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The social media giant finds itself under countervailing pressures after the uprisings in the Middle East. While it has become one of the primary tools for activists to mobilize protests and share information, Facebook does not want to be seen as picking sides for fear that some countries — like Syria, where it just gained a foothold — would impose restrictions on its use or more closely monitor users, according to some company executives who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing internal business.

Last week, Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, urged Facebook to take “immediate and tangible steps” to help protect democracy and human rights activists who use its services, including addressing concerns about not being able to use pseudonyms. In a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, Mr. Durbin said the recent events in Egypt and Tunisia had highlighted the costs and benefits of social tools to democracy and human rights advocates. “I am concerned that the company does not have adequate safeguards in place to protect human rights and avoid being exploited by repressive governments,” he wrote.

This is an incredible challenge and an incredible opportunity for Facebook, Twitter and Google,” said Ethan Zuckerman, a senior researcher at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, where he works on projects about the use of technology and media in the developing world. “It might be tougher for Facebook than anyone else. Facebook has been ambivalent about the use of their platform by activists.

“There will be more pressure on the media during the election season. What is happening now indicates that we will not have free elections. If they can interfere at any point to censor information, then this will really affect elections,” Mohamed Zaree, a Program Manager at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies,

“All these disordered procedures and measures that are based on elastic and illegal reasons and applied by the interim authorities everyday the same way the disposed president did,” said the Arab Network for Human Rights Information in a recent press release.

On September 11, officials in Cairo declared that emergency law in Egypt would continue until June of 2012. In previous statements, officials claimed that the emergency law would end before elections this November.

maintenance of the pre-revolutionary media landscape: No new TV station has been allowed. Just as no daily newspaper has emerged. New titles are edited by political parties and appear as weeklies, most of which incorporate the standard of the tabloid press. After a 9-days hunger strike by Radio Kalima’s manager, Omar Mistiri, twelve regional radios out of 74 candidates were finally selected in late June by the National Authority for Information and Communication Reform (INRIC), a temporary media advisory board. Now, the selected radios are waiting for the governmental permission. At the institutional level, the disappearance of the Communication Ministry does not lead, right now, to more media autonomy. Pre-revolutionary media managers are mainly the same: CEOs, Editors and Chairmen of Board moved from flattery of the ousted president and his system to a doubtful celebration of the “revolution”. In the state-owned media, the turnover of managers is conducted without any transparency just like under the dictatorship. Changes look more like a consequence of power balance between the different clans in the current government than a nascent process towards a democratic media system.

field reporting, which was longtime banned from or depreciated in the official media

The legal status of old private media, especially those belonging to the former president family, is still unclear. Some of them are under jurisdictional managers, but INRIC excluded them for the moment from any ethical obligations. Hannibal TV, owned by a relative to Leila Trabelsi, was involved in many ethical infringements to the Ethical Code like slandering or fake news, before and particularly after the revolution. Larbi Nasra, the Hanibal TV owner, seems to play a political role by receiving political leaders and airing many reports about his own charitable actions. Fethi Houidi, Information Minister under Ben Ali, is still Nessma TV’s CEO. Moez Sinaoui, former Nessma PR man, was nominated as the Interim Prime Minister’s spokesman

This film industry has been coined Kannywood, after the city it originated in. According to statistics from the National Film and Video Censors Board, its movies make up about 30 percent of the films produced by the Nigerian-based film industry popularly called Nollywood, which is often portrayed as the third-largest in the world, after Hollywood and Bollywood. Kannywood even has its own TV channel, Africa Magic Hausa, showing Hausa-language movies on satellite TV.

stricter guidelines, such as the banning of married women from acting, while also requiring all women in the industry to have a male guardian who would be legally responsible if their ward broke the rules

Their tone is devoutly Muslim, though, and quite often the very last line of the end credits is "Glory be to God". Many of these movies also denounce the hypocrisy of the ruling classes who preach piousness in public while sinning in private.

