Children’s TV and Digital Media in the Arab World: Childhood, Screen Culture and Education

Who analyses children's screen content and media use in Arab countries, and with what results? Children, defined internationally as under-18s, account for some 40 per cent of Arab populations and the proportion of under-5s is correspondingly large. Yet studies of children's media and child audiences in the region are as scarce as truly popular locally produced media content aimed at children. At the very time when conflict and uncertainty in key Arab countries have made local development and diversification of children's media more remote, it has become more urgent to gain a better understanding of how the next generation's identities and world-views are formed. This interdisciplinary book is the first in English to probe both the state of Arab screen media for children and the practices of Arabic-speaking children in producing, as well as consuming, screen content. It brings together a holistic investigation of institutions and leading players, children's media experiences and some iconic media texts. The studies are organised around the three core themes of regulation and policy, emerging trends in production and representations of gender, ethnicity and language. Looking at online media as well as television, and keeping regional educational crises in mind, the book is interspersed with separate short observations on policy transfer, the personalisation of production initiatives and the fraught choice between local dialect and standard Arabic. With children's media increasingly linked to merchandising, which favours US-based global players and globalizing forces, this volume provides a timely insight into tensions between differing concepts of childhood and desirable media messages.
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