Digital technologies have transformed the media landscape around the world, including regions in the Global South such as the Middle East and North Africa (El Hajj, 2019; Mellor et al., 2011). By means of their disruptive nature, these technologies have brought about important changes at the levels of production, dissemination and consumption of media industries and media content. Therefore, transforming culture and politics in their way. It is often claimed that these changes happen so abruptly that governments and their policies often follow rather than lead when canalising these changes towards particular goals.
In liberal societies, media policy tends to be the result of debates, struggles and consensus between political actors. These outcomes in the form of regulations and legal framework are also defined by a variety of corporate and societal interests that interact, lobby and pressure to define policymaking and decision taking (Collins, 2005). Less clear is what happens in settings where we find very different settings in the development of policy.
This special issue assesses, from a multidisciplinary perspective, the process of policy formulation and effects in the face of digital transformations upon media industries in the Middle East and North Africa. It is expected that the different articles will cover a series or interrelated topics that range from the type of impacts that digital transformation has had upon the creative and media industries to the challenges and limitation for media policy formulation in the region. We expect to include papers on how policy makers map and address the digital transformation of the media ecologies in the region.
The issue seeks to incorporate contributions from various countries. The special issue will be looking at how digital technologies, interactivity, social media platforms and data have fostered a new set of dynamic and practices within creative industries and the legacy media. The aim is to explore the significance of digital transformations in the local and regional context, and to understand how these shifts have reshaped the media industry and cultural industries around media consumption as well as the type of politics that derived from them.
The potential papers will be included in a symposium to be organized on 13 Mar. 2024 (onsite & hybrid). The final decision of what would be published will depend on the feedback from reviewers. However, we are providing free support in translation and proofreading for authors from the region who are selected in the first round.
Indeed, we aim to assist and support scholars in the region with translation and editing for non-English speaking authors while offering the possibility of submitting first versions in Arabic, English and French for the initial peer-review process. Once there is a group of papers that have been pre-selected, translated and edited, the guest editors will send them to external peer-review. This will allow us to have a collection of articles that is both representative of the region as well as meeting the highest standards possible. Topics include (but not limited to):
- Policymaking, communication and digital transformation in MENA
- Digital transformation and the media landscape in MENA
- Digital transformation and media audiences
- Religion, culture, and media policy in MENA
- Media Consumption, Entertainment and Societal Attitudes
- Digital media and social media in MENA’s public sphere configuration
- Arab theoretical contributions in the understanding of digital media and creative industries
- Changes in the digital media landscape
- Cultural Industries, Gender and Digital Transformation.
