Dr Mark Allen Peterson contrasts the Egyptian mediascape in 2011 with its Iranian counterpart in 1979 and concludes that, unlike Iran, Egypt is unlikely to revert to a pre-revolutionary status quo which included state domination of the media.

Dr Ramy Aly argues that Egypt's revolutionary moment is a golden opportunity to abandon old media practices that deprived many sectors of society of a media voice and privileged a narrow and elitist concept of what it means to be Egyptian.

El Mustapha Lahlali takes a close look at the rhetorical devices by which both Ben Ali and Mubarak tried to retain power when they addressed their nations at critical junctures during the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings.

Alice Hlidkova reports on the state of the media in Iraqi Kurdistan, where the reality does not always live up to the ideals promulgated by those who run the autonomous region.

Courtney C. Radsch discusses the interplay between the economic benefits of good communications, the willingness of Arab regimes to close down the Internet and mobile phone networks when they think their survival is at stake, and the role of multinational companies in the region.

Michael Oghia and Helen Indelicato research Internet ownership in key Arab countries, noting the differences in the extent of state control and in the levels of private and foreign investment in the infrastructure.

Dr Sahar Khamis and Katherine Vaughn give a comprehensive overview of the role of new media in the overthrow of Mubarak and wonders whether the same tools will enable activists to keep up the pressure for change during what could a lengthy transitional period.

Al Jazeera English is campaigning for greater access to the US market, building on positive publicity about its coverage of the Egyptian revolution. But research by William Youmans and Katie Brown suggests that substantial prejudice against AJE persists among segments of the American public, even after they are exposed to its coverage.

Heba Elsayed argues that young members of Cairo's lower middle classes, because of their ability to negotiate for themselves a heterogeneous cosmopolitanism dependent upon local repertoires yet also drawing on global discourses, are more deserving of the cosmopolitan label than their upper-class counterparts.

Leah Caldwell examines coverage of 'development' by the privately owned Syrian daily al-Watan and finds that it is always discussed in a tightly controlled framework where a handful of participants are allowed to participate and determine exactly what or who needs to be developed.