Political Economy of Egyptian Media

Maher Hamoud is an Associate Scholar at the University of Leuven, Belgium. He teaches political economy, and his research focuses on development politics in the Global South.

Adopting a critical political economy approach and drawing on interviews with media experts, Hamoud problematizes the notion that a privatized media can be truly independent and instead, convincingly shows how vested economic and political interests control, shape, and dominate the media and determine the content of public discourse. The book addresses the puzzle of how the Egyptian people demanded the removal of long ruling authoritarian President Hosni Mubarak only to end up supporting a military coup that established military rule. By tracing the evolution of the media landscape in post-uprising Egypt, Hamoud demonstrates how the media has played an important role in legitimizing power relations and determining which discourses became legitimate and dominant, and which discourses were prohibited and banned. By showing how media control plays an important role in shaping public opinion and political outcomes, Hamoud makes an important contribution to media studies and political economy.

• AcknowledgementsForeword by Charles Tripp1 Introduction 2 A Critical Overview of Egypt’s Media Market 3 A Political Economy of Egypt’s Distorted Advertising Market 4 Social Media as a Political Space 5 The Fall of Mubarak and Morsi: A Review of News Coverage 6 The Military as Media Producers: Politics and Drama on al-Sisi’s TV 7 ConclusionNotes Bibliography Index