Abstract
Mohammed Zayani and Suzi Migrani’s Bullets and Bulletins: Media and Politics in the Wake of the Arab Uprisings sets out to explore how political activism combined with mediated communication to turn local street protests in the Arab world into battles over information that reverberated across the globe. The edited collection brings together a diverse range of scholars working with interdisciplinary approaches and different cases to draw attention to the myriad ways that media and politics intersect in the Middle East.
Bullets and Bulletins is divided into three sections, the first of which provides historical context into the complex relationship between politics and the media in the Middle East. Here, the authors explore how the media landscape of the Middle East is evolving alongside a turbulent political environment. The second section shines a light on the relationship between space – in a physical and virtual sense – and communication; where chapters focus on the importance of public space and street art, alongside digital spaces of communication. The third section reflects on the changing dynamics of state-society power relations in a variety of Arab countries, where authors note that ‘the future of information is no longer the sole monopoly of the state’ (p. 5).
As such, Bullets and Bulletins provides an important, if not essential, contribution to our understanding of media in the Middle East and the Arab Uprisings of recent years. It is rich in its diversity of approaches and wide variety of fascinating empirical insights that span the newsrooms of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya (pp. 45–70); the graffitied walls of Beirut, Bahrain and Cairo (pp. 107–125), as well as the digital spaces of the Syrian opposition (pp. 89–106) and US public diplomacy efforts (pp. 179–197). Alongside being empirically interesting, each chapter is theoretically grounded and well written. Perhaps the only thing lacking in Bullets and Bulletins is a concluding chapter that pulls together the broad range of insights presented throughout the book and suggests which directions future research needs to go. That said, Migrini’s introduction does a thoroughly good job of bringing the collection together, and often chapters end with a reflection on what needs to be addressed by future research. All in all, Bullets and Bulletins is a must read for anyone interested in the Middle East and the intersection of politics and the media.