[FoME] Online Journal "Arab Media and Society"

[Christoph Dietz]

Arab Media & Society Launched
Online journal will cover changing media, political and cultural
landscape

The Center for Electronic Journalism at the American University in
Cairo and the Centre for Middle East Studies, St. Antony’s College,
Oxford, are pleased to announce the launch of their new electronic
journal Arab Media & Society at www.arabmediasociety.org. 

The online publication is the successor to the highly-regarded
Transnational Broadcasting Studies (www.tbsjournal.com), which has been
covering satellite broadcasting in the Middle East and broader Muslim
world for the past decade.

The move is recognition of the changing nature of the Arab media and
social landscape.

“When TBS Journal was founded two years after the launch of Al
Jazeera, satellite TV was the story. Newspapers were moribund. Internet
penetration was negligible. Media deregulation was an alien concept,”
publisher and co-editor Lawrence Pintak writes in the first issue.
“The impact of the pan-Arab satellite revolution is today felt at
every level of Arab society - and in every form of media.”

The journal will publish quarterly with frequent updates of timely
articles from scholars, researchers and journalists. 

“The Arab media scene and Arab society as a whole are changing
rapidly. The shift from a combination of print and online to a pure
online approach means we are able to offer thoughtful insights into
developments as they occur, produce more frequent thematic issues, and
include a mix of interactive features,” Pintak says in his column.

For example, the first issue includes: 

A package of six stories on blogging in the Arab world, led by an
article from Marc Lynch of Williams College, accompanied by an interview
with two Egyptian bloggers in a streaming audio format. 
A set of articles on last summer’s Lebanon war, including a piece on
women war correspondents by Magda Abu-Fadil and an article by Paul
Cochrane on how Hizbullah’s al-Manar managed to stay on the air 
Print interviews with the head of the BBC’s new Arabic news channel
and a Tunisian online magazine editor, along with an audio interview
with Daoud Kuttab, who is pioneering community radio in the Arab world 
A piece on the fate of US government broadcasting by former official of
VOA Alan Heil, Jr. 
Interactive book reviews that invite reader comment and debate 
And much more 
The site also contains real-time summaries of the Arab media, resources
such as major reports on the development of Arab media, and links to a
variety of other interesting content. 

For further information or to discuss writing for the journal, contact
Managing Editor George Weyman at ams at aucegypt.edu.