"Audience segmentation is generally associated with strategic communication (such as advertising and public relations), where content is manipulated to suit reader preferences. News has generally been considered truth-telling unvarnished by such concerns. This article compares how news of the same h
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umanitarian crisis [in Darfur, Sudan] was designed by 10 news organizations in seven countries for different market segments. Comparisons showed statistically significant differences in representation, influenced in part by what the audience-market was. Like advertising, news seemed to share an attribute with the strategic design of advertising and public relations. Increasingly carried online, news will be vulnerable to click-based customization of content like advertising is, taking us beyond currently observed geopolitical influences on segmentation to advertiser and market-based differences." (Abstract)
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"This study analyses the coverage of the 2011 Egyptian protests provided by Al Ahram (Egypt), Arab News (Saudi Arabia), China Daily (China), Guardian International (UK), International Herald Tribune (USA) and Jerusalem Post (Israel), with regard to the type and intensity of the coverage, potential s
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hifts in tunes and interaction with some types of social media. The results show the large role played by national policies and diplomatic relations as well as prevailing news themes in determining the type and intensity of coverage provided. Geographic proximity was also found to be an important factor in influencing coverage. Moreover, a shift in tune, although not significant, was found in the coverage of Al Ahram and Arab News. Finally, the study found that journalists demonstrated a clear preference for citing conventional rather than social media sources in their stories." (Abstract)
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"This article deals with the increasing connections among the Tunisian diaspora and its homeland provided by a widespread use of the social Web. The main aim is to evaluate to what extent the Tunisian diaspora has contributed to a wider diffusion of cyberactivism concerning legitimate claims for dem
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ocracy and human rights, considered as one of the main driving forces behind the 2011 revolution. After introducing some epistemological and methodological issues related to the study of the Web, the paper deepens the history of Tunisian migrants’ online activism in order to grasp connections with the later configuration of the cyberdissidence in the homeland. The last section is dedicated to interpretation of the graphs, in order to compare the research hypothesises with the results stemming from the e-Diaspora project methodology." (Abstract)
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"This article investigates the phenomenon of the Egyptian diaspora through an innovative approach based on the analysis of digital activity and the presence of Egyptian connected migrants. Following the methodology of the e-Diasporas project, we found a scarcely connected network of websites, with a
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large number of isolated nodes, little clusterisation and no authorities or hubs. The fact that the traditional approach of the e-diaspora gave few results prompted us to follow a new research strategy combining data from Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. In particular, thanks to the coincidence with the Egyptian revolt, we could investigate the mobilisation of Egyptian migrants for their voting rights on the micro-blogging platform Twitter. Through Twitter data, we identified links that were not visible through traditional Web mapping techniques and we could observe the emergence of a transnational Egyptian community debating and fighting for a common cause." (Abstract)
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"The Report is composed of four thematic parts. Part 1 describes the conceptual framework and relates the findings of the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) 2012. In addition, Part 1 features selected expert contributions on the general theme of hyperconnectivity. Part 2 includes two case studies showi
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ng the efforts that two countries, Azerbaijan and Mauritius, are making to develop ICT and fully leverage their potential benefits. Part 3 comprises detailed profiles for the 142 economies covered in this year’s Report, providing a thorough picture of each economy’s current networked readiness landscape and allowing for international comparisons of specific variables or components of the NRI. Part 4 includes data tables for each of the 53 variables composing the NRI, with rankings for the economies covered as well as technical notes and sources for the quantitative variables used." (Executive summary, page xi)
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"This report reviews the situation in which media operate in the Middle East, specifically in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, and also including a short section on Tunisia [...] Part 1 explores the historical development of the media in the region, outlines their structural environment, and
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probes practices of censorship and self-censorship. Part 2 looks into those developments of the past decades that have affected the monopoly on information by states and the access to information on the part of the public. Part 3 critically examines the function of guidelines for good journalistic practices in the region, and provides some samples of codes of ethics. Part 4 presents an overview of the recent situation of the media and freedom of expression in the region and provides some historical background. In general, this part seeks to survey the existing media, including the press, radio and television, the Internet, as well as media legislation in the individual countries. Due to specific local circumstances, some of the country sections are however structured in a slightly different manner. Part 5 compiles select training opportunities for journalists, as well as organizations and projects that are committed to networking, monitoring, advocacy and legal aid." (Foreword, page 8)
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"This report evaluates the risks and vulnerabilities of mobile phone services and apps in 12 specified countries: the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Republic of Belarus, the People’s Republic of China, the Arab Republic of Egypt, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Libya, the Sultanate of Oman, the Kingdom
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of Saudi Arabia, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Tunisian Republic, the Republic of Uzbekistan, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Rather than focus on a single innovation, this study analyzes multiple mobile technologies – including operating systems, applications and mobile protocols – to determine their capacity to protect security and privacy and to combat censorship and surveillance. Throughout this study the protection of mobile phone users was of paramount importance." (Executive summary)
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"This publication seeks to identify the relationship between freedom of expression and Internet privacy, assessing where they support or compete with each other in different circumstances. The publication maps out the issues in the current regulatory landscape of Internet privacy from the viewpoint
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of freedom of expression. It provides an overview of legal protection, self-regulatory guidelines, normative challenges, and case studies relating to the topic." (Foreword, page 5)
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"This book, via an analysis of cinema, provides a discussion on some misunderstandings and assumptions about Algeria, which remains to a large extent underrepresented or misrepresented in the UK media. It is about Algerian national cinema and illuminates the ways in which the official mythologising
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of a national culture at the 'centre' of the postcolonial state has marginalised the diverse identities within the nation. 'Tahia ya didou' occupies a pivotal position between fiction and documentary, capturing the hectic modernization of the Boumediene era while reflecting back on the aftermath of historical trauma. 'La Citadelle presents' gender differences as culturally engrained and patriarchal power as secure. 'Youcef', 'Bab El-Oued City' and 'Rome plutôt que vous' present differing visions of how a Freudian melancholia in the shadow of a crushed revolt might relate to Algerian experience after Black October. 'Lettre à ma soeur' listens to the voices of the subaltern; the film is a sense of re-emergence that follows the initial insurgency of Nabila's activism, the trauma of her killing and the subsequent years of silence and self-imposed incarceration.
