There has been an unprecedented transformation on the Arab street. The developments in Tunisia and Egypt have shaken up Arab governments and awakened the Arab people to new possibilities. For many of these states, the past decades have allowed for the establishment of interminably stable regimes. Leaders maintained an unwavering power through an absolute control over their public. Their clench over information and political expression has been critical in asserting their rule by completely silencing opposing views. Media control and censorship, therefore, were instrumental for these regimes in maintaining hegemony. State media systems soon found their competition as private Arabic satellite channels began emerging. These were privately owned stations that some Arab entrepreneurs established overseas. Unlike European and American satellite channels that reached Arab households, these stations brought viewers content in Arabic. Thus, broadcasting in a cultural language to which audiences could relate, these stations introduced alternative views from within the Arab circles to a growing number of satellite viewers in the region. The content of programs that these satellite channels introduced started a momentum of political debates in Arab communities. For the first time in the history of the region, Arab nationals gained access to media that provided them with a space for expression. State media were further undermined as people gained access to the Internet and social media. Essentially, new media leveraged debates on human rights, nationhood, and democracy in the Arab world. These electronic forums emerged as sites for voicing the rage and discontent that citizens harbored against state practices. Facebook communities, activist blogs, and Twitter feeds gave voice to a new generation that was otherwise condemned to silence and state censorship. With the proliferation of Internet and social media use, Arab governments needed to reconsider their ownership and management models. This paper surveys the history of broadcasts flows in Arab societies. It will follow the stages of transformation of media in the Arab world: from state instruments to public spheres. The paper will explore these media technologies and their contributions to the success of the Tunisian and Egyptian rebellions. The discussion will utilize a theoretical approach to understand the dynamics that govern these media practices and how new media have emerged as an infrastructure to mobilize for social action.

The Tunisian revolution took the whole world by surprise. Politicians, analysts and journalists alike all thought that the early events were small social protests that would soon be controlled by the regime and its police. However, the events turned out to be the very first revolution of its kind in the region, with a contagious impact that already proved bigger than anybody expected, spreading to Egypt and causing the fall of Mubarak, and bursting allover the Arab world as in Yemen, Algeria, Jordan (all have started moving even before Egypt), and beyond. Given the absence of precedent and the exclusion of international media by the regime, the Tunisian revolution was not televised, but was heavily Facebooked. Tunisian youth used Facebook to communicate, report the recent news and updates from different regions in Tunisia, analyze the president’s actions and speeches, and organize and plan their action. This sheds light on the Tunisian youth social skills and media literacy levels. Social networking sites depend heavily on the participation of their users (Veltri and Elgarah, 2009) , which means that the benefits of SN increases through the users' active participation and socialization. However, participatory culture as Jenkins (2006) called it, depends as well on the levels of media literacies (Livingstone, 2004), which “involve social skills developed through collaboration and networking” (Jenkins, 2006, p. 4). Therefore, it is indispensable to examine the media literacies and social skills of the Tunisian youth in order to understand the outcome of the revolution. The use of Facebook during the Tunisian revolution calls for a general investigation of the use of social networking sites for social change. The current research looks at this issue from a media literacy and media social skills perspective in an attempt to understand the predispositions that led to the efficient use of Facebook for the Tunisian political and social change.

In 1951 Iranian Prime Minister Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh announced the complete nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Britain petitioned the United Nations to prevent Iran from this act. In response, Mossadegh went to the United Nations to defend Iran’s rights over its natural assets. On his way back to Iran, Mossadegh visited Egypt, a nation similar to Iran in several aspects; both were ruled by pro-western monarchies, each had an oppressed nationalist movement, and both had major national assets which were controlled by British interests. To a large extent, the Egyptians viewed the Iranian Prime Minister as a role model. Mossadegh’s visit to Cairo provided Egyptian nationalists a paragon upon which to base their own national government. In July 1952, a few months after the visit, the Free Officers Revolution took place in Egypt, and engendered a new spirit of hope among the Egyptian people. In August 1953, Mossadegh was overthrown by a CIA sponsored coup d’état, and the Iranian National Project came to a premature end. Thus, 1953 saw Iran and Egypt change roles. Iran, which heralded the dawn of a postcolonial era in the Middle East, once again became a reactionary ally of the West, whereas Egypt became the champion of that Nationalist policy. Prior to social networks, Middle Eastern communities were aware of revolutionary events. In this paper I will analyze Iranian and Egyptian press coverage, and British Foreign Office documents to answer the following questions: How did the Iranian public react to the Egyptian Revolution? What were the attitudes towards Egypt in the Iranian public sphere (during the revolution of 1952, and later around the Suez Canal nationalization)? And how the Iranian opposition used the Egyptian endeavor for domestic political causes?

This paper will examine the expressive culture of the Egyptian "revolution"--an event that began 25 January 2011 and reached a climax on 11 February 2011 with the resignation of Egyptian president Husni Mubarak. The outcome of this event is at this writing still unknown, however it is possible even at this early stage to examine the role of songs, poetry, political slogans, photographs, and video in communicating the movement's goals and ultimately mobilizing the Egyptian people. The movement completely blind-sided all academic experts and even international intelligence. While the Tunisian "jasmine revolution" of early 2011 is credited as providing an impetus, many look further back to see the brutal murder of blogger Khalid Said in June 2010 as a catalyst, and others find inspiration in the movement of workers in the Egyptian town of al-Mahallah al-Kubra in 2008. While many debate the agency of the internet and social media in the events of early 2011, there is no doubt that new media have provided riveting photographs and video that attracted international attention to the Egyptian anti-government movement. As the revolution unfolded, it has also become clear that the "Facebook kids" (as they are now called in Egyptian media) orchestrated a meticulous plan to ensure that their revolution appeared to come from Egypt's grass roots. This paper will also briefly consider the expressive culture of previous Egyptian revolutionary movements and the connections between them and the movement which is still unfolding today. The author of this paper was not in Egypt at the time of the demonstrations, therefore the presentation will be built around the resources available to its author via YouTube, blog posts, photographs from a variety of sources, Facebook posts, and various news media. The author firmly believes that these media enabled an authentic engagement with events "on the ground."