Anne Hagood looks at the political narratives adopted by Iraqi Shi'ites sympathetic to the cause of their fellow Shi'ites in Bahrain and specifically at the parallels Iraqis have drawn between the conflict in Bahrain and their own conflict against the Baathist regime overthrown in 2003.

Nabil Dajani urges the academic community not to lose sight of traditional and folk media in assessing the role of digital technology in the Arab uprisings, warning that over-reliance on new media platforms to explain the events of 2011 has already led to a failure to understand and anticipate the course of change in the region.

Michael Oghia and Helen Indelicato research Internet ownership in key Arab countries, noting the differences in the extent of state control and in the levels of private and foreign investment in the infrastructure.

Dr Mark Allen Peterson contrasts the Egyptian mediascape in 2011 with its Iranian counterpart in 1979 and concludes that, unlike Iran, Egypt is unlikely to revert to a pre-revolutionary status quo which included state domination of the media.

Dr Ramy Aly argues that Egypt's revolutionary moment is a golden opportunity to abandon old media practices that deprived many sectors of society of a media voice and privileged a narrow and elitist concept of what it means to be Egyptian.

Alice Hlidkova reports on the state of the media in Iraqi Kurdistan, where the reality does not always live up to the ideals promulgated by those who run the autonomous region.

El Mustapha Lahlali takes a close look at the rhetorical devices by which both Ben Ali and Mubarak tried to retain power when they addressed their nations at critical junctures during the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings.

William Youmans analyzes the debate in Burlington, Vermont, over whether the local cable TV company should or should not carry Al Jazeera English. He concludes that Burlington was a special case, rather than the harbinger of a breakthrough into the US market for AJE.

Courtney C. Radsch discusses the interplay between the economic benefits of good communications, the willingness of Arab regimes to close down the Internet and mobile phone networks when they think their survival is at stake, and the role of multinational companies in the region.

Dr Sahar Khamis and Katherine Vaughn give a comprehensive overview of the role of new media in the overthrow of Mubarak and wonders whether the same tools will enable activists to keep up the pressure for change during what could a lengthy transitional period.