Although satellite channels still have a central importance for the circulation of news in the Middle East and North Africa, the attention of many scholars has recently shifted towards the development of social media and their political use in the region. This article aims to focus on the convergence between the two media fields, specifically looking at how social networks’ contents have been selected and amplified by Al Jazeera English during the Tunisian and Egyptian 2011 revolutions. These issues are illustrated through the analysis of a selection of videos and posts published online by Al Jazeera English from 4 January to 11 February 2011. Even though other media brands previously experimented with user-generated contents, the article argues that Al Jazeera English promoted a new configuration of ‘big’ and ‘small’ media in the MENA (Middle East and North African countries) region, based on the already well-established local media convergence. The article also intends to explore the profile of the international public interacting with the channel’s website during the Egyptian Revolution. To do so, it analyses a selection of the comments left by the readers from 28 January to 11 February 2011, showing how during the revolts the channel became a reference point for a large international audience.

The article explores the relation between identity definition and trust in different information sources in Morocco, Jordan and Tunisia following the 2011 Uprisings. While prior to 2011 literature mostly highlighted the role of pan-Arab news channels in consolidating a transnational Arab public sphere, recent studies argued that there has been a reinforcement of national media and identities in the Middle East and North Africa, as a consequence of a partial liberalisation of national broadcasting. Our study is based on the Arab Transformations survey (2014), which unlike previous surveys included questions covering both media consumption and identity definition. We looked at how in the three countries the choice of Muslim, Arab or national identity definition was associated with the preference for distinct sources of political news. The results only partially confirmed the hypothesis of a renewed importance of national media and showed that in the three countries people tended to attribute very different values to the same news sources.

This article investigates new trends in the consumption of national and transnational television channels in Algeria, following the changes introduced by the 2012 media law. Research on this topic was conducted through a small-scale audience survey among university students in Mostaganem, West Algeria, at the beginning of 2015. As other neighbouring countries, since the Eighties Algeria has been exposed to a rising amount of transnational television flows. After an initial French dominance, the last ten years saw a gradual growth in the Gulf channels' penetration, while national television became increasingly neglected. This partially changed after the 2011 uprisings, as many Arab countries accelerated a process of media liberalisation. In Algeria, the media law approved in 2012 opened the door to the creation of private television channels. The article explores the choices made by young Algerians in terms of national and transnational television content, both for news and entertainment. Based on the results of our survey and on other historical and contextual data, we argue that a new national perspective on news and current affairs is emerging in the country, together with the success of non-Western productions for entertainment formats. In both these domains, students from different faculties and backgrounds showed similar preferences, going beyond the linguistic, cultural and social segmentation that characterised the Algerian audience since the emergence of satellite television.

This article looks at the ongoing political changes in two non-democratic regimes moving beyond the 'authoritarian resilience' model. Five years after the Arab Uprisings, Jordan and Algeria seem to have resisted the revolutionary wave that has shaken the whole MENA region. According to the old debate informed by 'authoritarian resilience' and 'democratic transition' models, a series of obstacles in the political, economic or social sphere would prevent a successful 'transition' to democracy in some countries more than in others. Despite the criticisms addressed to the classical version of these models, they still influence most of the explanations of what happened after 2011, even though in their 'upgraded' version (Haydemann 2007; Heydemann and Leenders 2011). However, given the specific set of challenges and transformations each of the countries is going through, this framework becomes increasingly unsatisfactory. Jordan and Algeria are two profoundly diverse countries, and yet both are quite exceptional cases in their own right. Compared to other Arab monarchies, Jordan stands between the untouched authoritarian Gulf model and the constitutional reformist path followed by Morocco (Yom 2011; Yom and Gause 2012). As for Algeria, it was the only republic in the region to be apparently not affected by the regional turmoil (Volpi 2013). Still, in order to survive the 2011 protests, both regimes were forced to approve a number of 'facade' reforms. This article argues that such reforms, despite being mostly formal concessions, seen from a different angle could also be a starting point for more substantial long-term transformations. After all, does a truly "resilient" authority, elite or regime really exist? Authoritarian regimes after 2011: new and old 'obstacles' to 'transition'

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