform for “individualized activism” (Lambert, 115) that has helped transform gender as a political category into gender as a personal category embedded in the discourse of body-­positivism, sex-­positivism, sexuality, and body autonomy. Much of the inspiration for the fourth wave in Morocco originated online via  In 2011, the PJD minister Najib Boulif denounced the Moroccan actress Latefa Ajrrare’s revealing dress at the 11th International Film Festival in Marrakech, charging it with public exhibition of “nudity” and claimed that his party will only allow halal (clean) art. The incident triggered a ­public outcry from the country’s artistic community who saw it as an attack on the freedom of artistic expression.

1

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several incidents taking place in different parts in the world. For example, the organization Woman Choufouch’s online campaign for a Moroccan SlutWalk in August 2011 – modeled after the original SlutWalk in Montreal  – to protest the culture of socially sanctioned sexual violence, was in turn inspired by the Tunisian feminist Amina Sboui’s posting of topless pictures of herself on the internet to shock middle-­class patriarchal morality and assert her sexual autonomy. Ever since, the country has witnessed a rising expression of feminist militancy on the internet denouncing taboos against the autonomy of their bodies, sexual desire, and sexuality outside marriage, claims that were never a priority for third wave feminist organizations. The public attestation, for example, by a 17-­year-­old woman named Khadija about her two months of abduction, rape, and torture drew nationwide denunciation of the impunity rooted in the culture of sexual violence. The incident triggered the campaign #Masaktach (“I will not be silenced”), an example of “development of contextualization and ‘ownership’ of the movement according to Moroccan people’s own terms and struggles” (Ghadery 2019, 272). Initiated by a blogging collective Mamfakinch (“no concessions”), the 2013 counter-­hegemonic #RIPAmina campaign triggered by the suicide of a teenager forced to marry her rapist, problematized the women’s status in the country’s criminal justice system. Inspired by the Tunisian website Nawaat.org, Mamfakinch grew into an inclusive and nonhierarchical media working on “contentious politics” and as an “important force shaping the development of media industries -­ultimately participating in the construction of an emergent digital political culture” (Iddins, 3583–3593). Using social media technology and a human rights discourse, Mamfakinch carefully balanced Orientalist depictions of Moroccan women doubly oppressed as racialized Arab and female minorities and as autonomous empowered subjectivities. By way of illustrating our claim about the rise of fourth wave feminism in Morocco as a result of a complex intersection of the rejection of the culture of sexism, a transnational mobilization of gender equality, intersectionality, and digital access, this chapter explores the following three case studies: Zainab Fasiki, Marokkiates, and Moroccan Outlaws, all of them representatives of a new generation of feminist activists, artists, and writers whose social media–led dissident work on bodily autonomy, sexual desire, and sexual rights has brought these issues out of the shadows of the culture of shame and into the heart of public debate (Hachad 2021).

Methodology This chapter relies on textual analysis as a helpful conceptual tool to analyze both dominant as well as subversive written and visual media texts (Bainbridge 2010). Drawing on Bainbridge’s (2010) guidelines, our analysis utilized the principles of structuring absences (as what is missing in the text is as relevant as what is represented) and the principle of exnomination (the dominant assumptions that centrally frame the text and are part of the “common sense”). In addition to textual analysis, we assessed social media audience engagement (Trunfio and Rossi 2021) and conducted netnography (Kozinets 2015) of feminist content on

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social media to determine the level of impact of the feminist content on its audience and the level of meaningful discussion generated by the 4th wave tech-­savvy feminists. To reflect the findings of Leander (2017), an award-­winning and widely cited marketing expert who argues engagement rates above 1% indicate a high interaction with the content, we have shown empirical rates of engagement across several moments in the fourth wave feminist movement in Morocco. Our findings indicate an engagement rate larger than 1% for Fasiki’s content on Instagram ( p=0.054) and for the Marokkiates Facebook series (p=0.011), while the Moroccan Outlaws Manifestos on Instagram scored an engagement rate of below 1% ( p =0.0089). The combination of all the above moments resulted in a 2.2% engagement rate.

Zaineb Fasiki: A Fourth Wave Feminist Dismantling the Culture of Shame Zaineb Fasiki is a well-­known feminist graphic artist who was trained as a mechanical engineer but turned toward art to take on the culture of sexism. She defines herself as an “artivist” and uses women’s naked, uncensored, and unashamed portraits to denounce gender inequality, the culture of misogyny, and taboos around women’s sexuality through the policing and regulating of women’s bodies by the family, society, and the media. Many of Fasiki’s illustrations are self-­portraits, often nude, and always in bright blue, depicting her body eclipsing the Casablanca skyline, on the operating table, or inside a hammam surrounded by women of all shapes and sizes. She uses nude art to challenge the male gaze and transgresses the taboo on nudity in her country and the wider Arab world. With 127,000 followers on Facebook and Instagram, Fasiki’s content on Instagram has the highest engagement rate among our sample, 5.3–5.5%. Following the 2017 gang rape of a 26-­year-­old girl on a moving bus in Rabat and the dissemination of a video recording of the incident, an outraged Fasiki responded by drawing a partially naked illustration of the victim, sparking the start of highly engaging content. She posted the illustration on Instagram to demand accountability from the perpetrators and to turn the gaze back onto them, forcing a public conversation on rape culture in a country whose criminal justice system blames rape victims instead of protecting them. In the past, women dealt with their personal experiences by sharing them with women in closed whisper circles and by seeking redress from the law. While this practice created a small ripple effect among women’s well-­wishers, it ended up dying a little death under the cloak of shame and embarrassment in a culture where women were socialized to internalize the logic of victim blaming. By posting her illustration on social media, Fasiki transformed a deeply personal experience of sexual violence and humiliation of a single individual into an international public platform for debate and discussion within a matter of minutes. In the process, she also transformed it into an important fourth wave moment by insisting that individual experiences of sexual brutalization contributed to the formation of a sexist culture as a result of what Chamberlain calls the “drip-­drip effect of ongoing sexism” (2017, 110). In her latest intervention for the 2M’s digital

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Figure  36.1  A user’s comment on Fasiki’s work. [Author translation: “Superb interview! Thanks to activists like Zainab Fasiki, we can lift the taboos on the female body and sexuality.”]

platform’s Joojmedia, she harnessed an impressive engagement rate of 9.45%, with only supportive comments, including the one shown in Figure 36.1. Clearly, Fasiki’s success in detoxifying attitudes toward societal taboos through her artwork and discourse resonate with communities of feminist users.

Marokkiates: Capturing a Nascent Fourth Wave Our next case study relates to feminist filmmaker and cofounder of Moroccan Outlaws, Sonia Terrab, a fervent advocate for ending the country’s liberticide gender laws. Her web series, “Marokkiates,” directed for the antiestablishment digital platform Jawjab (producer of the podcast “Sorokhoti” #TaAnaMeToo, an animation series illustrating testimonials of sexual violence, and the Pride Month video featuring LGBTQAI+ people), puts the lens on 12 Moroccan women with each episode marked by the subtitle ‫ جمع مؤنث سالم‬signifying the plurality of female identities in Morocco. The series was published on Facebook between November 2017 and February 2018, and subsequently on YouTube, accumulating 2.67 million views, 54,000 reactions, and 17,000 comments, as of January 10, 2022, on Facebook and YouTube ( Jawjab 2018). Marokkiates’ Facebook engagement rates are the second highest in our sample. Contrary to Fassiki’s content, Marokkiates captures the most passionate public debate on social media due to its response to dominant discourses that circumscribe women’s realities in a patriarchal framework. The women in the web series engage in a countercultural activism (Mesia-­Lema 2018) based on oppositional reading (Hall 1980) – the ability to articulate an alternate reading to the dominant reading based on counter-­intuition and counter-­sensibilities, such as Stam and Spence’s (1985) concept of “aberrant reading,” of Hook’s (1989) notion of “talking back” is particularly useful in this context because the women, as subaltern counter-­publics (Dina Wahba 2016) reject their objectification and center their lived reality in their own voice. The women’s creative disobedience (Margot Badran 2016) focuses on the flaws and injustices embedded in the dominant discourse. The first theme in the women’s testimonies, expressed by 9 of 12 subjects, is the reappropriation of the public space regardless of their appearance, dress, behavior, time of day, or type of space. The web series throws a spotlight on the inherent irony of patriarchal double standards that view women’s presence in public places as an act of provocation (Phadke 2016) and take away their freedom through enforced domesticity and a regressive dress code in the name of their protection (Krishnan 2019).

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One of the principal characteristics of fourth wave feminism is the deliberate reclaiming of the body as well as highlighting the ways in which the different axes of identity constitute our sense of self. It is based on Crenshaw’s (1991) groundbreaking notion of intersectionality which critiques the universalist and monolithic understanding of femininity as middle-­class, cisgender heterosexual. The women in the web series were fully aware of the dominant gendered norms through exnomination. In fact, two subjects knowingly chose to display an appearance and language that would be considered ­provocative in the Arab culture and antithetical to the image of the “good Moroccan woman.” In her episode, Salima, who wears a tattoo on her chest proudly asserting “I’ll give them a reason,” generated the most views and discussion. The caption of the episode reads “the swing on the breast,” referencing a street harasser’s abusive words. While some commenters showed support for the struggle against misogyny and gender-­based violence, others aggressively opposed Salima’s feminist discourse. Many of the negative comments were referencing Islamic religious beliefs, attacking the subject’s sexual appearance and the publisher’s depraved and capitalistic perspective. As demonstrated in Figures 36.2, 36.3, and 36.4, the subject, the director, and the publisher contribute to the discussion encouraging positive comments or interjecting in the debates, implying the ongoing influence of a pluralistic, non-­judgmental, and inclusive fourth wave feminism that equates gender equality and sexual desire (Snyder-­Hall 2010).

Figure  36.2  Positive comments on Salima’s episode with the highest reactions. [Author translation: “It’s not my business . . . she can do whatever she wants. But, in my opinion, the most important thing is that she reconciles with her body. This is something amazing I wish to you with all my heart.”]

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Figure 36.3  Examples of negative comments on Salima’s episode. [Author translations: ”It’s obvious that you did it for yourself because you are obsessed with sex and that’s a disease”; “What I want for you is the goal of the feminist movement. Is there an answer??”; “Jawjab is encouraging this nonsense. They make money from this culture (if we can call it that).” ]

Figure  36.4  Examples of Salima’s interaction with the commenters. [Author translation: “Whatever you do people will talk. This is normal and exists everywhere. It’s just that here in Morocco, there is a lot of it, but you can’t let the words of others influence you. So indeed you need to have 100% self-­confidence and most of all be proud of yourself, of your body as it is, your personality, your ideas. I also have a tattoo, I love tattoos!! I love the way that you talked but you said something at the end that was wrong, you said you will give them a reason to talk but no honey. (We don’t do tattoos for others but for ourselves!! Each tattoo is the symbol of a life, an experience, a memory that we want to keep for life.) Kiss from me.”; “I didn’t do it for others, there is a whole story and childhood memory that I thought about deeply, I said that I gave them now a reason to criticize me because before, they were criticizing me for no reason. Thank you for your words!! Kisses.”]

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However, by setting radical femininity side by side with regressive masculinity, this fourth wave web series signals the need for an intersectional cultural revolution completely overhauling cultural attitudes toward gender norms and expectations. This is simply because without bringing men into the conversation, the younger women’s motto of “my body, my choice” is doomed to failure. Marokkiates touches on the issue of bisexuality with Rihab, despite the danger of illegality ascribed by Article 489 of the Moroccan Penal Code. Nonetheless, Jawjab published the 12 episodes on YouTube, but did not post Rihab’s episode on its Facebook playlist. Marokkiates shows that the absence of gatekeepers is not enough to sustain the participative nature of social media. Legal constraints invite self-­censorship. Along with other subjects, Rihab’s testimonial asserts the need to respect their individual freedom, previously proclaimed since 2009 by Betty Lachgar’s movement, M.A.L.I (Mougin, 2020). The subjects displayed incredible courage in their resistance to patriarchal and heteronormative norms and structures. Each enacted acts of bravery in different ways, putting themselves at risk as they challenge the status quo and emphasizing their obvious agency in their power to resist. This dissent negates the monolithic representation of Arab and Muslim women as passive victims in need of saving (Abu Lughod 2002; Jiwani 2006; Oumlil 2010). Emboldened by the fourth wave callout culture (Munro 2013), the subjects have furthermore bravely called out gender-­based violence by unashamedly talking about their own experiences with street and sexual violence, and, in one instance, telling the story of engaging in physical self-­defense, freeing themselves from the culture of victim blaming and mirroring Western liberal feminism. In the same way, Aya denounces gender-­based violence online by saying, “I wanted to send a strong message.” As an online activist who also attends protests, she demonstrates a key characteristic of fourth wave feminists who use the internet as a platform for both “discussion and a route for activism” (Munro 2013, 24), bridging the gap between online and offline activism. However, her interventions are met with “insults” online, which she fails to acknowledge as cyberviolence. Similar structuring absences are present in other subjects’ testimonies who did not have the language to name institutional sexism, slut-­shaming and gaslighting they experienced. Women lacking the vocabulary linked to different forms of violence can cause serious and lasting psychological damage and physical symptoms as described by Bourdieu’s symbolic violence (1977), Williams’s “spirit murder” (1991) or Wing’s “spirit injury” (1990–1991). While the Marokkiates are undeniably brave for openly discussing controversial societal issues, they haven’t yet developed a political consciousness of the source of their oppression. The online space provides the Marokkiates with a consciousness-­raising platform where sharing their specific gendered experiences gives them a unique perspective with which to look at the world and understand themselves and the society or why their oppression is unique to them (Hill-­Collins 2013).

From Marokkiates to Moroccan Outlaws: An Outspoken Fourth Wave Collective of Feminists Beyond reaching millions of Moroccans on social media, the testimonies of the Marokkiates spoke to the bigger issue of women’s rights, which continuously captures the attention of the media and international organizations. The relevance of

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these testimonials was further reinforced by the United Nations. Indeed, Sonia Terrab presented Marokkiates at the 63rd session of the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations Headquarters in March 2019. In a study carried out in the same year, the United Nation revealed that “only 3 out of 100 women survivors of sexual violence report incidents to the police in Morocco” (UN Women 2021). While Terrab’s docuseries primarily allowed women to move beyond the patriarchal protectionist discourse to proclaim sexual emancipation by expressing their sexuality and sexual identity, unafraid of society’s eye and gaining the support of a passionate online community. Terrab witnessed firsthand the impact of the Marokkiates transforming “it into a sort of movement because [she] receives every day messages from women who want to testify, become Marokkiates and break taboos” (TV5  Monde Info 2018). This is a powerful indication of a burgeoning fourth wave feminist movement in Morocco whose seeds can be exploited to capitalize on this energy emanating from women’s disenchantment with the status quo – similar to the ways in which Radway (2000) claims that for a group of mostly white, middle-­class, and married American women. In collaboration with the 2018 winner of the Goncourt Prize for literature, Leila Slimani, Terrab released the Moroccan Outlaws Manifesto in September 2019, in the process linking her media activism with activism on the ground. Signed by 490 Moroccan men and women, all of them attesting to being outlaws, the Manifesto denounced the country’s liberticide laws, namely the articles against abortion, extramarital sex, and homosexuality. The Moroccan Outlaws emerged in response to the journalist Hajar Raissouni’s incarceration for the “crime” of abortion. Terrab launched the Moroccan Outlaws’ official social media channels on Facebook on September 26th garnering 73,000 and 52,000 followers on Facebook and Instagram respectively (as of January 2022). In December 2019, the collective decided to call for a national petition to abolish articles from the penal code with the “Love is not a crime” manifesto on the national platform for citizen participation, which was not received by the parliament as it was missing 5,000 votes. Nonetheless, the collective received the Simone de Beauvoir Prize for Women’s Freedom in January 2020. In between the manifestos, the collective gathered on their social media platform testimonials from Moroccans being denied their freedom to love or experiencing abuse of power due to misimplementation of laws (Moroccan Outlaws, 2021). Gender-­based violence is also at the center of the group’s fight, as it lends its voice to support victims of revenge porn or extramarital relationships (Moroccan Outlaws, 2020). During the 2020 pandemic lockdown, the group openly supported the LGBTQIA+ community by denouncing cyberviolence (Moroccan Outlaws 2020). More recently, in December 2021, they were received by the Ministry of Justice to present their defense against article 490 and build together a common vision in the spirit of the Moroccan Constitution (Khettou 2021). Their latest campaign #MetooUniv is covered by international media exposing sexual harassment in higher education, leading to the investigation and imprisonment of faculty (France 24 2022). Despite having the lowest engagement rate in our sample, the Moroccan Outlaws’ Manifestos had the most powerful impact on society.

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Conclusion Fourth wave feminism in Morocco is no longer a dream but a reality, demonstrated by an army of activists speaking to devictimize and liberate themselves from the culture of shaming. Using social media, they engage with proponents and detractors alike, educating them through their content and vivid discussion among their online community. The mere presence and visibility of nonnormative identities help demystify negative cultural associations in favor of human rights, freedom, and dignity. Unfortunately, this new feminist social media activism has yet to generate the same impact on legal change as did the online mobilization for Amina Filali. Indeed, despite the activists’ efforts, the Moroccan legal and judicial system has yet to align with online sexual liberation proclaimed by the fourth wave. Even if the discussions have become more mainstream, feminists still represent a minority in a sea of traditional conservative Moroccans. Social media has no doubt revolutionized the way women in Morocco engage with feminism and has helped the feminist movement transition from an institutionalized and NGOized third wave to a grassroots, autonomous fourth wave. At the core of this revolution is the callout culture that has put a spotlight on the culture of sexism in the country, surfacing the systemic inadequacy of the legal system for survivors of sexual violence. Despite the state-­led initiatives introducing progressive legislature around women’s rights, regressive institutions at all levels of the society, an entitled patriarchy, legal loopholes, and the gap between the law and its practice all make these changes ineffective. On the one hand, the unprecedented engagement levels with social media platforms demonstrate that everyday sexual harassment and assaults have reached a crisis level in Morocco. On the other, they also suggest that women can see through and dismantle the lies that have historically sustained patriarchy in the country. More and more cases of misogyny are now being exposed through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, blog posts, etc. than through official legislative procedures. While the hope is that the fear of public exposure might act as a deterrent for perpetrators of sexism, social media has also emboldened cyber-­trolls and bullies. Just as rape culture thrives on victim blaming, women expressing their opinions online are seen to be asking for gendered bullying and threats of sexual violence, which is exacerbated by the immunity provided by internet anonymity. However, rather than be intimidated, the fourth wavers hit back by directly engaging with their trolls, so that “the wave and its counter” happen simultaneously, each one fueling the other (Chamberlain 2017, 137). Relentless attacks, for example, have not silenced the Moroccan Outlaws. In addition, they are supported by many other activists who lend their voice to the same cause. Examples include 7achak (50.8k followers), a movement led by Sara Benmoussa against menstrual precarity in the country, or “Machi Rojola” (12,000 followers), a podcast promoting gender plurality and positive masculinity produced by Soufiane Hennani. These voices gained prominence with the help of a flourishing social media ecosystem, which opened the door to content producers like Jawjab, who unapologetically advocates their millennial progressive feminist agenda. Evidently, merely exposing the deeds of sexual perpetrators is not enough: it does not make a material difference to the survivors, neither does it help those whose cases do not

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grab media attention. What is needed is a cultural revolution that would dismantle patriarchal entitlement and the culture of misogyny, intersected with homophobia, class oppression, and racism. Without bringing patriarchy and its institution to the table, this conversation will remain incomplete.

Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank Matthew Ryan Lehnertt for his contribution to the statistical analysis. References Abu-­Lughod, L. 2002. “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others.” American Anthropologist 104, no. 3: 783–790. Aït Akdim, Y. 2012. “Maroc: l’Art et la Manière Forte [Morocco: The Art and the Hard Way].” Afrilogue 28. https://www.jeuneafrique.com/140890/culture/maroc-­l-­art-­et-­la-­mani-­ re-­forte/ Atful, H. and Touati, Z., 2020. “Nouvelles revendications féministes et médias numériques. Contournement des interdits sociaux et religieux en Tunisie et Maroc [New Feminist Demands and Digital Media. Bypassing Social and Religious Taboos in Tunisia and Morocco].” ESSACHESS–Journal for Communication Studies 13, no. 1: 179–208. Bainbridge, J. 2010. “Textual Analysis and Media Research.” In J. Bainbridge, N. Goc, and L. Tynan (Eds.), Media and Journalism: New Approaches to Theory and Practice (pp. 224–237). Australia: Oxford University Press. Bourdieu, P. 1977. “Sur le pouvoir symbolique [On Symbolic Power].” Annales 32, no. 3: 405–411. doi: 10.3406/ahess.1977.293828 Brut. 2018. Projet Marokkiat: Les Jeunes marocaines prennent la parole dans la rue [Project Marokkiat: Young Morocccan Women Speak in the Street]. YouTube. April 9. Available at: https://youtu. be/onXDwnAGl5k (Accessed: January 28, 2022). Chamberlain. P. 2017. “Why Fourth Wave Now?” In C. Prudence (Ed.), The Feminist Fourth Wave: Affective Temporality (pp. 107–154). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Chraibi, S. 2021. “Nouveau bras de fer sur les réseaux sociaux autour de l’article 490, relatif aux relations sexuelles hors mariage [New Showdown on Social Networks Around Article 490, Relating to Sexual Relations Outside Marriage].” Telquel.ma. February 5. Available at: https://telquel.ma/2021/02/05/de-­n ouveau-­u n-­b ras-­d e-­fer-­s ur-­l es-­reseaux-­s ociaux-­ autour-­de-­larticle-­490-­relatif-­aux-­relations-­sexuelles-­hors-­mariage_1710159?f brefresh=8 (Accessed: January 28, 2022). Cirksena, K. and Cuklanz, L. 1992. “Male Is to Female as ________ Is to________: A Guided Tour of Five Feminist Frameworks for Communication Studies.” In L. F. Rakow (Ed.), Women Make Meaning, New Feminist Directions in Communications (pp. 18–44). London: Routledge. Crenshaw, K. 1991. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6: 1241–1299. doi: 10.2307/1229039 (Accessed: 7 July 2020). CSW63. 2019. UN Women. Available at: https://www.unwomen.org/en/csw/csw63-­ 2019 (Accessed: January 28, 2022).

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Fondation Simone de Beauvoir. 2019. “Le Collectif 490 ‘Hors la Loi’ Lauréat du Prix Simone de Beauvoir pour la liberté des femmes 2020 [The Collective 490 ‘Moroccan Outlaw’ Winner of the 2020 Simone de Beauvoir Prize for Women’s Freedom].” Press Release. December 9. Available at: http://www.prixsimonedebeauvoir.com/IMG/pdf/commmunique__presse_2020.pdf (Accessed: January 28, 2022). Ghadery, F. 2019. “#Metoo—­Has the ‘Sisterhood’ Finally Become Global or Just Another Product of Neoliberal Feminism?” Transnational Legal Theory 10, no. 2: 252–274, doi: 10.1080/20414005.2019.1630169 Gheytanchi, E. and Moghadam, V. N., 2014. “Women, Social Protests, and the New Media Activism in the Middle East and North Africa.” International Review of Modern Sociology 40, no. 1: 1–26. Grewal, I. and Kaplan, C. 1994. Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Hall, S. 1980. “Encoding/decoding.” In S. Hall, D. Hobson, A. Lowe, and P. Willis, (Eds.) Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies (pp. 128–138). London: Hutchinson. Hill-­Collins, P. 2013. “Defining Black Feminist Thought.” In C. McCann and K. Seung-­Kyung (Eds.), Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives (pp. 379–394). New York: Taylor & Francis. hooks, b. 1989. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. Boston: South End Press. Jaakonmäki, R., Müller, O., and Vom Brocke, J. 2017. “The Impact of Content, Context, and Creator on User Engagement in Social Media Marketing.” Proceedings of the 50th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Hilton Waikoloa Village, Hawaii, January 4–7, 2017. Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10125/41289 (Accessed: January 28, 2022). JAWJAB 2017. ‫“[ وجوه نسائية مغربية تَنْضَ ُّم إلى الحملة ! جميعاً من أجل رجل مغربي أفضل! (وال شي لعيبة بحال (هاكا‬Voices of Moroccan Women Mobilizing ! Together for a Better Moroccan Man!”] #JAWJAB #JournéeMondialeDeLHommeMarocain OUM Lioumness [Facebook]. March 15. Available at: https://f b.watch/aPXZb3EQgV/ (Accessed January 28, 2022). JAWJAB. 2018. Marokkiat English Subtitles Playlist. April 12. Available at: https://youtube.com/ playlist?list=PLinanTzAjACuu-­yeSc8JBftjiuOk5KWI_(Accessed January 28, 2022). JAWJAB. 2021. Qui sommes-­nous?[Who Are We?] Available at: https://www.jawjab.ma/a-­propos (Accessed January 28, 2022). Jiwani, Y. 2006. Discourses of Denial: Mediations of Race, Gender, and Violence. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press. Joojmedia. 2021. Two Words Two Generations with Sonia Terrab and Leila Rhiwi [Instagram]. November 30. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/CW6UGH_qsWV/ (Accessed January 28, 2022). Khettou, K. 2021. “Réforme du Code pénal: Le moment opportun pour le Collectif 490 qui a saisi Ouahbi [Reform of the Penal Code: The Opportune Moment for the Collectif 490 Which Seized Ouahbi].” Hespress. December 21. Available at: https://fr.hespress.com/239450-­ reforme-­du-­code-­penal-­le-­moment-­opportun-­pour-­le-­collectif-­490-­qui-­a-­saisi-­ouahbi.html (Accessed: January 28, 2022). Kozinets, R. V. 2015. Netnography: Redefined. London: SAGE. Lambert, J. 2017. “Watered-­Down Feminism: An Examination of Gender and Revolutionary Ideals in Morocco.” In L. Touaf, S. Boutkhil, and C. Nasri (Eds.), North African Women After the Arab Spring (pp. 97–120). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Le Monde with AFP. 2018. “Des Marocaines racontent harcèlement et agressions sexuelles dans une minisérie web [Moroccan Women Recount Harassment and Sexual Assault in a Web Miniseries].” LeMonde. March 8. Available at: https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2018/03/08/des-­marocaines-­racontent-­harcelement-­et-­agressions-­sexuelles-­dans-­une-­ miniserie-­web_5267796_3212.html (Accessed: January 28, 2022).

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Le360. 2017. Toit et moi: Sonia Terrab [Roof and Me: Sonia Terrab]. Le360.ma YouTube video. January 5. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guXbY3HLl-­ Y (Accessed January 28, 2022). Leander, M. 2017. “What Is a Good Facebook Engagement Rate? See Numbers Here.” Michael Leander Marketing Expert. January 5. Available at: http://www.michaelleander.me/blog/ facebook-­engagement-­rate-­benchmark/ (Accessed: January 28, 2022). Moroccan Outlaws. 2019. “490 Signatories.” Facebook. September 26. Available at: https://www. facebook.com/Moroccanoutlaws/photos/a.101874771218693/101874324552071 (Accessed: January 28, 2022). Moroccan Outlaws. 2019. “Love Is Not a Crime”. Facebook. December 6. Available at: https://www.facebook.com/Moroccanoutlaws/photos/a.103427444396759/153193872753449 (Accessed: January 28, 2022). Moroccan Outlaws. 2019. “Statement of the 10000”. Facebook. October 14. Available at: https://www. facebook.com/Moroccanoutlaws/photos/a.101874771218693/123035315769305 (Accessed: January 28, 2022). Moroccan Outlaws. 2019. “We, Moroccan Citizens, Declare That We Are Outlaws.” Facebook. September 26. Available at: https://www.facebook.com/Moroccanoutlaws/photos/a. 101874771218693/101876401218530 (Accessed: January 28, 2022). Moroccan Outlaws. 2020. ! ‫[ ما رأيك؟‬What Do You Think?]. Facebook. June 15. Available at: https://www. facebook.com/Moroccanoutlaws/photos/294917265247775 (Accessed: January 28, 2022). Moroccan Outlaws. 2020. “Together We Stand Strong.” Instagram. July 3. Available at: https:// www.instagram.com/p/CCMd7T7Fibj/ (Accessed: January 28, 2022). Moroccan Outlaws. 2021. “#STOP490”. Instagram. February 13. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/CLPW_abFATf/ (Accessed: January 28, 2022). Moroccan Outlaws. 2021. “Twitter-­TENDANCES#2 au Maroc.” Facebook. February. Available at: https://www.facebook.com/Moroccanoutlaws/photos/476333067106193 (Accessed: January 28, 2022). Mougin, T. 2020. “Betty Lachgar, la féministe qui ne s’arrêtait pas aux frontières [Betty Lachgar, the Feminist Who Did Not Stop at the Borders].” Hommes & migrations. Revue française de référence sur les dynamiques migratoires 1331: 213–214. doi: 10.4000/hommesmigrations.11941 (Accessed: December 4, 2020). Munro E. 2013. “Feminism: A Fourth Wave?” Political Studies Association 4, no. 2: 22–25. Ouassini, A., 2021. “We Are All Amina Filali: Social Media, Civil Society, and Rape Legislation Reform in Morocco.” Women & Criminal Justice 31, no. 1:77–82. doi: 10.1080/08974454.2019.1698488 Oumlil, K. 2010. “Discourses of the Veil in Al Jazeera English.” Reconstruction 10, no. 1. Radway, J. 2000. “Reading the Romance.” In P. Marris and S. Thornham (Eds.), Media Studies: A Reader (pp. 492–502). New York: New York University Press. Rottenberg, C. 2018. The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism. New York: Oxford University Press. Salime, Z. 2012. “A New Feminism? Gender Dynamics in Morocco’s February 20th Movement.” Journal of International Women’s Studies 13, no. 5: 101–114. Stam, R. and Spence, L. 1985. “Colonialism, Racism, and Representation: An Introduction.” In B. Nichols (Ed.), Movies and Methods: An Anthology, Volume II (pp. 632–648). Berkeley: University of California Press. Tazi, M. and Oumlil, K. 2020. “The Rise of Fourth Wave Feminism in the Arab Region? Cyberfeminism and Women’s Activism at the Crossroads of the Arab Spring.” CyberOrient 14, no 1: 44–71. Terrab, S. 2016. Soniaterrab. Instagram. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/ soniaterrab/?hl=en (Accessed January 28, 2022).

