Survey Series Examines Arab Attitudes to Media

By Sarah Lynch. Three years after uprisings across the Arab world expanded space in some countries for media and political freedom, Northwestern University in Qatar is examining just how media is used in the region. Not surprisingly, it has had to maneuver around some sensitivity.
On April 16, the university and the Doha Film Institute will release results of a survey that questioned 6,000 people in six countries on the use of entertainment media in the Arab world. The study will come on the heels of the first of its kind: Media Use in the Middle East, which was published by Northwestern University in Qatar last year and focused on the use of news, rather than entertainment, media. It surveyed more than 10,000 people in eight nations—Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. More...