NEW ARAB PRESS AND MEDIA LAWS IN THE POST- ARAB SPRING AND DIGITAL AGE: AN ANALYTICAL STUDY
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Abstract
Driven by the events of the so-called Arab Spring in 2011 and the digital inevitability that swept through, several Arab countries have changed their constitutions and press, publications, and media laws, issuing new constitutions and laws to keep pace with the political and technological changes witnessed in the Arab world in the second decade of the 21st century.
The core argument of this paper is that some Arab countries that experienced political changes had to amend their press, and media laws not only to align with the new regimes but also to keep up with the media landscape established by new media and social networks. Meanwhile, other countries felt the need to preempt revolutions by making structural changes to their media-related legislation to avoid what happened to other Arab regimes.
The research uses qualitative analysis to examine the texts of the new Arab press, and media laws issued after 2010, the year that marked the beginning of the Arab Spring, analyzing them qualitatively according to a set of axes. Specifically, it examines the press, and media laws issued in Algeria (2012), Tunisia (2014), Morocco (2016), and Egypt (2018), in addition to partial amendments made to the laws of other Arab countries.
The research concludes that the new media laws issued to put more control on the freedom of press and media and to keep pace with the digital age. These laws have reinforced the authoritarian Arab approach to be able to deal with traditional and new media, benefiting from accumulated experiences in this field. Thus, the changes in press and media laws were not aimed at granting more freedoms but rather at tightening the regimes’ control over the old and new media landscape.
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