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The Kurdish Media in the Middle East and Diaspora Alternative Public and Participatory Spaces for a Non-­State Nation Jiyar Aghapouri1 Introduction Kurds are one the main nations in the Middle East with an ethnic background distinguishable from their neighbors such as Arabs, Turks, and Persians. Today, there are an estimated 40 million2 Kurds located in a region called Kurdistan spanning over Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey (Alinia 2004; Van Bruinessen 1992). There are also an estimated two to three million Kurds in diaspora who mainly reside in the West, specifically in the European and Scandinavian countries (Alinia 2004; Khayati 2008). Except for political recognition and sovereignty, Kurds possess the characteristics to be called a nation, including their own language, a specific geography, history, common origin, culture, and imagining themselves as one nation (see Chapters 9, 19). There is a famous saying about Kurds that “They belong to four countries, but they do not have a country of their

 Consultant & Visiting Fellow at London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE); Assistant Professor in International Studies at American University of Kurdistan. 2  Estimates of the Kurdish population are usually the subject of debate, and differ depending on the source, the country or political orientation. The states occupying Kurdistan give lower figures, while Kurds and Kurdish nationalists typically provide higher ones. In any event, population estimates usually range from 30 to 40 million. According to the Kurdish Institute of Paris, Kurdish population in Turkey is estimated at 15–20 million, 10–12 million in Iran, 8–8.5 million in Iraq, 3–3.6 million in Syria, 1.2–1.5 million in European diaspora, and 400k–500k in the former USSR – for a total of 36.4 million to 45.6 million globally. See the Kurdish Population by the Kurdish Institute of Paris (retrieved on June 10, 2021) from The Kurdish population (institutkurde.org). 1

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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own.” This is the reason Kurds are usually referred to as the largest stateless or non-­state nation in the world. Kurdistan, the land of Kurds, has been through several divisions throughout history. The first division came following the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514 between the Ottoman and Safavid empires. The two parties agreed on drawing the official borders between them, which resulted in dividing Kurdistan into Safavid Kurdistan and Ottoman Kurdistan (McDowall 2004; Van Bruinessen 1992). The second division happened when the Treaty of Lausanne was negotiated by the Allies and Turkey in July 1923 (McDowall  2004). This treaty divided the Kurdish territories of the former Ottoman Empire into three parts, namely Turkey, Iraq, and Syria. These divisions and the fact that they have become part of nation-­states with different social and political systems have also led to further cultural, linguistic, social, and political divisions among the Kurds (Sheyholislami 2011, 51). While Kurds have maintained their traditional and cultural identities for many centuries, it was only in the beginning of the twentieth century that they learned the wisdom of becoming a “political community” as Kurds (Vali 2003). The formation of new nation-­ states and the emergence of Arab, Turkish, and Persian nationalisms throughout the twentieth century prevented Kurds from participating in political power in the dominant nations. In other words, Kurdistan has been the victim of numerous “empire-­building” and “state-­building” plans throughout history (Hassanpour and Mojab 2005). They have suffered through many hostile policies such as oppression, displacement, massacres, and genocide. Kurds hardly accepted the geopolitical conditions imposed on them by history or international politics; they have usually rebelled to change their conditions and thus have been seen as a threat to the stability of the countries occupying Kurdistan (Bengio  2014). They have reacted to the dominant nationalisms by forming political organizations and seeking self-­determination rights in the form of local autonomy or an independent state. Thus, Kurds’ national identity construction and state-­building activities were primarily formed in response to the policies of the dominant nation-­states and have become inseparable parts of Kurdish history in modern times. However, despite decades-­long struggles and establishment of several political parties/organizations in all parts of Kurdistan, Kurds have not managed to form an independent state of their own due to myriad geopolitical, social, and cultural reasons. Kurds attracted more international attention following the genocide of Iraqi Kurds in 1988. Later, the founding of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq in 1992 became a platform for Kurds to propagandize their ethnic and political identity on an international level. With the emergence of the ISIL, Kurds in Iraq and Syria began to attract a high degree of attention from the international community as they were effectively involved in fighting against fundamentalist Islamic groups in the region. The formation of the de facto autonomous administrations, i.e. cantons of Rojava (also known as Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria) in 2014 was another turning point in the history of Kurdish movement toward their national and sovereignty demands. Meanwhile, the situation of Kurds in Turkey and Iran is different from those in Iraq and Syria. In Turkey and Iran, despite many differences in the sociopolitical formation of the two states, and the ways Kurdish movement have reacted to the systems, Kurds are still deprived of any ethno-­national and political rights and face limitations in practising

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cultural and language activities (see Chapter 19). In both countries, Kurds have been through the process of “Turkification” (Aydin 2021) and “Persianization” (Sheyholislami 2012) of their language and identity in order to assimilate the Kurdish population. Also, the Kurds in the diaspora have positively influenced the stronger voicing of Kurdish national identity and the idea of a Kurdish state, especially among the Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan (Aghapouri 2020; Eliassi 2016; Khayati 2008).

The Origins of Kurdish Media: From Print to Social Media The notion of the diaspora points to several interactions, connections, and flows of information and ideas as they relate to the identity of a particular ethnic group or nation. The communication media play significant roles in linking people or groups with similar political, religious, and ethnic backgrounds (Appadurai  1996,  2002; 2011; Hassanpour  1998; Keles  2015; Rigoni  2003; Romano  2002; Sheyholislami  2011). For Kurds who are usually referred to as a “stateless nation,” “non-­nation state,” or a “nation without a state” (Eliasi 2016; Khayati  2008; Mojab  2001; Romano  2006), the advent of mass media has greatly influenced the articulation of Kurdish national identity and “politics of recognition” (Diamandaki, 2003).

Print Media Kurdish print media were born and developed by the Kurdish diaspora. Accordingly, they “took advantage of the media experience and favorable conditions of other countries and nations” (Mikhailov and Sepan  2013, 12). Print technology helped Kurdish intellectuals in diaspora to publish the first Kurdish newspaper, Kurdistan,3 in 1898  in Cairo, Egypt. Issued bilingually in Kurdish and Turkish, the newspaper endeavored to raise political and ethno-­ national awareness in support of the Kurdish people (McDowall  2004; Sheyholislami  2011). Due to certain political restrictions in the Ottoman Empire, the newspaper was published in exile in Cairo (Van Bruinessen 2000), as Egypt was out of reach of censorship from the Ottomans and it was also where a number of oppositional journals were published. Later, owing to pressure placed on the Egyptian authorities by the Ottomans, the newspaper moved to Switzerland and then to the United Kingdom (Hassanpour  1992; Khayati  2008; Sheyholislami  2011). Since the printing of the first Kurdish newspaper, a considerable number of Kurdish printing publications in the form of magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, and so forth have emerged. In addition to publications by private persons, almost all of the Kurdish political parties  This newspaper was issued by the support of Kurdish Badir Khan family, especially Mikdad Midhat Badirkhan, who was a member of Cemiyeta Tealiya Kurd (the Society for the Kurdish Rise).

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and have been spreading their own political agenda through print media. Moreover, the emergence and the establishment of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraqi Kurdistan has helped the most in terms of the issuing of thousands of print publications in Kurdistan in both of the main dialects of the Kurdish language (Sheyholislami 2011). Kurdish print media, according to Hassanpour (1992, 221), have been a significant pillar of Kurdish nationalism and the construction of Kurdish national identity. Furthermore, they aided the conversion of the Kurdish political discourse from the traditional, feudal-­tribal leadership of the nationalist movement to a modern, political party organization (Hassanpour  1994). One can argue that the advent of print and broadcasting media overlaps with the beginning of the Kurdish nationalist movements by enabling Kurds to construct images of “the other” and then differentiate themselves and create their own identity. Hence, it is almost unlikely “to understand national identities adequately without investigating how communication technologies serve as catalysts for their (re)construction” (Sheyholislami 2010, 290).

Radio Similar to Kurdish print media, Kurdish radio was also developed outside Kurdistan, mainly in the capital cities of the countries encompassing Kurdistan such as Baghdad and Tehran. Soviet Kurds also played a key role in introducing radio to the Kurdish societies. The Transcaucasia Kurdish autonomous region of the Soviet Union was the birth place of Kurdish radio between 1929 and 1932 (Hassanpour 1998; Sheyholislami 2011). Later, the Kurdish program in Radio Baghdad (commonly known as Kurdish Radio of Baghdad) that was established in 1939 is regarded as the second audio recording and broadcasting media of the Kurds; it comprised three hours of programming during the day (Ahmad 2011). The process of establishing Kurdish radio stations continued among the Kurds in exile owing to the relatively easy access to the new broadcasting technologies. Following in the footsteps of the Kurdish Radio of Baghdad, numerous Kurdish radio stations began to emerge, almost all of which transmitted from the diaspora. Some of the notable ones included the Kurdish program in the Radio Yerevan/Armenia in 1943; the Kurdish program in the Radio of Beirut/Lebanon in 1941; the Kurdish Radio of the Near East in Palestine in 1942; the Kurdish Radio of the Kurdistan Republic of Mahabad in 1946; the Kurdish programs in the Radio of Cairo in 1957; the Kurdish Radio in Tehran (1958); the Kurdish Radio in Bulgaria (1963); the Kurdish Radio in Czechoslovakia (1962), the Kurdish Voice of America (1992), and other radio station in the countries wherein Kurds were known to reside (Ahmad 2011). With the growth of modern Kurdish political parties in the twentieth century, almost all have had their own radio stations through which they spread their own political agenda, as well as producing programs on the Kurdish identity, nation, culture, etc. As McDowall said, “in the 1970s transistor radios and cassette tapes provided an important channel for political actions and cultural communication” (2004, 459). Most of the influential radio stations belonged to the Kurdish political parties. For instance, in the Iranian and Iraqi parts of Kurdistan almost all of the Kurdish political parties had their own radio stations, such as The Voice of Iraqi Kurdistan (PDK-­Iraq radio: 1963); The Voice of

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Iranian Kurdistan (PDK-­Iran: 1979); and The Voice of Kurdish People, previously known as The voice of Iraq’s Revolution (PUK’s radio: 1979). Some of the Kurdish radio services were state-­backed, however; such as Voice of America, Kurdish Radio of Baghdad, or the Kurdish Radio of Tehran propagated those states’ political agenda.

Satellite Televisions An important milestone for the Kurdish usage of modern media has been the implementation of Kurdish Satellite Televisions (KST). This was the first experience in their troubled and divided history for the Kurds to be able to “see their own lives, their own reality, reflected on the television screens across the world” (Romano 2006, 153). Kurds were the first stateless nation in the world to set up an independent satellite TV, MED-­TV, in 1994. The channel was mostly operated by the Kurdish diaspora in Europe. Based in London, MED-­TV broadcast in several Kurdish dialects. It provided a service that had 18 hours of programs that included news, documentaries, and entertainment from a satellite positioned over Africa to a Kurdish population living in and around Kurdistan.4 Satellite TV stations and broadcasting technologies are not only effective in creating bonds in the social environment but they can also actually create such environments (Peterson 2000, cited in Christiansen 2004, 187). In a short time, Kurdish satellite televisions have been able to have their “media effect” (Laughey 2007) on Kurdish public opinion. MED-­TV became a home for the Kurds, as it was possible for the Kurds in Iran to understand and also speak to the Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, and Syria via “phone-­ins” and find out about how their fellows lived in Europe and in other parts of world The most important influence from the emergence of Kurdish satellite and visual media has been to empower and promote Kurdish political and ethno-­national consciousness among the Kurds themselves, both in the homeland and in the diaspora (Hassanpour  1998; Khayati  2008; Romano  2006). In fact, thanks to the emergence of Kurdish visual media, the Kurds’ struggles with the nation-­states ruling over Kurdistan could be told and broadcast for a “made-­to-­air” audience. Because they were broadcasting in Kurdish and presenting a Kurdish perspective of news, politics, and history, the Kurdish TV channels broadcasting from the diaspora have challenged the dominant sovereignty and dominant nationalism of the nation-­states ruling Kurdistan. In other words, the rebuilding of the Kurdish identity, history, and language through Kurdish media has challenged the “denial politics” of these states (Keles  2015). For example, MED-­TV

 MED-­TV’s founder and principal director was a Kurdish author and filmmaker, Hikmet Tabak. Owing to his political activities and involvements in the Kurdish national movement, he had spent 11 years in prison in Turkey. Finally, he fled his home on the Turkish/Armenian border in 1992 and was granted political asylum in the UK. He and 20 others founded MED-­TV back in 1994, taking the name MED from Medes myth. It has been quoted that they had only £5,000 in the bank when they launched MED-­TV. However, they launched several fundraising campaigns among the Kurdish diaspora, particularly the Kurds from Turkey, and managed to run the TV until it was closed down (see Romano 2002; Ryan, 1997).

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covered the clashes between Kurds and the four states that ruled over Kurdistan and challenged the territorial borders and politics of these countries. This changed “the theatre of war” in favor of the Kurds. . . [and] “the Kurds [felt] that they have achieved sovereignty in the sky” (Hassanpour 1998, 53). In other words, Kurdish satellite televisions5 altered the power relations among actors in the region in which the Kurds live. They produced a counternarrative to those disseminated by Turkish, Iranian, or some Arabic state media against the Kurdish political and nationalist struggles (Romano 2006). In addition to challenging the politics and media domination of the states occupying Kurdistan, Kurdish satellite channels have propelled those states to provide more opportunities for the growth of state-­sponsored Kurdish TV channels inside their countries. Ayata (2012) pointed out that “the emergence of a state-­sponsored Kurdish channel in Turkey is a reaction to the existence of the Kurdish ROJ-­TV in Europe, after the Turkish state’s efforts to shut down the station failed” (524). This is also true about Iran. Following the establishment of Kurdish satellite TV (including Rojhelat-­TV, Tishk-­TV, Aso Sat, and Komala TV) by the Iranian Kurdish opposition political parties from the diaspora in the 2000s, the Iranian government granted more opportunities to Kurdish state-­sponsored provincial channels inside Iran. It also extended the broadcasting of Kurdish Sahar International TV. Moreover, Iranian state media (IRIB) began to air more programs about Kurdish culture. Such developments suggest that these states anticipated they could distinguish the Kurdish ethno-­cultural identity from the political-­nationalist identity by partially supporting the former, and not the latter.

Kurdish Online Media While explaining the concept of the “network society,” Castells (2011) discussed how people act and produce meaning in virtual communities. He points out how social structures and agency movements inside these structures are arranged around the data given within the networks and, in this regard, the virtual community becomes the wellspring of resources and power. Through the virtual world, real borders have been devalued or removed. In this sense, the communities that were physically separated can stay connected on the internet and social media in order to share ideas and broadcast news as it relates to their communities. Consequently, a large number of individuals can easily become mobilized within the time span of a click (Couldry 2012, 1–3). Electronic communications combined with huge migrations created by the present world economic system helped create a new form of nationalism called “long-­distance nationalism” (Anderson 1992) which no longer depends as it once did on territorial location in a home country.

 Visual broadcasting did not end with the cancellation of MED-­TV. In the 2000s there were other Kurdish TV channels which were mostly linked to the Kurdish political parties. Channels such as Kurdsat and Kurdistan TV were broadcasting from the Kurdistan Region-­Iraq, whereas others such as Tishkt TV, Roj-­TV, Medya TV, and Aso Sat were based in Europe.

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The use of the internet by the Kurds started at a great speed and immediately a large number of Kurdish websites and blogs emerged. That was a phenomenon often called “the renaissance of Kurdish culture and language”.  .  . “the Kurdistan on the ground has been supplemented with the Kurdistan of the airwaves and in cyberspace. And much of the Kurdish nationalist struggle is going in the latter” (Van Bruinessen 1999, 20). The Kurds, and especially the Kurdish diaspora, reinforced their online presence in the first decade of the twenty-­f irst century by continuing to stay in contact with each other, by taking part in political and cultural activities, and by creating various sites, such as Kurdistan Net, Kurdish Info, Kurdistan Press, Kurdish News, Kurdish Globe, Kurdistan Observer, Kurdistan Post, Zkurd, WeKurd, Kurdish Media, Renesans, 4Rojhelat, and so on. The internet has been more than a network of websites which are freely accessible. It is a “body politic” and “terra incognito” with respect to its “exteriority to existing societal norms and social imaginaries” (Mutlu 2010, 130). While the Kurdish satellite channels have offered a ground for ideologies and political positions, the internet has turned out to be an incredible participatory tool in the everyday life of the Kurdish diaspora for about two and a half decades (Keles 2016). These virtual social structures have engendered new conversations between the Kurdish diaspora and the people in their homeland that have enabled the Kurds to “redefine their lives and challenge dominant states” (Romano 2002, 128). The huge quantity of websites and online activism related to Kurdish political parties and organizations illustrates that the Kurds of the diaspora played a key role “in transferring an important part of their nation-­building project and their political rhetoric and activities to the domain of Internet” (Khayati 2008, 93). Similar to many other non-­state nations, such as the Tibetans, Tamils, Chiapas, and so on, the Kurds have utilized the internet “to further their identity construction or self-­ determination projects” (Mills 2002, 70). Eriksen (2007) underlines the importance of the use of internet by the stateless groups, and mentions the Kurds’ involvement with the internet. He argues that nations flourish on the internet and this includes online chatrooms, semi-­official data on websites, magazines, newspapers, and so forth. Eriksen positions the Kurdish internet in the category of the pre-­independence internet nationalism, by which he defines the Kurds as an ethnic group in the process of forming of a nation. He notes that the “Kurdish national identity can be claimed to be in a formative stage” and highlights the “considerable factionalism” and divisions among the Kurds (2007, 12). Rather than being platforms against the occupiers of Kurdistan, as Keles (2015) points out, the internet inspired a Kurdish public discussion of the various “taboos of Kurdish parties” (67). For example, many online users repeatedly question their Kurdish leaders about their past wrongdoings. They dispute the issues of corruption and lack of democracy within Kurdish political parties. Through the internet, diasporic Kurds could be updated regarding the recent news and political developments, and rapidly respond on these occasions. In this regard, the political activities of the Kurdish diaspora on the internet serve as “social capital” for the political and nationalist mobilization of Kurds. For example, Keles (2016) notes that “many Kurdish political dissidents who do not agree with either the Turkish state or the PKK have established

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Internet-­based newspapers or blogs to participate in the debate over the Kurds and Kurdistan and o ­ ngoing conflicts”(124).

Kurdish Social Media: Platforms for a Wider and Pluralistic National Identity Another turning point in the history of the Kurdish nationalist movement has to do with the introduction of social media platforms. Unlike traditional media or even the internet, social media provides the users with possibilities for sharing and social interaction (Aghapouri  2020; Smets  2018) and many functions including the use of texts, audio, video, and graphics at the same time. These functions facilitate more involvement, interaction, and integration on the part of the Kurdish diaspora regarding the Kurdish national movement. This shows the capacity of social media to bring “alive images that are ubiquitous, accessible to a myriad of people” (Tettey 2009, 158) and compete with other conventional ways to articulate and construct their national identity, such as through print and broadcast media. Social media offers interactive spaces for Kurdish individuals in the diaspora to represent their national identity, which has been difficult to achieve through traditional media, and opened new ways of thinking about the “imagined” community (Anderson  2006; Mahmod  2016). While the Kurdish conventional national identity could be observed through the discussions and comments of many users, social media offers the opportunity for the voices of the Kurdish diaspora that were not heard through the mainstream media. Through this process of identity representation, online forums provide outlets for self-­narratives, history, languages, humor, and many others which can all express the diversity of the Kurdish national identity. Through the creation of user-­generated platforms, the active members of Kurdish social media use their “human capital and e-­skills” to produce cultural, linguistic, and political content as bloggers, video producers, authors, and opinion makers in virtual networks (Keles 2016, 8). The shift to user-­generated sites has been a substantial improvement of the Kurdish online experience. In this era, more Kurdish individuals, groups, and political parties have become involved online rather than just relying on the few websites set up by some technically knowledgeable experts. Although the internet has significantly helped the Kurds become connected, social media has produced a space to articulate diverse and opposing political, cultural, religious, and linguistic differences. Social media has effectively empowered Kurdish users to find a new form of communicative space, and enabled them to voice their views and objections to events in the original homeland or in diaspora country, with relative immunity (Mahmod 2016, 200). In other words, the over-­articulation of the marginalized identities, particularly dialects and political views, has resulted in the emergence of sub-­national or minor discourses throughout Kurdish society, which has reduced the discourse of Kurdish nationalism and the Greater Kurdistan to the dialects, regions and religions of the Kurds. In a rather similar vein, as Aghapouri (2020) argues, social media offer spaces for a wider participation for the construction of a “grassroot national identity” by ordinary members of the Kurdish social media.

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Conclusion Since the advent of the first Kurdish newspaper in 1898, Kurds have taken advantage of media technologies to develop their ethno-­ national identity discourses and demands. In this regard, through print and broadcast media, the Kurdish diaspora has played a crucial role in the creation of a transnational social space through which the discourse of Kurdish ethno-­national identity has been developed. Kurdish newspapers, radios, and satellite channels have been subject to restrictions within the four states occupying Kurdistan. These states have also pressured European governments and countries to put limitations on and even shut down Kurdish media outlets operating within their borders. Print, broadcast, and internet media have acted as significantly positive phenomena in regard to the promotion of Kurdish national question and nation-­building. One can clearly argue that the Kurdish diaspora and Kurdish nationalism would not have reached the stage of mobilization it has reached today, nor could they have received such international attention, had there not been an active media landscape (see Chapters 9, 19). The internet has served as a new domain and offered the best opportunity for Kurds in terms of communication, imagination, participation, and representation. It has turned into “the weapon of choice” for the Kurds (Mutlu 2010). Kurdish diaspora effectively used the internet as the medium of communication and to make up for the barriers that have existed in the communication between the homeland and the diaspora. Hence, to a degree, the favorable, free, and less restricted media have possibly provided for Kurds in exile the best support for the Kurdish cause and nationalism. Moreover, the emergence of new social media has provided alternatives for Kurds both in the homeland and in the diaspora to create and circulate their views and national identity discourse freely and openly without access to the official and unofficial media of the countries occupying Kurdistan. Indeed, the speed of dissemination of information via social media and the internet is much more rapid than that of print and broadcast media. This has accelerated what is now referred to as nation-­building online. Social media, however, have transformed the notion of this nation-­building into a more pluralistic and participatory effort. References Aghapouri, J. H. 2020. “Towards Pluralistic and Grassroots National Identity: A Study of National Identity Representation by the Kurdish Diaspora on Social Media.” National Identities 22, no. 2: 173–192 DOI: 10.1080/14608944.2019.1601172 Ahmad, B. 2011. “Kurteyeki Mejuy Ezgey Radio u television u kanale asmanye Kurdyekan [A summary on the history of Kurdish radios, televisions and satellite channels].” [In Kurdish]. Rojnamenus 23–24 (Spring): 186–197. Ahmadzadeh, H. 2003. Nation and Novel: A study of Persian and Kurdish Narrative Discourse. Coronet Books. Alinia, M. 2004. “Spaces of Diasporas: Kurdish Identities, Experiences of Otherness and Politics of Belonging.” PhD dissertation. Göteborg University. Anderson, B. 1992. Long-­distance Nationalism: World Capitalism and the Rise of Identity Politics. Amsterdam: CASA.

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Anderson, B. 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London and New York: Verso. Appadurai, A. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Appadurai, A. (Ed.). 2002. Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Ayata, B. 2012. “Kurdish Transnational Politics and Turkey’s Changing Kurdish Policy: The Journey of Kurdish Broadcasting from Europe to Turkey.” Journal of Contemporary European Studies 19, no. 4: 523–533. Aydin, B. 2021. The Role of Kurdish Media in the Resistance Against Turkification: A Case Study of an Online Kurdish News Platform.” Turkish Studies 21, no. 5: 726–749. DOI: 10.1080/14683849.2019.1699408 Bengio, O. 2014. Kurdish Awakening: Nation Building in a Fragmented Homeland. University of Texas Press. Castells, M. 2011. The Rise of the Network Society (2nd ed.). Chichester, West Sussex, and Malden, MA: Wiley-­Blackwell. Christiansen, C. 2004. “News Media Consumption Among Immigrants in Europe: The Relevance of Diaspora.” Ethnicities 4: 185–207. Couldry, N. 2012. Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice. Cambridge: Polity Press. Eliassi, B. 2016. “Conceiving Citizenship and Statelessness in the Middle East and Sweden: The Experiences of Kurdish Migrants in Sweden.” In N. Stokes-­DuPass and R. Fruja (Eds.), Citizenship, Belonging, and Nation-­States in the Twenty-­First Century (pp. 85–110). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Eriksen, T. H. 2007. “Nationalism and the Internet.” Nation and Nationalism 13, no. 1: 1–17. Hassanpour A., Mojab, S. 2005. “Kurdish Diaspora.” In M. Ember, C. R. Ember, and I. Skoggard (Eds,), Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures Around the World, Vol. 1 (pp. 214–224). New York: Kluwer Academic. Hassanpour, A. 1992. Nationalism and Language in Kurdistan, 1918–1985. Edwin Mellon Press. Hassanpour, A. 1994. “The Kurdish Experience.” Middle East Report 24, no. 2: 2. Hassanpour, A. 1998. “Satellite Footprints at National Borders: MED-­TV and the Extraterritoriality of Sovereignty.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 18, no. 1: 53–72. Keles, J. Y. 2015. Media, Diaspora and Conflict: Nationalism and Identity Amongst Turkish and Kurdish Migrants in Europe: London: I.B. Tauris. Keles, J. Y. 2016. “Digital Diaspora and Social Capital.” Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 9, no. 3: 315–333. Khayati, K. 2008. “From Victim Diaspora to Transborder Citizenship? Diaspora Formation and Transnational Relations Among Kurds in France and Sweden.” PhD dissertation. Linköping, Sweden: Linköping University. Available at: https://www.mah.se/upload/Forskningscentrum/ MIM/2009%20Seminars/Khalid%20Khayati%2011%20mars.pdf Laughey, D. 2007. Key Themes in Media Theory (1st ed.). Berkshire: Open University Press. Mahmod, J. 2016. Kurdish Diaspora Online: From Imagined Community to Managing Communities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. McDowall, D. 2004. Modern History of the Kurds (4th ed.). London: I.B. Tauris. Mikhailov, S., and Sepan M. 2013. Peyamneri Tlivision [TV reporter]. In Kurdish. Kurdistan Region. Erbil: Mukryani Publications. Mills, K. 2002. “Cybernations: Identity, Self-­determination, Democracy and the ‘Internet Effect’ in the Emerging Information Order.” Global Society 16, no. 1: 69–87. Mojab, S. 2001. “Introduction: The Solitude of the Statelessness: Kurdish Women at the Margins of Feminist Knowledge.” In Shahrzad Mojab (Ed.), Women of Non-­State Nation: The Kurds (pp. 1–25). Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers.

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Mutlu, C. 2010. “Kurds in Cyberspace: The Kurdish Diaspora, the Internet and Its Impact on the Kurdish Question.” On Politics 2, no. 2: 119–137. Rigoni, I. 2003. “The Press Was a Catalyst in Engendering the First Modern Nation-­states in Europe and America.” Paper presented at the meeting of CRER, University of Warwick, England. Romano, D. 2002. “Modern Communication Technology in Ethnic Nationalist Hands: The Case of Kurds.” Canadian Journal of Political Science 35, no. 1: 127–149. Romano, D. 2006. The Kurdish Nationalist Movement: Opportunity, Mobilization, and Identity. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sheyholislami, J. 2010. “Identity, Language, and New Media: The Kurdish Case.” Language Policy 9: 289–312. Sheyholislami, J. 2011. Kurdish Identity, Discourse, and New Media. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Sheyholislami, J. 2012. “Kurdish in Iran: A Case of Restricted and Controlled Tolerance.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2012, no. 217: 19–47. Smets, K. 2018. “Ethnic Identity Without Ethnic Media? Diasporic Cosmopolitanism, (Social) Media and Distant Conflict Among Young Kurds in London.” International Communication Gazette 80, no. 7: 603–619. Tettey, J. W. 2009. “Transnationalism and the African Diaspora, and the Deterritorised Politics of the Internet.” In F. M. Banda and J. W. Tettey (Eds.), African Media and the Digital Public Sphere (pp. 143–164). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Vali, A. (Ed.). 2003. Essays on the Origin of Kurdish Nationalism. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers. Van Bruinessen, M. 1992. Agha, Shaikh, and State: the Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan. London and Atlantic Highlands: Zed Books. Van Bruinessen, M. 1999. “The Kurds in Movement: Migration, Mobilisation, Communications and the  Globalisation of the Kurdish Question.” Islamic Area Studies Project. Working Paper. Tokyo, Japan. Van Bruinessen, M. 2000. “Transnational Aspects of the Kurdish Question.” Working Paper. Paper presented at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies, Florence, Italy.

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Arab American Media William Lafi Youmans Arab American media date back to the earliest formations of the community itself. Various localities emerged starting in the nineteenth century in immigrant magnets like New York and Boston, while later clusters in places like Paterson, New Jersey, Detroit, Chicago, Houston, and Los Angeles arose over time. Arab American identity has not always been cohesive and is often subordinate to sectarian or country-­based affiliations. Similarly, the media sector serving it as a distinct audience has waxed and waned. Arab American media are those made by people who identify as Arab American to speak to those they see as their own community. The state of the group’s identity and the media that give it expression are completely intertwined. The first Arab American media consisted of newspapers, but have since run the gamut from periodicals to broadcasting, and to digital incarnations of both. Art, theater, music, comedy, and film also articulate Arab Americans as a community (see Chapters 39, 40, 42). This chapter overviews the history of Arab immigration to the United States in summary, and then presents the state of the research on the subject while giving historical and contemporary examples. This chapter presents defining themes of this literature and suggests future directions.

