MENA Independent Media: Negotiating the Logics of Media Development Programs

The political economy of post-2011 emerging independent media in the MENA region is intricately entangled with the growth in media development (or assistance) flows to the region following the Arab uprisings. This chapter will take stock of the growing literature examining these media development interventions and the complex relationships they have built with local media producers in the region. Building on recent fieldwork at the newsroom of Enab Baladi, a Syrian online publication operating from Istanbul, Turkey, it will illustrate how some of the underlying (political and institutional) logics built into such interventions are negotiated and understood from the perspective of their local interlocutors. Finally, it will also argue for the value of recentering the voices of these local media actors in current scholarship.