2011 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 20,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Muslim Brotherhood Moves Into Mainstream Media
Until the resignation of Hosni Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood was a banned organization with little media presence outside the Internet. Now they are moving into mainstream media in an effort to reach out to wider audiences.
Until the uprisings, Islamic media was dominated by salafis. Because salafi groups eschewed politics and supported the status quo, the Mubarak regime allowed them to establish several satellite pushing extremely narrow views of Islamic orthodoxy and promotong rigid forms of Islamic practice.
The Muslim Brotherhood benefited from these programs because although salafis were hostile to the brotherhood–which it represented as too worldly–they were the only organized political force to offer an Islamic perspective.
Now that the salafis have their own political parties–and have done better than the liberal parties–the Brotherhood is launching its own media empire.
It started in May when the Muslim Brotherhood launched Misr25, a satellite television channel under Hazem Ghorab, a former Al-Jazeera producer. The channel offers talk shows and other programs of general interest, but emphasizes news. There are three news shows, a continuous rolling news ticker, and a five minute news update at the top of each hour.
Unlike its salafi rivals, it has some women reporters and anchors; unlike its secular rivals, they wear the Brotherhood interpretation of Islamic dress–the higab and long-sleveed, loose-fitting dresses.
Then Al-Horriya wa Al-Adala (Freedom and Justice), the official newspaper of the Muslim Brotherhood, began publishing Friday, October 28 under general manager editor Mohamed Mostafa and editor-in-chief is Adel Al Ansari.
Many–the Brotherhood claims a majority–of the journalists both on TV and in print are not members of the Muslim Brotherhood or its political party. They adhere, however, to a strict code of “appropriateness,” especially in choices of images.
Both media emphasize the need for stability, and the dangers posed by “anarchists” who want to undermine the state. The are scathing of critics of the Muslim Brotherhood, usually depicting them as acting in bad faith rather than treating them as having an honest difference of opinion.
In addition to its salafist rivals, the establishment of Muslim Brotherhood political media parallels that of the the Free Egyptians Party and Wafd Party. The founder to the latter, Naguib Sawiris, owns ONTV, while Wafdist leader Al-Sayed al-Badawy owns the Hayat channel.
Unlike these, though, Misr25 is funded by a large pool of small investors–mostly members of the Brotherhood, of course. Their models, they claim, are BBC (UK), NHK (Japan), and NPR (US). [I can’t wait to see the pledge drives…]
This trend is not a new effort for the Muslim Brotherhood, but rather a return to its previous practices. Under the British Colonial occupation the Brotherhood issued Majallat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin and other publications.They continued to issue print media even under the censorship of Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s by releasing them under other names with various figurehead publishers. They returned to publishing under their own imprint after Anwar Sadat allowed the group to operate openly again.
Under the censorship of the Mubarak regime, the group moved their publishing to cyberspace, launching its official Ikhwan Online web site in 2001, and following it with an English language version, IkhwanWeb in 2006.
Resources
Statement about the new Freedom and Justice newspaper on Ikhwanweb
Analyzing Military Statements as Performance
General Emara at a press conference. Photo: Al-Masry Al-Youm
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There is a superb account of the military council’s recent press conference, viewed as a performance, in Al-Masry Al-Youm.
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Entitled “The subtext of the military council’s video ‘evidence’” by Rime Naguib, the gist of the article is this:
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In the speech, the protesters were characterized as thugs, infiltrators or agents paid for by a mysterious force that seeks to destroy Egypt. The general’s warnings were framed as coming from an ordinary Egyptian citizen who is concerned for Egypt and the “prestigeof the state”rather than a member of the ruling military council.
The video shown by Emara was meant to support the SCAF’s narrative: to prove that it was the demonstrators who were on the offensive, trying to break into the parliament building and set aflame the Egyptian Scientific Institute, allegedly for no reason other than to wreck havoc and tarnish the image of the army, as dictated by the invisible hand.
But the article not only describes the content of the videos used by General Emara to make his points,it situates them within the context of the press conference, Gen. Emara’s introduction and commentary on them, and the reactions of the audience to them.
You can read the entire 2400-word account here.
Talking About a Revolution: Oxford University Plans 2012 Conference
Talkin' 'bout a revolution, well you know... We all want to change the world
Oxford University’s Department of Politics and International Relations is calling for a conference May 18-19 2012 to be called “The Egyptian Revolution, One Year On: Causes, Characteristics and Fortunes.”
The convenor, Dr. Reem Abou-El-Fadl, issued a call for papers, with abstracts due Jan. 31st.
Scope and Aims:
The popular uprising of the 25 January 2011 launched a revolution in Egypt that captured observers’ imagination worldwide, and whose reverberations continue to be felt throughout the Middle East, as well as in the world’s major capitals. The year 2012 will see scholarly communities worldwide mark the first anniversary of this extraordinary development. This Conference aims for Oxford University to be the meeting point, at the juncture of one year on, for a consideration of the causes, characteristics, and fortunes of the January Revolution.
Continuity and Change(?) In State Media
Middle East News Agency: How the Egyptian state talks to the Egyptian people.
Under the old regime, the state communicated to the people via state media, state television in particular. In spite of Egypt’s dramatic social and political changes, state television continues to play that role. But the medium is perhaps not as unidirectional as it used to be.
I was thinking about this today as I skimmed the Egyptian newspapers. The first story that caught my attention involved the statements Sunday Dec. 25th by Mansour Hassan, head of the civilian advisory council to SCAF, explaining why presidential elections and handover of power to a civilian government could not be accomplished by Jan. 25th, as demanded by many protesters.
