Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today

Extract

Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today. By Marc Lynch. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. 293p. $25.50 cloth, $18.50 paper.

Marc Lynch provides a comprehensive overview of the historical rise of new Arab media and public spheres, in which Arabs attempt to break stereotypes and represent themselves, giving voice to views and ideas that are usually absent in both their state-controlled media and Western media. Building on Jürgen Habermas's (1992) The Structural Transformation of the Bourgeois Public Sphere, which traces the rise of the bourgeois public sphere in eighteenth-century Europe, Lynch examines whether Arab countries are developing liberal public spheres of information, debate, and consensus. Using Habermas, Lynch identifies progressive features of the new Arab public spheres, but also indicates limitations.