Campaign professionalism and the ‘birth’ of democracy. Analyzing the 2012 first multi-candidate presidential election in post-revolutionary Egypt.

This thesis studies the first Egyptian presidential election campaigns after the 25th January 2011 revolution. It aims to answer two questions: to what extent this election was professionalised and to what extent the levels of professionalism impacted the democratisation process of Egypt. To answer these questions, the study analyses the top five presidential candidates’ campaigns, applying the professionalisation index to them; this consists of two sub-indices that assess campaign structures and campaign strategies, offers insights into the organizational and tactical development of the campaigns and how they viewed the functions of campaigning in relation to this contest. The study does this through analytical qualitative research involving interviews with campaign staff and managers as well as analysis of secondary documents and contemporary media reports. The thesis demonstrates the crucial role campaign professionalism played in the 2012 Egyptian presidential elections. The thesis infers that the professionalism of the 2012 elections campaigns might have been the main factor that led to the success of both Mohamed Morsi and Ahmed Shafiq in the first round of elections. The thesis also argues that the professionalisatism – as applied during this election through a “do anything to win” or a “win at all costs” approach - had negative implications on the democratization process of Egypt, as it hindered Egypt’s transition to functional if thin democracy. On the contrary, it led Egypt to remain trapped in its transitional period

The Power of Numbers: Four Ways Metrics are Transforming the News

The benefits of analytics on news media organisations’ revenues and traffic have been well documented (Bodó, 2019; Christin, 2020; Diakopoulos, 2019), yet their consequences for news production and content remain double edged (Hermida 2016). To date, most empirical studies on their use and influence have focused on newsrooms in developed countries, with less attention paid to their impact on journalism practice in emerging and transitional media systems, which are often characterised by relationalism, informal economies, extensive state-owned enterprises and relatively low internet penetration rates (Cavusgil 2021; Iordanidou et al 2022). Building on interviews with twenty journalists, this study examines how journalists in transitional Egypt adapt to web analytics and how they perceive the influence of audience metrics on their journalistic practice. Based on their testimony, we identify four ways that metrics are changing journalistic practices and news content that relate to their role as agenda-setters, as newsroom change agent, as facilitators of institutional capture, and as drivers of tabloidisation. Each of these have power implications that are discussed in relation to ongoing debates in the field of digital journalism

Egypt's feminist counterpublic: The re-invigoration of the post-revolution public sphere

This study examines the current feminist counterculture movements which appears to be reinvigorating the Egyptian public sphere. The study argues women in particular have been able to find themselves alternative ways to develop a discourse focused on a desire for social changes around which they can unite. In focusing on lifestyle issues that normally are discussed only in small private spheres, they are able to challenge norms while not provoking the state or security apparatus and avoiding becoming part of the polarised political environment. This article explores the dynamics and motivations of these groups through a case study of three of the networked feminist movements. Our data from semi-structured interviews with the founders show that they grew from networks to movements which then evolved in order to be sustainable. This article argues that through the process of their evolution, these movements are helping strengthen the public sphere and enhance Egyptian democracy

Egyptian political conversations on Clubhouse: Proto-public sphere at the age of the pandemic

In this article, we use Shoemaker and Reese’s hierarchy of influences (HOI) model as a framework to investigate the ways in which Egyptian journalists perceive the influences exerted on them in the context of post-Arab Spring transition. Our findings show that perceptions of limitations to journalism practice can extend to all levels in the hierarchy of influences model, and that journalistic autonomy is particularly impeded due to factors at the social systems level. This leads to an adaptation of the HOI model as we find that the perceived closure of the public sphere and a complicated network of clientelism at the social system level has impacted journalism practice negatively in Egypt and has a wider influence on the rest of the four levels in the model. In other words, routines, individuals, organizations, and social institutions all seem to mediate the social system’s influence on journalistic behavior. These findings are discussed in light of research on journalism in transitional contexts

Journalism in Transitional Context: Societal Hostility, Self-Censorship and the Expansion of “One Voice Journalism”

The transformations in the media and political landscapes in Egypt over the last decade and their implications on media pluralism and freedom of expression are well documented. However, less is known about how Egyptian journalists themselves experience these changes; how their relationships with authorities and ordinary citizens are being redefined, and how journalists’ routines and practices are evolving. Through interviews with twenty Egyptian journalists working for different types of media outlets (government-owned, independent, privately owned, opposition and new start-ups), this article records and analyses journalists’ experiences with both authorities and citizens amid the current transitional period, assessing to what extent these relationships and experiences are impacting journalism practices in Egypt. Findings reveal that journalists perceive a hostile stance from both officials and ordinary citizens towards journalists due to a common belief that journalists played a role in the removal of previous regimes and therefore are seen as “destabilising agents”. This prevents journalists from accessing both information and news sources, forcing journalists to produce unified content and practice self-censorship and “service journalism” as opposed to original and investigative stories. These challenges are discussed in light of research on media and democratic transition

