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The security logic seems to suggest that one cannot be sure that a researcher working on Islamic endowments in the 15th century isn’t really a spy — he might be looking for maps of Siwa, Halayib and Shalatin, the Yaghbub Oasis, or Tiran and Sanafir. Since we have border disputes with all our neighbors, not only can you not copy maps related to any border issue, you can’t conduct research on any topic vaguely connected to borders.

The security logic doesn’t stop at maps and borders. It casts suspicion on every topic. An Egyptian colleague working on Mamluk history was denied a research permit. An American colleague was denied a permit for a project on the history of private presses in the 19th century. A student of mine studies the history of the Labor Corps during World War I; his permit was also rejected

The official’s response (I paraphrase) was:Here’s someone studying the history of irrigation, and we have a dispute with Ethiopia over the Nile waters. We have no doubt that this student is honest and isn’t a spy, but how can we be sure that his thesis won’t fall into malicious hands, that it won’t contain information that could harm us — for example, info about Ethiopia’s right to the Nile waters? Such details could damage our negotiating position. Of course, we know employees at the National Archives are sincere patriots, and the same is true of most professors and students doing research there, but we have considerations that no one understands but us.

draft laws currently being prepared by various ministries about the right to information and free circulation of information. As a society, we have come a long way on this subject since the 1960s; Military Intelligence (which today we refer to as “sovereign entities”) has loosened its grip on the media, and we have made huge progress in media freedom after the emergence of independent newspapers and satellite channels, blogs, Facebook and Twitter. Nonetheless, the security mentality still controls much of freedom of publication, and I believe we need to launch a serious dialogue about the relationship between national security on the one hand and freedom of opinion and free circulation of information on the other.

Information is vital for the democratic process; if the people don’t know what’s happening and if the actions of government officials and public figures are concealed and secret, then the citizenry would not be able to participate in events in their society.

Availability of information also allows the citizenry to oversee state agencies, and thus effectively contribute to curbing corruption and abuse of power. This makes free information flow vital to raising the efficiency of the government apparatus and improving its performance

Watching television for more than 3.5 hours per day is associated with a dose-response decline in verbal memory over the following six years, independent of confounding variables. These results are found in particular amongst those with better cognition at baseline and are robust to a range of sensitivity analyses exploring reverse causality, differential non-response and stability of television viewing. Watching television is not longitudinally associated with changes in semantic fluency. Overall our results provide preliminary data to suggest that television viewing for more than 3.5 hours per day is related to cognitive decline.

Despite some such studies showing positive associations with language acquisition and visual motor skills in very young children2, many more studies have shown concerning cognitive associations including with poorer reading recognition, reading comprehension and maths3, and cognitive, language and motor developmental delays4,5. However, much less attention has been paid to the effects of television viewing at the other end of the lifespan. Indeed, despite it having been hypothesised for over 25 years that watching excessive television can contribute to the development of dementia1, this theory still remains underexplored empirically.

Watching television for more than 3.5 hours per day was associated with poorer verbal memory six years later with evidence of a dose-response relationship: greater hours of television per day were associated with poorer verbal memory at follow up (Table 2)

Wrongful arrests, an expanding surveillance dragnet, defamation and deep-fake pornography are all actually existing dangers of so-called “artificial intelligence” tools currently on the market. That, and not the imagined potential to wipe out humanity, is the real threat from artificial intelligence.

Beneath the hype from many AI firms, their technology already enables routine discrimination in housing, criminal justice and health care, as well as the spread of hate speech and misinformation in non-English languages. Already, algorithmic management programs subject workers to run-of-the-mill wage theft, and these programs are becoming more prevalent.

Corporate AI labs justify this posturing with pseudoscientific research reports that misdirect regulatory attention to such imaginary scenarios using fear-mongering terminology, such as “existential risk.”

“Dehumanizing and demonizing characterizations of the other were very rare in both Israeli and Palestinian books.” The research team found 20 extreme negative depictions in the Israeli state books, seven in the ultra-Orthodox books, and six in the Palestinian books. An example of this rare occurrence from an Israeli book: A passage saying that a ruined Arab village “had always been a nest of murderers.” And an example from a Palestinian book: “I was in ‘the slaughterhouse’ for 13 days,” referring to an Israeli interrogation center. This could be a lot worse, right?

84 percent of the literature pieces in the Palestinian books portray Israelis and Jews negatively, 73 percent of the pieces in the ultra-Orthodox books portray Palestinians and Arabs negatively, and only 49 percent of the pieces in Israeli state schools do the same. In an Israeli state school text, a passage reads: “The Arab countries have accumulated weapons and ammunition and strengthened their armies to wage a total war against Israel.” In the ultra-Orthodox, it ratchets up: “Like a little lamb in a sea of 70 wolves is Israel among the Arab states.” In the Palestinian case: “The enemy turned to the deserted houses, looting and carrying off all they could from the village that had become grave upon grave.” These statements aren’t necessarily false, but they are just one-sided and fearful—and they are rarely balanced by anything sunnier

The research team found that 58 percent of Palestinian textbooks published after 1967 (the year in which Israel took control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, Gaza and Sinai from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria) made no reference to Israel. Instead, they referred to the entire area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as Palestine. In the Israeli state system, 65 percent of maps had no borders and made no mention of Palestine or the Palestinian Authority, while in the ultra-Orthodox system that number was a staggering 95 percent.