Mansour–whose council is supposed to represent the populace view to the military council–did not call a general press conference, at which he would have had to answer questions, contextualize his remarks and perhaps be challenged. Instead, he spoke to the state-owned Middle East News Agency (MENA), and let them redistribute his comments to the various state, opposition and independent news media.
For the state, the existence of unidirectional distribution of media has always been a boon, allowing them a linear, one-way mode of communication from the state to the populace, with none of the messiness of dialogue or conversation.
On the other hand, another story made me think about the nature of the changes in Egyptian media, and question whether state media is as impervious to public response as it used to be.
Egypt Elections Explained: An Infographic from Al Jazeera English
The Egyptian elections–occurring in phases, employing a dual electoral system of party and majoritarian selection, and requiring candidates to identify as professionals or workers (with quotas for each category)–is difficult to explain to non-Egyptians (or even to many Egyptians, for that matter). The graphic below, from Al-Jazeera offers one of the best overviews of the process I’ve ever seen.
In Egypt, Who Sees Viral Videos?
The video above went viral. It was seen by millions of people, in Egypt and abroad, and perceived by many as a “game-changer” in the struggle between the military council and the protesters.
But to be a game changer it has to be seen by tens of millions of Egyptians. It has to shock, anger and disgust them so that they come to recognize that the Army, as a stabilizing force,
A man holds up a copy of Al-Tahrir, one of the independent newspapers that reported the incident.
is a dangerous force capable of exhibiting real contempt for Egyptian citizens and the values they hold dear.
Are “the masses” sharing this video? Is it circulating in the media nodes in which most Egyptians live?
The independent media—newspapers like Al-Masry Al-Youm, Al-Yawm al-Sabeh, Al-Tahrir, and Al-Shurouq–have reported in detail on the incident captured in the video and reactions to it, both domestically (the women’s march) and internationally (Secretary Clinton’s angry speech denouncing military violence against civilians). And the clip is all over the blogosphere and social media networks.
But state media has reported in the most perfunctory way on the incident and focused instead on footage reportedly shows an attack against the Parliamentary building housing the people’s council and the torching of a number of governmental buildings.
Check It Out: What’s What In Egypt…
There’s a new section in the Resources page of this web site.
“What’s What” offers an alphabetical listing of Egyptian institutions, some of which are mentioned in Connected in Cairo, some in this blog, but mostly those which have played a prominent role in the Egyptian uprisings.
As of this posting, it contains 127 entries, from political parties to activist organizations to cultural institutions to media.
This page offers an alphabetical listing of Egyptian institutions initially created by Sarah Sterner, an International Studies major and Arabic minor at Miami University, as part of an independent study course with me on the Egyptian uprisings.
Check It Out: Who’s Who In Egypt…
There’s a new section in the Resources page of this web site.
“Who’s Who” offers an alphabetical listing of prominent people in Egypt, who are mentioned in Connected in Cairo, this blog, or who have otherwise played a prominent role in the Egyptian uprisings.
As of this posting, it contains 141 entries, from politicians to activists to musicians and artists to movie stars.
It was compiled initially by Mikaela Ashley, an International Studies major at Miami University, as part of her independent study with me on the Egyptian uprisings this semester.
And there’s more to come from my other highly productive students…
The Arab Spring in North Africa: Special Journal Issue
Yet another scholarly journal is offering a special issue on the “Arab Spring”, this time the interdisciplinary Journal of North African Studies.
The issue offers a short introduction by George Joffé (Cambridge), who explains that the special issue “is an early attempt to contribute to the growing debate about what these events may eventually mean.”
He explains:
Early ideas of a ‘domino effect’ have now been set aside, for it is clear that some attempts to transform regimes through peaceful mass demonstration have ended in tragedy, whilst others have been adroitly managed by the regimes they challenged. And, in at least three cases – Libya, Yemen and Syria – peaceful challenges to established governments have been met with the full force of state violence, whilst in the Gulf monarchic conservatism has ensured political stasis. Instead, it has become evident that the demonstrations themselves were merely the prologues to complex and lengthy processes of transition that may take years to be completed, in which positive outcomes are not inevitable.
North Africa, he points out, offers a useful site for case study since all four of these alternatives have emerged in one part of the Maghreb or another.
The other articles, and their abstracts, are as follows:
Joffé, George. 2011. The Arab Spring in North Africa: origins and prospects. Pages: 507-532.
The insurgencies in Tunisia and Egypt – the Jasmine and the Tahrir Revolutions – seemed to offer great hope of the outbreak of democratic change in the Middle East and North Africa in what has come to be called the ‘Arab Spring’. However, the civil war in Libya and the ongoing crises in Yemen and Syria suggest that overall regional change may prove to be more difficult to achieve. In fact there are quite specific reasons why insurgencies occurred in three North African states and not in the remaining two states and why their outcomes have been so different. The causes for the insurgency are similar – they lie in the global economic crisis and in the neo-patrimonial political natures of regional states – but the outcomes differ because two of the states concerned were liberalising autocracies and the third – Libya – had resolutely rejected any political or social domestic competitors to its hegemonic political discourse and practice. Even the liberalised autocracies face very different futures for, in Tunisia a whole system has been removed whilst in Egypt, the regime rejected its figurehead in order to preserve the regime itself. Ironically enough, the authorities in Tunisia attempted a similar course of action but were unable to impose themselves on the revolution that had occurred.
CONNECTED in CAIRO 