The Shifting Arab Media Landscape After the Arab Spring and COVID-19
Please join CCAS Georgetown for this hybrid event featuring visiting research fellow, Dr. Sahar Khamis to discuss her research followed by a Q&A moderated by Dr. Fida Adely (Associate Professor of Anthropology; Clovis and Hala Salaam Maksoud Chair in Arab Studies, CCAS Georgetown).
About the Event: As a scholar of Arab media, Dr. Khamis’ research has been hugely influenced by the “Arab Spring” moment of 2011, and all its wide-ranging effects and implications on political change, in general, and press freedom, in particular, in the Arab region, with a special focus on the phenomenon of “cyberactivism,” or how social media could be deployed to instigate, proliferate, and stimulate socio-political transformation in the Arab world.
This event will focus on where Dr. Khamis’ research stands ten years past the 2011 uprisings as well as in the wake of the effect of COVID-19 on media in the region. The post-Arab Spring media scene is highly reflective of the derailment of the process of democratization in all the “post-Arab Spring countries” with the unique exception of Tunisia. This is clearly exemplified in the harsh governmental crackdowns on the regimes’ opponents, including activists, journalists, and intellectuals, which has only been exacerbated by the global pandemic. This talk will discuss the shifting media landscape in the Arab world marked by “cyberwars” with each party enhancing its learning curve and sharpening its tools, both online and offline. Dr. Khamis will present her findings regarding the way in which media use has moved from a stage of “digital euphoria” to “cyber- authoritarianism” over the past decade.
Dr. Sahar Khamis is a visiting research fellow at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University for the 2021-22 academic year. Dr. Khamis is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and an Affiliate Professor of Women’s Studies and the Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is an expert on Arab and Muslim media, and the former Head of the Mass Communication Department at Qatar University. She is a former Mellon Islamic Studies Initiative Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago in 2014 and a former Visiting Scholar at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania in 2015. She is the co-author of Islam Dot Com: Contemporary Islamic Discourses in Cyberspace (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and Egyptian Revolution 2.0: Political Blogging, Civic Engagement and Citizen Journalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and the co-editor of the book Arab Women’s Activism and Socio-Political Transformation: Unfinished Gendered Revolutions (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Dr. Khamis is a frequent international media commentator and analyst, a public speaker, a radio host, and a former human rights commissioner.
This is a hybrid event. Attendance in-person is limited to 35 people who are active students, faculty, or staff at Georgetown University. All other attendees may join virtually via Zoom. The in-person event will take place in the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies Boardroom (ICC 241). Please email mcf77@georgetown.edu with any questions or requests for accommodation.