Dr Farmanfarmaian was invited to present on the media for the MENA 1.01 series run by The Foreign Commonwealth Office. The presentation will give an overview of the media landscape in the region and answer questions such as:
1. What are the broad trends in media use (newspapers; state TV and radio; satellite TV, al-Jazeera, talk shows)? What does the present mix look like?
2. What is the political impact of the media in the MENA region?
3. What are the main religious TV channels, both Sunni and Shia (such as al-A'lam and al-Manara)? And what impact do they have?
4. What form does the 'media war' between Sunni Arab traditionalist/Ikhwani channels such as al-Jazeera and Shia populist channels take? And who - if anyone - is winning? Or are they simply preaching to their own converted?
5. How do BBC Arabic (and Persian?) and equivalent US, French etc. channels fit into the picture?
6. What are the trends in and impact of social media? Who's using these media, how and where?
7. What is the audience share and demographic for particular media, traditional and social?