Co-sponsored by the Balsillie School of International Affairs (BSIA) and CIGI, this lecture focuses on media in the Arab Spring. Speaker Habib Battah, Beirut-based journalist, filmmaker and media analyst, looks at the recent trajectory and developments in transnational Arab media and broadcasting.

As a freelancer with Al Jazeera, CNN, Variety and BBC News, he considers how changes, from trends in news and entertainment production to media ownership and new technologies, have impacted the social and political sphere in the Middle East, both before and after the Arab Spring.

Joined by discussant Bessma Momani, CIGI senior fellow and BSIA professor, they discuss media as a state-tool, the history of media development in the Middle East, and the proliferation of new Arab and Western media outlets in the region as an influencer of changing relationship between public opinion, foreign policy and governance in the Middle East.