In the first survey of its kind, Mohammed el-Nawawy and Catherine Strong study job satisfaction among journalists working for Al-Arabiya TV. They explore how the channel’s Saudi ownership and coverage of the Arab uprisings shape perceptions of editorial freedom, job security and job satisfaction, pointing to a new understanding of journalism values among news workers at pan-Arab satellite channels.

Salah Al-Nasrawi reflects on the hiring practices and work conditions of native Arab reporters employed by international media organizations with offices in the Middle East. He exposes an unregulated and often inequitable environment that stifles the development of local Arab journalism and he calls for a public debate on the issue.

Arab Media & Society editorial board members remember the life and career of journalist Anthony Shadid
The Daily Star editor-at-large Rami Khouri writes that Shadid’s gift was the blending of his craft and his conscience, his profession and his person.  CSIS Middle East Program Director Jon Alterman traces the career of a friend whose life and reporting embraced ambiguity and complexity.

The many deserved accolades and tributes to the late New York Times correspondent Anthony Shadid after his death in February were moving testaments to his life and work.[1] It was hard to count the many ways in which his friends and colleagues—and thousands of readers who never knew him personally—emphasized …

I met him before he was Anthony Shadid. In the summer of 1991, he was just a skinny kid from the University of Wisconsin with a black mustache and an easy smile. We were studying Arabic together in Cairo. He was a third-generation Lebanese-American who had learned Arabic from scratch …

Television producer Mohamed Nasser calls Egypt’s privately owned satellite channels a threat to the goals of the revolution and little better than their state-owned counterparts. He proposes a series of reforms, including legislation to separate ownership and management.

El Mustapha Lahlali examines the ideological function of lexical repetition in two political speeches of Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, illustrating the ways that Nasrallah employs this rhetorical device to further his ideological agenda and political strategies.

Mark LeVine calls this volume, edited by Karin van Nieuwkerk, a tour de force of cultural analysis of the blossoming production of religiously oriented art, music, and theater in the Muslim world. The book, he writes, will "further the interdisciplinary development of Islamic studies, cultural studies, ethnomusicology and even, it is hoped, the usually drier disciplines such as political science or sociology, both of which could certainly use a bit more rhythm and color in their methodological repertoires in the wake of the region-wide protests and revolutions in which culture has played a powerful and as yet poorly understood role."

Sahar Khamis, Paul B. Gold and Katherine Vaughn compare and contrast the role of social media in the Egyptian and Syrian uprisings, providing a comprehensive review of the tactics used by both activists and regimes. The ability of new technologies to effect political change, they argue, is determined by pre-existing social, political and communication structures.

Robert Hassan argues that high-speed social networking technology disrupts the traditional rhythms of liberal democracy which, since the Enlightenment, have been based on the slower processes of print-based culture. Digital technology, he maintains, has propelled mass political action in the Arab world, but has left in its wake a political vacuum, with democratic processes struggling to catch up.