Arab American Immigration The paradigmatic telling of Arab immigration outlines three primary immigration periods. The first communities formed in the late nineteenth century, starting with small numbers in the 1860s and escalating in the 1880s and 1890s. Disproportionately, they came from the Ottoman province of Syria, inclusive of modern day Syria, Lebanon, Israel-­Palestine, and Jordan. They were predominantly, but not exclusively, Christian and they mostly migrated for economic purposes, or to escape famine, epidemics, conflict, and hinterland stagnation, sometimes after facing internal dislocations (Karpat  1985, 177); some have argued that sectarian strife was a push factor (Sawaie and Fishman 1985, 33). In the United States, the newcomers concentrated initially in East Coast cities, but spread across the country to work in factories and agriculture, and as traveling The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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p­ eddlers who often eventually settled as small merchants. There was also substantial Arab migration through the US-­Mexico border (Gualtieri, 2020). During the second phase, those hailing from the Middle East, along with other groups, faced greater obstacles to immigration. Politicians cited the goal as preserving some degree of confessional and cultural homogeneity. The second period saw Arab/Syrian immigration slow to a trickle. This is one reason Arab American historical writing tends to presume discontinuity in Arab American institutions over time (Bawardi  2014, 5). This decline also meant the demise of many Arabic language newspapers, which relied on fluent first-­generation immigrants. However, new English-­language publications emerged at that time to give the US-­born generations more awareness of the homeland (Ajami 1987, 110). The Syrian World, for example, made headway concretizing a shared ethnic identity against residual village, kinship, or confessional affiliations (Ismaeal 2003). The immigration restrictions lasted until the 1964 Immigration and Nationality Act, which begat the third phase of rejuvenation and redefinition. The onset of the period from the 1960s to the 2000s overlapped with the emergence of pan-­Arab politics. This helped congeal an Arab American identity. Migrants in this phase were also more likely to be educated, as immigration law favored educational and professional visas. Refugees dislocated by conflict or conquest arrived. Both groups were prone to partake in dissident politics and were highly attentive to news from the homeland. Sometimes, this stood in the way of community formation because civil and regional wars were polarizing. In this period, immigrants were more nationally and religiously diverse, and more likely to be Muslim; they did not possess the same assimilationist propensity that previous generations enjoyed as Christians. Immigrants of this era resuscitated Arab American civil society. New national organization formed in this period. The National Association of Arab Americans (NAAA), Association of Arab University Graduates (AAUG), and the American-­Arab Anti-­Discrimination Committee (ADC) are just a few examples. It was in this period that the Arab American identity took root. It owed its development to political activism, particularly on the left, which advocated for civil rights and against imperialism (Pennock, 2017). It expressed an American version of the one-­nation mantra of the pan-­Arabist movement that took off in the 1950s through the 1970s. It sought to unify the Arabic-­speaking populations of the Middle East and North Africa. Assertion of an Arab American identity was a political statement fueled by a regional movement, and fit with the rise of post–civil rights movement multiculturalism. As with Asian American and Hispanic American identities, “Arab American” collapsed disparate national affiliations, language dialects, and racial and religious persuasions. The identity was an agglomeration intended to represent a spectrum of people who felt they shared Arab ancestry. It was advanced in part to make them collectively visible in public life. There were deep challenges to this identity formation and maintenance. This identity marginalized some, including late generation non-­Arabic speakers, non-­Arabs from Arab countries, and tenuously Arab confessional members, such as Lebanese Maronites or Egyptian Copts (David 2007). Also, alternative identities emerged to hyphenate with American: subsequent movements in both state nationalism and Islamic politics gave priority to these affiliations. These new associational bonds diminished Arab American cohesion. Furthermore, each civil and regional war tore at the ties that bound them.

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Wars in Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Libya are just a few examples. For these ­reasons, the identity is still unsettled today, a work in progress. As with the counts at border more than a century ago, data-­keeping on the Arab American population today is imprecise. One reason is that the US census collapses Arab Americans within the category of White. Yet, there is proof of growth. Drawing on the Census’s community surveys, which allow for documenting national origins, it is believed that from 1980 to 2010, the foreign-­born immigrant population from predominately Arab countries increased fourfold, from 223,000 to 861,000. Then, from 2010 to 2016, the population grew 36%, reaching 1,167,000 (Cumoletti and Batalova 2018). This does not include second, third, or subsequent generations. Estimates of the total population range from the Census’s 2 million to the Arab American Institute’s 3.7 million.1 The AAI’s numbers suggest that only 1% of Americans are of Arab ancestry. It must be noted that in terms of size, it is a relatively marginal group.

Scholarly Approaches to Arab American Media The body of scholarship is admittedly sparse. In one 2010 review, an Arab American studies researcher overviewing the state of the field noted “there has been little evaluation of the Arab-­American media” (Suleiman  2010, 53). Writing more than a decade later, one still struggles to locate examples of traditional media research, including content or textual analyses, audience-­side inquiry, production or political economy studies, and so on. There are only a handful of theoretically motivated studies that deploy traditional media research methodologies, using textual analysis (Kaufer and Al-­Malki 2009), semi-­structured interviews (Oumlil 2016), participant-­observation (Stephan 2013), and surveys (Barakat et  al. 2014). Research on ethnic or immigrant media in general has touched upon Arabic-­language press and broadcasting, meriting mentions only, but there is little systematic attention. The richest works have been dissertations or theses about particular media or media figures, youth, or the history of Arab American newspapers (Melki 1972; Habeeb 2018; Haddad 2015; Ajami 1987; Ismaeal 2003; Saylor 2015; Popp 2000). None of them, however. appear to have been converted into published academic books in English. There is some relevant empirical, behavioral research on Arab American media usage. It has been carried out by researchers working in social sciences such as sociology, psychology, and business (Albdour et al. 2019; Barakat et al. 2014; Muhtaseb and Frey 2008; Yousef et al. 2015). Still, there is a pronounced shortage of reliable, empirical data on how many Arab Americans rely on media made for and by the community. The most recent survey is from 2005 (n=100). Three-­in-­four respondents identifying as Arab American took in at least some ethnic media. Half watched Arabic television, half visited websites, and one-­f ifth read ethnic newspapers (NCM 2005, 12–13). While a large percentage of television and websites might be from the region, the ethnic newspaper   https://censuscounts.org/wp-­c ontent/uploads/2019/03/National_Demographics_ SubAncestries-­2018.pdf 1

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readership level was still twice the number of those obtaining news from a national US newspaper like USA Today, the New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal (NCM 2005, 48). Nearly 40% said they preferred Arab American media to mainstream media (2005, 8). The study did not offer much insight into explanations for these patterns of media usage. Frequency and causes of media reliance are far from the only gaping holes in the scholarship. What follows is a broad overview of Arab American media research that highlights key themes and gaps, and identifies the empirical bases for further study.

The Rich History of Print and Publishing Arab American studies scholars, including historians, have written about the importance of media for local centers of Arab American life at different points in history (Fahrentold 2019; Bawardi  2014; Khate 2005; Mehdi,  1978; Naff  1993; Sherman et  al  2002; Gualtieri, 2009, 2020). Although some include extensive sections or chapters on particular outlets, the majority of these works do not take the media sector as the primary object of analysis. In these works, media are elements of larger social histories. There is a similar pattern with language research on the prevalence of Arabic in the United States (Sawaie and Fishman 1985). In fact, the only publication with “Arab American media” as the title is a 1992 chapter in an edited volume about the role of language in media formation and maintenance (Tayash and Ayouby 1992). That essay usefully provided a partial list of some of the various radio and television programs and newspapers around the country, but it was not media research per se. For both ethnic and language studies, Arab American media is more often a source for research, an evidentiary base for understanding a past community or the presence of Arabic speakers. Of all the media types, there has been the most work on the press, thanks in part to archival preservation.2 In 1892, the first known Arabic newspaper began publishing in New York, centered in the Little Syria area of Manhattan’s Lower East Side around Washington Street (Naff 1993). Kawkab Amrika (Star of America) ran three pages of Arabic content and a page of English. Its mission, as printed in the inaugural issue, was “bringing its eastern and western readers into closer and more intimate relations.” It faced several obstacles related to its transnationalism. Although the Ottoman authorities prevented the spread of foreign dissident press by forbidding the export of Arabic language typeset for printers, it made an exception for the paper’s proprietors. Apparently, the Ottoman officials saw the United States as a country that did not harbor imperial intentions on Ottoman territories (Khater 2016). Still, finding a setter who could work in Arabic was difficult (Melki 1972, 5). The paper did not take an anti-­Ottoman line despite the political leanings of its owners. There was a pragmatic reason. In his study of the ethnic press, Chicago sociologist Robert E. Park explained that since the Syrian population was not large enough to support its press, the publications relied on export to the  The Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies at North Carolina State University offers a vast repository of historic media on its website

2

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homeland and therefore had to stay in the good graces of the Sultan (1922, 56). Furthermore, one of its editors, Abraham Mitrie Rihbany, felt censored: “[t]he hand of the Turk was still heavy upon me, even on Pearl Street, New York” (1914, 240). Other Arab American publishers who were critical faced death sentences and lost their ancestral property as retribution (Melki 1972, 7). Park believed that these transnational dimensions “made the paper a force against assimilation” (1922, 56). Rihbany wrote in his autobiography about the difficulties in turning the paper into a vehicle for Americanization. This tension between transnationalism and assimilation has been an abiding concern in much of the scholarship. Early on, however, Park argued that immigrant newspapers delivered “urgent information” that recently arrived communities “use in making adjustments to a new environment, in changing old habits, and in forming new opinions”(1922, 9). This presaged the Uses and Gratifications theory of mass communication, which centered audience needs and conceived of media consumption as fulfilling them. The second clause of Park’s book title, The Immigrant Press and Its Control, spoke to the nativist anxieties at the time, though he ultimately assuaged. Transnational connections were a bridge for people in a new land. Later work found that Arabic language media in the United States continued to keep immigrants connected to their homelands and helped them preserve the Arabic language without necessarily keeping them separate from mainstream society (Ajami 1987; Tayash and Ayouby 1992; Naff 1993). Akram Khater related acculturation as a sort of “becoming” that required an appreciation of their “experience of simultaneity of the near and far . . . in this interconnected world” (2005, 300). At the same time, associational life was rich with investments in political developments in the homeland. Hani Bawardi (2014) demonstrated Syrian American political involvements from the turn of the century through the early post–World War II period; they engaged in activism on questions of nationalism, the Ottoman empire, and Zionism. Enmeshed in both the politics of the Levant and their own local struggles, the earliest activists and newspapers also engaged other parts of the diaspora, including South America, through their press, correspondence, and associational affiliations (Fahrenthold 2019). They did so from the positionality of being Americans. Another pattern that would become common in Arab American media history began at the time. Many publications started but closed down quickly. Paradoxically, there was overall growth over time. There were 21 regular Arabic publications in the United States between 1892 and 1907 (Naff 1993). In 1907 alone, 11 papers served an estimated 50,000 Syrians in the United States; by 1930 there were 50, but there were more readers and they had a wider geographic reach (Naff 1993, 319). The first West Coast newspaper, Syrian-­ American News, began around that time (Mehdi 1978, 20). During the postwar era, the press continued to expand. By 1983, “638,070 copies of newspapers, magazines, newsletters and journals” circulated each month (Ajami 1987, 159). In the late 2000s, however, there were not many more publications than there were a century prior despite the population of Arab Americans being many times larger. One estimate was that there were 40, six of which were weekly, with the rest being biweekly or monthly (Brown et al. 2012). Overall, Arab American press leaned more towards “politics over human interest and entertainment” (Ajami  1987, 176). Print has always carried a large burden on its

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shoulders as the medium of choice for intellectuals and activists alike. As Schumann wrote about the Washington, D.C.-­based magazine Al-­Hewar (The Dialogue), the community’s newspaper and magazine were caught in the “peculiar triangle of diaspora politics”: acculturation to the new land, maintaining ties to back home, and struggling “to overcome the diversity within” (2004, 308). They did so by navigating the terrain of macro-­concepts like “Arabism,” religion, and the imperatives of citizenship (2004, 308). Similarly, a pioneer of Arab feminism, Afifa Karam, worked as a reporter for Al-­Hoda before writing books and publishing Arab women’s journals (Saylor  2015). Arab American publications have always engaged in the big issues of the day while taking on the practical challenge of trying to stay afloat – often without success, as commercial feasibility remained elusive. There were some notable publications that put commercial activity and social and cultural subjects on the forefront. These are under-­studied. On the West Coast, Joseph Haiek (1932–2018) published books and business directories, as well as The Arab American Almanac that saw six editions from 1974 to 2010. His magazines included The News Circle, which usually had about 80 pages and ran for decades after its first issue in 1972. It was one of the few publications that had a truly national readership and aimed to bring the various organizations and media outlets together. Haiek also started the Arab American Historical Foundation in 1978. It was committed to research and documentation of the community. Haiek served as a public figure that US news media went to for comment on current events. While his publications never shied from politics, they documented the whole spectrum of Arab American life. Elsewhere, publications in art and culture, like the Minneapolis-­based Mizna and Al-­Jadid out of Los Angeles, have thrived for decades, continuing the legacy of early literary or arts journals, such as Al-­Fanun.

A Dearth of Work on the Most Powerful Medium: Broadcasting The largest void in the body of research is with broadcasting. Outside of a master’s thesis (Habeeb, 2018), there are no sustained studies on audiovisual media in Arab American life, despite it being an empirically rich terrain. The first Arab American broadcast medium was radio. Starting in the 1960s, Arab American radio programs appeared in cities like Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco to offer news about local and Middle Eastern events, entertainment, and religious services (Kayyali 2006, 86). Some programs were narrow in scope. “The Voice of Palestine” out of Chicago aired in the 1970s under the direction of the Arab American Congress for Palestine (Mehdi  1978, 141). Pawtucket, Rhode Island, had a music-­only program, “Music of the Near East” (Mehdi 1978, 141). Unlike print, human interest and music were more common over the radio waves (Ajami  1987, 176). In 1980s Detroit, there were nine programs, seven of which were in Arabic (Tayash and Ayouby  1992). All except one were on AM stations. The one FM program, “Arabesque,” an Arab American Media Society production, launched in 1980 and aired on WDET 98.2 FM. Major cities outside of Detroit saw between one and four hours of weekly Arabic radio, and almost

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all were volunteer-­driven (Ajami 1987, 176). By the 2000s, there were a handful of programs around the country. Many had found the costs of renting airtime expensive, and only a few established stations carried community programming as part of their own offerings (Brown et al. 2012). Arab American radio’s heyday appeared over. In the 2005 survey, only 2% of Arab Americans listened occasionally or more (New California Media 2005, 12–13). Television blossomed in the 1980s with the emergence of cable television, which had more carriage capacity plus was obligated by franchise agreements to carry local, community-­access channels. Arab Americans took advantage of that. There is one television program that has continued since the 1980s: The Arabic Hour, a volunteer-­run program in Boston, began airing in 1982 on community-­access channels in New England (Habeeb  2018). A private nonprofit, the Arab Media Foundation, produces it, which likely explains its longevity. Its online archives give a glimpse of its history.3 The show not only covers community events and airs documentaries, but also gives a platform to authors and activists to discuss foreign affairs. Its proximity to universities means academics were overly represented as guests. It aired cultural content as well, including a short-­lived cooking show, concerts, literary readings, and other gatherings (Habeeb 2018, 52). As with Arab American TV programs around the country, it subsided on local, small business advertising (Habeeb 2018, 73). The most advanced Arab American television program was Los Angeles’s Arab American Television (AATV), which ran for 25 years beginning in the early 1980s. The founder Wahid Boctor started the program to give the Arab American community a voice in what he saw as a very biased American media system (Wood 1991). The one-­ hour weekly program reached millions of homes in Southern California through over-­ the-­air broadcasting and cable, though its audience was likely in the tens of thousands. In the 1990s, AATV started reaching a national audience daily through the International Channel, carried on many cable systems. AATV relied on commercials, parties and banquets, and donations to stay afloat. Most of the advertisements came from Arab American entrepreneurs. The revenue was sufficient to cover a full staff of five employees at its height, but it required volunteers to operate. While The Arabic Hour was in English, AATV was bilingual, though primarily in Arabic. It was magazine format, but had news segments, with news anchors reading from scripts and introducing news packages. AATV thrived in part because it imported movies, concert videos, and television shows from the region and integrated clips into the programs. This was at a time that the Arab diaspora otherwise had poor access to Arabic-­language media. Yet, the most dense Arab American broadcast history is where the most concentrated Arab American population lived: Detroit, Michigan. In the mid-­1980s, for example, there were a dozen local television programs, mostly broadcasting in Arabic (Tayash and Fahad 1992, 81–82). Some were religious in nature and put on by Islamic associations, whereas others were civic or focused on public and mental health. The latter were produced by Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS), a community-­based services organization founded in the early 1970s. The market was  http://www.arabichour.org

3

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large enough that two of the programs actually aired on a broadcast channel. Detroit had the most intense localized Arabic-­language mediasphere since New  York’s Little Syria in the early 1900s. With satellite television’s expanded footprint in the 1990s, Arab Americans gained wider access to Arab regional media, giving many of these local programs fierce competition for viewers. This was an impediment to initiatives to develop Arab American television programs that were national in scope. AATV struggled against deep-­pocketed rivals. The Arab Network of America (ANA) started broadcasting through radio and television in the early 1990s and reached large Arab American markets in select cities. Its output was seven to ten hours per day, but it was short-­lived. The Saudi-­owned Arab Radio & Television America, founded in 1996, was a wealthy juggernaut that many of the local programs could not compete with; it folded around 2012. Despite the availability of cheaper technology, television was expensive to produce. That limited the development of this sector. Unlike newspapers, literary works, and other forms of fixed media, broadcasting was ethereal, making it difficult to preserve. The original recordings call upon technologies that are now obsolete. These collections rarely survive and can deteriorate over time. Outside of The Arabic Hour, there has been little sustained effort to archive and document televisual media. Such research requires archives and documentation, which are either cost-­prohibitive or simply unavailable.

Creative Expression: Theater, Arts, Literature, and Comedy Humanities disciplines like literature, art, and performance studies have generated terrific work on Arab American self-­representation through adjacent types of mediation (Ali  2017; Najjar  2015; Fa’i 1994; Imangulieva,  2010; Sabry  2011; Selim  2014; Fadda-­ Conrey 2014). Since the first immigrants arrived, Arab Americans have produced films, art, theater, comedy, and music. Historically, Arab American media was perhaps nowhere near as impressive as its literary achievements. The famed “Ar-­Rabitah” of Pen League was a highly influential group of writers, poets and artists anchored around Khalil Gibran, Rihani, and Mikhail Naimy (Mehdi  1978, 13). Their long-­lasting influence on Arabic literature is well-­ documented (Imangulieva 2010; Rihani 2016). Gibran’s name is well known internationally. However, their accomplishments cannot be separated from the early press, where many of them had their first writings published. The mahjar newspapers gave them the freedom to innovate literary forms and put them on the map publicly. Melki concluded that “Arab-­American journalism was the cradle of the modern school of literature in the Arab World” (1972, 12). One debate among scholars of literature and the arts is worth illuminating. Fadda-­ Conrey (2014) found that Arab American literature has flourished and moved from looking back home, as the early writers did, to situating the community in the United States as their new place of belonging. Najjar (2015) suggested the inverse. In mapping a

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history of Arab American drama, cinema, and performance, Najjar distinguished the modern, from the time of Rihani, Gibran, and Naimy up until 1967, with a contemporary phase since then. Najjar sees in this phase a marked thematic shift from acculturation concerns to empowerment against oppression, an avowedly subversive politics rather than aspirations of belonging. Playwrights, actors, and other creatives in theater see their work as a zone of defiance against crude perceptions of Arabs and Muslims (Ali 2017). This tension between belonging and resistance is a useful debate because it proposes theoretical lines of inquiry in future studies of other forms of Arab American media. Popular theater has not been written about as much. In 1980s Detroit and Los Angeles, amateur theater groups put on plays that directly addressed the difficulty of transition to the United States. The most common genre was the comedic farce, imitating a popular Egyptian format that circulated via videotapes and used absurdist humor to deliver social commentary (Fa’ik 1994, 109). Performed in Arabic dialect, they were set in familiar localized places. Titles of plays in the mid-­1980s were telling: Party Store; Shuf al-­Lotto Esh Sawwa (“See What the Lotto Did”); Matlub Za’im Lil-­Jaliyah (“Wanted: A Leader for the Immigrant Community”) (Fa’ik 1994, 109). These were vital in that they showed a politics that was highly localized, in contrast to Najjar’s focus. Arab American comedy has been an active front in practice, but the research is somewhat minimal. The budding Arab comedy scene in the United States has been the subject of research examining how comics, especially women, use it to self-­narrate, challenge stereotypes, and help reformulate Arab American identity (Sabry  2011; Selim  2014). Comedy may not seem like media, per se, but live performances reach beyond their venues, mediated through online platforms; comedians become media personalities, actors, TV comics, and writers. Some comedians have gained widespread recognition on television. In 2019, Ramy, a sitcom about an Arab American family in New Jersey, aired on Hulu. The star, comedian Ramy Youssef, won a Golden Globe for his acting. Though made for a general audience, its portrayal of an Arab American family gave it a particular appeal to the community.

New Directions in Digital Media Studies on Arab American uptake of the Internet run the range of theoretical and disciplinary approaches. There has been social scientific inquiry looking at why Arab Americans consume online media. Muhtaseb and Frey found information-­seeking to be a primary motive (2008). On the other hand, ethnographic research on particular sub-­ groups, such as youth, explores their meaning-­making and identity construction online, both within the context of and against their Arab American milieus (Haddad 2015). Youth use social media to engage in what is normally condemned as taboo in the community, to test boundaries and express rebelliousness (Youmans, forthcoming). Virtual spaces of interaction have also allowed for collective coordination among Arab American feminists, as one case study of Arab Women’s Solidarity Association United (AWSA United) revealed (Stephan 2013). There are risks to an online presence, however. Psychology research has looked at the sites and impacts of cyberbullying that Arab American youth face through

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text messaging, Facebook, and Instagram (Albdour et  al.  2019). One study found that Arab American youth were more likely to face online intimidation based on their identity than their African American, White, or Latino classmates (Yousef et al. 2015). The proliferation of Arab American media-­makers means that overall this sector as become de-­institutionalized, personalized, and highly diffuse. Take, for example, the new predominant audio media form, podcasts. Many are made by those who traditionally did not have access to broadcast radio. This altered who speaks in and for Arab America. Some of the most interesting new podcasts are made by women. Some examples are Dearborn Girl, Breaking Pita with Zee, and Arab-­American Psycho. Notably, these new outlets do not, and probably cannot, seek to address an entire Arab American community as did the outlets of the past. The new media personalities are no longer the community leaders in the traditional sense. They are not the traditional local power-­brokers who acted as gatekeepers to, and representatives of, the community: the ethnic media entrepreneurs, the religious clerics, influential businessmen, or presidents of community groups. These were the figures who historically were most represented in Arab American media. Now, the most visible media figures are minor celebrities with their own fanbases. A host of social media influencers operate somewhat independently of the traditional matrices of community leadership. They produce a range of types of content, distributing them directly to hundreds of thousands of followers on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. They are public personalities, and as such are arbiters and articulators of novel ways of being Arab American. This has given room to normally excluded sub-­identities. A few examples include those who identify as LGBTQ individuals, political radicals, or are racial, religious, or Arab-­adjacent ethnic minorities who nevertheless claim a positionality as Arab Americans. The hyper-­fragmentation suggests a major transformation in the shape and composition of Arab American media.

Conclusion While the body of research on Arab American media is underwhelming, there has been some evolution that gestures to fertile grounds for future work, both historical and contemporary directions. Structuralist-­ f unctionalist scholarship of the past construed immigrant media as a piece of the process of assimilation or as a tool for the community to preserve language, educate its denizens, or circulate overseas information (Park 1922; Ajami 1987; Tayash and Ayouby 1992). More recently, researchers have examined the community’s media on its own terms, embracing its complexity and dynamism rather than subjecting it to a priori theoretical agendas. Arab American media, both analog and digital, have always been vehicles of self-­expression articulated uniquely alongside and between confessional, national, generational, and gender lines, among other others. As immigrants and subsequent generations navigate the tension between belonging and transnational attachments, the media they make to speak to each other will continue to be instrumental to their collective sense-­making and identity formation.

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References Ajami, J. 1987. “The Arabic Press in the United States Since 1892: A Socio-­historical Study.” Doctoral dissertation. Ohio University. Albdour, M., Hong, J. S., Lewin, L., and Yarandi, H. 2019. “The Impact of Cyberbullying on Physical and Psychological Health of Arab American Adolescents.” Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health 21, no. 4: 706–715. Ali, R. 2017. “In Response to Narratives of Stereotypes: Arab American Playwrights Reclaim and Fortify Arab American Representation.” Gramma: Journal of Theory and Criticism 24: 81–91. Areeg, Barakat, Gopalakrishna, Pradeep, and Lala, Vishal. 2014. “The Impact of Arab American Ethnic Identity on the Consumption of Culture-­Specific Products.” Journal of International Consumer Marketing 26, no. 5: 405–425. DOI: 10.1080/08961530.2014.946575 Bawardi, H. J. 2014. The Making of Arab Americans: From Syrian Nationalism to US Citizenship. Austin: University of Texas Press. Brown, Heather, Guskin, Emily, and Mitchell, Amy. 2012, November 28. “Arab-­American Media: Bringing News to a Diverse Community.” Pew Research Center. https://www.journalism. org/2012/11/28/arabamerican-­media/ Cumoletti, Mattea, and Batalova, Jeanne. 2018. “Middle Eastern and North African Immigrants in the United States.” Migration Information Source. (January 10). Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/middle-­eastern-­and-­north-­african­immigrants-­united-­states-­2016 David, G. C. 2007. “The Creation of ‘Arab American’: Political Activism and Ethnic (Dis)Unity 1.” Critical Sociology 33, no. 5-­6: 833–862. Habeeb, N. E. 2018. “The Arabic Hour: Understanding Arab-­American Media Activism and Community-­Based Media.” Masters Dissertation. Tufts University. Haddad, C. 2015.:Being Young in Arab Detroit: Media and Identity in Post-­9/11 America.” Doctoral dissertation. University of Michigan. Fadda-­Conrey, C. 2014. Contemporary Arab-­American Literature: Transnational Reconfigurations of Citizenship and Belonging (Vol. 5). New York: NYU Press. Fahrenthold, S. D. 2019. Between the Ottomans and the Entente: The First World War in the Syrian and Lebanese Diaspora, 1908–1925. New York: Oxford University Press. Fa’ik, Ala. 1994. “Issues of Identity: In Theater of Immigrant Community.” In E. N. McCarus (Ed.), The Development of Arab-­American Identity (pp. 107\–118). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Gualtieri, Sarah. 2009. Between Arab and White: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian American Diaspora. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gualtieri, Sarah. 2020. Arab Routes: Pathways to Syrian California. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Imangulieva, A. 2010. Gibran, Rihani & Naimy: East–West Interactions in Early Twentieth-­century Arab Literature. Oxford, UK: Inner Farne Press. Ismaeal, H. M. 2003. “Creating an Imagined Community: Self-­representation in an Arab-­ American Journal, The Syrian World, 1926–1935.” PhD dissertation. Southern Illinois University. Karpat, K. H. 1985. “The Ottoman Emigration to America, 1860–1914.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 17, no. 2: 175–209. Kaufer, D., and Al-­Malki, A. M. 2009. “The War on Terror Through Arab-­American Eyes: The Arab-­American Press as a Rhetorical Counterpublic.” Rhetoric Review 28, no. 1: 47–65. Kayyali, R. A. 2006. The Arab Americans. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group.

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Khater, Akram Fouad 2005. “Becoming ‘Syrian’ in America: A Global Geography of Ethnicity and Nation.” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 14, no. 2: 299–331. doi:10.1353/ dsp.0.0010. Khater, Akram. 2016 November 30. “Arbeely Family: Pioneers to America and Founders of the First Arabic Language Newspaper.” Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies News.  https://lebanesestudies.news.chass.ncsu.edu/2016/11/30/arbeely-­family-­pioneers-­ to-­america-­and-­founders-­of-­the-­f irst-­arabic-­language-­newspaper/ Mehdi, B. T. (Ed.). 1978. The Arabs in America, 1492–1977: A Chronology & Fact Book (No. 31). Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana Publications. Melki. Henry H. 1972. “Arab American Journalism and Its Relation to Arab American Literature.” PhD dissertation. Georgetown University. Melki. Henry H. 1998. Al-­Sihafah al-­arabiyah fi al-­mahjar wa-­alaqatha bi-­al-­adab al-­mahjari’. In Arabic. Beirut: Dar Al-­Sharq al-­Awsat. Muhtaseb, A., and Frey, L. R. 2008. “Arab Americans’ Motives for Using the Internet as a Functional Media Alternative and Their Perceptions of US Public Opinion.” Journal of Computer-­ Mediated Communication 13, no. 3: 618–657. Naff, A. 1993. Becoming American: The Early Arab Immigrant Experience. Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: SIU Press. Najjar, M. M. 2015. Arab American Drama, Film and Performance: A Critical Study, 1908 to the Present. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. NCM 2005. “The Ethnic Media in America: The Giant Hidden in Plain Sight.” New California Media. https://legacy.npr.org/documents/2005/jul/ncmfreport.pdf Oumlil, K. 2016. “Alternative Media, Self-­representation and Arab-­American Women.” Journal of Alternative & Community Media 1, no. 1: 41–55. Park, R. E. 1970. The immigrant Press and Its Control. New York: Harper & Brother. Pennock, P. E. 2017. The Rise of the Arab American Left: Activists, Allies, and Their Fight Against Imperialism and Racism, 1960s–1980s. Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press Books. Popp, R. A. 2000. “Al-­ Funün: The Making of an Arab-­ American Literary Journal.” PhD Dissertation. Georgetown University. Rihani, A. 2016. The Book of Khalid: A Critical Edition. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Rihbany, Mitrie Abraham. 1914. A Far Journey: An Autobiography. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin. Sabry, S. S. 2011. “Performing Sheherazade: Arab-­American Women’s Contestations of Identity.” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 31: 196–222. Selim, Y. F. 2014. “Performing Arabness in Arab American Stand-­up Comedy.” American, British and Canadian Studies, 23, no. 1: 77–92. Stephan, R. 2013. “Creating Solidarity in Cyberspace: The Case of Arab Women’s Solidarity Association United.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 9, no. 1: 81–109. Suleiman, Michael. 1999. “Introduction: The Arab Immigrant Experience.” In M. Suleiman (Ed.), Arabs in America: Building a New Future (pp. 1–24). Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Suleiman, M. W. 2010. “The Arab Community in the United States: A Review and an Assessment of the State of Research and Writing on Arab Americans.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 37, no. 1: 39–s55. Sawaie, M., and Fishman, J. A. 1985. “Arabic-­language Maintenance Efforts in the United States.” Journal of Ethnic Studies 13: 33–49. Sherman, W. C., Whitney, P. L., and Guerrero, J. 2002. Prairie Peddlers: The Syrian-­Lebanese in North Dakota. Bismarck, ND: University of Mary Press. Saylor, Elizabeth. 2015. “A Bridge Too Soon: The Life & Works of Afifa Karam, the First Arab American Woman Novelist.” PhD Dissertation. UC Berkeley.

