Cogitatio Press: Media and Communication Journal
The Arab Uprisings in 2011 were an exceptional moment in the MENA region: they shattered stagnation paradigms and introduced dynamism as a lens of analysis, as also proven by the second wave of protests in 2019. Media are crucial in such disruptive and self-reflective processes. Initial research on media and communication and the Arab Uprisings, which quickly subdued, highlighted the role of (social) media and mobilization, attributing to digital media a central role in the public’s empowerment and in the evasion to censorship through the networked public sphere. Scholarship did not only overemphasize the technology; it reconstructed the Arab Uprisings from a predominantly Euro- and US-centric perspective (i.e. democratization, security concerns and economic consequences). It is important to understand how media and journalism are relevant to the post-Arab Spring transformation phase.
This thematic issue invites scholars to scrutinize media within their societal, cultural and political interdependencies, beyond techno-deterministic logics, retracing interactions and negotiation processes between media, society and politics. It will develop our understanding on how media engaged with, reconsidered and re-articulated voices amid a turbulent transformation beyond the mobilization moment.
Revisiting media and the Arab Uprisings after ten years encourages critical-reflective articles and interdisciplinary modes of analysis that pay attention to both old and new media. Lines of inquiry can include, but are not limited to:
- Patterns of agency of professional and non-professional actors;
- Negotiation processes during transformation in media policies;
- Reconstruction of media discourses;
- Representation, framing and articulation of actors, shifts in structures in the media;
- Subtle dynamics of power struggles in hybrid media systems;
- Actors’ media use for defiance, coping, resistance or survival.
Contributions from the Global South are particularly welcome, to develop theorizing from (and not about) the Global South. This not only to expand the analysis beyond the Global North but also to reconstruct the disruptions while challenging normative models of media systems (Gumede, 2020).
Instructions for Authors: Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal’s instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here).
Open Access: Accepted papers will be granted Open Access and Editing fees after the peer-review and pending final budgetary approval by the Arab–German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities (agya.info).
Timeline:
Submission of Abstracts: 1-15 December 2020
Submission of Full Papers: 15-30 April 2021
Publication of the Issue: October/December 2021
For more information on Media and Communication:
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/pages/view/nextissues#ArabUprisings
Recent publications:
- Badr, H. (2020). The Egyptian Syndicate and (Digital) Journalism’s Unresolved Boundary Struggle. Digital Journalism https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2020.1799424
- Richter, C., Dupuis, I., & Badr, H. (2020). Media pushing for political transformation: A comparative analysis of issue contestation in Poland before 1989 and Egypt before 2011. International Communication Gazette. https://doi.org/10.1177/1748048520915833
- Badr, H. (2020) Egypt’s media system: historic legacies and blocked potentials for independent media. Publizistik https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11616-019-00537-8
- Badr, H. (2019). Before the ‘Arab Spring’: How challengers pushed counter-issues in Egypt’s hybrid media system. Media, War & Conflict. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750635219894611