In October 2016, lawyer Samir Sabri filed a lawsuit before the Second Circuit of the Administrative Judiciary Court, demanding that Shiite media outlets and websites be shut down in Egypt

“It is unacceptable and unreasonable to have a media platform in Egypt promoting Shiite ideology. Egypt is an Islamic state and the main source of legislation is Sharia under the constitution, which recognizes Christianity and Judaism to be monotheistic. El-Nafis is one of the news websites inciting against Saudi Arabia, Al-Azhar and the Ministry of Awqaf, where Ahmad Rasem al-Nafis attacks in his articles the Sunnis and Saudi Arabia and calls for professing the Shiite faith.”

“The Salafist leaders’ Wahhabism was behind the dissemination of extremism in Syria and Yemen. Shiite channels and websites in Egypt do not advocate extremism or renounce any ideology or doctrine. They call for dealing with the Shiites as Muslims at a time when Salafist movements claim that Shiites are non-Muslims.”

Rajab, a former journalist, was appointed last month to lead the new Ministry of Information Affairs. The government department was created to help implement the media reforms suggested by the Bahrain Independent Commission (BIC)

the report noted the role government-allied outlets played in contributing to tensions. The commission found that much of the coverage in February and March from television, radio and print media “contained derogatory language and inflammatory coverage of events.” The Bahrain government controls all of the radio and television stations in Bahrain. Moreover, six of the seven newspapers in the country take pro-government positions. The BIC also reported that journalists working for news outlets said they were coerced into covering events from a pro-government perspective instead of objective reporting.

The commission’s recommendations included suggestions that the state television and radio become more neutral and provide access to citizens with a variety of opinions. The report also recommends the relaxation of censorship in all the country’s media. Not giving opposition groups enough space to speak openly further polarises the atmosphere

"This week, Blizzard tightened up its procedures to ensure compliance with these laws, and players connecting from the affected nations are restricted from access to Blizzard games and services," read the statement. Unfortunately, said Blizzard, the same sanctions meant it could not give refunds to players in Iran or help them move their account elsewhere. "We apologise for any inconvenience this causes and will happily lift these restrictions as soon as US law allows," it added. Although the block on Wow has been imposed by Blizzard, other reports suggest a wider government ban might have been imposed. Players of Wow and other games, including Guild Wars, said when they had tried to log in they had been redirected to a page saying the connection had been blocked because the games promoted "superstition and mythology". Blizzard said it had no information about Iranian government action against online games.

The editor of Morocco's Al-Ahdath Al-Maghribia daily newspaper, Moktar el-Ghzioui, is living in fear for his life after he expressed support for pre-marital sex during a local television debate. "The next thing there was a cleric from Oujda releasing a fatwa that I should die," he says.

Imam Hassan Ait Belaid who preaches at a mosque in the commercial capital Casablanca says article 490 is part of the culture of a non-Western society. "If the code is removed, we will become wild savages. Our society will become a disaster," he says.

Critics of the Islamists argue that the strict sex laws merely increase the harassment of women.

a poster held aloft at the Bakırköy rally: Seni bilen hayran, bilmeyen düşman. “Those who know you are your followers, those who don’t are your enemies.” What struck me about this slogan was that it perfectly summed up the strength of the political message Erdoğan is espousing. It is a mantra that encompasses both support and resistance; it presupposes, even requires, opposition, while simultaneously dismissing that opposition as illegitimate

his narrative becomes even stronger the more he is seen to be under attack by his “enemies.”

Erdoğan’s slogan of the “national will”—a concept that sounds deeply creepy concept to many people—is far more compelling and less nebulous to many Turks than notions such as “the separation of powers” and “the rule of law,” particularly given that law itself has been tainted by the motives of the Gülenists.

Only a day after the US-based watchdog Freedom House, in its "Freedom of the Press 2014" report that was released May 1, relegated Turkey from the league of “partly free” countries to the league of “not free” countries, Davutoglu exploded. Speaking at a joint news conference with Omani Foreign Minister Yousef bin Alawi bin Abdullah in Ankara on May 2, he said, “No one can put Turkey in that category. All kinds of opinions are openly voiced in Turkey. In this sense, the press freedom in Turkey is freer than some countries called 'partly free.'” If he had left it there, there would be no problem. But, he urged Turkish reporters to act against the Freedom House report: “I’m calling on the press and the intellectuals to display a stance against this report. We expect our journalists to reject this report,” he said, and alleged that “a perception operation is being conducted against Turkey.” The term “perception operation” is increasingly used by government officials and pro-government media to describe an alleged smear campaign underway against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government of Turkey.