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Tayash, F. A., and Ayouby, K. K. 1992. “Arab-­American Media: Past and Present.” In Aleya Rouchdy (Ed), The Arabic Language in America (pp. 162–183). Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Wood, Daniel B. 1991, February 7. “An Arab View of TV News.” Christian Science Monitor. https:// www.csmonitor.com/1991/0207/larab.html Youmans, W. L. (forthcoming). “Digital Dearborn.” In Y. Hanoosh, S. Howell, and A. Shryock. (Eds.), Uncertain Refuge: Vitality and Vulnerability in Arab Detroit. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Yousef, M., Shaher, W., and Bellamy, A. 2015. “The Impact of Cyberbullying on the Self-­esteem and Academic Functioning of Arab American Middle and High School Students.” Electronic Journal of Research in Educational Psychology 3: 463–82.

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39

Contemporary Arab Media and Cultural Landscape in Istanbul Franck Mermier

The killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi on the premises of the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, drew the attention of the world’s media to Istanbul, a city which has sometimes been presented as a place of refuge for dissident Arab intellectuals and politicians who have fled political repression and war. The “discovery” of an Arab media and cultural presence in Turkey as a result then gave rise to various articles in the international press emphasizing the supposed role played by Istanbul as a new public sphere of the Arab world.1 This representation of Istanbul and Turkey as a refuge and as a place of free expression for the Arab media can also be found in the discourse of Arab media executives and in that of Arab directors of research centers, at least when they are speaking in an official framework (see Chapters 11, 17). How should one understand the phenomenon of the

 An article in the New York Times argued that “Arab Exiles Sound Off Freely in Istanbul Even as Turkey Muffles its Own Critics” (Hubbard 2019), whereas the French Daily newspaper Libération devoted an article on “Istanbul as a place of refuge for political exiles” (Berlioux 2020). An article in Qantara.de, a prominent German cultural site that publishes articles from Arab and Western scholars and writers in Arabic, German, and English, called the city “Istanbul the Arab World’s Beacon on the Bosphorus” (Hage Ali 2020b). The same article contains material by the same author published by the Carnegie Middle East Centre under a different title; see Hage Ali (2020a).

1

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Arab media and culture in Istanbul that has received little scholarly attention,2 but which has become a subject of both praise and criticism in the Arab and Turkish press?3 This chapter identifies the components of the contemporary Arab cultural and media scene in Istanbul by explaining the political pressures and historical circumstances from which it originated. The Arab cultural and media landscape in Istanbul in fact combines many different registers: the most obvious is at the political level found in the network of institutions that constitutes it, and the least visible one is made up of the multiple interactions between Arab and Turkish cultural and media scenes leading to cultural “crystallizations” made possible by the urban setting of Istanbul (Burke 2009, 114). The creation of Arab media and cultural venues in the city, after the Arab uprisings of 2011, raises the question of their autonomy from political pressures in a context where the position of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) on the Arab uprisings and the alliance of Turkish political leadership with Qatar (Başkan  2016) had direct consequences on the configuration of the Arab media scene. It also prompts us to consider to what extent Turkey became an extension of the pan-­Arab public sphere and of different Arab national spheres, notably Syrian, Egyptian, Yemeni, and Libyan. Finally, we will question the durability of this Arab media and cultural scene in Turkey, born in particular political circumstances, and which fluctuates according to the evolution of the political situation (see Chapter 17).

Political Developments Underpinning the Emergence of Arab Media Scene The formation of the contemporary Arab cultural and media scene in Turkey is essentially the result of domestic and regional developments, first and foremost among them the AKP’s new foreign policy in the Middle East and the repercussions of the Arab uprisings. After his appointment as the minister of foreign affairs in 2009, Ahmet Davutoğlu stepped up the implementation of his doctrine of “strategic depth,” which called for reinvigorating Turkey’s historical and cultural relationships with countries that hitherto comprised the hinterland of the Ottoman Empire, and his policy of “zero problems with neighbours,” which aimed to improve Turkey’s relations with the Arab world (Burdy and Marcou 2013, 9–10). In addition to closer political relations, the latter policy also resulted in an increase in economic relations and mobilities between Turkey and the Arab countries. The lifting of visa requirements for many Arab countries and attractive

 It is worth mentioning a survey of Arab media in Turkey published in Arabic (Halâyiqa, 2020).  The pro-­AKP Turkish press, whether publishing in Turkish, English, or Arabic, often contains articles praising the role of Istanbul as the “capital” of the Arab media or even as a “paradise” for Arab journalists living in exile, while the pro-­regime press in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt just as regularly denounces the negative role played by the Arab media in Turkey and its subservience to the Muslim Brotherhood. Mustafa Menshawy (2020, 16, 69) points out that thousands of Egyptian Muslim Brothers took refuge in Turkey after the coup d’état against president Morsi, but that many of them then disaffiliated themselves from the Brotherhood in Istanbul. 2 3

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494 Contemporary Arab Media and Cultural Landscape in Istanbul investment policies, notably in real estate, led to a significant increase in the number of Arab tourists visiting and residents living in Turkey. This policy aiming to increase Turkey’s influence in Arab countries had effects in the media sector with the creation of an Arabic television channel by the state-­run broadcaster TRT in 2010, an Arabic department at the state-­run Anadolu News Agency in 2011, various Arabic-­language websites linked to pro-­government newspapers, and other Turkey-­based Arabic news websites. One of the main figures in the Arab media scene in Turkey is Turan Kışlakçı, who took part in the creation of the Arabic department at Anadolu Agency and was appointed director of TRT Arabi in 2015. Kışlakçı, an Arabic-­speaking Turkish journalist also at home in Urdu thanks to his having attended university in Pakistan, is the author of the first book in Turkish on the Arab uprisings of 2011 (Kışlakçı, 2012). He is also the director of the AKP-­linked Arab Media House in Istanbul, which claims to be an independent association seeking to promote the professional integration of Arab journalists in Turkey. He played a major role in the media campaign protesting the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, to whom he was close,4 mobilizing main figures of the Arab media scene in Istanbul such as the Palestinian Wadah Khanfar (the former director general of the Al Jazeera Network5 and the cofounder of the Al-­Sharq Forum in Istanbul), Tawakkol Karman (the Yemeni Nobel Prize recipient), Ayman Nour (the Egyptian opponent against the Marshal al-­Sissi’s regime), and last but not least Yasin Aktay6 (an adviser to the Turkish president). It is important to remember, however, that the development of the contemporary Arab media scene in Turkey has taken place in a context in which “the Turkey media system is marked by the combination of state power with the power of capital, and authoritarian state control with neoliberal elements” (Yesil 2016, 13). It is also necessary to bear in mind the repressive measures adopted after the failed coup d’état on July 15, 2016, which led among other things to the closure of around 100 media outlets and the imprisonment of 150  journalists in the months that followed (Akin  2019, 207–208). Syrian journalists in Turkey have also been the victims of repressive measures during the Turkish intervention in Northern Syria and some have been expelled to Idlib; it has also been stated that some have even been handed over to the Nusra front (Porlezza and

 He is often quoted in Rugman’s book (2019) on the Khashoggi affair, for example. Turan Kışlakçı is a previous editor of the Al-­Lam’a (in Arabic) and Spark magazines in Islamabad and was later a journalist on the newspaper Yeni Şafak, which is close to the AKP. He writes regularly to the Arab newspaper Al-­Quds Al-­Arabi (financed by a Qatari media group). 5  www.sharqforum.org. After the appointment of Wadah Khanfar as general manager of Al Jazeera in 2003, it is claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood became more prominent and also that he was close to Ahmet Davutoğlu (Başkan 2016, 60–61). He was made a member of the board of trustees of the International Crisis Group in 2020. 6  Yasin Aktay is the MP for Siirt, his home district, and has been the spokesperson of the AKP. He is an Arabic speaker who teaches sociology at Selçuk University in Konya and writes articles on Turkey’ s international relations. Jonathan Rugman (2019, 222) mentions the ties of friendship between Yasin Aktay and Jamal Khashoggi in his book, as well as similar ties with Ayman Nour. He plays an important role as an intermediary between Arab political and media personalities and the Turkish authorities. 4

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Arafat  2021, 10).7 In March 2021, the start of a rapprochement between Turkey and Egypt had repercussions on the content of the Egyptian opposition satellite channels Sharq, Mekammeleen, and Watan, broadcasting from Istanbul, as reported in some Arab press articles.8 Furthermore, self-­censorship is generalized among Arab media where Turkey is concerned, and in a context where the existence of a critical and independent journalism has become seriously threatened (Pukallus et al. 2020, 1443–1460). But as stated by Badran (2020, 75), “Nevertheless, Syrian oppositional media in Turkey occupy a space that is largely separate and isolated from that of Turkish media and thus are directly influenced by, and far more reactive to, the aforementioned policy areas rather than the changes in the broader media environment.” Among the regional developments that had implications for Turkey, the settlement of 3.5 million Syrian refugees on its territory after 2011 was crucial. The other wars ravaging the Arab world and the period of ferocious repression that followed the revolutionary events of 2011 also had major consequences in increasing the number of Arab nationals living in Turkey. Several tens of thousands of Iraqis took refuge in Turkey after the US-­ led invasion of Iraq in 2003, with thousands more following after the taking of Mosul by the Islamic State group in June 2014. Thousands of Egyptian opposition figures relocated to Turkey after the 2013 coup d’état, and thousands of Yemenis and Libyans forced out of their countries because of war and Palestinians fleeing life under occupation also found refuge in Turkey. However, these groups are very different from each other, not only because of their different nationalities and their status under Turkish law, but also because of the many differences in social level and professional background within the same national group. In addition to refugees living in situations of extreme precarity, there are members of the middle and upper classes, among whom are businesspeople of different nationalities who have chosen Turkey as a base for their activities, and many Arab students at Turkish universities.9   https://rsf.org/en/news/rsf-­urges-­turkey-­not-­send-­syrian-­refugee-­journalists-­back-­syria. The Nusra Front, the former Al-­Qaida branch in Syria, became Hay’at Tahrir Al-­Sham (The Organization for the Liberation of the Levant) in March 2017 with the merging of other Islamist groups, and disaffiliated itself from Al-­Qaida. 8  See, for example, the articles in two Pan-­Arab dailies, the first financed by Qatar and the two  others by Saudi Arabia: Al-­Tâhir Al-­Tawîl (2021), “Qanawât al-­mu’ârada wa thaman ­al-­musâlaha bayna Misr wa Turkyâ” [The Opposition Channels and the Price of Egypt-­Turkey Rapprochement], Al-­Quds al-­arabi, March 26, and “Turkey Orders Muslim Brotherhood TV Channels to Stop Criticizing Egypt,” Arab News, March 19, 2021; https://www.arabnews.com/ node/1828181/media, Ahmad Abd al-­Hakim (2021), “Hal al-­tadhiyat bi-­‘qanawât al-­Ikhwân’ sabîl Anqara nahw tahsîn ‘ilâqati-­hâ bi-­l-­Qâhira” [Is Sacrificing the Muslim Brotherhood’s TV Channels the Way Chosen by Ankara to Improve Its Relations with Cairo?], Independent Arabia, April 17, 2021, https://www.independentarabia.com/node/204196. 9  Of the 154,505 foreign students studying in Turkey in 2018–2019, there were 50,762 Arabs, among them 27,000 Syrians, 7,614 Iraqis, 3,076 Yemenis, 2,910 (5,700 in 2019) Egyptians, 2,483 Palestinians, 2,643  Jordanians, 1,071  Moroccans, 588 Algerians, 396 Tunisians, 735 Sudanese, 467 Lebanese, 1,756 Libyans, 19 Kuwaitis, 39 Qataris, 31 Bahrainis, 21 Emiratis, and 417 Saudis, as well as 3,764 Somalis (counted as Arabs); these figures are given by the Turkish High Council for Higher Education YÖK, 2019. 7

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496 Contemporary Arab Media and Cultural Landscape in Istanbul

Arab Satellite Television Channels Based in Istanbul It is difficult to determine the true number of Arab journalists and media professionals in Turkey as many of them are not registered as such because of regulations that require a special journalist visa to be obtained before they enter Turkish territory. Because media companies must be 56% owned by Turkish nationals, many are registered as production companies instead. However, Syrian companies operating in Turkey are exempt from the requirement and are allowed to recruit only one-­third of their employees from among Turkish nationals, as is the case for other foreign companies. It is estimated that there are between 2,600 and 3,000 Arab journalists and media professionals working in Istanbul for news websites, newspapers and magazines, and satellite TV stations and radio stations, the majority of whom are Syrian or Palestinian.10 It is a diverse media landscape that includes the Istanbul studios of Arab television stations whose headquarters are elsewhere, such as Al Jazeera, Al-­Hiwar, Sky News Arabia, Al-­Arabiya, and Al-­Arabi, Arab Internet sites hosted in Turkey,11 and media companies that operate principally from Istanbul. The most visible part of the Arab presence in the political and media sectors can be found in the satellite audiovisual landscape. While some of the channels were set up in Istanbul, others moved to the city as a result of war or political repression. However, it is difficult to measure the size of the audience of these television stations either inside or outside the countries concerned. Moreover, the media landscape frequently changes, and many Arab television stations have closed. It should be added that the Arab satellite landscape in Turkey reflects great disparities in terms of human and material resources, according to the sources of funding. The division by nationality of the Arab satellite television channels broadcasting from Turkey also reflects the map of the regional conflicts in which the Erdogan regime is involved, either through direct military interventions in Syria and Libya, or through its support for political actors such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and allied political groups in Yemen. The configuration of the Arab television landscape in Turkey is also the result of the soft power policy pursued by Qatar, which represents a major source of funding for a large part of the Arab media scene. It must be understood through its links to a network of political and media actors and entrepreneurs whose nodal points are Istanbul, Doha, Beirut, and London. Of the three Syrian television stations broadcasting from Turkey, the most recent and most important, TV Syria, was set up in Istanbul in 2018 and has around 200 employees. It is a subsidiary of Fadaat Media, a private company set up in Doha in 2012 and also

 The figure of 3,000 Arab journalists and media professionals was provided by a correspondent of the Anadolu news agency (Qalâluwa 2018), and that of 2,600 was provided by a Syrian journalist who had helped set up the Arab Media House in Istanbul and requested anonymity. 11  Arabi Post, Arabi 21, Rasd, Sasa Post, Filistin Post, Surya Net, and Khaleejonline may be cited, along with others. 10

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registered in the United Kingdom.12 This media conglomerate was set up around the newspaper and website Al-­Araby Al-­Jadeed (The New Arab) and the television station Al-­Arabi, and was meant to make up for the loss of credibility of the satellite channel Al Jazeera, compromised by its too obvious support for the Muslim Brotherhood during the Arab revolutions (Khatib 2014, 12). A former member of the Israeli Knesset before becoming an adviser to the emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad Al-­Thani, Azmi Bishara is a highly important figure behind Qatar’s soft power policy in the realms of culture and media directed in a large part at Arab intellectuals, researchers, and media professionals (Mermier 2017, 201–220). Based in Doha, where he directs the Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies and chairs the board of trustees of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Bishara’s influence is equally effective in many other Arab and Syrian institutions in Istanbul. Other individuals also play an important role in the Arab television sector in Turkey. Ayman Nour, for example, founder of the Egyptian liberal party Al-­Ghad, which became Ghad Al-­Thawra in 2011, and an opponent of the July 2013 coup d’état, has launched the satellite television station Al-­Sharq in Istanbul. There are allegations that this station has connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar, similar to the situation of Egyptian channel Mekammeleen and news website Rassd News Network, both also based in Istanbul (Dunne and Hamzawy  2019, 9). The same applies to Watan,13 broadcasting from the same city which targets, like Al-­Sharq, young supporters of the Egyptian revolution. While the channel Alqanat 9 (Channel 9) is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood movement, it addresses an audience beyond the borders of Egypt. However, it is important not to associate the Egyptian media operating in Istanbul solely with the Muslim Brotherhood; for example, the Facebook page of Al-­Mawqef Al-­Masry was set up by secularist and leftist Egyptians living in Istanbul (Dunne and Hamzawy 2019, 9). Another eminent political personality associated with the Arab media sphere in Turkey is Tawakkol Karman, who set up the Tawakkol Karman foundation based in Istanbul providing aid for development. She had set up the Yemeni satellite television station Belqees TV in Sanaa in 2014 with the aid of the Doha Centre for Media Freedom. The channel moved to Istanbul in 2015 after the Houthi rebels took power in Yemen. Tawakkol Karman was excluded from the Yemeni Congregation for Reform (close to the Muslim Brotherhood) in 2018 because of her criticisms of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates’ conduct of the war in Yemen. Since then, Saudi and Emirati media sharply criticized her links to Qatar, Turkey, and the Muslim Brotherhood, and she also became the target of a virulent campaign after Facebook appointed her to its oversight board in May 2020. Two other  Fadaat Media also owns the following: the pan-­Arab daily newspaper and website Al-­Araby Al-­ Jadeed (The New Arab), set up in 2014 and whose offices are in London; the TV station Al-­Arabi set up in London in 2015; the Horizons company, which specializes in technology and business services and was set up in Qatar in 1996; the advertising agency Motif, set up in London in 2011 and with a branch in Doha; the film and television production company Metafora in Istanbul; and several online news sites. 13  The first television station set up in Istanbul in 2013 and directly linked to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was Rabea TV, which was later closed. Rabea, also meaning “four,” is a direct reference to Rabea Square in Cairo where a massacre of hundreds of Muslim Brothers protesting against the July 2013 coup d’état took place. There is also another Egyptian channel, Channel 9, which is more directed at an Arab audience. 12

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498 Contemporary Arab Media and Cultural Landscape in Istanbul Yemeni television stations also broadcast from Istanbul, Al-­Yaman Shabab (The Yemen of the Young) and Almahria. The first was set up in Yemen in December 2011 and moved to Turkey in 2015, while the second began broadcasting in Turkey in 2020 under the sponsorship of Oman. Almahria focuses mainly on what they consider the Saudi occupation of the province of Mahra and the Emirati seizure of the Island of Socotra. The establishment of Iraqi and Libyan television channels in Turkey was also the result of security and political factors. Khamis Al-­Khanjar, a major Iraqi political figure, owns the television channels Al-­Rafidayn and Alfallujah, which were established in Istanbul in 2015.14 Al-­Khanjar, a leading businessman, founded the Arab Project in Iraq and took part in the launch of Al-­Iraqiya. In addition, Al-­Khanjar provides financial support to Iraqi Sunni leaders who also benefit from aid provided by Turkey (Mansour  2016, 14–15, 18). He has extended his media empire by giving his financial support to the creation of the UTV television channel set up in Istanbul in 2020 that targets the Iraqi youth market in particular. The Libyan television channels operating in Istanbul play an active role in the Libyan propaganda war. One of the most important is Libya Al-­Ahrar, which began broadcasting from Doha on March 30, 2011, during the mobilization against the Gaddafi regime where it benefited from the support of various Libyan businessmen and a former minister of information. Based in Istanbul since 2017, the channel is politically close to the Islamist currents in the Libyan General National Congress, much like another Libyan channel, Al-­Nabaa TV, which was set up in Tripoli in 2013 and moved to Istanbul after its premises in Libya were forcibly closed in 2016. It is owned by Abdelhakim Belhaj, the founder of the Al-­Watan party. Belhaj is a controversial figure in Libya, having had a murky past as a jihadist and benefiting from Qatari support for his release from prison during the Gaddafi period. Qatar also financed his military activities as leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group during the 2011 uprising (Mandraud 2013). Other Libyan channels are based in Istanbul such as Attanasoh TV, a Libyan television channel run by Suhayl Al-­Ghariani, the son of Al-­Sadeq Al-­Ghariani, the former mufti of Libya, which is close to Islamist movements, and Arraed TV, a channel set up by the Mediasat company in 2015,15 and which broadcasts Turkish programs as well as programs directed at Libya.

Think Tanks, Research Centers, and Publishing Industry Various Arab research and documentation centers are also located in Istanbul, the most important being Syrian, such as Harmoon, Jusoor, the Omran Center for Strategic Studies, and The Day After.16 They reflect the need to broaden the knowledge  Al-­Rafidain was forced to close its offices in Cairo for political reasons in 2014 along with Al-­ Baghdadiya, another Iraqi TV channel. 15  Mediasat is a private company supported by Turkish and Libyan investors. 16  The Day After is distinguished from the other think tanks mentioned by its specialization in issues having to do with civil society, transitional justice, women survivors, prisoners, and heritage, and was set up in 2012 in order to help plan the transitional period after the projected fall of the Syrian regime. It was based in Gaziantep between 2013 and 2016 before moving to Istanbul. 14

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of Syrian society that developed during the revolutionary process after decades of dictatorship and censorship (Mermier, forthcoming). Although they are different in terms of their academic scope or ideological orientation, as well as the nature and extent of their relations with the different branches of the Syrian opposition, these research centers have become essential in producing information about contemporary Syrian society and the conflict underway in the country. The Harmoon Center is the most academically oriented among the others, owing to its journal Kalamoon and other publications, with Kalamoon being overseen by an editorial committee bringing together a group of Syrian intellectuals and researchers whose members are established figures in their respective areas. The Harmoon Center is affiliated with the Center for Research and Policy Studies in Doha, as well as the Center for the Documentation of the Syrian Revolution (Markaz Tawthîq al-­ Thawra al-­Sûriyya), which was set up in Istanbul in 2020 to gather and publish the testimonies of the actors and important figures of the Syrian revolution, and the Arab Network for Research and Publishing, the most important Arab bookstore in Istanbul that opened in 2017.17The manager of the bookstore also organized an Arab book fair in Istanbul at the headquarters of the Turkish Publishers Association in 2015. Another Arab book fair, officially presented as the first, was organized in 2016 by Mustafa Al-­Habbab, a Saudi businessman and investor living in Turkey.18 Al-­Habbab also directs the think tank and research center the Strategic Fiker Center for Studies, which has published studies on the Middle East, the Islamist movements, and other contemporary topics since 2010. From 2016 onwards, the organization of Arab book fairs in Istanbul19 and in Gaziantep was thus taken over by organizations close to the AKP, such as the International Association of Arab Book Publishers in Turkey created in 2019. As far as Arab books are concerned, Istanbul is above all a place of consumption, as most of the Arab books sold in Turkey are imported, particularly from Egypt and Lebanon. The production of books in Arabic in Turkey, and in Istanbul in particular, remains limited, but some private Arab publishing houses have been established.

 The Istanbul bookstore plays an important role as a cultural center and meeting place for many young Arab students. Other Arab meeting places have been set up by other Arab bookstores likes Wasm and Seray, and these attract Arab students, researchers, journalists, and intellectuals to their events. 18  He is the director-­general of Gulf Turk Media and has business interests particularly in Turkish real estate and the export of Turkish products to the Gulf countries. 19  The fifth edition of another book fair, the Arabic Culture and Books Days, which was meant to be held in the Üsküdar district of Istanbul at the end of March 2020, invited Arab and Turkish publishers specializing in religious books. Interestingly, the organization of the Arab book fair of October 2021 in Istanbul was affected by the conflict between the mayor’s office and the AKP regarding its location and by the directives which were allegedly given to restrict the presence of authors with strong Islamic orientations. 17

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500 Contemporary Arab Media and Cultural Landscape in Istanbul

Cultural and Artistic Encounters The cultural and artistic interactions that the urban context of Istanbul has nurtured have led to the creation of numerous Arab-­Turkish projects, meeting places, and initiatives. Many of these were short-­lived and their ephemeral existence is related to the precarity of exile. The Hamisch (Margin) association, a Syrian cultural center in Istanbul, was founded in 2014 by eight Syrian and Turkish intellectuals and artists, but its activities began to decline from 2017 onwards.20 Its aim was to build bridges with the Turkish cultural and intellectual milieu and to showcase the cultural and civil face of the Syrian revolution. Some of the same Syrian intellectuals who were behind the Hamisch initiative participated in 2012 in the creation of the cultural and political website Al-­Jumhuriya (The Republic) which, two years later, was partly relocated in Turkey. Another important Syrian website is Enab Baladi (Local Grapes), initially launched in Deraya in the suburbs of Damascus in 2011, and forced to move to Istanbul afterwards (Badran and Smets 2021). The Syrian bookstore Pages should also be mentioned here. It was founded by the publisher and graphic designer Samer Al-­K adri and the illustrator Gulnar Hajo in June 2015, but had to close its doors in 2017. The departure of numerous Syrian intellectuals from Turkey after 2015 reduced Istanbul’s attractiveness to the secular segment of culture and political activism.21 In the field of art, two galleries specializing in Syrian-­Turkish art with very different artistic orientations have emerged on the Istanbul contemporary art scene. Both are located in the Kadiköy district, and were founded in 2014. The Kelimat Gallery, created by the Syrian Adnan Alahmad and the Turk Hüseyin Emiroğlu, specializes in art brut and exhibits the work of young Syrian painters as well as Arab and Turkish artists. The Arthere Gallery, founded by the Syrian photographer Omar Biraqdar, who participated to the creation of the Hamisch association, is a meeting space and a place for artists in residence that brings together international, Arab, Turkish, and Syrian artists.

Conclusion The Arab media and cultural scenes in Turkey are a direct consequence of the 2011 Arab uprisings and are, to a large extent, under the political and economic influence of the Ankara and Doha governments. This explains their limited autonomy from the political

 The establishment of Hamisch “was related to the fact that there were still Syrian intellectuals in Istanbul and the Turkish government considered them to be among its supporters, while the Turkish intelligentsia ignored them” (interview with Şenay Özden, Istanbul, November 16, 2019). 21  For example, a Syrian journalist told me in August 2017 that two years earlier, secular activists were complaining about the large number of people coming to visit them in Istanbul and that now there were fewer of them and those who remained “became tired of the Syrian revolution.” He left Istanbul some months later. 20

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field, while their dependence in a continuously changing regional and local context constitutes a threat to their future. The establishment in 2019 of a Qatar Media City may thus lead to relocation in Doha if pressures on Arab media in Turkey increase in the future.22 Nevertheless, these cultural and media scenes play a significant role in some Arab national public spheres, particularly the Syrian ones, as they contribute to their pluralism by adding new media outlets and spaces of expression and creation (see Chapters 17, 18, 20). Thus, Turkey, by becoming an extension of some of the Arab national public spheres through its media and cultural production for the Arab world, participates in reconfiguring them outside Istanbul. Turkish cities also became the locus of emergent interstitial cultural spaces, leading to an increase of interactions between Arab residents and Turkish society. These encounters in the fields of cinema, theatre, music, literature, and translation seem to revive old relationships between Turkey and the Arab region, but they also produce unprecedented repercussions on the Arab and Turkish cultural scenes. References Akin, Altug. 2019. “Does Journalism Exist in Turkey? Constraints on and Struggles in the Field of Journalism in the Post-­coup Context.” Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 12, no. 2: 205–219. Badran, Yazan. 2020. “Strategies and (Survival) Tactics: The Case of Syrian Oppositional Media in Turkey.” Journal of Alternative & Community Media 5, no. 1: 69–85. Badran, Yazan, and Smets, Kevin. 2021. “Anatomy of a Precarious Newsroom: Precarity and Agency in Syrian Exiled Journalism in Turkey.” Media, Culture & Society (November) 43, no. 8: 1377–1394. Başkan, Birol. 2016. Turkey and Qatar in the Tangled Geopolitics of the Middle East. New  York: Palgrave Macmillan. Berlioux, Jérémie, 2020, “Istanbul. Terre d’accueil des exilés politiques.” Libération, 1 October. Burdy, Jean-­Paul & Marcou, Jean. 2013. “Le cheminement complexe des nouvelles relations turco-­arabes.” Hérodote no. 148: 8–22. Burke, Peter. 2009. Cultural Hybridity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Dunne, Michele, and Hamzawy, Amr. 2019. Egypt’s Political Exiles: Going Anywhere but Home. Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. https://carnegieendowment. org/2019/03/29/egypt-­s-­political-­exiles-­going-­anywhere-­but-­home-­pub-­78728 Hage Ali, Mohanad. 2020a. “Exiles on the Bosphorus.” Diwan (March 10). Carnegie Middle East Center. https://carnegie.mec.org/diwan/81249. Hage Ali, Mohanad. 2020b. “Istanbul, the Arab World’s Beacon on the Bosphorus.” Qantara.de (April 3). https://en.qantara.de/content/turkeys-­middle-­east-­exiles-­istanbul-­the-­arab-­worlds­beacon-­on-­the-­Bosphorus. Halâyiqa, Islâm, 2020. Al-­I’lâm al-­‘arabî fî Turkyâ. Al-­imkânât wa-­l-­tahaddiyât wa-­l-­wâqi’ [The Arab Media in Turkey. Possibilities, Challenges and Reality]. Istanbul: Arap Stratejik Araştirmalar Merkezi.  In September 2021, it was decided to transfer the headquarters of Al-­Arabi TV from London to Doha. The same month, Saudi media companies that were operating from Dubai Media City started moving to Riyadh.

