Week 1
Introduction and Course overview: general characteristics of Arab media systems
Reading
Selected readings from:
Rugh, William, “ Arab mass media: newspapers, radio, and television in Arab politics,” Praeger, Westport, 1-27.
Week 2
Transnational Broadcasting in the Arab world: historical overview (1960s-1980s)
Reading
Selected readings from:
Boyd, Douglas “ Broadcasting in the Arab world (a survey of electronic media in the Middle East)”, Iowa State University Press/Ames 3rd edition, 1999, 15-54.
Abu-Lughod, Lila “Islam and public culture. The politics of Egyptian television serials”, Middle East Report, January-February, 1993, 25-30.
Watching
Selected clips from Egyptian films
Week 3
Transnational Broadcasting in the Arab world: rise of Pan Arab networks (1990s-2010s)
Reading
Selected readings from:
Mellor, Noha; Rinnawi, Khalil; Dajani, Nabil & Ayish, Muhammad I. “ Arab Media: Globalization and Emerging Media Industries”, Polity Press, 2011
Sakr, Naomi, “Arab Television today”, I.B. Tauris, 2007
Watching
Selected clips from Pan Arab channels
Week 4
The Political Economy of Arab media: Ownership and Media Moguls
Reading
Selected readings from:
Della Ratta, Sakr, Skovgaard-Petersen (eds) “Arab Media Moguls”, I.B . Tauris 2015
Sakr, Naomi “Satellite realms. Transnational Television, Globalization & the Middle East”, I.B. Tauris, 2001
Week 5
Al Jazeera and the all-news revolution
Reading
Selected readings from:
Lynch, Marc “Voices of the new Arab public. Iraq, al Jazeera, and Middle East Politics today”, Columbia University Press 2007
Zayani, Mohamed and Sahraoui, Sofiane “The culture of Al Jazeera: inside an Arab media giant”, McFarland and Company, 2007
Watching
Selected clips from Al Jazeera's shows and news items; “The control room” (2004)
Week 6
Entertainment & TV Fiction in Arab Television
Reading
Selected readings from:
Kraidy, Marwan and Khalil, Joe “Arab media industries”, Palgrave, MacMillan, 2009
Kraidy, Marwan “Reality television and Arab politics. Contention in public life”, Cambridge University Press, 2010
Watching
Selected clips from entertainment programs and TV series
Week 7
Recap and Midterm exam
Week 8
Part I. A Changing Media Landscape in the post Arab Spring: news coverage, social media, and citizen journalism
Reading
Selected readings from:
Kraidy, Marwan, “The naked blogger of Cairo”, Harvard University Press 2016
al-Ghazzi, Omar “Citizen Journalism in the Syrian uprising: problematizing Western narratives in a local context”, Communication Theory, 2014
Snowdon, Peter, “The revolution will be uploaded: Vernacular Video and the Arab Spring”, Culture Unbound 6, (2014): 401–429.
Watching
Selected coverage of the Arab Spring by Arabic all news channels and citizen journalists; “The square” (2013)
Week 9
Part II. A Changing Media Landscape in the post Arab Spring: Real-time TV Drama, from terrorism to the refugee crisis
Reading
Della Ratta, Donatella “Making Real-Time Drama: The Political Economy of Cultural Production in Syria’s Uprising”, The Annenberg School for Communication, Pennsylvania University, PARGC Press, PARGC Paper 2, Fall 2014
Della Ratta, Donatella “Dramas of the authoritarian state,” Middle East Report online, February, 2012
Salamandra, Christa “Prelude to an uprising: Syrian fictional television and socio-political critique”, Jadaliyya, May 17, 2012
Watching
Selected clips from post-2011 TV series
Week 10
Part I: Armed groups and terrorist organizations as media actors: from Al Qaeda to Isis
Reading
Winter, Charlie “Media Jihad: The Islamic State's Doctrine for Information Warfare”, Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2017
Della Ratta, Donatella “ISIL and Western media: accidental allies?”, Al Jazeera English , 25 September 2014
Watching
Selected clips from al-Qaeda and ISIS propaganda (graphic material won't be shown)
Week 11
Part II: Armed groups and terrorist organizations as media actors: from Al Qaeda to Isis
Reading
Della Ratta, Donatella “Fighting ISIL through TV drama: the case of Black Crows”, Al Jazeera English, 19 June 2017
Khader, Jamil “On ISIL, Arab TV and post-ideological politics”, Al Jazeera English, 22 June 2017
Atran, Scott “ISIS is a revolution”, AEON, 2015
Watching
Selected clips from anti-extremism Arab TV series (“Beautiful Maidens” 2005, “Black Crows”, 2017), anti-ISIS Ramadan campaign from Zain (2017)
Week 12
Library workshop and classroom quiz
Week 13
Documentaries and independent filmmaking in the Arab world
Reading
Selected readings from Dickinson, Kay “Arab Cinema Travels: Transnational Syria, Palestine, Dubai and beyond”, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016
Della Ratta, Donatella “The unbearable lightness of images: unfinished thoughts on filming in contemporary Syria”, Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, Volume 10, Issue 1-2, 2017.
Tarnowski, Stefan “What have we been watching? What have we been watching?”, Bidayyat, 2017
Watching
Selected clips from post-2011 independent documentaries from Syria, Egypt, Palestine; “The pixelated Revolution” (2012) Silvered Water : Syria's self portrait (2014)
Week 14
Paper presentations
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