Alumnus Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi '98 discusses media in the Arab World

On Friday, April 29th, the Department of Global Communications presented a public lecture by AUP alumnus Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi '98 entitled, "An Overview of the Media Landscape in the Arab World".

During his talk, Sultan explored the history of media across the Arab region, as well as the contemporary and evolving media landscape due to the development of digital platforms. Sultan talked about  former initiatives in the region to create Arab language news outlets, giving examples of successful models, as well as failures. He also discussed the proliferation of “citizen journalists” who record events in the region through their cell phones, namely during the Arab Spring. Sultan himself rose to prominence during the Arab Spring when his tweets became an essential news source, rivaling the major networks of the time. He then addressed the question of media as propaganda, providing examples of political organizations investing in various media projects to promote a particular agenda.

Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi is one of AUP's most visible and active alumni, in terms of his work in the international arts sector, and as a journalist, writer and commentator on politics and world affairs. Sultan is a United Arab Emirates-based columnist whose articles have appeared in The Financial Times, The Independent, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, The New York Times Room for Debate, Foreign Policy, Open Democracy, and The Globe and Mail, as well as other notable publications. A respected commentator on Arab affairs through Twitter, Sultan rose in prominence during the Arab Spring, following which TIME magazine listed him in the “140 Best Twitter Feeds of 2011.”

Visit Sultan's blog at sultanalqassemi.blogspot.fr or his Twitter: @sultanalqassemi