Egypt: A Divided and Restricted Media Landscape after the Transformation

Published: 2021
Arab Media Systems; Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers

Abstract

Egypt’s media landscape is marked by long years of struggle. This is  a  paradox:  it  is  one  of  the  pioneers  of  media  industries  in  the  Arab region, yet today, it has a massively restrained media system. The Egyptian media is marked by an unresolved identity struggle between its traditional roots in Arab and Islamic culture and an ambivalence towards modernized, Westernized lifestyles. It is also contending with a highly polarized media-politics parallelism in an  environment  which  does  not  grant  the  media  system  space  to  develop  fully  and  freely.  Despite  the  great  potential  of  the  media  system,  the  recent  crackdown  on  freedom  of  expression  has  suspended  the  potential  for  the  professionalization  of  an  autonomous form of journalism.