Overview

Lebanon and Tunisia are two of the freest countries in the Middle East and North Africa, but elites in both countries seek to manipulate media organisations and individual journalists to shore up support for themselves and attack opponents. This book explores the political role of journalism in these hybrid settings where democratic and authoritarian practices co-exist a growing trend all over the world. Through interviews with journalists in different positions and analyses of key events in recent years, Journalism in the Grey Zone explains the tensions that media instrumentalisation creates in the news media and how journalists navigate conflicting pressures from powerholders and a marginalised populace. Despite 'capture' of the media by political and economic actors, journalism remains a powerful and occasionally disruptive force.

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9781399515825

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This book is a unique contribution based on interesting, primary analyses of the news apparatuses in two important Arab countries. It is valuable not only to scholars of Arab media, but also to researchers studying the realities of politically fragile states, or states transitioning from authoritarianism to democracy. --Mohamad Hamas Elmasry, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies

Author Information

Kjetil Selvik is Research Professor in the research group on Peace, Conflict and Development at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. He is co-author with Stig Stenslie of Stability and Change in the Modern Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2011) and co-editor with B.O. Utvik of Oil States in the New Middle East: Uprisings and Stability (Routledge, 2016). Jacob Høigilt is Head of Research, Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, and Professor of Arabic Language and Culture at the University of Oslo. He is the author of Comics in Contemporary Arab Culture: Politics, Language and Resistance (I. B. Tauris, 2019) and Islamist Rhetoric: Language and Culture in Contemporary Egypt (Routledge, 2011). He is also co-editor with Gunvor Mejdell of The Politics of Written Language in the Arab World (Brill, 2017).

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