22

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502 Contemporary Arab Media and Cultural Landscape in Istanbul Hearst, David. 2020. “Go to Tehran. The Inside Story of How the US Was Sidelined in Iraq.” Middle East Eye ( June 17). https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-­story/iraq-­politics-­khamis­khanjar-­us-­iran-­saudi. Hubbard, Ben. 2019. “Arab Exiles Sound Off Freely in Istanbul Even as Turkey Muffles Its Own Critics.” New  York Times (April 14). https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/world/ middleeast/istanbul-­turkey-­arab-­exiles.html. Kışlakçı, Turan. 2012. Arap Baharı. Istanbul: Mana Yayınları. Khatib, Lina. 2014. Qatar and the Recalibration of Power in the Gulf. Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. (September 1). Beirut: Carnegie Middle East Center. https:// carnegieendowment.org/2014/09/11/qatar-­and-­recalibration-­of-­power-­in-­gulf-­pub-­56590 Qalâluwa, Suhayb. 2018. “Istanbûl ‘âsimat al-­I’lâm al-­‘arabî” [Istanbul Capital of the Arab Media]. Anadolu Agency (January 18). https://www.aa.com.tr/ar/1034272/‫العربي‬-‫اإلعالم‬-‫عاصمة‬-‫إسطنبول‬/‫العربية‬-‫الدول‬. Mandraud, Isabelle. 2013. Du Djihad aux urnes. Le parcours singulier d’Abdelhakim Belhadj. Paris: Stock. Mansour, Renad. 2016. The Sunni Predicament in Iraq. Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Beirut: Carnegie Middle East Center. https://carnegieendowment. org/files/CMEC_59_Mansour_Sunni_Final.pdf Menshawy, Mustafa. 2020. Leaving the Muslim Brotherhood. Self, Society and the State. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Mermier, Franck. 2017. “Arab Cultural Foundations and the Metamorphoses of Pan-­Arabism.” In Leïla Vignal (Ed.), The Transnational Middle East. People, Places, Borders (pp. 201–220). London: Routledge. Mermier, Franck. Forthcoming. “Creating a Syrian Culture in Exile. The Reconfigurations of Engagement.” In Pénélope Larzillière (Ed.), In Motion. The Global Politics of Artistic Engagement. Beyond the Arab Uprisings. Leiden: Brill. Porlezza, Colin, Arafat, Rana. 2021. “Promoting Newsafety from the Exile: The Emergence of New Journalistic Roles in Diaspora Journalists’ Networks.” Journalism Practice. https://doi. org/10.1080/17512786.2021.1925947 Pukallus, Stefanie, Bradley, Lisa, Clarke, Sarah, and Harrison, Jackie. 2020. “From Repression to Oppression: News Journalism in Turkey 2013–2018.” Media, Culture & Society 42, no. 7/8: 1443–1460. Rugman, Jonathan. 2019. The Killing in the Consulate. Investigating the Life and Death of Jamal Khashoggi. London: Simon & Schuster. Yesil, Bilge. 2016. Media in New Turkey. The Origins of an Authoritarian Neoliberal State. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

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Part VI

Perspectives

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Cultural Politics of the Diaspora Orit Ouaknine-­Yekutieli and Yigal Nizri

Since the 1990s, the terms diaspora and diasporicity have been frequently used in a­ cademic, public, and political discourses about migration, belonging, nationality, periphery, and community. As described and analyzed in these discourses, diasporic communities are created by voluntary or forced movements of people from a homeland to two or more countries. Dispersed diasporas usually maintain memory and myths of their original homeland, and their members also share individual and collective memories of migration, dispersal, and collective regenesis (see Chapters 37, 38, 39). In cases of conflict-­induced diasporas, the members also share pre-­migratory traumatic experiences and post-­traumatic phenomena. The entirety of these histories and experiences binds dispersed individuals to each other, and to their former homelands. These bonds are expressed through various ­self-­awareness measures accompanied by social, economic, political, and cultural exchanges. As past and present realities demonstrate, in many cases diasporic communities are not entirely welcome in the host countries. Not so rarely, they face allegations accusing them of “posing security risks,” “exploiting national public services,” “stealing jobs,” and “threatening the host lands’ cultures.” Consequently, many of their members deem they cannot be entirely accepted and become estranged from the host countries. These feelings, coupled with a sense of nostalgia, contacts with family and friends who did not emigrate, and feelings of commitment to the homeland, often trigger various returns to the old country in trips, family visits, businesses, and philanthropic projects. Concomitantly they may prompt political action in the host land concerning its policies towards the homeland. As time passes, and diasporic communities become multigenerational, their endurance relies on transmitting their heritage over time, which is often practiced through substantial cultural production (Safran  1991; Clifford  1994; Chaliand and Rageau  1995, xiv–xvii; Cohen 1997, ix–x; Van Hear 1998, 6; Butler 2001; Vertovec 2011, 242; Koch and Ragab 2018, 7; Pedaya 2011). Cultural production – the focus of this chapter – encompasses numerous forms of arts and media common in many multigenerational diasporic communities. From an The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Cultural Politics of the Diaspora

academic perspective, these expressions and the various statements they make turn them into a prime location for studying the complex relationships between expression, identity, and politics in an interconnected transnational world. The appeal to study cultural politics of the diaspora derives from this field of study’s ability to challenge concepts like displacement, intercultural negotiations, interethnic power relations, and issues of gender, ethnicity, and identity. Such perspectives reveal the degree to which culture is a political issue, and politics a cultural field (Hae-­Kyung Um 2005, 1–2; Georgiou 2010, 17; Vertovec 2011, 242; Shohat and Alsultany 2013). The goal of this chapter is to examine selected perspectives on cultural politics of diaspora, and outline some challenges for future research. We begin with some observations deriving from our research of the Moroccan diaspora in Israel expanded with examples from other contexts, and conclude with some thoughts about future academic considerations.

Cultural Politics of a Diasporic Community – The Moroccan Diaspora in Israel Moroccan emigrants in Israel constitute the second-­largest Maghrebi diaspora in the world after France. Approximately 250,000 Moroccans migrated to Israel in the 1950s and 1960s, where they currently number between 750,000 to 1  million (Boum  2010; Baïda 2011; Cofman-­Simhon 2013, 50). From the perspective of the country’s dominant historiography and public discourse, they were not considered a diaspora of Morocco but a constituent of a consolidating Jewish migrant society made up of various diasporas, which had “returned home from exile.” In this set-­up, the “real” homeland was conceived as the place they had migrated to, and not the place from which they had arrived (for an elaboration of these discourses, see Raz-­Krakotzkin 2017). This view was almost always shared by both the hegemonic national discourse and the critical anti-­hegemonic discourse. Only in the last decade, some awareness has developed in Israeli society that frames migrant communities in Israel as diasporas of their former homelands. At present, Israel boasts multiple Jewish-­Moroccan cultural expressions: Andalusian music orchestras; numerous theatre productions in Darija (colloquial Moroccan); composition of Moroccan-­Jewish religious and secular music and poetry; publication of a new dictionary of “Moroccan Jewish Arabic” and numerous study groups for learning Darija; a body of nostalgic literature on Morocco and its Jewish past; re-­creation of popular festivals devoted to saints’ pilgrimage rites; cooking traditions from the old country; and organized “heritage trips” to Morocco. In these processes, it is often the case that second-­, third-­, and fourth-­generation members of the diaspora perform new representations of their parents’ “lost” homeland (Ouaknine-­Yekutieli and Nizri 2016). Other Israeli-­Jewish diasporas from different Muslim countries (for example, the Iraqi; Goorji 2020) share certain characteristics with the Moroccan diaspora in Israel. However, the case of the Moroccan Jewish diaspora is unique due to the ongoing contacts it has with the homeland and the particular attitude of Morocco towards its Jewish community, in Morocco and abroad (Ouaknine-­Yekutieli 2020).

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The current situation differs drastically from the state of affairs during the first years after immigration. At that time, the Moroccan diaspora was considered inferior by the earlier immigrants to Israel, who attempted to erase Moroccan émigrés’ cultural practices, accusing them of ruining the “national culture” because of their adherence to indigenous customs. Such cultural alienation is common in the initial formation of diasporic communities. Not rarely, representatives of host societies bring up particular images, narratives, and symbols which in their view represent “the national culture” and contrast them with the alien and “threatening” immigrant culture. Diasporic cultures are, hence, a political concern from their very beginning. Quite often, after diasporic communities gain an electoral value, their cultural practices begin to be conceived differently. Along with this transformation, diasporic culture gradually gains a status of offering an “enrichment” to national arts, music, and literature. Such is the case of the Mimouna celebrations in Israel. The Mimouna, a popular Moroccan-­Jewish festival, made its way in the mid-­1960s from the Moroccan community’s confines into the national public sphere. On the one hand, it emerged as an institutionalized social and cultural outlet for Moroccans who sought to engage in the communal national circle; on the other hand, it became an event frequented by the highest political figures seeking the vote of the Moroccan diaspora. Analyzing the Moroccan diasporic cultural production in Israel from the early years of en masse immigration to the present cultural renewal reveals a few consecutive and often overlapping stages. During the first two decades (the 1950s and 1960s), the hegemonic authorities repressed all public manifestations of Moroccanness, which – after a few years of migration-­shock experienced by the newcomers  – triggered protest and resistance, most notably expressed in the emergence of the local “Black Panthers” movement and related cultural production. Although in Israeli studies, this was often conceived as a local process, a global perspective indicates that the timing of this course of affairs was relatively in sync (though with a decade’s delay) with the universal counterculture of the 1960s. In the third and fourth decades (the 1970s and 1980s), both the Israeli state and the Moroccan diasporic community were implicated in various political collaboration and co-­optation strategies, which had slowly moved Moroccan cultural production into a mainstream path of a hybrid culture. The current phase, beginning in the 1990s and gaining momentum ever since, exhibits an unprecedented level of a cultural renaissance – almost a “mission” in the Fanonian sense1 – manifested in a variety of ways. Within this renaissance, the multiple imaginings of “Morocco” by second-­and third-­generation artists, writers, and performers, gain a therapeutic value, which brings about some recovery to the first generation’s tough experiences. Global perspective reveals many cases in which cultural production supports coping with traumatic effects caused by the shock of immigration and the traumas that have caused those immigrations (see Chapters 37, 38). This is evident, for instance, in the surge of diasporic cultural production related to the Armenian genocide centenary year (Kasbarian 2018), the

 Referring to Frantz Fanon’s famous dictum: “Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity” (“chaque génération doit dans une relative opacité, découvrir sa mission, la remplir ou la trahir”). Fanon (2002): 197.

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50th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba (Hill 2005, 1), or to the coping of young Syrian Yazidi refugees in Europe with their miserable situation (Millar and Warwick 2019). The restorative force of cultural production also relates to its ability to serve as a platform for promoting the diasporic community’s political aims. In our case study, a series of cultural actions helped change the representation and status of the Moroccan diasporic community, for example, in the mid-­1970s, Yehoshua Sobol’s play Kriza (Nerves), and Erez Bitton’s first published poetry book Minkha Marokanit (Moroccan Offering). These two, and many other contemporaneous productions, are clear measures through which political claims of the diasporic community were conveyed. As expressed in interviews with Ronit Ivgi (1949–2016), the founder of the first Darija theatre in Israel, and with Asher Cohen, a member of her ensemble who later founded his own Moroccan-­language theatre, diasporic cultural production is not directed only at the general public, but often addresses intercommunity needs. Similar patterns occur elsewhere, for example in young women’s online forums in the Moroccan diaspora in Germany, where on the basis of publishing and discussing various love stories, users may interactively negotiate identities, and religious and cultural values within the diasporic community (Çiğdem Bozdağ 2017).2 A common characteristic of second and later diasporic generations’ artistic production is the blurring of boundary lines previously drawn between the “national” and the “foreign,” by intermingling memories and practices from the families’ pasts, with national and global styles. Worldwide diasporization creates hybrid intercultural and multicultural productions that incorporate, appropriate, subvert, and reinvent cultural practices. In the case of the Moroccan diaspora in Israel, we may refer to songwriter and performer Neta Elkayam, who avows a deep sense of Moroccanness in her productions. Similar hybridities are found in the works of authors Abdelkader Benali and Hafid Bouazza – a second generation of Moroccan diaspora in the Netherlands (Ricci 2017, 31), or in the work of Cuban musician Omar Sosa, which combines Moroccan and Caribbean lyrics, musical genres, and rhythms (Shohat and Alsultany 2013, 12–13).

Returns In our study of the Moroccan diaspora in Israel, we have singled out the increasing popularity of “returns” to the homeland as actual performance and as a concept. In the case of Moroccan Jews, a most common “return track” developed around pilgrimages to Morocco to visit Jewish saints’ (Tzaddikim) tombs and places where family members are buried. Concurrent with the development of the diasporic community, pilgrimages routes became more complex with Jewish Moroccan saints also being buried in Egypt (at Damanhur) and in Israel (at Netivot). The multitrack movements between these saints’ tombs had acquired a unique diasporic sense organized around concepts of death, pilgrimage, visit, and virtue (Nizri and Ouaknine-­Yekutieli 2019). Over the  Diasporic cultural and other activities over the social media are extremely intensive and thoroughly researched, especially since Appaduari’s seminal Modernity at Large (1996).

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years the returns gained additional significances; many of the original émigrés and the following generations had embarked on “heritage trips,” discovering where their families came from, and seeking to grasp a sense and essence of the old homeland. Cultural production is strongly interconnected with these returns. We had already noted Neta Elkayam’s musical production, which is in constant movement between Israel and Morocco. To this realm also belongs Herzl Cohen’s novel Pure Marble Stones, which describes a love story occurring on the axis between the homeland and the diaspora. A central cultural arena where diasporic returns are celebrated is that of cinematic production. Will Higbee describes diasporic Moroccan filmmakers, whom he labels cinéastes de passage, as maintaining a presence both within and between the cinematographic cultures and industries of Europe and Morocco (Higbee  2019). Similar cases occur among diasporic Algerian and Turkish filmmakers (e.g. Higbee 2007; Tunç 2011). The cultural returns to the homeland do not end up as a unidirectional vector. As a part of the current post-­diasporic condition (see the following paragraph), a back-­and-­forth cultural production movement occurs. An excellent demonstration of this process is the case of Brazilian Capoeira. Celina Aisha Davidson de Sá’s study of the back-­and-­forth movement of Capoeira from the homeland to the host land and back, discovered that youth in urban West Africa mobilize diasporic forms of performance, history, and symbolism as a way of forming their own sense of belonging (de Sá 2018, v–vi). Similar dynamics are currently forming in Middle Eastern and North African diasporic cultural production. Favoring diasporic culture and many of the diaspora’s other characteristics currently appear as a major process relevant for both individuals and states. It demonstrates a ­likelihood for a shift from the initial traumatic state of the diaspora creation into an advantageous position often referred to as “post-­diaspora.” Post-­diaspora reflects emerging forms of individual and collective awareness, which move discussions about place, time, belonging, and displacement into a conceptual space that is “beyond diaspora.” The post-­diasporic state evolves, for example, from the acquisition of full citizenship rights both in the homeland and the host land, which makes its bearers cosmopolitan. Accordingly, post-­diaspora becomes a concept, a discourse, and a reality that transforms nation-­ states into “cosmo-­ national states.” Under these conditions, post-­ diaspora undermines some negative connotations of diaspora and creates new social and cultural constructs (Rollins 2010, 246–247; Laguerre 2017, 11–32; Scafe 2019, 96). Mutually connected with the post-­diasporic state is a realization of its significance and essentially its utility for former homelands which in recent decades had reaffirmed contacts with their diasporas (Adamson 2019, 213). According to Arif Dirlik (2004, 495), this rather new situation had reached a degree in which diasporic populations are appropriated by nation-­states for their own purposes such as bolstering their power “back home” and extending its reach. In cases such as Turkey, Morocco, Israel, and Palestine, institutional bodies were established to keep contact with these nations’ diasporas. In many cases, the current condition followed a decades-­long pattern that began with denial, continued to acceptance, and currently moves into a full endorsement of the diaspora by the homeland (Drhimeur 2020, 3). The new relationship of the former homelands to their diasporas, especially when these communities are almost entirely gone at their places of origin – such as the Jews of Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, or Iraq  – creates an unprecedented wave of nostalgia in the homeland,

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which can be regarded a current historical “moment” shared by many Muslim countries (Ouaknine-­Yekutieli 2020). Nevertheless, even with the evolution of the post-­diasporic condition, which celebrates the diasporic, it is still evident that many diasporas experience stressful conditions. Thus, current reality exhibits a paradoxical actuality that Shohat and Alsultany described as “mingling the ‘worst of times’ and the ‘best of times’” (2013, 10).

Conclusion Diasporic and post-­diasporic itineraries crisscross the world. These are not only movements of people but also cultural production, which create constant cultural mixtures and intercultural encounters. Common historiographies draw “beginning lines” for the creation of many diasporic communities, but the diasporic essence has much more profound and ongoing historicity, not to speak of archaeology. Diasporas are transregional communities belonging to different strata of space and time, which continue to be elemental components of the present. Diasporas and their cultural production, which is evident in language, music, poetics, various types of imagery, and self-­conception, transcend the hardened boundaries of ethnicity, nationality, time, and place and contain memories of these deep histories (see Chapters 4, 6, 14). Historiographically, after a long struggle with the contested concept of “diaspora,” the scholarly community had reached a consensus in its description and categorization and had studied in detail numerous types of host land-­homeland-­diaspora relationships. A greater awareness currently exists within these realms to diasporic cultural production, its political impact, diversity, its flows, intercommunity effects, transnationalism, and “long-­distance nationalism.”3 A survey of current research of the field reveals that the concept that attracts growing attention in the last few years is that of the post-­diaspora and its multiple meanings. These include studies of the increasing number of diasporic multinational individuals whose status turns cosmopolitan, homelands that “court” their diasporas, and continuous back-­and-­forth cultural movements between host lands and homelands, which complicate the concept of “the return.” As “returns” to the homeland for short-­or long-­term visits become widespread and involve cultural production like filmmaking, music creations, poetry, and literary productions, it appears that future research should move from the study of the “diasporic turn” to increased exploration of the “diasporic return.” As part of this, more attention should be given to reading homelands’ histories also through the research of their diasporas. This view enlarges Shohat and Alsultany’s (2013, 12, 16) methodological comment that scholars of diaspora and diasporic cultural production should leave the terminology of area-­studies and seek homelands’ diasporic “islands” all over the globe. At the current historiographic “moment” the sociocultural phenomenon of post-­ diaspora takes center stage. Hence, in our view, the focus in the coming years is on investigating the various cultural politics of a post-­diasporic, multicultural, and multiethnic world.  Regarding “long-­distance nationalism,” see Anderson 2001, 42.

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References Adamson, Fiona B. 2019. “Sending States and the Making of Intra-­Diasporic Politics: Turkey and Its Diaspora(s).” International Migration Review 53, no. 1: 210–236. Anderson, Benedict. 2001. “Western Nationalism and Eastern Nationalism.” New Left Review 9: 31–42. Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Baïda, Jamaâ. 2011. “The Emigration of Moroccan Jews, 1948–1956.” In Emily Benichou Gottreich, and Daniel J. Schroeter (Eds.) Rethinking Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa, (pp. 321–333). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Bigger, Anat. 2020. “The Peace with Morocco: A Demonstration of Support in Morocco for the ‘Liberation of the Sahara.’” Ashdod10 (December 10). (In Hebrew). https://ashdod10.co.il/ % D 7 % 9 E % D 7 % 9 0 % D 7 % A 9 % D 7 % 9 3 % D 7 % 9 5 % D 7 % 9 3 -­% D 7 % 9 1 % D 7%90%D7%94%D7%91%D7%94-­% D7%9C%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%A7% D7%95/ Boum, Aomar. 2010. “From ‘Little Jerusalems’ to the Promised Land: Zionism, Moroccan Nationalism, and Rural Jewish Emigration.” The Journal of North African Studies 15, no. 1: 51–69. Butler, Kim D., 2001. “Defining Diaspora, Refining a Discourse.” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 10, no. 2: 189–219. Chaliand, Gerard, and Rageau, Jean-­Pierre. 1995. The Penguin Atlas of Diasporas. New  York: Viking. Christou, Fanny. 2019. “Ecologies of Integration: Palestinian Socio-­Cultural Activism in Sweden.” Sociétés Plurielles. Presses de l’INALCO. Çiğdem, Bozdağ. 2017. “Love Stories and Diasporic Identity Narratives: Mediatized Practices of Storytelling in the Moroccan Diaspora.” Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research 10, no. 2: 217–232. Clifford, James. 1994. “Diasporas.” Cultural Anthropology 9, no. 3: 302–338. Cofman-­Simhon, Sarit. 2013. “African Tongues on the Israeli Stage: A Reversed Diaspora.” The Drama Review 57: 48–68. Cohen, Robin. 1997. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. London: University College London Press. Dirlik, Arif. 2004. “Intimate Others: [Private] Nations and Diasporas in an Age of Globalization.” Inter-­Asia Cultural Studies 5, no. 3: 491–502. Drhimeur, Lalla Amina. 2020. “Moroccan Diaspora Politics Since the 1960s: Literature Review.” DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4080855 ERC AdG PRIME Youth ISLAM-­OPHOB-­ISM 785934. Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. 2006. “Diversity Versus Difference: Neo-­Liberalism in the Minority-­ Debate.” In Richard Rottenburg, Burkhard Schnepel, and Shingo Shimada (Eds.), The Making and Unmaking of Difference (pp. 13–26). Bielefeld: Transcript. Fanon Frantz. 2002. Les Damnés de la Terre. Paris: La Découverte. Georgiou, Myria. 2010. “Identity, Space and the Media: Thinking Through Diaspora.” Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales [Online] 26, no. 1. http://journals.openedition. org/remi/5028; DOI: 10.4000/remi.5028 Goorji, Sigal. 2020. “Fiction Produces Reality: The Pictures on the Wall and the Longing for a ‘Golden Age’ in Iraq.” Jama’a 25: 73–90. (In Hebrew). Hae-­Kyung Um. 2005. Diasporas and Interculturalism in Asian Performing Arts: Translating Traditions. Abingdon: Routledge. Higbee, Will. 2007. “Locating the Postcolonial in Transnational Cinema: The Place of Algerian Émigré Directors in Contemporary French Film.” Modern and Contemporary France 15, no. 1: 51–64. Higbee, Will. 2019. “Moroccan Diasporic Cinema: the ‘Rooted Transnationalism’ of the Cinéastes de Passage.” Transnational Screens 10, no. 2: 75–88.

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Hill, Tom. 2005. “Historicity and the Nakba Commemorations of 1998.” EUI Working Paper RSCAS No. 2005/33. San Domenico di Fiesole: European University Institute Badia Fiesolana. Kasbarian, Sossie, 2018. “The Politics of Memory and Commemoration: Armenian Diasporic Reflections on 2015.” Nationalities Papers 46, no. 1: 123–143. Koch, Katharina, and Nora, Jasmin Ragab. 2018. “Mapping and Study of the Palestinian Diaspora in Germany.” Maastrict: Maastricht Graduate School of Governance. Laguerre, Michael S. 2017. The Postdiaspora Condition: Crossborder Social Protection, Transnational Schooling, and Extraterritorial Human Security. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Millar, Oscar, and Warwick, Ian. 2019. “Music and Refugees’ Wellbeing in Contexts of Protracted Displacement.” Health Education Journal 78, no. 1: 67–80. Nizri, Yigal, and Ouaknine-­Yekutieli, Orit. 2019. “Risani, Damanhur, Netivot: Diasporic Itineraries.” Unpublished lecture at the “Diasporic Reading of Communities in North Africa and the Middle East Symposium.” Ben-­Gurion University of the Negev. December 9–11, 2019. Ouaknine-­Yekutieli, Orit and Yigal S. Nizri. 2016. “‘My Heart Is in the Maghrib’: Aspects of Cultural Revival of the Moroccan Diaspora in Israel.” Hespéris Tamuda 51, no. 3: 165–194. Ouaknine-­Yekutieli, Orit. 2020. “Bled ma-­fihash Yahud ma-­fihash Ta’arikh.” (Exploring “Our Jews” in Morocco). Jama’a 25: 111–132. (In Hebrew). Pedaya, Haviva. 2011. Walking Through Trauma. Tel Aviv: Resling. (In Hebrew). Raz-­Krakotzkin, Amnon. 2017. “Exile Within Sovereignty: Critique of ‘The Negation of Exile’ in Israeli Culture.” In Zvi Ben-­Dor Benite, Stefanos Geroulanos, and Nicole Jerr (Eds.), The Scaffolding of Sovereignty: Global and Aesthetic Perspectives on the History of a Concept (pp. 393–420). New York: Columbia University Press. Ricci, Cristián H. 2017. “Intercultural Representations of Diasporic Amazigh (Berber) Writers in/ from the Netherlands.” Journal of Dutch Literature 8, no. 2: 30–46. Rollins, J. 2010. “Post-­diaspora and the Poetics of ‘What’? in Fred Wah’s Diamond Grill.” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 19, no. 2/3: 229–253. de Sá, Celina Aisha Davidson. 2018. “Becoming Diasporically African: The Cultural Politics of West African Capoeira.” Unpublished PhD Dissertation. University of Pennsylvania. Safran, William. 1991. “Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return.” Diaspora 1: 83–84. Scafe, Suzanne. 2019. “Gendered, Post-­Diasporic Mobilities and the Politics of Blackness in Zadie Smith’s Swing Time (2016).” Caribbean Review of Gender Studies 13: 93–120. Shohat, Ella, and Alsultany, Evelyn. 2013. “The Cultural Politics of the Middle East in Americas, an Introduction.” In Evelyn Alsultany and Ella Shohat (Eds.), Between the Middle East and the Americas: The Cultural Politics of Diaspora (pp. 3–41). Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Tunç, Ayça. 2011. “Three Generations of Turkish Filmmakers in Germany: Three Different Narratives.” Turkish Studies 12, no. 1: 115–127. Van Hear, Nicholas. 1998. New Diasporas: The Mass Exodus, Dispersal and Regrouping of Migrant Communities. London: UCL Press. Vertovec, Steven. 2011. “The Cultural Politics of Nation and Migration.” Annual Review of Anthropology 40: 241–256.

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Dialectics of Resistance: Youth in the Middle East Joe F. Khalil

Youth is generally defined as a transitional phase from childhood to adulthood, focusing on ages 12–24 (World Bank  2007; United Nations  2010).1 Such definition, primarily adopted for statistical purposes, is limited and limiting. Around the world, the transitions to adulthood are subject to educational, demographic, economic, sociocultural, ­religious, and other factors. In the Middle East, the meaning of youth stretches to include, on one end, child labor and child brides, and on the other, unmarried men and women living with their parents, for example.2 The grounds on which such distinctions could be undertaken remain highly problematic: either we would need to resort to a physiological or psychological definition of youth that fundamentally supports an “internationalist” approach,3 or we would follow a definition that recognizes how youth is locally embedded and socioculturally and politically constructed.4 Such distinctions about the meaning of youth underscore tensions that underlie how young people in the Middle East are constituted, defined, condescended to, anathematized, disciplined, seduced, imagined, and re-­created. Since the 2000s, debates about Middle Eastern youth had resurfaced

Even within the UN, there is no complete agreement around the age brackets. For instance, the UN General Assembly endorsed a resolution in 1985 (A/36/215) that defines “youth” as those persons between the ages of 15 and 24. 2  In the Middle East, it is a common and socially acceptable practice for unmarried men and women to continue living with their parents until they are married and consequently relocate to a place of their own. In contrast, living at home as an adult is negatively stereotyped in industrial societies such as “parasite single” ( Japan) or “boomerang child” (US). 3  I borrow this term from Joseph Massad’s reference to a universalizing approach with an “orientalist impulse” that “continues to guide all branches of human rights community” (Massad 2009, 362). 4  These distinctions echo a long-­standing debate in childhood studies between the social psychological and cognitive development studies and the “new sociology of childhood.” These approaches inform various discourses about youth. 1 

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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when, for brief periods, they became associated with social change (see Chapters 28, 33, 35). Furthermore, the ramifications and implications of their use of media in sociopolitical movements have been featured in the popular press,5 discussed in political and social ­settings, and researched in sociology, political science, anthropology, and media studies.6 Definitions, categories, and manifestations of youth and resistance cannot be generalized across the spatial-­temporal geopolitics of the Middle East. For the region’s political, economic, sociocultural, and religious institutions, youth are either an opportunity waiting to be developed and molded or a challenge that needs to be controlled or ­surmounted. Such binary thinking, in particular, renders young people as contested subjects. Because young people’s public dissent is perceived as power, their expressions of resistance are soon constrained, contained, disciplined, and defeated. But like rhizomes, acts and expressions of resistance circulate below the mainstream and reemerge in attitudes, activities, and movements at different places and times. Herein lies the dialectics of resistance that challenge inherent conceptions of youth in the Middle East. Dialectics of resistance are reflected in the complex and often conflicting capabilities of Middle Eastern youth: They can be advocates for peaceful and reasonable social change, yet they can plan and execute violent activities. This generation, which embodies many contradictions and complexities, represents the region’s future leaders. They are nonviolent and rational yet easily mobilized around hot-­button political, religious, and other issues. They are increasingly educated and eager to demonstrate competence in developing secure and prosperous societies, yet are often unemployed with minimal professional prospects. Young Middle Easterners have long been used within their societies by political or religious ideologues to advance often violent agendas and then ignored once those plans are achieved or rejected. Today, young people carry weapons and bear the brunt of conflicts in Palestine, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. At the same time, in most other Middle Eastern states, they form the security forces that sustain regimes in power (Zartman  2020).7

After the first wave of the Arab Uprisings, the Guardian, for example, produced a “youth heatmap of the world” and asked, “is the demographics of the ‘youth bulge’ enough to explain the huge rise in disaffection?” At the same time, Business Insider linked the “youth bulge” to growing instability. Kingsley, Patrick, 2014, “Does a Growing Global Youth Population Fuel Political Unrest?” The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/19/growing-­youth-­ population-­f uel-­political-­unrest-­middle-­east-­south-­america; Ro, Sam, 2014, “’Youth Bulge’ May Undermine Political Stability in the Middle East,” Business Insider, https://www.businessinsider. com/young-­males-­may-­undermine-­political-­stability-­2014-­7 6  The topic of youth in the Middle East has been the subject of various books, including Bæk Simonsen, Jørgen, 2005, Youth and Youth Culture in the Contemporary Middle East. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Dhillon, Navtej, and Tarik Yousef, 2009. Generation in Waiting: The Unfulfilled Promise of Young People in the Middle East. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Erlikh, Ḥagai, 2015,  Youth and Revolution in the Changing Middle East, 1908–2014, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. 7  It is worth noting that young people are the core of internal security forces and armies around the world. In the Middle East, they also form the leading groups in militias and are often associated with radical activities. 5 

