Media Sexual and Reproductive Health Taboos in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)

Abstract:: Female adolescents in many developing societies are still facing various forms of discrimination due to their gender, race, and class. Communication must become central to development thinking and practice in relation to the Middle Eastern and North African nations (MENA), otherwise any regional initiatives to improve the lives of people in this troubled region will never succeed. One could say that this same reality is a major cause of the current widespread incidence of sexually transmitted diseases among adolescents as a result of poverty, poor health status, low literacy level, high number of young people, and inadequate knowledge about the diseases. In addition, the cultural paradigm of polygamy, violence, and cultural pressures to present one's premarital relationship as moral, have prevented young girls from negotiating safer sex.

What Underlies Children, Media and Democracy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)

Abstract:: The daunting reality of the contemporary world is that autocracies and semiauthoritarian states lack the basic foundation for building a democracy In these countries the media are weak fragile and at risk of collapse which means that the challenge is not to pressure media and media educators to surrender power but rather to figure out how to regenerate legitimate power in the first place The imperative is not just mediate empowerment of citizens but also make them interested in truth in full and universal knowledge rather than in improving society This would be lsquopolitical thoughtrsquo which instigates the achievement of knowledge by making the civil society plays a role in forming a collective view and a common mission to make the states serve the interests of their people instead of the current reverse situation that ended by strikes violence and societal disintegration in Tunisia Algeria Jordan and Egypt

Abstract:: To understand this broader phenomenon of protests that have swept through North Africa and parts of the Middle East, one must consider the causality between the two key variables of the revolution: media texts and political change. Two questions are answered about the claim of social media and change in the Arab Spring: 1. Has WikiLeaks influenced the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa? 2. What is the role of Journalism? The situation MENA has been reshuffled from Ben Ali exiled, Mubarak fallen, Gaddafi genocidal, Bahrain recruiting the Saudi military, Yemen using nerve gas, Syria arresting bloggers at random; many other regimes all over the region either attempting to bridge the gap with reform, or steadfastly refusing to see their people rise. To understand the the broader phenomenon of protests that have swept through North Africa and parts of the Middle East, one must consider the causality between the two key variables of the revolution: media texts and political change. There are several factors that have brought the MENA region to this point of crisis, including rising food prices and the effectiveness of social media (Facebook, etc.), high rates of unemployment, poverty and political oppression. But the timing is intriguing to insitgate anger and unveiling the grapes of wrath.