Nature Middle East launches today at www.nature.com/naturemiddleeast. The new website from Nature Publishing Group (NPG) showcases scientific and medical research from the Arabic-speaking Middle East region and is continuously updated with articles in English and Arabic. The King Abdullah International Medical Research Center (KAIMRC), at King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences (KSAU-HS), Saudi Arabia, is sponsoring Nature Middle East.

"We are proud to be launching Nature Middle East, which reflects our growing commitment to a region with a proud scientific history and a promising future," comments David Swinbanks, Publishing Director for NPG. "We believe this launch is particularly timely, as nations from across the region increase their investment in science and medical research facilities and programmes. Nature Middle East will be the place to keep in touch with these exciting new developments."

Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestinian territories, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen

The regime has also been engaging in some rather transparent diversionary tactics which, again, don't look like the actions of an innocent party. 

Apparently based on the time-honoured principle that nobody ever criticises Egypt unless paid to do so, claims also began circulating that the 588 MEPs who voted for the European parliament's resolution had been bribed to support it by the Muslim Brotherhood. Ahmed Moussa, the TV host who had earlier interviewed fake witness Mohammed Fawzi, suggested this on his show and others joined in – including Hamdy Bakhait (a prominent MP, conspiracy theorist and former army general). Egyptian blogger Zeinobia commmented: "I got tons of MPs' statements in my inbox full of similar claims." Meanwhile, the semi-official al-Ahram newspaper published an article telling readers how the European parliament had "fallen into the trap" of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Like social scientists, the Egyptian authorities developed theories for the explosion of popular unrest in 2011. While political scientists have emphasised the spontaneity, courage and agency of ordinary citizens ... Egyptian security forces believe that the unrest was steered by well-organized political forces capable of manipulating the average citizen for political ends ... In the United States, these views are often dismissed as classic authoritarian propaganda. However, my research suggests that such anxieties are real and inform the way the Egyptian regime perceives threats. In particular, they make security forces highly attentive to ties between “foreign elements” and “mobilisable” sectors of society. It is possible that Regeni’s research activities were misinterpreted as groundwork for preparing a new uprising. He had built ties with local actors, attended meetings with labour activists and spoke excellent Arabic — an essential skill for a researcher, yet one that unfortunately tends to raise suspicions. 

they had shared and could recite the viral Facebook memes constructing an alternate reality of nefarious Muslim plots. Mr. Lal called them “the embers beneath the ashes” of Sinhalese anger

the forces of social disruption that have followed Facebook’s rapid expansion in the developing world, whose markets represent the company’s financial future. For months, we had been tracking riots and lynchings around the world linked to misinformation and hate speech on Facebook, which pushes whatever content keeps users on the site longest — a potentially damaging practice in countries with weak institutions.

Time and again, communal hatreds overrun the newsfeed — the primary portal for news and information for many users — unchecked as local media are displaced by Facebook and governments find themselves with little leverage over the company. Some users, energized by hate speech and misinformation, plot real-world attacks.

"Media literacy has long focused on personal responsibility, which can not only imbue individuals with a false sense of confidence in their skills, but also put the onus of monitoring media effects on the audience, rather than media creators, social media platforms, or regulators,"

the need to better understand the modern media environment, which is heavily driven by algorithm-based personalization on social-media platforms, and the need to be more systematic about evaluating the impact of various media-literacy strategies and interventions

In response, bills to promote media literacy in schools have been introduced or passed in more than a dozen states. A range of nonprofit, corporate, and media organizations have stepped up efforts to promote related curricula and programs. Such efforts should be applauded—but not viewed as a "panacea," the Data & Society researchers argue.

People are more likely to endorse authoritarian values after watching the movie 300, according to new findings published in the journal American Politics Research.

The students who watched 300 were more likely to endorse authoritarian views, the researchers found, while the opposite was true of students who watched V for Vendetta.

we should always be prepared to think critically about the messages we get in media.”“This is particularly the case with entertainment media because we engage with these films and television shows in a relatively passive way, which is to say we do not have our normal psychological defenses up as we might with news media.”

ACOR Photo Archive’s material is a unique collection due to the diversity of subjects it includes. It currently provides a representative record of Jordan’s archeological and social history spanning from 1955 to the early 2000s. Photos soon-to-be-digitized will feature subjects from the 1970s onwards in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Palestine, and Iran. Its historic photos of important sites are free to use and could be mobilized to support research proposals and grant applications.

The ACOR’s archival images are valuable as records of change for both archaeological-cultural heritage sites (more than two-hundred are represented in Jordan alone), as well as daily life in the Middle East over the past seventy years. Indeed, this record of change means that the archive has the potential to impact future heritage preservation projects across the region. They allow visual comparison with the past, thereby illustrating recent damage and helping experts and local communities decide how sites should be managed in the future.