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Often marginalized by official figures, policies, and plans, youth are seen as either grown children or premature adults. Also, many young people still feel voiceless and powerless in the face of oppressive regimes, religious extremism, and neoliberal economic policies. Although young people across the Middle East have demonstrated political awareness, their capacity for mass mobilization and organization is still in the fledgling stage. While they may have broken the silence in many Middle Eastern societies, youth are still s­ ubject to structural and systemic suppression on the streets and in the media (Cole  2015; Bayat 2021). Narratives circulating in research and popular media about youth in the Middle East follow linear, one-­dimensional, normative frameworks that tend to be technologically deterministic and unabatingly celebratory. These frames slowly evolve but become accepted as truths, such as a Middle East resistant to change with its youth as profoundly trapped between a political-­economic stalemate and sociocultural stasis. Young people are absent from the political process and often lack socioeconomic opportunities (United Nations 2012). For many young people, the Middle East remains a land of missed opportunities. They would instead seek any alternative (e.g. legal and illegal migration) to escape the region’s political upheavals, economic misfortunes, and sociocultural restrictions (Bani Salameh 2019). At the same time, young people are celebrated for their ­abilities to harness digital affordances and put them into innovative projects while advancing demands for democracy and freedoms that reflect neoliberal economic visions and predominantly Western views about society and culture (Zayani 2018). The life choices of different segments of Middle Eastern youth populations resonate with a universal message: They, like most youth, want to express themselves. Through communication content and activities, young people express and exercise a dialectics of resistance. I have previously referred to these counter-­discursive artifacts as youth-­generated media (Khalil 2013). Using smaller, cheaper, and easier to obtain and operate tools, young people are drawing graffiti, producing rap songs, sharing poems, and engaging in the transformation of public life. While it may seem as if young people are caught in a perpetual cycle of resistance, defeat, and acquiescence, the dialectics of resistance are not history repeating itself but continuous interchanges of cultures and countercultures, hegemonies, and counter-­hegemonies. After all, the dialectics of resistance implies the presence of oppression which manifests itself in a power play between the oppressed and the oppressor, or the ruled and the ruler. But such binary thinking limits our mnemonic imagination from connecting past to present, local and global, and a range of communities and individuals, cultures, and identities that interact in a continuum. Understanding young people’s resistance requires a dialectical treatment that accommodates their fluid practices and elusive strategies. It also requires us to move beyond the homogenization of youth as a single group to acknowledge their multiple subjectivities around gender, race, class, sexuality, and other markers. Like self-­moving tempos, dialectics of resistance are not static; they adopt and adapt to changing contexts, spatialities, temporalities, and forms of publicness. These dialectics of resistance should be understood as constantly developing, continually unfolding, and articulating the ­politics of everyday life through youth-­generated media. Looking back into the last century, youth, broadly defined, were ideologues and fighters of liberation and independence movements across the region. They were also the

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journalists, poets, and singers using newspapers, booklets, and oral traditions for resistance and liberation. Young people were the driving force behind urban mass protests (Iran), organized labor (Tunisia, Egypt), social and political Islam (Turkey, Saudi Arabia), and leftist intellectual and student movements (from Morocco to Turkey). In this century, young people have animated movements from Egypt’s Kefaya to Algeria’s Smiles Revolution (see Chapter 28). Although we cannot appeal to anyone factor in explaining the emergence and durability of such movements, young people have harnessed the informational infrastructure of traditional media (oral traditions of poetry, speech, chants), mass media (television, movies, music), and emerging media (Meta, YouTube) in their struggle for systemic change. Extending beyond traditional politics, this yearning for self-­expression encompasses the politics of everyday life (Khalil, 2017). Today, young people in the Middle East continue to engage with everyday politics that remain distinct from the traditional sociopolitical spheres that often reject them. Like most youth, young Middle Easterners are not a homogenous mass. Instead, they tend to form cohorts within and across national borders, religious connections, economic circumstances, and other variables. To that end, digital media have played a significant role in encouraging and facilitating the emergence of these cohorts on discussion forums, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, then Instagram, and Snapchat, more recently on Twitch, Clubhouse, and TikTok. Youth are always the first to experience the possibilities and the limitations of the successive waves of communication technologies (from print to social media). Their responses follow a different logic than often planned or anticipated and tend to reflect and refract young people’s lived experiences from the idealized visions of the national self.8 Youth-­generated media constitute various sites to be mined for clues of the dialectics of resistance. Within these spaces, traditional conceptions of young people belonging to collectivist societies are negotiated against conceptions of the young self as associated with cultural politics. Whether in localities and temporalities (e.g. Arabian Gulf ) or forms of publicness (e.g. social media), analyses of these sites reveal how young people’s lives interact, overlap, and refract to produce the complex eddies, waves, and flows in everyday life. In the Arabian Gulf, young people are the majority. Their political socialization emphasizes a consensual understanding of citizenship in which cultural, religious, and economic considerations ensure that dissenting voices are silenced, isolated, or marginalized. At the same time, it can be argued that young people in the Gulf occupy several “identity positions” as Arabs, Gulf nationals, Saudis, Emiratis, and so on – but also members of various tribes, men or women, and as Muslims. These identities are reflected in their everyday cultural politics. The stateless people, or bidun of Kuwait, have been very active in trying to reclaim their rights to citizenship. Because they were absent from the official accounts of citizens at the time of independence, the bidun and their descendants still lack the judicial

For insights on media use in the region, please check Northwestern University in Qatar’s annual media survey (http://www.mideastmedia.org/) and the series of reports and commentaries by Damian Radcliffe (https://medium.com/damian-­radcliffe).

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and legal recognition of citizenship. For the past 20 years, their demonstrations associated with communicative acts (e.g. placards, blogs, and digital campaigns) have emphasized their political awareness of their rights and affective mobilization to Kuwait. In the absence of political parties, young Saudis are enacting their political citizenship by subscribing to means of gathering information, deliberating, and attempting to have an informal impact on public policies. Starting in the late 1990s, they took the majlis – the traditional gatherings of men – to the web. What began on online forums continues with Clubhouse; these virtual spaces for developing political citizenship have expanded access to include men and women long before the recent state-­sanctioned reforms. At the same time, these are similar to spaces used to recruit potential terrorists. They are sources of information and disinformation. At the height of the Bahraini government’s backlash against its Shia citizens in 2011, a group of young Bahrainis, both Shia and Sunnis, developed a viral video campaign reflecting their affective citizenship. With the hashtag #UniteBH, tweets, videos, flags, bumper stickers, and other forms of communication appeared, emphasizing solidarity in times of strife and civil belonging in times of violence. In expressing and exercising the dialectics of resistance, these youth groups in the Arabian Gulf are rejuvenating old political plights with new impetus; in the process, they expand their mnemonic imagination with communicative acts and content.9 To that extent, the development and circulation of youth-­generated media have been empowering on at least three levels. First, youth-­generated media have pushed the boundaries of permissible discourse in religious, social, and political proscriptions. The heavy-­handed state, commercial, and political backlash against poets, citizen journalists, and women activists is evidence of a discourse that resonates with youth in the region. Second, youth-­generated media have dispelled certain normative conceptions about youth. Young people managed to mobilize for a sociopolitical change instead of continuing to be perceived as dormant, apathetic, and acquiescent youth. Third, youth-­generated media offered young people an alternative to the social, cultural, and political vacuum in public life. Official channels for sanctioning, funding, displaying, and promoting their talents no longer bind young people. In addition to localities, the dialectics of resistance revealed in the development of youth-­generated media echo different forms of publicness. For independent and alternative music (e.g. Arab Sounds or Scene Noise), rappers (e.g. Rap Scene), and local musicians (e.g. Moroccan Rap Memes, Saudi Musicians), Instagram’s multimodal affordance (audiovisual, filters, photos, texts, captions) has expanded their reach while subjecting them to the politics of algorithms. Despite legal criminalization, police repression, and social stigma, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) Across the region, young people continue to advocate for political, religious, or socio-­cultural rights. These are documented and analyzed in various studies, including D’Orsi, L., 2018, “Inheriting and Living the Political: The Leftist Youth Subculture in Istanbul,” Anthropology of the Middle East. [Online] 13, 2: 8–25. Laouni, Nour-­Eddine, 2022, “Cyberactivism and Protest Movements: The February 20th Movement – the Forming of a New Generation in Morocco.” The Journal of North African Studies 27, 2: 296–325. Rahimi, Babak, 2016, “Vahid Online: Post-­2009 Iran and the Politics of Citizen Media Convergence,” Social Sciences 5, 4: 77–89.

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youth in the Middle East region are developing collective and individual ways to express themselves, develop communities, self-­organize, and influence public discourse. Excluded from t­raditional media, drag queens like Queen Sultana (@ SultanatheQueen), La Kahena (@la_kahena), and Latiza Bombé (@latizabombe) have used social media as a way to engage the community in a relatively safe space, to amplify their voice through humanizing their existence, and also to generate income from their performances. In assessing the outcome of youth-­generated media, we need to avoid the temptation of merely celebrating alternative visions, and pay closer attention to how Middle Eastern regimes resist threats, encroach on spaces, and muffle voices. Identifying such dialectics of resistance requires analyzing when and how the increased visibility resulting from media development was co-­opted (see Chapters 17, 18, and 39). It requires us to examine the direct and indirect links between political regimes, private investors, and the establishment of youth-­oriented media platforms–the political economy of media (see Chapters 12 and 13). Perhaps more importantly, youth-­generated media are starting points for bemoaning the failures and inadequacies of existing structures to address the dialectics of resistance and rendering more consciously articulated what is (un)consciously obscured in their cultural politics. Yet, such forms of identity construction and self-­expression are precarious and open to further rounds of co-­optation and commodification. As media regulators, the state enacts cybercrime laws that effectively orient these youth content producers away from political and economical to sociocultural topics. A de facto self-­censorship is exercised as the spectrum of criminalized content encompasses undefined areas such as “public order and morals” and “religious values.” By limiting material critical of the state and transforming young people into licensed content producers, the state has managed to infringe on grassroots phenomena. At the same time, the state stood to reap the benefits of having young people produce seemingly apolitical content and engage in the knowledge economy. Oppression and resistance are constitutive of one another over time and space; their structural and material conditions are in constant flux. Unless the pace, scope, and breadth of change accommodate young people’s spatial-­temporal needs, the material and structural foundation of domination will remain, consequently compelling the dialectics of resistance. When young people’s communicative acts contest the hegemonic discourses of the state or mainstream media, they should be interpreted as dialectics of resistance. Emphasizing the digital, “new”, or “old” aspects of such acts misses their value for political action and transformation. Similarly, understanding codes and ­discourses is as essential as identifying tools and platforms. In what might be a sign of things to come, institutions of power, including the state and “mainstream” media, are impaired not only because youth-­generated media are simultaneously using alternative media and reflecting a globalized, networked, and culturally sensitized youth, but also because these mainstream institutions are increasingly dependent on forms of youth-­generated media to mitigate dissent (just consider state and commercial infiltration of social media with disinformation and marketing techniques). By playing out these apparent disjunctions and conjunctions, which, while

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dispersed and uneven, young people reveal underlying patterns of sociocultural stratification and sociopolitical control. Thus, the problem is one of control, not of communication. References Bani Salameh, Mohammed T. 2019. “Migration from the Arab Spring Countries to Europe: Causes and Consequences.” In Al-­Masri, Ahmed, Curran, Kevin (Eds.), Smart Technologies and Innovation for a Sustainable Future: Advances in Science, Technology & Innovation (pp. 243–254). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­030-­01659-­3_28 Bayat, Asef. 2021. Revolutionary Life: The Everyday of the Arab Spring. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Cole, Juan Ricardo. 2015. The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation Is Changing the Middle East. New York: Simon & Schuster. Khalil, Joe F. 2013. “Youth-­Generated Media a Case of Blogging and Arab Youth Cultural Politics.” Television & New Media 14, 4: 338–350. Khalil, Joe F. 2017. “Lebanon’s Waste Crisis: An Exercise of Participation Rights.” New Media & Society 19, 5: 701–712. Massad, Joseph A. 2009. “Re-­orienting Desire: the Gay International and the Arab World.” Politics of the Modern Arab World: Critical Issues in Modern Politics 4: 343–365. United Nations. 2010. Youth in the ESCWA Region: Situation Analysis and Implications for Development Policies. New York: United Nations. United Nations. 2012. Youth Exclusion in the ESCWA Region: Demographic, Economic, Educational, and Cultural Factors. New York: United Nations. World Bank. 2007. Youth – an Undervalued Asset: Towards a New Agenda in the Middle East and North Africa: Progress, Challenges and Way Forward. Washington DC: World Bank. Zartman, Jonathan K. 2020. Conflict in the Modern Middle East: An Encyclopedia of Civil War, Revolutions, and Regime Change. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-­CLIO. Zayani, Mohamed. 2018. Digital Middle East State and Society in the Information Age. New York: Oxford University Press.

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42

Borders Helga Tawil-­Souri

Porosity, with a few exceptions, may well be the Middle East’s defining feature: a wide stretch of land, characterized by thousands of years of flows and mobilities. Trade routes, migration, and pilgrimage have defined the region both in terms of what occurs within it and in terms of its spatial extent.1 A considerable number and diversity of population movements continue to define the region, both permanent and temporary: diasporic circulation, pilgrimage, refugees, migrants, guest workers, and commercial and cultural circulation.2 The region is characterized by its historically deep interconnectedness and crisscrossings. Islam and the Arabic language are widespread and influential – which is neither to suggest homogeneity, nor exclude the region’s diverse ethnic, religious, linguistic, and cultural groups (see Chapters 1, 2, 6). In practice, borders have been nothing short of problematic. Already the term “Middle East” brings conundrums to the fore. It is an amorphous region with unanswerable delineations: are North Africa and the Caucuses, are Afghanistan and Turkey, for example, to be included? Within the region, demarcations aren’t much  While certainly Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca may come to mind first, one should equally consider Christian and Jewish migration, Shia pilgrimage into Iraq, and smaller communities’ connections to the region, such as the Bahi’a and Rastafarians. 2  The long history of mobility and migration includes a great variety of peoples and practices. Over the past hundred years alone, the examples are plenty: the Armenian genocide in the early twentieth century witnessed forced mass movement into today’s Syria and Lebanon; migration from the Levant to Africa and Latin America; the creation of Israel saw the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians as well as the in-­migration of hundreds of thousands of Jews from the region, Europe, and beyond. A tremendous percentage of the Lebanese population escaped the civil war; the 1960s/1970s oil booms led to massive migration into the Gulf from across the Arab world along with workers from South Asia, Africa, and elsewhere; large numbers of Iraqis and Iranians left their country during the Iran-­Iraq war; people continue to escape conflicts in Sudan, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, Syria (and wind up “trapped,” such as Syrians in Lebanon and Turkey); while others move through on their way elsewhere, end up stuck or choose to be where they are: African migrants in Israel, sub-­Saharan Africans in Libya, South Asians and West Africans in the Gulf. 1

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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clearer: in the location of where a state might end or begin, and, more importantly, where any such line indicates the inclusion or exclusion of different populations. Borders, as we have come to know them, demarcate state territory, the territorial extent of state authority and sovereignty, and purportedly contain within them a nation. These are European creations that emerged in the seventeenth century, and exported to colonized regions often in arbitrary ways with long-­lasting results, not least of which is situating Europe as the center. In the aftermath of the fall of the Ottoman Empire, at the signing of the Sykes-­Picot agreement in 1916 French and British colonists literally drew (sometimes straight) lines across vast regions, with little regard to geography, ethnicity, religion, or much else beyond self-­interest. Borders served to divide up and create national populations. Yet the region’s contemporary landscape demonstrates borders’ problematics: just about every state has border disputes – Algeria and Morocco, Morocco and Western Sahara, Iraq and Iran, Iraq and Kuwait, Lebanon and Syria, Israel and Syria, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, the list goes on. Borders’ inadequacy would equally manifest in the non-­creation of states. In the divvying up of territory, Palestinians and Kurds were not taken into account, while Bedouins found themselves hampered by new state borders. As Rogers Brubaker reminds us, membership of a national polity is not always generated “by the movement of people over borders, but by the movement of borders over people.”3 The emergence of successor states after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the breakup of former Yugoslavia are prominent examples, but so too are the division and reunion of Yemen, the statelessness of Kurds, or the arbitrary lines drawn between cities that are now bifurcated, such as Rafah between Gaza and Egypt or Kobani/Ayn-­Al Arab between Syria and Turkey. In many cases, during and after the formation of nation-­states, citizens and others were encompassed or contained by the state, bordered within it. Meanwhile, moments of political conflict or instability (the ongoing Syrian war, Iraq after 2003, Libya since 2011) can be understood as internal border disputes. The emergence of distinct political entities or quasi-­states demonstrates not only borders’ exclusion but also their perceived need (ISIS, Iraqi Kurdistan, the Rojava– Northern Syria Democratic Federal System).4 And yet, while states may claim to represent the “unity of people,” this is often dubious at best.5 That two of the region’s countries are still known through the title of their ruling family rather than the unity of their people (the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan) demonstrates the discontinuity between state and nation. In some cases still, the idea of the state has arguably ceased to exist, such as in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria. These often become problematically referred to as “failed states”: a discursive ruse that veils the historical legacies of imperialism and colonialism (and their ad hoc creation of borders), denies the role of Western powers in their continued meddling and military intrusions, and then  Rogers Brubaker (2010), “Migration, Membership, and the Modern Nation-­State: Internal and  External Dimensions of the Politics of Belonging,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 41(1): 61–78, 69. 4  Raffaella Del Sarto (2017), “Contentious Borders in the Middle East and North Africa: Context and Concepts,” International Affairs 93(4): 767–787. 5  Arjun Appadurai (1990), “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,” Theory, Culture & Society, 7(2–3): 295–310. 3

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522 Borders rhetorically justifies the exclusion of these very same peoples, fleeing their countries, by erecting new kinds of borders to keep them out of Fortress Europe or beyond. Borders only ever partially match other boundaries such as language, ethnic identity, or religion; even as they also result in the creation or reinforcement of identities within each state. The region is amorphous, porous, interconnected; it is also fragmented, ­confining, and divided. Borders make evident the contentions between the state and the nation, and their relation to politics, belonging, and power become more evident. Nonetheless, borders acquire legitimacy over time as markers of state construction. These are equally and continually contested, challenged, and changing. And despite these ongoing dynamics, they also become embodied and deeply ingrained in practice. Conceptually, borders are nothing short of contradictory. On the one hand, the contradictions have to do with the fact that borders are not immutable. They are “impermanent features of social life, dependent on particular ­circumstances rather than being permanent fixtures of human society. The status of borders have been contingent on varying historical circumstances.”6 In other words, borders are productive of differentiated forms of access and rights; they allow passage as much as they deny it.7 On the other hand, borders are nonetheless literal demarcations between nation-­states and conceptual emblems of much more expansive and ubiquitous instances of enmity; in Achille Mbembe’s words: “dead spaces of non-­connection which deny the very idea of a shared humanity.”8 Indeed, recognizing the border as both fluid and exclusive, Gloria Anzaldúa describes it as a place where dualistic thinking falls into crisis, where contradictions and ambiguity reign, where a plurality of voices clash and merge, where a single territory plays host to multiple, mutually implicated worlds.9 So while “the border retains a clear and categorical function for the management of movement,” it is most helpful to approach the border as constituting “a site of constant encounter, tension, conflict and contestation.”10 Media – both as communication technologies or cultural texts – are integral in the production of spatiality, and highlight the paradoxical construction of borders as well as play a role in constituting them. There is no question that media can help construct and sustain geopolitical borders – an argument made by Benedict Anderson’s account on the role of newspapers in the creation

 Joel S. Migdal (2004), Boundaries and Belonging: States and Societies in the Struggle to Shape Identities and Local Practices. Cambridge University Press, p. 5. 7  What we may deem as “natural” borders are no less amorphous, and ultimately rest on positionality and perspective too. One may consider a mountain range, a desert, a sea, or a river a border, but these spaces are (also) undoubtedly spaces of connection or inclusion, and do not, inherently, mark a clear end or beginning. 8  Achille Mbembe (2019), Necropolitics. Duke University Press, p. 99 9  Gloria Anzaldúa (1987), Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Aunt Lute Books. 10  Maribel Casas-­Cortes, Sebastian Cobarrubias, Nicholas De Genova, Glenda Garelli, Giorgio Grappi, Charles Heller, Sabine Hess, Bernd Kasparek, Sandro Mezzadra, Brett Neilson, Irene Peano, Lorenzo Pezzani, John Pickles, Federico Rahola, Lisa Riedner, Stephan Scheel, and Martina Tazzioli (2015), “New Keywords: Migration and Borders.” Cultural Studies 29(1): 55–87, 67, 69. 6

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of a nation-­state.11 Throughout the twentieth century in the Middle East, state-­owned media platforms from newspapers to broadcast stations were used in the fortification of borders and construction of nation-­states and national identities. In tandem, media played (and continue to play) a formative role in the materialization, continuation, and growth of linguistic dialects; the performance of nationalism; the creation of a sense of shared togetherness; in providing information on national and local matters; as well as enabling the state’s governmental embrace. In other words, the borders that media make and unmake are not simply geopolitical but sociocultural, linguistic, and ideological. They are equally economic. For example, postal service, telegraph networks, telephone area codes, fiber-­ optic landing locations, among other infrastructural examples, garner economic flows and revenues. These infrastructures are territorialized: they exist in place, require investment in certain locations, serve as means to impose taxes and tariffs, manage information and revenue flows from other states, and contribute to a state’s economic standing.12 Of course media equally help eradicate those very same borders. Telegraph and telecommunication lines, broadcast signals, and satellite footprints do not inherently stop at any political boundaries, and in that alone already demonstrate media’s challenge to territorial borders (as well as their own infrastructural territoriality). Simultaneously, such “transgression” of geopolitical boundaries through media infrastructures and content demonstrates how a state (or a corporation) can project its authority and ambitions beyond its territorial frontiers and exerts its power. For example, from the 1990s onwards, the emergence of satellite television in the region marked a large-­scale shift in media consumption and highlights paradoxical border formations. News channels such as Al-­Jazeera (out of Qatar) and MBC (Saudi Arabia) and entertainment channels such as ART (also Saudi) and Rotana (Dubai) did not simply bring together a wider Arab audience but created a pan-­Arab public that transcended national boundaries. Equally important, channels brought diaspora populations into the fold well beyond the region, and as they began broadcasting in English, further expanded their reach (see Chapters 12, 13, 22). On the one hand, this demonstrates the display and manifestation of cultural power (or desire of it) of Gulf countries throughout and beyond the region. On the other hand, this also demonstrates the creation of new audiences and communities – and thus new kinds of borders – whether in creating a shared sense of belonging among people across vast areas, mainstreaming Modern Standard Arabic, or raising awareness of political issues and demands well beyond national boundaries. It would not be without reason, for example, that many political leaders (in the region as well as outside it) would blame the likes of Al-­Jazeera for fomenting uprisings at home (see Chapters 12, 16). To be sure, the power of media to eradicate and challenge borders, while simultaneously creating new publics, is demonstrated in the prominent role they played in “exporting” the Tunisian uprisings in late 2010 across the region.13 From Egypt and Libya to  Benedict Anderson (2006), Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso. 12  See for example, Lisa Parks and Nicole Starosielski (Eds.), (2015), Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructures. University of Illinois Press. 13  This is not to suggest that media played the sole or determining role, but was one among others such as political disillusionment or economic hardship. 11

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524 Borders Syria and Bahrain, news reportage, satellite television, radio broadcasts, internet communication, and social media triggered protests, mass mobilizations, and crackdowns. Some of those states’ responses – shutting down the internet, limiting foreign broadcasts, or increasing censorship and surveillance – certainly demonstrated the heavy hand of the state, but also revealed the porosity (and even partial insignificance) of territorial borders that already existed. Satellite television is not unique. Much earlier, low-­frequency radio played a similar role (insofar as consideration of borders are concerned); whereas more recently, the internet and social media do the same: a newspaper can be downloaded from any computer, a TikTok video can be uploaded in one part of the world and watched by millions across the globe, a Facebook group can easily include people well beyond territorial state borders, a television station can rebroadcast on satellite or YouTube. Moreover, by no means is media an exception in contributing to a sense of a shrinking world or bringing together peoples over vast areas. Political ideologies in the region such as Arab nationalism or militant Islam were (and are) not contained within national borders, even if they have different goals and outcomes. Arab nationalism inherently approached state borders as meaningless in the formation of a regional alliance and ideology. ISIS hoped to eradicate the Sykes-­Picot lines and re-­create the map of the region. Meanwhile, there is no denying the power of the Muslim “nation” (ummah) as deeply transnational. This does not mean that contradictions are eradicated: people can be extremely nationalistic while also feel they belong to the ummah, just as they can watch foreign shows on MBC or YouTube and have an identity tied to their village. The global and technological advancements of media have often led to the belief or promise of the eradication of borders and shrinking of the world – or space-­time compression, in some parlance. This is only half true: media can challenge or eradicate borders as much as they can reinforce them. More accurately: media create new borders. In form, these new borders are constituted by different technologies, economic policies, and cultural flows; and in location, they include and draw boundaries around different places that do not necessarily follow territorial lines. There exists a multiplicity and ­dispersal of borders beyond territorial boundaries across a variety of sites, institutions, and actors, so that borders can be thought of as “communicative infrastructures [. . .] embedded in sociocultural and geopolitical regimes of power.”14 There is no uniform, homogenous way in which borders are erected, maintained, redrawn, or challenged. They are a dynamic assemblage of various forces and processes, an iterative process of pulls and pushes. Sometimes dynamics emanating from the technological realm may be more pronounced, other times dynamics emanating from state, military, or more traditional forces may be more pronounced, and other times still, language or religion may have more prominence. In all of these cases, it is safe to say that borders are ­territorial, discursive, and technological spaces where social and political decisions are (re)produced and enacted. As social products, borders have performative effects and offer symbolic systems of categorizations which are made more dynamic through media,

 Tamara Vukov and Mimi Sheller (2013), “Border Work: Surveillant Assemblages, Virtual Fences, and Tactical Counter-­Media,” Social Semiotics 23(2): 225–241, 227.

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technologies, and cultural practices. There is an entanglement between territorial and symbolic borders, the former describing the sociotechnical systems that govern borders “on the ground,” and the latter describing the representational and narrative aspects of boundary-­making. Lilie Chouliaraki and Myria Georgiou suggest that this should be understood as an assemblage of mediations that operates both on the ground and on screen.15 Borders are (academically) situated in the broader context of techniques and technologies of control within logics of governmentality and management. They exist along a wider spectrum of terms and practices that signify both the regulation of flow and the creation of limits, such as boundaries, edges, perimeters, margins; or indeed verbs that suggest their necessary relationship to movement and im/mobility, such as approximate, reach, surround, contain, converge, connect, constrict, or perhaps, quite simply, communicate. References Anderson, Benedict. 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso. Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Appadurai, Arjun. 1990. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.” Theory, Culture & Society 7, no. 2–3: 295–310. Brubaker, Rogers. 2010. “Migration, Membership, and the Modern Nation-­State: Internal and External Dimensions of the Politics of Belonging.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 41, no. 1: 61–78. Casas-­Cortes, Maribel, Cobarrubias, Sebastian, De Genova, Nicholas, et al. 2015. “New Keywords: Migration and Borders.” Cultural Studies 29, no.1: 55–87. Chouliaraki, Lilie, and Georgiou, Myria. 2019. “The Digital Border: Mobility beyond Territorial and Symbolic Divides,” European Journal of Communication 34, no. 6: 594–605. Del Sarto, Raffaella. 2017. “Contentious Borders in the Middle East and North Africa: Context and Concepts.” International Affairs 93, no. 4: 767–787. Mbembe, Achille. 2019. Necropolitics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Migdal, Joel S. 2004. Boundaries and Belonging: States and Societies in the Struggle to Shape Identities and Local Practices. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Vukov, Tamara, and Sheller, Mimi. 2013. “Border Work: Surveillant Assemblages, Virtual Fences, and Tactical Counter-­Media,” Social Semiotics 23, no. 2: 225–241.

 Lilie Chouliaraki and Myria Georgiou (2019), “The Digital Border: Mobility beyond Territorial and Symbolic Divides,” European Journal of Communication 34(6): 594–605. Also see Maribel ­Casas-­Cortes et al., “New Keywords” p. 597.