 “What I think would change the way people look at Turkey is if they unblocked YouTube, if they didn’t block Twitter. I think that’s what drives people other places to say, ‘Hey, maybe freedom of expression isn’t that great in Turkey right now,’”

in a manner that would further complicate the AKP’s image in the Western world, the pro-AKP mouthpiece daily Star drew attention to Freedom House President David J. Kramer’s “Jewish origin,” and also alleged that Freedom House is financed by philanthropist George Soros and Jewish lobbies. Mehmet Ocaktan, editor-in-chief of the staunchly pro-AKP daily Aksam (who is also a former MP of the ruling party), was very blunt. He wrote: “Half-witted Turkish friends of proven anti-Turkey foreign sources are quietly skilled in covering up anything good that has been done. For example, they grab as a salvation nothing but a scandalous Turkey report of the Freedom House that is financed by famous speculator Soros, who has made a billion dollar profit from domestic troubles he instigates in various countries, and [the] Israeli financial lobby. For one thing, the data about detained journalists in Turkey [are] old and almost none of them [are] accurate. For Freedom House, [which] always lists Israel among free countries, to put Turkey in the same bracket as Uganda, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Tanzania and Kenya is not only dimwitted but also an indicator of absolute ignorance.”

"This is a symptom of a creeping orthodoxy of UK legislation that is trying to enforce so-called British values," said Fitzgerald, adding that the atmosphere has worsened since new guidelines were issued for universities calling on lecturers to look out for "potential radicals"."We're already seeing the effects. Some lecturers don't want to do modules on terrorism anymore because they don't want to come under suspicion."

On January 7, former prime minister Ali Laarayedh issued Decree 59-2014, which sets procedures for the legal deposit of periodical and non-periodical publications. Under Article 3 of the decree, printers, producers, editors and distributors are required to submit six copies of new publications to the Prime Ministry before making them available to the public. The decree states that the legal deposit aims at “enriching and consolidating the collection of the national library and the national center of documentation.”

critics of decree 59 fear the stipulation to submit before publication could mean the return of prior censorship practices on books and newspapers

Abdelssalem Zbidi, the prime ministry’s communications officer dismissed the censorship concerns, arguing that the new regulations only conform to the stipulations of Decree 115 of 2011 on freedom of press, printing and publishing. However, under decree 115, the legal deposit is only limited to non-periodical publications, while the new decree also targets periodicals. “This decree diverts a law which exists elsewhere (the deposit of copies of all publications in a country to the national library), to an instrument of political and ideological censorship”, Karim Ben Smail, an editor at Ceres Bookshop, argued

the extended jailing in September 2013 of two Jaffra news site journalists, Nidal al-Faraaneh and Amjad Mu’ala, who agreed early on to register with the government, as further intimidation against publishing articles critical of the regime. A judicial official said that Faraaneh and Mu’ala were “accused of posting a video that that offends Sheikh Jasim bin Hamad al-Thani. They were charged with carrying out acts that the government does not approve of and that would expose Jordan and its citizens to the risk of acts of aggression.” The video discusses an alleged sex scandal between a Qatari official and an Israeli woman.

the publisher and editor-in-chief can be held liable for the content of the comments sections, even though readers — and not journalists — write them

the security services arrested 12 employees of the Iraqi Al-Abasiya TV station based in Amman on June 6, including station owner Haroun Mohammed. One staff member, who insisted that his name not be used due to the sensitive nature of this topic, told Al-Monitor during the night of the arrest, “Fifteen policemen came to our channel’s office, pointing guns to our heads. In the interrogation, the police kicked us while forcing us to stand on one foot.” The official noted that the police also arrested an Iraqi friend of one employee, even though he was not an Al-Abasiya staff member. Especially disconcerting was that the journalists were charged with “terrorism” offenses and “using the Internet to carry out acts that would expose Jordanians to acts of aggression.” Under Jordan’s anti-terrorism laws, the suspects could face up to five years in prison if convicted. Al-Abasiya’s website was down at the time of this writing.