NYU Abu Dhabi’s archive has an extensive collection of historic photos featured on its Instagram page (widening its popular appeal through more tongue-in-cheek posts). Darat al-Funun, an art gallery housed in Amman’s fashionable Jabal al-Webdeih district, also hosts an exhaustive online archive of video and images relating to the gallery’s exhibitions. It also features artist talks and musical performances over its almost thirty-year history. On a smaller scale, there are commendable efforts at documenting the modern visual heritage of the region, such as the Sultan-al-Qassemi-managed Instagram dedicated to highlighting the architectural heritage of the Emirate of Sharjah in the UAE. (You can check out ACOR’s instagram here.)

Although podcasting is growing in Africa, radio, a close cousin that has been around since the days of colonization, remains prevalent.

The largest podcasting markets in Africa include Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya

the African podcasts that get exposure typically sound familiar with commercial appeal in terms of format, content, and tone

The British government ran a secret “black propaganda” campaign for decades, targeting Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia with leaflets and reports from fake sources aimed at destabilising cold war enemies by encouraging racial tensions, sowing chaos, inciting violence and reinforcing anti-communist ideas, newly declassified documents have revealed.

The campaign also sought to mobilise Muslims against Moscow, promoting greater religious conservatism and radical ideas. To appear authentic, documents encouraged hatred of Israel.

The Information Research Department (IRD) was set up by the post-second world war Labour government to counter Soviet propaganda attacks on Britain. Its activities mirrored the CIA’s cold war propaganda operations and the extensive efforts of the USSR and its satellites.

Journalist Khaled El Balshy — a keen defender of freedom of expression and a democracy advocate, deputy head of the Egyptian Press Syndicate and head of the syndicate’s Freedom Committee — has been vigorously campaigning for the release of jailed journalists in Egypt. This week Balshy himself faced prosecution and risked being imprisoned on charges of “inciting protests, insulting the police and inciting to overthrow the regime.”

On April 6 the Interior Ministry, which had filed the legal complaint against him, was forced to withdraw the lawsuit following an outcry from fellow journalists, free speech advocates and rights organizations

Minutes after hearing of the warrant for his arrest, he boldly declared in a Facebook post: “If they want to arrest me, I’m in my office. I’m not better than those who are imprisoned.”

Scott Atran,  Director of Research in Anthropology at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris and Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University, told Tunisia Live, “The core strategy outlined in the ISIS playbook, The Management of Chaos-Savagery, (Idarat at-Tawahoush),   (required reading for every ISIS political, religious and military leader, or amir), is to fill the void wherever chaos already exists, as in much of the Sahel and Sahara, and create chaos that can be filled as in Europe.”

In achieving this, Daesh must eliminate the “gray zone,” the area of society they regard most Muslim emigrants as inhabiting. The “Brussels attacks represented just the latest, ever more effective, instalment for fomenting chaos in Europe and thereby ‘Extinguish[ing] the Grey Zone,’” Atran said. In a 12-page editorial in the February 2015 edition of Dabiq, Daesh’s online magazine, titled, “The Extinction of the Gray Zone.” specific mention is given to the kind of division that yesterday’s attack was intended to provoke and broaden. “The editorial quotes Osama bin Laden, for whom ISIS is the true heir,” Atran told Tunisia Live. “’The world today is divided. Bush [former US President George W. Bush] spoke the truth when he said, “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists,”’ with the actual ‘terrorist’ being the Western Crusaders. Now, ‘the time had come for another event to… bring division to the world and destroy the Gray zone.’”

“Motivate the masses to fly to regions that we manage, by eliminating the ‘Gray Zone’ between the true believer and the infidel, which most people, including most Muslims, currently inhabit. Use so-called ‘terror attacks’ to help Muslims realize that non-Muslims hate Islam and want to harm all who practice it, to show that peacefulness gains Muslims nothing but pain.”

There is no filtering by keywords if a user chooses another country (e.g., United States, Canada) as their location even if they are physically located in an Arab country. - One anomaly we found when probing filtering by keywords is that filtering does not work if a filtered Arabic keyword is used together with another non-filtered keyword. For example, a search using the Arabic word for “sex” is banned, but using the Arabic term for “sex stories” is not banned.

We found no evidence of filtering of keywords in Arabic or English that could return results in other content categories. We tested keywords that could yield politically sensitive content (e.g., “democracy”, “freedom”, “opposition”), content related to violence and terrorism (e.g., “torture”, terror”, “explosive”), Web sites related to minority and religious rights (e.g., “Shiite”, “Baha’i”, “Christian”, “Jews”), and content related to women’s rights (e.g., “gender”, “equality”). None of the tested keywords were found banned.

It is interesting that Microsoft’s implementation of this type of wholesale social content censorship for the entire “Arabian countries” region is in fact not being practiced by many of the Arab government censors themselves. That is, although political filtering is widespread in the MENA region, social filtering, including keyword filtering, is not practiced by all countries in MENA. ONI 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 testing and research found no evidence of social content filtering (e.g., sex, nudity, and homosexuality) at the national level in countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Libya.10