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Activism and Surveillance in the Middle East Bilge Yesil

Information and communication technologies have long been celebrated as facilitators of social, political, and economic change. From the early 2000s, a plethora of popular and scholarly writings focused on the emancipatory powers of internet, web, and wireless communication in mobilizing collective action and transforming activism along the way (Rheingold 2002; McCaughey and Ayers 2003; Tarrow 2005). Meanwhile, critical works questioned these cyberutopian perspectives by pointing out to digital divides, data mining, corporate colonization of internet, digital surveillance, and censorship (McChesney 2000; Margolis and Resnick 2000; Coleman and Blumler 2009; Morozov 2011). Nonetheless, arguments that put technology front and center in civic engagement and democratic participation proliferated, peaking in the wake of protests in Iran in 2009 and Arab uprisings in 2011 (Diamond  2010; Shirky  2011; Lynch 2011; Howard and Hussain 2013). Sadly, these assessments ignore the long history of civic activism in the Middle East, as well as military-­industrial and imperial structures that underpin contemporary online public spheres (Sreberny and Khiabany 2011; Deibert and Rohozinski 2011; Newsom et al. 2011; Zureik et al. 2011; Aouragh and Alexander 2014; Khiabany 2015; Chakravartty and Aouragh 2016). Indeed, as Khiabany (2015) notes, much of the literature treats communication technologies “in isolation” with no regard for “the way imperialist forces, not to mention dictatorships, have used and are continuing to use [them], not for progress but for blocking it, not for civilized purposes but for barbarian ones” (p. 349). There is indeed a long and rich history of activism in the Middle East, especially of the nationalist kind. In early twentieth century, Arab populations revolted first against the Ottoman Empire, and after its collapse, against their new colonial rulers, the British and the French (Niblock 2005). In the 1920s and 30s, Arab Palestinians held rallies, demonstrations, and strikes, and used the press to defend their interests (Matthews  2006). Meanwhile, in 1918, a group of Syrian elite women founded a society and launched

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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a magazine to propose reforms regarding women’s rights and shape the future of their country (Williams 2012).1 In the post-­independence era, various forms of organized action engendered major social and political transformations, such as the toppling of dynasties, the end of the British rule in Egypt in 1952 and then in Iraq in 1958, the overthrow of French colonial rule in Algeria in 1962, and the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 (Bayat  2013, 6). Grassroots and nonviolent popular mobilizations also gained traction, such as the first intifada between 1987 and 1993 when Palestinians protested Israeli occupation via acts of civil disobedience, strikes, demonstrations, and product boycotts (Bayat 2013). In the 1980s, urban middle and lower classes in Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon, Algeria, Jordan, and Turkey staged mass protests to express their discontent with neoliberal policies of the era (Bayat 2000, 5). Throughout the decades, popular forces and activists in the Middle East have demanded change through political parties, trade unions, civil society organizations, and community groups, and used both direct action (e.g. protests, strikes) and art, music, graffiti, cartoons, leaflets, and even their own bodies as tools of protest (e.g. self-­ immolation, hunger strikes).2 In addition to these direct, mediated, and bodily acts, they also incorporated internet, web, and social media into their activism toolbox.3 In the wake of contested presidential elections in Iran in 2009, and during the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt in 2010–2011 and anti-­government protests in Turkey in 2013, activists used smartphones and social media sites to share information, connect with transnational advocacy networks, and reach international audiences (Moss 2016; Megiddo 2020). It is important to keep in mind, however, that digital communication tools complement and augment civic engagement, but also make activists vulnerable to state surveillance (Deibert 2014; Moss 2018; Megiddo 2020). For every time activists share information and communicate with others via social media, they inadvertently leave “digital footprints” in the form of personal information, location data, photographs, and messages (Moss 2018). States develop and use surveillance systems for various purposes.4 Law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and bureaucratic organizations gather information about the entire population or select groups in order to manage potential risks, preempt perceived dangers and govern (more) effectively. In the Middle East, from the eighteenth century onwards, the Ottoman Empire built an extensive surveillance system to achieve certain political and administrative goals. It deployed a wide network of informants to record  For a detailed discussion on women’s activism in the Middle East, see chapters 7 (by Aldikacti-­ Marshall) and 36 (by Houki, Kurian and Oumlil) in this volume. 2  See Sreberny-­Mohammadi and Mohammadi 1994 for a discussion of the use of “small media” (e.g. sermons on cassette tapes, photocopied statements) in the Iranian revolution. For discussion of art and body as protest mediums in the Arab world, see Kraidy 2016. 3  For discussion of the role of ICTs in contentious politics, see Sreberny and Khiabany  2011; Aouragh 2012; Zayani 2015 and Moss 2022. 4  Surveillance is also undertaken by private entities, such as corporations, marketing agencies, insurance companies, social media companies, employers, schools, and hospitals, as well as ordinary citizens. For the purposes of this chapter, I focus on state surveillance. 1

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conversations of dissidents and ethnic minorities in response to the growing nationalist insurgence in its Balkan and Middle Eastern provinces (Kirli 2009). Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the region’s new colonial rulers built local security apparatuses to contain potential threats, and engaged in widespread intelligence gathering activities. In Egypt, the British employed a vast army of operatives to monitor and collect information about militant nationalists, whereas in Tunisia and Algeria, the French accumulated intelligence to infiltrate nationalist or Islamist groups (Thomas 2008; Sirrs 2010; Safi 2019). In the post-­independence era, several Arab states used these existing surveillance apparatuses as the basis of their national mukhabarat agencies (“intelligence” in Arabic).5 Based on the priorities of the ruling elites and their national security concerns, mukhabarat agencies in Iraq, Egypt, Syria, to mention just a few, took on prominent roles in state systems and pervaded social institutions from schools to mosques. They collected information about local and foreign adversaries via field agents and informants and carried out operations against them inside and outside their borders, all of which coalesced into brutal regimes of repression (Kamrava 2011, ­302–305; Sirrs 2010; Safi 2019). From the 1990s onwards, the Middle East’s security-­oriented states began to make extensive investments in telecommunication and internet infrastructures (see Chapter 13). Although these investments followed a developmentalist logic to improve the local economy and incorporate it into global networks of trade and finance, one must keep in mind that they were unequivocally about state control over communication. There is indeed a correlation between a country’s internet expansion rate and governmental attempts to control the domestic information environment. Repressive regimes are usually the ones most interested in providing online connection to their citizens since they aim to expand their surveillance capabilities and continuously signal the presence of the state and its all-­seeing eye (Espen Geelmuyden and Weidman 2015, 341, 347). States in the Middle East, similar to their counterparts around the globe, have also established legal frameworks to repress potential opposition and conduct mass surveillance on the internet. In the wake of Arab uprisings, Syria, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey passed repressive cybercrime laws or strengthened existing legislation to conduct surveillance of users under the pretense of national security, combating terrorism and safeguarding social values (Fatafta and Samaro 2021; Shqair 2019). Turkey’ ruling AKP government amplified its digital surveillance capabilities after the nationwide Gezi protests and the revelations about a massive corruption scandal, both in 2013. The following year, it hastily amended the Internet Law and the Law on State  In Iran and Turkey, the establishment of intelligence services followed quite a different path. In Iran, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi founded SAVAK in 1957, with assistance from the CIA and Mossad, for domestic and foreign intelligence activities, including but not limited to suppression of opponents at home and surveillance of Iranian students abroad. SAVAK was closed shortly after the revolution in 1979. Turkey’s national intelligence agency was established in 1927 during Ataturk’s presidency, then restructured in 1965 and renamed MIT. It collects intelligence about domestic and foreign security threats, and in recent years has attracted media attention in Europe for its surveillance and recruitment activities.

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Intelligence Services to identify and prosecute users that engage in so-­called anti-­state crimes on the web or social networking sites.6 After the coup attempt 2016, it passed decree laws that facilitated the interception of digital communications and the collection of private data from state institutions and private companies (Yesil et.al 2017). In Egypt, four years after the revolution, the military regime reinforced the state’s digital surveillance capabilities. In 2014, the Ministry of Interior introduced the “Social Networks Security Hazard Monitoring Operation,” a program that enables the state to track the conversations of Islamists and to identify users involved in “debauchery” and “homosexual acts.” According to the Ministry spokesperson, this new system collects data about online activities of all internet users, whether suspects or not. It is “not limited to a certain time frame, and does not require a judicial order, and may be performed regardless of necessity” (Herrera 2015, 355). Regardless of where they stand on the autocracy–democracy spectrum, Middle Eastern states use a panoply of digital techniques to collect information on the entire population and/or identify regime-­critical groups, such as activists, dissidents, journalists, and academics (for censorship of online content in the region, see Chapter 13). Obviously, this is not to say that state surveillance is specific to autocracies or the Middle East. Israel subjects Palestinians to a racially based surveillance system by retrieving their mobile phone data, monitoring Facebook accounts, and using biometric ­identification systems – to mention just a few of its anti-­democratic and illegal practices (Stevens 2011; Zureik et.al. 2011; Tawil-­Souri 2012). Governments in Western democracies, as revealed by Edward Snowden, have the utmost capabilities in monitoring their citizens’ digital communications, and engage in massive surveillance operations in the name of national, regional, and global security, as well (Lyon 2014; Bauman et al. 2014). To monitor and penalize activists, authorities use a number of techniques that include cyberattacks (i.e. phishing, hacking, malware attacks), online harassment, and manipulation. For example, in 2017, the Egyptian regime carried out a large-­scale phishing campaign, known as the Nile Phish, against NGOs, lawyers, journalists, and activists, all working on human rights, political freedoms, and gender equality. Regime-­affiliated hackers sent the staff of seven NGOs email messages with invitations to fake events and links to malicious websites, and then took control of their email accounts (Scott-­Railton et al. 2017). Syrian pro-­regime agents also carried out malware attacks against activists based inside and outside the country. Since the beginning of the civil war, Syrian Electronic Army, a pro-­Assad group of hackers, have sent activists malicious files via social media and eventually gained access to their devices (Kaspersky Lab 2014). States also engage in online harassment and social media manipulation against activists. By using state-­affiliated agencies, outside firms, hacker or volunteer groups, they flood social media sites with pro-­government propaganda and directly or indirectly mount smear campaigns against activists. According to a 2020 report, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates all have permanent, high-­capacity cyber

 Among the anti-­state crimes are vaguely defined acts such as inciting people to hatred and a­ nimosity, praising a terrorist organization, disseminating propaganda on behalf of a terrorist organization, and declaring one’s affiliation with a terrorist organization.

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troops (also known as troll armies) that engage in such activities (Bradshaw et. al 2020).7 State authorities invite their supporters to report on critical groups, as well. In Turkey, the Erdogan regime encourages citizens to report “virtual terrorists,” that is, users ­allegedly engaging in anti-­state activities on social media. Such initiatives aim to mobilize lay citizens to “integrate surveillance into their daily lives,” identify themselves with the “agencies of the state,” and “perform social responsibility as per state objectives (Reeves 2012, 236, 245). Generally referred to as lateral surveillance, these practices are borne out of concerns with risk management and preemption of real and perceived threats (Andrejevic 2004). State surveillance of activists is no longer bound by territorial borders. Digital communication, mobile telephony, and location-­based services enable the authorities to monitor activists that live in diaspora or exile, gather information about their online communication and physical movements, and thus conduct surveillance at the “micro-­ level of everyday life” (Dennis 2008; Lyon 2010; Moss 2016). Such cross-­border surveillance, as Moss notes, brings the dialectics of ICTs into sharp relief: the same technologies that bring activists in host countries “closer to the homeland” and connect them with international allies also make them the subject of the surveillance powers of the state they seek to avoid in the first place (2016). A case in point is the cyberattacks against Iranian dissidents that left the country after the 2009 presidential election. In 2015 and 2016, Iranian activists in diaspora were targeted by state-­affiliated hacker groups via phishing emails. Information gathered via these cyberattacks were then used by Iranian security forces to harass and prosecute diasporic activists’ professional and personal contacts in Iran (Michaelsen 2016). Perhaps a more notorious example of transnational surveillance of dissidents comes from Saudi Arabia. In 2018, using digital spyware, Saudi authorities infiltrated exilic political opponents’ and human rights activists’ smartphones and gained access to their emails, text messages, and personal files (Marczak et al. 2018). According to Citizen Lab, a research institute at the University of Toronto, spyware was found on the phone of Jamal Khashoggi’s wife two months before his assassination at Saudi Arabia’s Istanbul consulate (Priest 2021). Digital surveillance of activists, be it in homeland or diaspora, is obviously the outcome of autocratic politics. Yet, one would be amiss not to consider the role of private corporations that develop and sell these surveillance technologies. The irony here is that the commercial spyware that perpetuates autocratic rulers’ surveillance schemes are usually supplied by companies based in developed and/or allegedly (more) democratic countries. European, American, and Israeli companies have supplied digital surveillance software and equipment to Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the UAE, and ­dozens of other countries around the world, and continue to do so. For example, Gamma Group in Germany develops and sells FinFisher, a comprehensive spyware package, to Bahrain, Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and others (Marczak et al. 2015). Italy’s Hacking Team sells remote control systems that facilitate infiltration of phones and computers to Egypt, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. Narus, owned by Boeing,

 Other high-­capacity teams are found in China, India, Russia, the UK, the United States, and Venezuela, to name just a few.

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provides Egyptian and Saudi telecoms with “deep packet inspection” software that ­enables the tracking of IP addresses, Skype calls, and personal information of dissidents (Ungerleider 2011). The most well-­known cyber-­surveillance firm is the Israeli NSO Group, the maker of the sophisticated Pegasus spyware. In 2021, it was revealed that more than 50 countries used Pegasus to track 50,000 mobile numbers that belong to government leaders, politicians, dissidents, journalists, academics, and human rights activists (Bergman and Kingsley 2021).8 A few months later, the US Department of Commerce blacklisted the NSO Group for “knowingly supplying foreign governments with [malicious] spyware,” and Apple sued it for the Pegasus spyware that attacked its smartphones (Sanger et al. 2021; BBC News 2021). Despite these developments and intense global pressure from rights organizations and calls for boycotts, the NSO Group continues to sell Pegasus to clients. Digital surveillance in the Middle East is also perpetuated by Western intelligence contractors and former security officials. For example, the former US counterterrorism czar Richard Clark served as a consultant to the UAE in regards its secret cyber-­ surveillance agency, known as Dark Matter, founded in 2008. After the Arab uprisings, Dark Matter expanded its surveillance net to include women’s rights activists in Saudi Arabia, diplomats at the United Nations, Qatari government officials, and human rights activists, journalists, and political dissidents (Bing and Schetman 2019). The entangled relationships between states and private companies I have synopsized here call for a more nuanced framework that goes beyond the binaries of autocracy and democracy, Middle East and the West, and a rethinking of digital communication technologies outside the discourse of emancipation. Digital technologies deployed to enhance national and global security are deeply imbricated with the colonial legacies that define much of the Middle East and hence must be viewed in the longue durée of the relationships between technology and society.9 It bears noting that surveillance in the Middle East (or for that matter, elsewhere in the world) is far more complicated than a territorially bound, state-­specific phenomenon; it crosses national borders, involves public-­private alliances, and is fueled by autocratic and profit-­seeking impulses. References Andrejevic, M. 2004. “The Work of Watching One Another: Lateral Surveillance, Risk, and Governance.” Surveillance & Society 2, 4: 479–497. Aouragh, M. 2012. Palestine Online: Transnationalism, the Internet and the Construction of Identity. London: I.B. Tauris. Aouragh, Miriam and Alexander, Anne. 2014. “Egypt’s Unfinished Revolution: The Role of the Media Revisited.” International Journal of Communication 8: 890–915.

 The NSO Group had been under scrutiny long before these revelations. See Citizen Lab’s 2016 report, “The Million Dollar Dissident: NSO Group’s iPhone Zero-­Days Used Against a UAE Human Rights Defender” (https://citizenlab.ca/2016/08/million-­dollar-­dissident-­iphone-­zero-­ day-­nso-­g roup-­uae/). 9  For a detailed discussion, see Madianou 2022. 8

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Aouragh, M. and Chakravartty, P. 2016. “Infrastructures of Empire: Towards a Critical Geopolitics of Media and Information Studies.” Media, Culture and Society 38, 4: 559–575. Bauman, Z., Bigo, D., Esteves, P., Guild, E., Jabri, V., Lyon, D. and Walker, R.B. 2014. “After Snowden: Rethinking the Impact of Surveillance.” International Political Sociology 8, 2: 121–144. Bayat, A. 2000. “Social Movements, Activism and Social Development in the Middle East.” United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. Civil Society and Social Movements Program Paper. Available at https://www.unrisd.org/80256b3c005bccf9/(httpauxpages)/ 9c2befd0ee1c73b380256b5e004ce4c3/$file/bayat.pdf Bayat, A. 2013. Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. BBC News. 2021. “Apple Sues Israeli Spyware Firm NSO Group.” November 24. Available at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-­59393823 Bergman, R. and Kingsley, P. 2021. “Israeli Spyware Maker Is in Spotlight Amid Reports of Wide Abuses.” The New York Times, July 18, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/18/ world/middleeast/israel-­nso-­pegasus-­spyware.html Bing, C. and Schetman, J. 2019. “Inside the U.A.E.’s Secret Hacking Team of American Mercenaries.” Reuters, January 30. Available at https://www.reuters.com/investigates/ special-­report/usa-­spying-­raven/ Coleman, S. and Blumler, J. 2009. The Internet and Democratic Citizenship: Theory, Practice and Policy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Deibert, R. and Rohozinski, R. 2011. “Liberation vs. Control: The Future of Cyberspace.” The Journal of Democracy 21, 4: 43–57. Deibert, R. 2014. “Communities at Risk: Targeted Digital Threats Against Civil Society.” University of Toronto Policy Reports. Available at https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/handle/1807/80130 Dennis, K. 2008. “Keeping a Close Watch: The Rise of Self-­surveillance and the Threat of Digital Exposure.” The Sociological Review 56, 3: 347–357. Diamond, L. 2010. “Liberation Technology.” Journal of Democracy 21, 3: 69–83. Espen Geelmuyden, R. and Weidman, N. B. 2015. “Empowering Activists or Autocrats? The Internet in Authoritarian Regimes.” Journal of Peace Research 52, 3: 338–351. Fatafta. M. and Samaro, D. 2021. “Exposed and Exploited: Data Protection in the Middle East and North Africa.” Access Now. Available at https://www.accessnow.org/cms/assets/uploads/ 2021/01/Access-­Now-­MENA-­data-­protection-­report.pdf Herrera, L. 2015. Citizenship Under Surveillance: Dealing with the Digital Age. International Journal of Middle East Studies 47, 2: 354–356. Howard, P. N. and Hussain, M. M. 2013. Democracy’s Fourth Wave? Digital Media and the Arab Spring. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Kamrava, M. 2013. The Modern Middle East: A Political History Since the First World War (3rd ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. Kaspersky Lab 2014. “Kaspersky Lab Warns of Users of the Dangers Posed by Syrian Malware.” Press release, August 18. Available at https://www.kaspersky.com/about/press-­releases/ 2014_kaspersky-­lab-­warns-­users-­of-­the-­dangers-­posed-­by-­syrian-­malware Khiabany, G. 2015. “Technologies of Liberation and/or Otherwise.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47, 2: 348–353. Kirli, C. 2009. “Surveillance and Constituting the Public in the Ottoman Empire.” In S. Shami (Ed.) Publics, Politics and Participation: Locating the Public Sphere in the Middle East and North Africa (pp. 177–203). New York: Social Science Research Council. Available at https://www.ssrc. org/publications/publics-­politics-­and-­participation-­locating-­the-­public-­sphere-­in-­the-­middle-­ east-­and-­north-­africa/

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Lyon, D. 2014. “Surveillance, Snowden, and Big Data: Capacities, Consequences, Critique.” Big Data & Society 1, 2: 1–13. Madianou, M. 2022. “Technological Futures as Colonial Debris: ‘Tech-­ for-­ Good’ as Technocolonialism.” In J. Zylinska (Ed.), The Future of Media (pp. 281–294). London: Goldsmiths Press. Available at https://www.gold.ac.uk/goldsmiths-­ press/publications/ the-­f uture-­of-­media/ Marczak, B. and Scott-­Railton, J., Senft, A., Poetranto, I., McKune, S. 2015. “Pay No Attention to the Server Behind the Proxy: Mapping FinFisher’s Continuing Proliferation.” Citizen Lab Research Report No. 64, University of Toronto, October 2015. Available at https://tspace. library.utoronto.ca/handle/1807/97784 Marczak, B. and Scott-­Railton, J., Senft, A., Abdul Razzak, B., Deibert, R. 2018. “The Kingdom Came to Canada: How Saudi-­Linked Digital Espionage Reached Canadian Soil.” Citizen Lab Research Report No. 115, University of Toronto, October 2018. Available at https://tspace. library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/95329/1/Report%23115-­-­Kingdom%20Came.pdf Margolis, M. and Resnick, D. 2000. Politics as Usual: The Cyberspace Revolution. London: Sage. Matthews, W. 2006. Confronting an Empire, Constructing a Nation: Arab Nationalists and Popular Politics in Mandate Palestine. London: I.B. Tauris. McChesney, R. 2000. “So Much for the Magic of Technology and the Free Market.” In A. Herman and T. Swiss (Eds.), The World Wide Web and Contemporary Cultural Theory (pp. 5–35). New York: Routledge. Megiddo, T. 2020. “Online Activism, Digital Domination, and the Rule of Trolls: Mapping and Theorizing Technological Oppression by Governments. “The Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 58, 1-­2: 394–442. Michaelsen, M. 2018. “Exit and Voice in a Digital Age: Iran’s Exiled Activists and the Authoritarian State.” Globalizations 15, 2: 248–264. Moss, D. M. 2016. “Transnational Repression, Diaspora Mobilization, and the Case of the Arab Spring.” Social Problems 63, 4: 480–498. Moss, D. M. 2018. “The Ties That Bind: Internet Communication Technologies, Networked Authoritarianism, and ‘Voice’ in the Syrian Diaspora.” Globalizations 15, 2: 265–282. Moss, D. M. 2022. The Arab Spring Abroad: Diaspora Activism Against Authoritarian Regimes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Morozov, E. 2011. The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. New York: Public Affairs. Newsom, V. A., Lengel, L. and Cassar, C. 2011. “The Arab Spring, Local Knowledge and the Revolutions: A Framework for Social Media Information Flow.” International Journal of Communication 5: 1303–1312. Niblock, T. 2005. “Civil Society in the Middle East.” In Y. M. Choueiri (Ed.), A Companion to the History of the Middle East (pp. 486–503). Blackwell. Priest, D. 2021. “A U.A.E. Agency Put Pegasus Spyware on Phone of Jamal Khashoggi’s Wife.” Washington Post, December 21. Available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/ interactive/2021/hanan-­elatr-­phone-­pegasus/ Reeves, J. 2012. “If You See Something, Say Something: Lateral Surveillance and the Uses of Responsibility.” Surveillance & Society 10, 3-­4: 235–248. Safi, O. 2019. The Tunisian Mukhabarat State: The Origins of Tunisian Intelligence, Its Influence on Tunisian State Development and Domestic Politics from 1881 to 1965. London: I.B. Tauris. Sanger, D. et.al. 2021. “U.S. Blacklists Israeli NSO Group over Spyware.” New  York Times, November 3. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/03/business/nso-­group-­spyware-­blacklist. html?searchResultPosition=1 Scott-­Railton, J., Raoof, R., Marczak, B. and Maynier, E. 2017. “Nile Phish: Large-­Scale Phishing Campaign Targeting Egyptian Civil Society.” Citizen Lab Research Report No. 88, University

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of Toronto. Available at https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/96975/1/ Report%2388-­-­nilephish.pdf Shirky, C. 2011. “The Political Power of Social Media: Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change.” Foreign Affairs 90, 1: 28–41. Shqair, Y. 2019. “Cybercrime Laws in Arab Countries: Focus on Jordan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.” Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism. Available at https://en.arij. net/wp-­content/uploads/sites/3/2019/12/Cyber-­Crime-­Laws-­in-­the-­Arab-­world-­Policy-­ paper-­by-­ARIJ.pdf Sirrs, O. 2010. The Egyptian Intelligence Service A History of the Mukhabarat, 1910–2009. London: Routledge. Sreberny-­Mohammadi, A. and Mohammadi, A.1994. Small Media, Big Revolution: Communication, Culture, and the Iranian Revolution. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Sreberny, A. and Khiabany, G. 2011. Blogistan: The Internet and Politics in Iran. London: I.B. Tauris. Stevens, A. 2011. “Surveillance Policies, Practices and Technologies in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories: Assessing the Security State.” Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Available at https://www.sscqueens.org/sites/sscqueens.org/files/2011-­ 11-­Stevens-­WPIV.pdf Tawil-­Souri, H. 2012. “Digital Occupation: Gaza’s High-­tech Enclosure.” Journal of Palestine Studies 41, 2: 27–43. Thomas, M. 2008. Empires of Intelligence: Security Services and Colonial Disorder After 1914. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Ungerleider, N. 2011. “How American-­made Tech Helped Middle Eastern Governments Censor the Internet.” Fast Company, March 31. Available at https://www.fastcompany.com/1677860/ how-­american-­made-­tech-­helped-­middle-­eastern-­governments-­censor-­the-­internet Williams, E. 2012. “Nazik al-­Abid and the Nur al-­Fayha Society: Independent Modernity, Colonial Threat, and the Space of Women.” In Mohammed A. Bamyeh (Ed.), Intellectuals and Civil Society in the Middle East: Liberalism, Modernity and Political Discourse (pp. 29–56). London: I.B. Tauris. Yesil, B. Sozeri, E. K. and Khazraee, E. 2017. “Turkey’s Internet Policy After the Coup Attempt: The Emergence of a Distributed Network of Online Suppression and Surveillance.” University of Pennsylvania, Internet Policy Observatory. Available at https://repository. upenn.edu/internetpolicyobservatory/22 Zayani. M. 2015. Networked Publics and Digital Contention: The Politics of Everyday Life in Tunisia. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Zureik, E., Lyon D. and Abu-­Laban, Y. 2011. Surveillance and Control in Israel/Palestine: Population, Territory and Power. London: Routledge.

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Index

Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to foot notes.   Abd el‐Fattah, Alaa  363n1, 377–379 media diversification  248–250 Abou Jaoude, Abboudi  155n21, 156 product placement  250n4 Abrahamian, Ervand  6 during Ramadan  249n3 Abu‐Lughod, L.  232n3 African Charter on Human and People’s Accented cinema  219 Rights  166 Achar, G.  19 African Commission on Human and Activism Peoples’ Rights 169 civic 526 African Court on Human and Peoples’ cultural 363 Rights (2004) 167 history of   526 Ahmad, Aijaz  57 labor 73–80 Ahmad, Leila  66, 67 quiet  440–442, 446–449 Ahmed, Sarah  47 social media  353, 355, 357, 361 AIOC see Anglo‐Iranian Oil Company and surveillance  526–531 (AIOC) “Activist‐bloggers”  329, 329n7 Aissat, Kamel  80, 80n21 Ad hoc laws/regulatory bodies  102–103 AJCC see Al Jazeera Children’s Channel Advertising industry  245 (AJCC) audience‐media play  256–258 Ajjoub, O.  397n6 creating advertisements  254–256 Akhtar, S.  403n33 culture 254–256 AKP see Justice and Development Party establishment, struggle of   246–247 (AKP) expenses 250 Akser, Murat  327, 329 formats development  251–252 Al‐Abdullah. F.  406n53

The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East, First Edition. Edited by Joe F. Khalil, Gholam Khiabany, Tourya Guaaybess, and Bilge Yesil. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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536 Index Al‐Ahmad, A. K.  404n38 Alankuş, Sevda  327 Al Arabiya news channel  184 under new leadership  186–188 political bias and loss of credibility of  185–186 with Saudi government  182–183 Al‐Azm, S. J.  19 Algerian Civil War  343–344 Algerian liberation revolution  318 Algerian media system  342–343 see also Humor, in Algeria Algerian Penal Code  175 Alinejad, D.  86 Al‐Jawlani, Abu Muhammad  396, 397 Al Jazeera news channel  183, 184 under new leadership  186–188 political bias and loss of credibility of  185–186 with Qatari government  181–182 Al Jazeera Children’s Channel (AJCC)  293, 294 Al Jazeera English (AJE)  183 Al‐Khatib, K.  403n36 Allagui, I.  245 Alloula, Malek  25 Al‐Nas channel  268–270 Alois, M.  404n37 Al‐Omar, Z. A.  402n32 Al‐Qadhafi, Muammar  319–320 Al‐Rayyan, H.  405n46, 405n47, 405n49 Al‐Resalah channel  269, 270 Alsalem, F.  143 Alternative and citizen journalism(s) economic and organizational perspectives 334–335 ethnic and religious minorities  333 functions of   330–334 in Middle East  326–328 production and dissemination of  328–330 providing voice, for voiceless  332–334 reporting news in times, of political crisis 331–332

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tackling unspoken issues  330–331 theories of   326 Alternative media  208–209 Alternative news projects  329, 333, 334 Aly, Ramy  127 American Convention on Human Rights 100 Amin, Heba Y.  366, 367n11, 368, 368n13, 371n24, 373–375, 377, 377n34 Anglo‐Iranian Oil Company (AIOC)  149, 150, 150n6 Anzaldúa, Gloria  522n9 Aouragh, Miriyam  73n1, 74n4, 77n13, 297n32 Appadurai, Arjun  233, 521n5 April 6th Youth Movement  78, 374 Arab advertising  245 Arab American media broadcasting 484–486 digital media  487–488 immigration 479–481 overview of   479 print and publishing, history of   482–484 scholarship 481–482 theater, arts, literature, and comedy 486–487 Arab American Television (AATV)  485, 486 Arab animation Arab Spring of   296–297 articulating nationhood by  290–291 early challenges of   287–288 identity representation in  289–290 Islamic identities  294–296 localization 287 national identities  291–292 overview of   286–287 pan‐Arab identities  292–294 political economy of   288–289 “Arab Awakening”  3 Arab Charter on Human Rights  167 Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS)  485 Arab cultural studies being digital  48–50

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Index

cultural translation  46 dialectical phenomenological method 47–48 double movement  46, 47 double‐thrownness method  50–51 hermeneutics  45, 47 media as equipment  48–50 Arab gamevironments  301–303, 309 Arabian‐American Oil Company (ARAMCO) 149 Arabic Culture and Books Days  499n19 Arabic news channels Al Arabiya, with Saudi government 182–183 Al Jazeera, with Qatari government 181–182 Arab Spring impact on  184–185 competition and market strategy of  183–184 development of   179 under new leadership  186–188 overview of   178–179 political bias  185–186 Arab journalism  116–117 Arab Network of America (ANA)  486 Arab News Network (ANN)  180 Arab Radio and Television (ART)  180, 263–264 Arab religious media authorities and celebrities  270–272 overview of   261–262 as political tools  267–272 Salafi trend  269–270 typology 262–266 websites and YouTube channels  263n7 Arab revolutions  99, 497 Arab Satellite Communications Organization (Arabsat)  179 Arab satellite media  238, 267 Arab satellite television channels  496–498 Arab State Broadcasting Union (ASBU)  179 Arab uprisings  1–3, 414 first wave of   514n5 genealogy of   99

0005627805.INDD 537

537

impact on news channels  184–185 media and the politics of minorities  82 rap scenes before  416–418 shift, in media assistance  195–196 small media organizations  191 Arab Women’s Solidarity Association United (AWSA United)  487 Archival research cinema networks  148–151 fieldwork 154–157 overview of   147–148 semi‐detached and unsynced elements in 151–154 unevenness, of online platforms, social media, and digitization  157–159 Arena, M.P.  397n7, 404n42 Arrigo, B. A.  397n7, 404n42 Arslan, M.  227 Art (Fatmi)  27–28 Association of Workers and Employees  75 Atton, Chris  328n3 Attride‐Stirling, J.  401, 401n27, 401n28 Audience‐media play  256–258 Authoritarian restoration  96 Autocrats strike back  111–113 Autonomous Administration  398    Baala, Hamdi  347 Baha’is  333, 333n9 Bainbridge, J.  456 Barber, Brian K.  296n31 Bayat, Asef   392 BBC 180 Being and Time (Heidegger)  48 Benjamin, W.  61 Bennington, Geoffrey  290n19 Bérgère, Clovis  38n3 Berti, B.  403n34 Bhabha, Homi  26 Black and Blur (2017) (Moten)  27 Boghani, P.  406n54 Borders 520 geopolitical 522–523 national populations  521

