Arab Media & Society

Although the book is poorly rendered into English, Gertz and Khleifi offer an insightful look into Palestinian film and draw an important link between art and politics in Palestinian society, says Sonia Rosen.

This volume is a welcome start to the long-overdue project of challenging stereotypes of the Gulf as a backward, tribal culture that has been overwhelmed by global cosmopolitanism, argues Reviews Editor Samer Abboud.

Jabbar al-Obaidi’s typology of the region’s media is a valuable contribution, writes John Measor, but imprecise analysis and failure to engage with existing scholarship undermines the work as a whole.

Massad’s work on Arab sexuality in literature and media in reference to Said’s Orientalism will no doubt promote fruitful discussions, says Stephanie Tara Schwartz.

Hamid Dabashi gives “blood and bone” to the lives and predicaments of Iran’s filmmakers. Yet his conceptions of “realism” seem to be surrogates for aesthetic judgments, argues Farouk Mitha.

Side-by-side renderings of Arabic articles and their English translations make the book useful for students and researchers, yet crude generalizations and culturalist arguments deflect from Kedar’s analytical contributions, argues Book Review Editor Samer Abboud.

Drawing on Sakr’s deep and sophisticated industry expertise, the book is a must-read for anyone interested in the political economy of the Arab television industry, writes Youssef Masrieh.

Flagg Miller’s The Moral Resonance of Arab Media remains at a rarefied, theoretical level, but bears ample rewards for advanced students of Arabic literature, media studies, communication anthropology and public sphere studies, writes Zuzanna Olszewska.

Instant Nationalism contains a wealth of material and a useful set of questions to be explored in further studies of transnational media in the Middle East and the shaping of regional public perception and political action, argues Becky Schulthies.

Journalism in Iran and Media, Culture and Society in Iran will help academic and general audiences navigate between simplistic ‘reformist versus hardliner’ narratives by bringing social science perspectives to bear on the historical development and contemporary diversity of Iran’s media, writes Managing Editor Will Ward.

“Shafik shows that cinema has enabled filmmakers and viewers to go through cathartic exercises to express dissatisfaction, grief, imaginary empowerment and solidarity, and argues that this artistic channel is especially important because Egypt lacks an adequate civil society,” writes Nesreen Khashan.

Josh Rushing’s Mission Al Jazeera is cookie-cutter "celebrity bio" whose analysis of Al Jazeera and other Arab media developments relies heavily on other scholars, says Tom Scudder.

“While many contributors present fresh ethnographic research and �their weak arguments, inconclusive results and poor editing undermine the collection as a whole,” argues Anna Swank in her review of Arab Media and Political Renewal: Community, Legitimacy and Public Life.

Steve Tatham makes a strong contribution to correcting the record on Al Jazeera, especially in the wake of the negative publicity directed against the channel by American officials after September 11th and during the continuing war in Iraq, says Laura Smith in her review of Losing Arab Hearts and Minds: The Coalition, Al-Jazeera and Muslim Public Opinion.

Cairo Cosmopolitan sets the tone and the standard for future work on the relationship between Cairo’s people and its urban space, yet it remains to be seen whether the broadly-conceived 'Cairo School’ will be taken as a bold new direction in urban studies, argues Managing Editor Will Ward.

Kabha’s work falls well short of its considerable promise to chart the influence of Arabic news media on the evolution of the Palestinian National Movement in the tumultuous years that culminated in the Revolt of 1936-39, argues Aaron Jakes in his review of The Palestinian Press as Shaper of Public Opinion, 1929-1939: Writing Up a Storm.

Lina Khatib laments the fact that “the number of studies on the way the Middle East represents itself cinematically � is infinitesimal.” Yet because Khatib does not pursue this much-needed study herself in a field where there are already a number of survey-type works, she misses a valuable opportunity to engage with the Arab cinema on a deeper level of analysis, argues Refqa Abu-Remaileh.

The methodological shortcomings and scarce editing make this book a frustrating read. The lessons to be taken from this book regard the challenges facing Arab media studies as much as those facing Arab media, argues Contributing Editor Sune Haugbolle.

Readers of American Encounters will be heartened by the reminder that — regardless of the administration or specific policy — there remain elements in the U.S. foreign policy establishment dedicated to engaging with Arab audiences and keeping avenues of communication open, argues Will Ward.

With Riverbend’s blog, no longer is the reader limited to news reports from major networks or White House press conferences: the blog phenomena and particularly that of Riverbend and her blogging peers represents an uncensored real-time account of war, politics, and the perils of neo-imperialism, says Alexandra Izabela Jerome.