Media Evolution on the Eve of the Arab Spring

Leila Hudson is Associate Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and Associate Director of the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Arizona, USA. An anthropologist and historian, she researches and teaches on popular culture, conflict, gender and political economy in the Arab world. She is the author of Transforming Damascus: Space and Modernity in an Islamic City (2008) and publishes in Middle East Policy and the Journal of Islamic Studies. She directs the Southwest Initiative for the Study of Middle East Conflicts (sismec.org) and the Arizona Arabic Flagship Program.

Adel Iskandar is Assistant Professor of Global Communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. His research focuses on media, identity, and politics, and he has lectured extensively on these topics worldwide. Before starting at Simon Fraser University, he taught at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and the Communication, Culture, and Technology program at Georgetown University, USA. He is the author of Egypt In Flux: Essays on an Unfinished Revolution (2013) and co-author of Al-Jazeera: The Story of the Network that is Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism.

Mimi Kirk is Research Director at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C., USA. She is co-editor of Palestine and the Palestinians in the Twenty-first Century (2013 with Rochelle Davis) and Modern Middle East Authoritarianism: Roots, Ramifications, and Crisis (2013 with Noureddine Jebnoun and Mehrdad Kia). Her writing has appeared in Middle East Report, Jadaliyya, and the Atlantic.