The online journal Arab Media & Society has published its new issue that discusses the state of post-Arab Spring media and journalism. All included articles are available online or in the PDF format for download. Arab Media & Society, formerly TBS Journal, is a joint project of The Center for Electronic Journalism at the American University in Cairo and the Centre for Middle East Studies at St. Antony’s College, Oxford.

The book investigates the role of newspapers and television in news provision and the impact of new media developments, most especially the emergence of the internet as a platform for news distribution and of international satellite television channels such as Al Jazeera. Examining the constantly developing nature of news, the collection contains separately authored chapters produced by the researchers responsible for each original analysis, covering Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Oman, Qatar, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

This book explores the body and the production process of popular culture in, and on, the Middle East and North Africa, Turkey, and Iran in the first decade of the 21st century, and up to the current historical moment. Essays consider gender, racial, political, and cultural issues in film, cartoons, music, dance, photo-tattoos, graphic novels, fiction, and advertisements. Contributors to the volume span an array of specializations ranging across literary, postcolonial, gender, media, and Middle Eastern studies and contextualize their views within a larger historical and political moment, analyzing the emergence of a popular expression in the Middle East and North Africa region in recent years, and drawing conclusions pertaining to the direction of popular culture within a geopolitical context.

The Dubai School of Government in cooperation with the online recruitment website Bayt.com released its white paper The Arab World Online: Trends in Internet Usage in the Arab Region, co-authored by Sara Alshaer and Fadi Salem. The report is based on a survey conducted with residents from 22 countries in March 2013.

The book analyzes the exercise of British ‘soft power’ through the BBC’s foreign language services, and the diplomatic role played by their diasporic broadcasters. The book offers the first historical and comparative analysis of the ‘corporate cosmopolitanism’ that has characterized the work of the BBC’s international services since the inception of its Empire Service in 1932 – from radio to the Internet.