06-01-2023 11:01:19

538 Index Borders (cont’d) natural 522n7 power of media  523–524 satellite television  523, 524 territorial and symbolic  525 Boubekeur, Amel  345 Bourdieu, P.  223, 224 Bouteflika, Abdelaziz  113 Boyd, Douglas A.  96 Brand activation  252n10 Braune, I.  143 Brecht, B.  61 Broadcast media  278, 280 Brownlee, B. J.  195 Brubaker, Rogers  521, 521n3 Buccianti, Alexandra  294n26 Burchfield, E.  398n9 Bureaucratization 199–200 Burke, Jason  365n5 Bush, George W.  103   Cable News Network (CNN)  179 Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) 377n33 Capitalism, democracy and  3, 4 “Capital of Visibility”  431 Cardon, Dominique  430 Carenzi, S.  406n52 Caspi, Dan  85 Castells, M.  473 Casual games  308 Cedar revolution (2005)  6, 332 Censorship  100, 103, 122 cultural component of   125–126 freedom of expression  168–170 of The Photograph  222 Chakravartty, P.  62 Chalaby, J. K.  383 Charmaz, K.  401n26 Cheurfa, Hiyem  341n2 Christian television channels  268–269 Cinema networks  148–151 Citizen journalism, 141 see also Alternative and citizen journalism(s)

0005627805.INDD 538

Civil code  66, 66n2, 68 Clément, Pierre‐Alain  303 The Colonial Harem (1986) (Alloula)  25 Commerce and Industry Authority  246 Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)  343 Communication technologies  34–35, 125 Conceptualization 33 Connective marginalities, of hip‐hop  422 Constitutional Revolution (1905–1911)  59 Convention on Human Rights  100 Cook, C. E.  193 Cook, J.  409n71 Coptic Canadian History Project  87 Coptic media  85 Coronil, F.  323 Costa, E.  86 Cottle, S.  85 Countering Violent Extremism (CVE)  193 COVID‐19 pandemic fake news  116 freedom of expression and journalism, impact on  176 Iranian women during  283 in Syria  407 Cox, Laurence  78n16 Crenshaw, K.  459 Criminal law  175 Critical discourse analysis (CDA)  206 Critical transculturalism  302 Culcasi, K.  31 Cultural authenticity, Arab video game  305–306 Cultural component, of MENA television 125–126 Cultural globalization  287 Cultural hybridity  302 Cultural imperialism  18, 19, 295, 302, 391 Cultural politics, of diaspora diasporic returns  508–510 Moroccan diaspora, in Israel  506–508 overview of   505–506 post‐diaspora 509 Cultural revolution  384, 461, 464 Culture and Imperialism (Said)  38

06-01-2023 11:01:19

Index

“Cultures of circulation”  221–222 Cultures, of Middle East  5–7 Cybercrime laws  103, 139–140 Cyberspace 70 Cyber‐surveillance 531   Dabashi, Hamid  17, 21, 60 Damascene milieu dramas  237–238 Damir‐Geilsdorf, Sabine  341 Daoud, Kamel  25 The Day of the Awakening (2020) (Fatmi)  27 Debord, Guy  39 Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information in Africa  169 Della Porta, D.  445 Della Ratta, D.  195 Del Sarto, Raffaella  521n4 Democracy, capitalism and  3, 4 Demonopolization policy  98 Depoliticization 345 Deprofessionalization, of journalistic practice 208 Development agencies, in Middle East 30–34 Dialectical phenomenological method  47–48 Diallo, D.  436 Diamond, Larry  134 Digital archives contemporary cultural critiques  364n2 Egyptian internet shutdown  368–373 evidentiary potential of   364 momentous ruins and spatialized memories 373–377 online social media platforms  363–366 records and accounts  366 Digital distribution  123 Digital insurgents  115–116 Digital media  48–50, 95, 102, 487–488 infrastructure 135–137 journalism and media regulation in  172–173 overview of   134–135 policies 137–140

0005627805.INDD 539

539

practices 140–143 unregulated 170–171 Digital religion  263 Digital surveillance  530, 531 Digital turning point  98–101 Digitization, unevenness of   157–159 Directorate of Religious Affairs  68n4 Dirlik, Arif   509 Double‐thrownness method  50–51 Drevon, J.  398n11, 406n56 Duffy, Matt J.  176 Dunn, Alexandra  78n17   Echchaibi, N.  392 Economic component, of digital infrastructure 135 Economic eviction, of troublemakers  101–102 Economic liberalization  6 Educational component, of digital infrastructure 135 Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights  69 Egyptian Feminist Union  67 Egyptian Graffiti see Graffiti, in Egypt Egyptian internet shutdown  368–373 Egyptian Media Group (EMG)  102 Egyptian Radio and Television Union (ERTU) 73–74 Egyptian revolution  365, 366, 376 Egyptian Satellite Channel (ESC)  124, 179 “Egypt writes, Lebanon prints, and Iraq reads”  96n3 Electronic media  87 El‐Hamalawy, Hossam  376n32 Elias, Nelly  85 Elmahdy, Aliaa Magda  69 El Manchar  340, 344, 344n4 El‐Otmai, Saad Eddine  116 Emerging public sphere, intellectuals and 60–63 Emotional echo‐chamber theory Gezi Spirit  356–361 methodology 355–356 overview of   352 social media role, in Turkey  354–355

06-01-2023 11:01:19

540 Index Enab Baladi  197, 198, 200 The End of a Brave Man (Minna)  237 Erdogan, Nezih  152, 152n13 Eriksen, T. H.  474 ERTU see Egyptian Radio and Television Union (ERTU) Eslen‐Ziya, H.  354, 355 European Bank for Reconstruction and Development 34 European Union membership process  68   Facebook revolutions  99, 134, 141, 368 Fadaat Media  497n12 Fadda‐Conrey, C.  486 Family Law (1917)  66 Fanon, Frantz  507n1 Farhi, F.  390 Fatmi, Mounir (art)  24, 27–28 Fatwa programs  262, 262n5, 271 February 20th (M20) movement  454–455 Federation of Kuwaiti Women’s Organizations 67 Feminisms and feminist movements anti‐colonial and nationalist movements 65–67 decolonization 65 Egyptian feminists  67 first‐wave 65–66 organizing, issues, and tactics  68–71 state building  65 Feminist Bloc  70 Flaskerud, Ingvild  295n27 Forde, Susan  327n2 Foucauldian approach  16 Fouda, Yosri  181 Fourie, P. J.  194 Fourth National Telecommunications Plan (NTP4) 139 Fourth wave feminism, in Morocco February 20th (M20) movement  454–455 Marokkiates case study  458–461 methodology 456–457 Moroccan Outlaws case study  461–462

0005627805.INDD 540

overview of   453–454 sexual violence  455–456 Zaineb Fasiki case study  457–458 Fraenkel, B.  432 Francisco, R.  446 Freedom of expression COVID‐19 pandemic impact on  176 digital media, journalism and media regulation in  172–173 documents relevant to  167–168 journalism, exercise of   171–172 libel, slander, and defamation  174–175 national interests  165 national security legislation  174–175 notion of censorship  168–170 post‐2011 developments and restrictions 170–176 regional standards on  166–167 terrorism 174–175 unregulated digital media  170–171 Freedom on the Net report  75, 139n4 Fuchs, Christian  327n2 Funk, Allie  379n39 Furlan, M.  398n10, 408n61   Galander, Mahmoud  139n5 Game Developers’ Conference (GDC)  307 Game development  307 García‐Canclini, Nestor  37n1, 42 Garnham, Nicholas  61 GCCT see Global Consumer Culture Theory (GCCT) Gender relations, in media  278–279 Gender‐segregation policies  277 General Comment No. 34  175 General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA) 76–77 Genin, C.  433 Geopolitical borders  522–523 Gezi Park  354–355, 357, 359, 361 Gezi Spirit  353, 356–357 anger, hope, joy, and solidarity  359–361

06-01-2023 11:01:19

Index

leaderless leadership to post‐heroic leader 357–358 tweet narrators  359 Gheissari, A.  385n1 Ghobadi, Bahman  224–225 Ghonim, Wael  366n10 Glissant, Édouard  27 Global advertising agencies  246, 247, 254 Global Consumer Culture Theory (GCCT)  252, 253 Global Game Jam in 2020 (GGJ 2020)  300 Global media  86–87 windowing strategies of   158 Global Network Initiative (2016)  175 Glocalized theory  253–254 Golding, Peter  3 Göle, Nilüfer  26, 66 Gourhan, Andre Leroi  49 Gourlay, W.  220 Gradne, Larbi  289n14 Graffiti, in Egypt extolling resistance  436–438 “impure genre” marginality of   429–430 institutionalization of   435–438 legitimization of   436 marginalized visibility  429 mobilization 432 overview of   427–429 political 432–435 visibilization process and political upheaval 430–432 Gramscian model  61 Gramsci, Antonio  56, 57, 60, 61 Great Arab Revolution  318 Green Movement (2009)  70 Grounded theory  400 Grow, J. M.  252 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)  4, 293 Gunter, M. M.  220   Haenni, P.  398n11, 406n56 Haghighat‐Sordellini, E.  275 Haid. H.  409n70

0005627805.INDD 541

541

Haiek, Joseph  484 Hajj Saleh, Y.  319 Hakim, S. A.  405n48 Halabi, Nour  130 Hallin, D.  95n2 Hall, Stuart  56, 62 Hamid, S.  404n39, 404n40 Hamilton, Omar Robert  365n7 Hamisch (Margin) association  500, 500n20 Hamouchene, Hamza  76n11 Hanieh, A.  323 Hanks, Bill  223 Haphazard drama  239 Harmoon Center  499 Harris, K.  4, 390 Hassanpour, A.  471 Hay’at Tahrir al‐Sham (HTS) context and origins of   398–399 media‐based communications  400 overview of   396–398 politics global theme  404–406 society global theme  407–409 strategic communications  399–400 Syrian Revolution global theme  402–404 thematic networks analysis  400–401 HDP see People’s Democratic Party (HDP) Heidegger, M.  48, 50 Heikal, Mohamed Hassanein  108 Hemmasi, F.  387n4 Herrera, Linda  77n14 Hierarchization 199–200 High Authority for Audio‐visual Communication (HAICA)  268 High‐definition television (HDTV)  124 Hip‐hop rap  414–416, 422, 423 Hirak protest movement  340, 341, 344–348 Hofstede, G.  254 “Holy women”  277 HTS see Hay’at Tahrir al‐Sham (HTS) Human Rights Council Resolution 33/2 172n15 Human rights/peace journalism  333

06-01-2023 11:01:19

542 Index Human Rights Watch  113, 375n28, 376n31, 442 Humor, in Algeria in Algerian media system  342–343 Hirak movement  345–348 historical contextualization  343–344 social movements  341–342 Hybridity, as dazzlement overview of   37–39 South‐to‐South 42–43 Tonda’s critique of   39–40 Tonda’s theory of the image  40–42, 42n9 violence of the imaginary  40–41   ICCPR see International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) Identity representation, in Arab animation 289–290 Immigration and Nationality Act (1964) 480 “Impure genre” marginality of   429–430 Industrial component, of MENA television 127–128 Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)  2, 68–70, 526 Institutionalization, of Graffiti  435–438 Intellectuals, debate on and commitment  56–58 description of   55 and emerging public sphere  60–63 modernities, encounter with  58–60 Intelligence services  528n5, 529 Inter‐American Commission for Human Rights 169n13 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)  100, 166, 168, 172 International Finance Corporation (IFC)  35 International Telecommunication Union (ITU)  98, 135–136, 136n2 Internet service providers (ISPs)  140 Invisible modernities, emerging geographies of   23–28 Iqraa channel  267, 269, 270

0005627805.INDD 542

Iranian media and politics alternative media  383 broadcasting 385 citizenship 390–393 communication policies  390–393 internet 388 Islamic culture  382 messaging apps and social networks in 388–389 networked publics  390–393 satellite television  386–387 small media  384 “state‐run” media  382–383 Iranian reformist press  328n4 Iranian revolution (1979)  18, 384 IRI see Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) IRIB see Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) Islam as a Culture  408–409 Islamic animation  295–296 Islamic exceptionalism  3 Islamic identities  294–296 Islamic Justice and Development party (PJD)  455, 455n1 Islamic rap  421 Islamic Republic  384, 390 Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI)  382, 385, 388n5 Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB)  102, 384–386 regulatory authority  391 women’s work in (see Women’s work, in IRIB) Islamic Revolution, women’s work in 276–278 Islamic Salvation Front (FIS)  343 Islamic State in Iraq (ISI)  398 Islamic State of Iraq and al‐Sham (ISIS)  221 Ismail, Rami  309 Israel, Moroccan diaspora in  506–508 Istanbul, Arab cultural and media landscape in Arab satellite television channels  496–498

06-01-2023 11:01:19

Index

bookstore 499n17 cultural and artistic interactions  500 overview of   492–493 political developments  493–495 research and documentation centers 498–499 Istanbul Convention in 2021  71n6 ITU see International Telecommunication Union (ITU)   Jacobson, Brian  152, 152n12 Jacoby, Russell  60 Jalfin, S.  287, 287n4 Jasper, J.  352, 360, 445 Joint Program Production Institution ( JPPI) 293 Jones, A.  193 Jones, M. O.  93n1 Joubin, R.  234n5 Journalism alternative and citizen (see Alternative and citizen journalism(s)) Arab journalism  116–117 autocratic responses  111–113 beyond Arab World  114 COVID‐19 pandemic impact on  176 digital insurgents  115–116 exercise of   171–172 freedom’s limits  115 oppression tools  113–114 overview of   107–108 Qatar and Saudi Arabia, in media sphere  109–111 before revolution  108–109 in Turkey (see Turkish journalism) JPPI see Joint Program Production Institution ( JPPI) Justice and Development Party (AKP)  67, 207, 210, 214, 214n9, 353, 356–358, 493   Karakaş, O.  358 Kassab, Elizabeth  234 Keddie, N. R.  58, 62 Keles, J. Y.  474

0005627805.INDD 543

543

Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1976) (Willams)  315 Khalifa, D.  397n4 Kharabeesh Jordanian company  296 Khatibi, Abdelkebir  45 double movement  46 strategic submission, to non‐linearity  47 Khazen, Jihad  94, 103, 106 Khiabany, G.  102, 526 Khomeini, Ayatollah  276–278 Kirişçi, K.  359 Klandermans, B.  446 Knowledge‐based economy  2 Korkut, U.  354, 356 Kraidy, M. M.  178, 287, 287n6, 296n30, 302, 347n7, 38n2, 430 Kurdish cinema Film Festival awards  228–229 identity politics  220–221 movement and liminality, discourse on  223–227 overview of   219–220 in transnational space  221–223 Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP)  220 Kurdish media online media  473–475 overview of   468–470 print media  470–471 radio 471–472 satellite televisions  472–473 social media  475 Kurdish population  468n2 Kurdish question, media representation of   209–210 Kurdish Satellite Televisions (KST)  472–473 Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)  209–211, 209n5 Kutlay, M.  354 Kutz‐Flamenbaum, Rachel V.  341   Labor activism see State control over media, in labor activism Larabi, Samir  76n11 Large‐scale media projects  7

06-01-2023 11:01:19

544 Index Large‐scale orientalism  15 Laughing Revolution  347 Lebanese advertising  247–248 Lebanese Broadcasting Center (LBC)  180 Lerner, Daniel  3, 34, 60 Levinas, E.  48 LeVine, M.  20, 419 Lewis, Bernard  316–317, 323 LGBTQ community advocacy and collective action  442–444 micro‐level engagement  444–446 quiet activism  440–442, 446–449 state repression against  441–442 Liberalization process  7 Liberation technology  134, 141 Limbrick, Peter  156n24 L’impérialisme postcolonial: Critique de la société des éblouissements (Tonda)  38 Lindemann, T.  404n41, 404n43 Lister, C. R.  398n8, 400n22, 403n35 Lobato, Ramon  123 Local actors, perspectives of   197 bureaucratization 199–200 editorial independence and grant dependence 198–199 hierarchization 199–200 negotiating internal legitimacy  197–198 short‐termism and quantifiable indicators 199 Local Coordinating Committees  329, 329n6 London Kurdish Film Festival (LKFF)  222 Long‐distance nationalism  473 Lynch, Marc  74n3, 181, 182   Mahmood, Saba  283 Mahoney, Robert  108 Mainstream journalism  206–208 Malekzadeh, S.  390 Mancini, P.  95n2 Mardini, Abdelkarim  370n22 Martín‐Barbero, Jesús  37n1 Mass communication  290

0005627805.INDD 544

Uses and Gratifications theory of   483 Massumi, B.  353 Matin‐Asgari, Afshin  58 MBC see Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC) Mbembe, Achille  341–342, 522n8 McCauley, C.  445 McCollum, Victoria  327, 329 McDowall, D.  471 McFadden, William  108 Media and Information Commission (MIC) 169 Media confluence  95, 98–101 Media development  191–194 growth of   196 interventions 194–197 local actors, perspectives of   197–200 organizations 196 Media diversification, of pan‐Arab media market 248–250 Media dynamics and trajectories  7–9 Media imperialism  19 Media industry economics  127 Media policy Ad hoc laws and regulatory bodies 102–103 digital turning point and media  95, 98–101 governments in power  96–98 media confluence  95, 98–101 moral responsibility, of media  103–104 with political field  94–95 public policy  93–94 regional media  94 regulation  93–94, 101–104 transnational media, regulation of   96–98 troublemakers, economic eviction of   101–102 Media regulation, in digital media  172–173 Mediasat 498n15 Media sphere, Qatar and Saudi Arabia in  109–111 Media systems, transformation of   1

06-01-2023 11:01:19

Index

Mediatized Diaspora (MEDIASP)  261n1 MED‐TV  472–473, 472n4 Mehchy, Z.  399n15 MENA Anti‐Piracy Coalition  129 Menshawy, Mustafa  493n3 The Meursault Investigation (2015) (Daoud) 25 Meyer, Günter  108 Micro‐level engagement, LGBTQ community 444–446 Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC)  127, 128, 179, 180, 182, 187, 188 Middle East, defining  3–5 Middle Eastern advertising  245 Middle East terrorism  6 Migdal, Joel S.  522n6 Miliani, H.  417 Milich, Stephan  341 Militarization 4–5 Million martyrs revolution  318 Mills, C.  61 Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance 129 Ministry of Family and Social Services  68n4 Ministry of Interior  529 Minority media global media  86–87 identity 83–84 overview of   82 tasks, of alternative media space  85–86 Mironova, V. G.  396n3, 406n50 Misr Digital  365n6 Mitchell, Timothy  5 Mittell, Jason  292n22 Modernities, intellectuals encounter with 58–60 Modernization, in Middle East development programs  30–31, 34–35 Mohammed Channel  267 Momentous changes, in politics  2 Moral responsibility, of media  103–104

0005627805.INDD 545

545

Moran, Albert  289n15 Moroccan diaspora, in Israel  506–508 Moroccan Outlaws  461–462 Moroccan Penal Code  175 Morrison, J. F.  408n66 Moskalenko, S.  445 Motahari, Morteza  277 Moten, Fred  27 Muhammad bin Salman (MbS)  111, 187 Multigenerational research  9 Muslim subjectivity fugitivity and blur  27–28 reimagination of   23–26 Muslim violence  28 Muslin Brotherhood channels  268 Myers, M.  193–194   Naficy, H.  219, 384 Najjar, M. M.  486–487 Nasr, V.  385n1 Nasser, Gamal Abdel  108, 124, 179, 237 National identities  291–292 National Information Network  391 National Iranian Radio and Television (NIRT)  278, 383, 384 National Liberation Front (FLN)  343 National Media Council (NMC)  306 National security legislation  174–175 Networking, in video gaming  307 NGOization 71 Nickell, Chris  158n31 Nilsen, Alf Gunvald  78n16 9/11 attacks before and after  267–268 events of   24, 239 Middle East following  192 specter of   27 US response to  181 NIRT see National Iranian Radio and Television (NIRT) Northwestern University in Qatar (NU‐Q) 125–127 NSO Group  531, 531n8

06-01-2023 11:01:19

546 Index NU‐Q see Northwestern University in Qatar (NU‐Q)   Occidentalism 323 Offshore media  97 O’Keefe, S.  415 Omar, Ilhan  23, 24 On Being Included (Ahmed)  47 Öniş, Z.  354 Online platforms social media  363–364 unevenness of   157–159 Operation Peace Spring  206, 210 in Sabah  210–212 in T24  212–215 Oppression, tools of   113–114 Optimist approach  282 Orbit Communications Company  180, 180n2 Orbit Showtime Network (OSN)  180n2 Organisation for Economic Co‐Operation and Development (OECD)  32 Organizational component, of MENA television 128–129 Organizational cultures  255 “Orgasmic‐body‐sex” 41n8 Orientalism 5 beyond 19–21 cultural imperialism  19 dynamics 18–19 implications, for culture  16–18 large‐scale 15 media imperialism  19 overlapping domains  15 visual culture of   16 Orientalism (Said)  38, 316, 323 “Orientalism in reverse”  19–20 Ortiz, Fernando  37n1 Oruc, Firat  149n5 Osumare, H.  422 Ottoman rule  66 Overseas Private Investment Corporation 35

0005627805.INDD 546

Ovshieva, I.  419 Oz, Kazim  226–227   Pahlavi‐era “modernization” projects  276 Palestinian rap  418 Palestinian Revolution  318 Pan‐Arab identities  292–294 Pan‐Arab media market, media diversification of   248–250 Papacharissi, Z.  352 Paradoxical policies, of liberalized authoritarianism 137 Park, Robert E.  482–483 Partiya Yekitiya Demokrat (PYD)  210, 210n6 The Passing of Traditional Society (Lerner)  3 Patriot Act  123 Patriotic journalism  342 Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)  220 People’s Democratic Party (HDP)  211na, 212, 215 People’s Protection Units (YPG)  221 Peripheral states  4 Phiri, S.  194 The Photograph, censorship of  222 PJD see Islamic Justice and Development party (PJD) PKK see Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) Political economy, of Arab animation 288–289 Political humor  342, 344, 347n7 Politically driven technology  124–125 Political martyrdom  434–435 Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Mahmood)  283 Post‐Arab uprisings rap scenes  420–421 gender and sexuality  422–423 Islamic rap  421 language 423 marginalized identities  422 Post‐colonial imperialism  38, 40, 43 Post‐Orientalism: Knowledge & Power (2021) (Dabashi) 17

06-01-2023 11:01:19

Index

Print media  470–471 Pro‐AKP Turkish press  493n3 Project Speak2Tweet  366–367, 367n12, 370, 371n24, 372–377 Protests, in Algeria  343–344 Public space  429–430   Qatar, in media sphere  109–111 Qatari News Agency (QNA)  110 Qatar National Library (QNL)  149 Quiet activism  440–443 three Egyptian queer women, stories of  446–449 Qur’ān channel  267   Raafat, L  400n22, 403n35 Radsch, C. C.  141 Radway, J.  462 Rap music before Arab Uprisings  416–418 and hip‐hop  414–416, 422, 423 post‐uprisings rap, politics of   420–423 struggle paradigm  418–419 Rate cards  249 Rayes Lebled (El General)  418–419 Regulation censorship to  100 in media policy  93–94 modes, of expression  101–104 of transnational media  96–98 Religious media see Arab religious media Religious violence  27 Rentier states  4 Resilience, Syrian Revolution  402–403 Revolution in Arab contexts  316 archival processes (see Digital archives) conceptualization of   315 future goal  320–322 and graffiti  433 in near past  322–323 region 316–319 resonance of   323–324

0005627805.INDD 547

547

suspended in time  319–320 typologies 319–322 Rezaian, Jason  114 Richtel, Matt  368n15 Riggins, Stephen  83, 85 Roy, S.  62 Rugh, William  109 Rugman, Jonathan  494n4, 494n6   Sabah, online news platform  205–207, 207n2 Operation Peace Spring in  210–212 Sabbagh, Rana  113–114 Saeed, A.  396n1, 397n5, 399n14, 400n25, 407n58 Saidani, M.  417 Said, Edward  15, 21, 25, 38, 316, 317, 323 analysis, of Orientalism  16–17 Foucauldian approach  16 intellectual life  57–58, 60 region represents itself   18 West sees itself   17–18 Salafi trend  269–270 Salamandra, Christa  130 Sana’a Declaration on the Arab media  169, 171 Sand, Shlomo  60 Satellite channels  180–181, 184 Satellite television  386–387 Saudi Arabia anti‐terrorism legislation  175 in media sphere  109–111 SayNow 367n12 Scanlen & Holderness v. Zimbabwe  169 Scannell, Paddy  47, 48 “Scholar‐combatants” 58 Self‐censorship  335, 342, 495 Semi‐detached elements, in archives 151–154 Services Provision  407–408 Shahbaz, Adrian  379n39 Shah, H.  32 Shari’a law  409

06-01-2023 11:01:20

548 Index Shariati, Ali  277 Shavitt, S.  254 Sheller, Mimi  524n14 Simon, Andrew  154n17 Simondon, Gilbert  49 Skeptical approach  282 Skovgaard‐Petersen, J.  238n6 Smith, Shelagh  76n11 SMT see Social Movements Theory (SMT) Social media  109, 141 and fourth wave feminism (see Fourth wave feminism, in Morocco) internet and  142–143 Kurdish 475 networking and advocacy  87 networks 332 platforms  77–80, 159, 363–366 in Turkey  354–355 tweets on  355–356 unevenness of   157–159 Social movements, humor and  341–342 Social Movements Theory (SMT)  440, 444, 445 Social Networks Security Hazard Monitoring Operation program  529 Society global theme, HTS  407 Islam as a Culture  408–409 Services Provision  407–408 Society of the Spectacle (1962) (Debord)  39 Sociocultural and political changes  2 South‐to‐South hybridities  42–43 Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (SDN)  396 Spence, L.  458 Sreberny, Annabelle  4 Stam, R.  458 Stanton, Andrea L.  156n23 Star Animation for Artistic Production  293 State capitalism  7, 102 State control mobilizations  78, 79 over media, in labor activism  73

0005627805.INDD 548

print media and online media production 74–76 social media platforms  77–80 technological changes  74 workplace‐based organizations  76 State surveillance  527, 529, 530 Stein, A.  398n9 “Strategic states” group  4 Straubhaar, J.  287, 287n5, 383 Structural component, of digital infrastructure 135 Subscription video‐on‐demand (SVOD)  125 Sudanese Professionals Association  76, 79 Suleiman, Yasir  290n16 Surveillance, in Middle East  526–531 Survival Signs (2017) (Fatmi)  28 Syria, HTS in see Hay’at Tahrir al‐Sham (HTS) Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)  398 Syrian politics  404–405 global positioning  406 local positioning  405–406 Syrian revolution  319, 402 Resilience 402–403 Victimhood 403–404 Syrian Salvation Government (SGG)  407 Syria’s musalsal drama aesthetic Arabism  232, 235–236 authenticity 233 contemporary dramas  232 digital technologies  241 disadvantages 234 ideological and affective dimensions to 234 local authenticity  231 outpouring 236–241 social embeddedness  232 Waiting serial  239–240   Tanzimat  65, 66 Tattooed Memory (Khatibi)  45 Tawakkol Karman foundation  497 TAZ see Temporary autonomous zones (TAZ)

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Index

Tebboune, Abdelmajid  340, 340n1, 346 “Tehrangeles” 387 Television and the Meaning of Live (2014) (Scannell) 47 Television, in MENA censorship 122 cultural component of   125–126 experiential elements  130 industrial component of   127–128 organizational component of   128–129 politically driven technology  124–125 trace change and continuity in  123 Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1974) technology  123 Telewebion 389–390 Temporary autonomous zones (TAZ)  437, 437n21, 438 Terpstra, N.  407n57 Terrorism, freedom of expression and  174–175 Thematic networks analysis  400–401 “Three‐part test” freedom of expression  168, 175 Tiger Production  293 Tonda, Joseph  38 critique of hybridity  38–40 postcolonial imperialism  40, 43 theory of images  38, 40–42, 42n9 T24, online news platform  206–209 Operation Peace Spring in  212–215 Toygür, I.  359 Transformations of media systems  1–2 in news and information system  2 Transnational media, regulation of   96–98 Trump, Donald  116 Truth‐to‐power model  107 Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT)  76 Turkey alternative news channels  333 EU membership  69n5 social media role in  354–355 violence against women  68

0005627805.INDD 549

549

Turkey‐origin news agency  212n8 Turkish journalism Kurdish question, media representation of  209–210 mainstream and alternative media in 206–209 overview of   205–206 Turkuaz Media Group  207 Tutelary approach  127 Tweet narrators  359 Tweissi, Basim  74n2 Twitter Revolution  368 Two‐headed media policy strategy  97   UGTA see General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA) UNESCO  172, 173, 176 UN Human Rights Committee  166, 166n3 United Nations Development Program 135n1 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 166 Unsynced elements, in archives  151–154 Unwritten law  281 US bilateral programs  35 Uses and Gratifications theory  483 US invasion of Iraq (2003)  112   Van Stekelenburg, J.  446 VHS transfer  153, 153n14 Victimhood, Syrian Revolution  403–404 Video gaming, in Arab world casual games  308 cultural authenticity  305–306 foreign consumption  303–304 gamevironments  301–303, 309 globalization and transnational networks 307 governmental support and regulation 306 local production  304–305 modding and community translations 308

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550 Index Video gaming, in Arab world (cont’d) overview of   300–301 representation and politics  307–308 socio‐technical and socioeconomic changes 306 Video stores, role of   155n18 “Violence of the imaginary”  40–41 Virtual private network (VPN)  126 Visual broadcasting  473n5 Voice actors  152 Volpi, F.  445 Vukov, Tamara  524n14   Waisbord, S.  193, 287n4, 290, 290n17 Wark, Mackenzie  60 “War on Terror”  6, 24 Wedeen, L.  239n9 Welad al‐Balad project  333 Wells, Paul  286n1 Western and Soviet modernization models 7 Wilkins, Karin  32 Williams, A. S.  423 Williams, Raymond  40, 40n5, 123, 315 Winter, C.  400n24

0005627805.INDD 550

Women’s work, in IRIB broadcast media, in Iran after 1979  278 challenges and strategies  281–282 constructing new identity  283 gender relations  278–279 in Islamic Revolution  276–278 motivations 279–281 World Trade Organisation (WTO)  129 “Writing sanctuaries”  432, 432n13   Yaqub, Nadia  156, 156n25 Yilmaz, M.  358 Youniss, James  296n31 “You stink” movement  69, 70 Youth‐generated media  516, 518 Youth, in Middle East communication content and activities 515 mainstream media  518–519   Zaid, Bouziane  129 Zaman, Hisham  225–226 Zelin, A. Y.  398n12 Zubaida, Sami  59 Zuckerman, N.  250n4

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