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"An extraordinary wave of popular protest swept the Arab world in 2011. Massive popular mobilization brought down long-ruling leaders in Tunisia and Egypt, helped spark bloody struggles in Bahrain, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, and fundamentally reshaped the nature of politics in the region. New media -
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at least that which uses bit.ly linkages - did not appear to play a significant role in either in-country collective action or regional diffusion during this period. This lack of impact does not mean that social media.or digital media generally were unimportant. Nor does it preclude the possibility that other new media technologies were significant in these contexts, or even that different Twitter or link data would show different results. But it does mean that at least in terms of media that use bit.ly links (especially Twitter), data do not provide strong support for claims of significant new media impact on Arab Spring political protests. New media outlets that use bit.ly are more likely to spread information outside the region than inside it, acting like a megaphone more than a rallying cry. This dissemination could be significant if it led to a boomerang effect that brought international pressure to bear on autocratic regimes, or helped reduce a regimefs tendency to crack down violently on protests. It is increasingly difficult to separate new media from old media. In the Arab Spring, the two reinforced each other. New media must be understood as part of a wider information arena in which new and old media form complex interrelationships. Of the four major Arab Spring protests analyzed - Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Bahrain - large differences were found across the four in the amount of information consumed via social media. The events in Egypt and in Libya (#jan25 and #feb17, respectively) garnered many more clicks on a much larger number of URLs than those in Tunisia and Bahrain." (Summary, page 3)
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This report analyzes the most important trends of two recent major laws aimed at regulating free speech and media issues in Tunisia: Decree 115 of 2011 (Decree 115/2011), on the Press, Printing and Publishing, and Decree 116 of 2011 (Decree 116/2011), on the Freedom of Audiovisual Communication and
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the Creation of a Supreme Independent Body of Audiovisual Communication, both dated 2 November 2011.
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"This report is the third in a series of comprehensive studies of internet freedom around the globe and covers developments in 47 countries that occurred between January 2011 and May 2012. Over 50 researchers, nearly all based in the countries they analyzed, contributed to the project by researching
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laws and practices relevant to the internet, testing the accessibility of select websites, and interviewing a wide range of sources. This year's findings indicate that restrictions on internet freedom in many countries have continued to grow, though the methods of control are slowly evolving, becoming more sophisticated and less visible. Brutal attacks against bloggers, politically motivated surveillance, proactive manipulation of web content, and restrictive laws regulating speech online are among the diverse threats to internet freedom emerging over the past two years. Nevertheless, several notable victories have also occurred as a result of greater activism by civil society, technology companies, and independent courts, illustrating that efforts to advance internet freedom can yield results." (www.freedomhouse.org, January 14, 2013)
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"This article investigates what the news says about inequity-driven civil wars and economic underdevelopment. Dewey argued that the lack of causal knowledge that distinguishes between symptoms and root causes would limit potential effective and transformative public action. Political scientists have
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demonstrated that increases in just the number of news stories about a foreign country in both US print and TV news in one year produced a clearly significant relationship to increases in commitments of US foreign aid the following year. This study of reporting on a 2003-2005 African crisis by ten news organizations over 26 months found few articles predominantly focused on causes against conditions on the ground or remedies. It raises questions about the conditions under which news organizations might be expected to provide causal knowledge and when such information can lead to more enlightened long term aid for national transformation." (Abstract)
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"This study examines the Egyptian revolt of January/February 2011 from two discrete perspectives. The first perspective is a contextual marker that takes into account long-term and forecast trends in democracy from 1952 through 2011. The second perspective reports the opinions and viewpoints of Egyp
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tian citizens living in a remote fishing village and resort town through impromptu in-person interviews conducted between 23 and 30 January 2011. The statistical findings evidence that the Internet and mobile phones have helped to facilitate sociopolitical instability and democratic change over time, while the personal interviews paradoxically suggest circumspection in making generalizations about how these events have proceeded across a large population and through a period of tightly suppressed communication when Internet access was shut down. Taken together, characterizing the events in Egypt as having been just a social media revolution therefore appears to misrepresent the evolution of political change in the country through this time period." (Abstract)
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"The Tunisian media is still a venue for manipulation, intimidation, and bias. Media outlets are becoming the main stage for the fierce political and ideological battle between the country’s opposing camps: conservative Islamists and secular elitists. Ennahda, the Islamist winner of the first free
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elections in the history of this deeply secular country, gradually awakened to the ongoing influence of the national media and turned to old regime tactics. The Islamist party and its supporters are raising their voices against what they view as the “leftist lobbies” that are turning the media into a weapon against government policies. The true liberalization of the media sector will be impossible without the training that instills professional standards in the industry and helps members of the Tunisian media overcome entrenched habits. Guaranteeing journalists a degree of job security must also be a priority. As long as working conditions remain a concern and journalists are unable to secure decent contracts with reasonable stability and salaries, the quality of content will not be a priority." (Summary, page 1)
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