Assessing media roles in Egypt: A journalistic perspective on liberal media functions

This study critically engages with four main basic normative media functions that are commonly adopted in democratic media systems and assesses their relevance and suitability to a post-uprising context like Egypt. By interviewing twenty journalists representing all forms of news outlets and ownership models, this study examines whether journalists see these normative functions as important to Egypt’s political context and/or potential democratization, whether and how they try to engage with them, and what are their perceived societal benefits and limitations. Our findings suggest that despite the historical influence of the liberal paradigm on journalism practice in Egypt, the perceived benefit of some of these normative media functions in Egypt is quite limited. Structural and societal factors appear to influence the perception of these functions, in addition to other factors related to the journalists’ views and perceptions. The study’s findings are discussed in light of research on de-westernizing media studies and the role of media in democratization

Revisiting the Hierarchy of Influences on Journalism in a Transitional Context: When the Social System Level Prevails

In this article, we use Shoemaker and Reese’s hierarchy of influences (HOI) model as a framework to investigate the ways in which Egyptian journalists perceive the influences exerted on them in the context of post-Arab Spring transition. Our findings show that perceptions of limitations to journalism practice can extend to all levels in the hierarchy of influences model, and that journalistic autonomy is particularly impeded due to factors at the social systems level. This leads to an adaptation of the HOI model as we find that the perceived closure of the public sphere and a complicated network of clientelism at the social system level has impacted journalism practice negatively in Egypt and has a wider influence on the rest of the four levels in the model. In other words, routines, individuals, organizations, and social institutions all seem to mediate the social system’s influence on journalistic behavior. These findings are discussed in light of research on journalism in transitional contexts

Role of right heart catheterization in diagnosis of pulmonary arterial hypertension

Background Pulmonary hypertension (PH) presumably has an impact on 1% or less of the world’s population. Right Heart Catheterization (RHC) is essential for determining PH problems. RHC determines prognosis and offers helpful information on the degree of hemodynamic impairment. Therefore, this comparative study was carried out to determine the diagnostic role, pitfalls associated, and complications encountered during RHC in suspected cases of PAH and chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH). Methods The observational cohort study was conducted on 75 patients with clinical suspicion of PH and CTEPH. All patients were subjected to full history taking, ECG, Echocardiography, and radiological investigations including Chest radiography (CXR), high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT), and computed tomography (CT) pulmonary angiography. Results The mean pulmonary artery mean pressure (PAMP) was 46.05 ± 9.631 mmHg, the mean Pulmonary artery dilatation (PAD) was 30.04 ± 1.082 mm the mean ejection fraction (EF%) was 63.87%, the mean right ventricular diameter was 45.83 ± 0.444 mm. The mean pulmonary artery wedge pressure (PAWP) was 10.91 ± 2.303 mmHg, and the mean cardiac output (CO) was 4.00 ± 0.773 L/min mean cardiac index (CI) was 1.94 ± 0.416 L/min/m2. Doppler echocardiographic estimated pulmonary artery systolic pressure (DE-ePASP) and estimated pulmonary, artery, end-diastolic pressure (ePADP) significantly positively correlated with RHC-PASP (P < 0.001) and mean DE-ePAP significantly positively Correlated with mean RHC-PAP (P < 0.001). Conclusions RHC is still the only method that can completely and accurately diagnose PAH. however, the combination between right cardiac catheterization and echocardiography provides a more accurate diagnosis of the diseases and their complications

Strategy for Nasal Reconstruction in Atypical Facial Clefts

Summary:. It is difficult to put forward a strategy for the treatment of nasal clefts due to the rarity and diversity of anatomical aberrations of these cases contrary to the common nasal affection in cleft lip and palate patients, which differ in severity rather than differing in the morbid anatomy. This simple strategy for correction of these nasal clefts will hopefully help surgeons to achieve better results. In the mean time I intended to describe the morbid anatomy of these cases by choosing examples of each morbid anatomy

Social Media Toxicity Classification Using Deep Learning: Real-World Application UK Brexit

Social media has become an essential facet of modern society, wherein people share their opinions on a wide variety of topics. Social media is quickly becoming indispensable for a majority of people, and many cases of social media addiction have been documented. Social media platforms such as Twitter have demonstrated over the years the value they provide, such as connecting people from all over the world with different backgrounds. However, they have also shown harmful side effects that can have serious consequences. One such harmful side effect of social media is the immense toxicity that can be found in various discussions. The word toxic has become synonymous with online hate speech, internet trolling, and sometimes outrage culture. In this study, we build an efficient model to detect and classify toxicity in social media from user-generated content using the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT). The BERT pre-trained model and three of its variants has been fine-tuned on a well-known labeled toxic comment dataset, Kaggle public dataset (Toxic Comment Classification Challenge). Moreover, we test the proposed models with two datasets collected from Twitter from two different periods to detect toxicity in user-generated content (tweets) using hashtages belonging to the UK Brexit. The results showed that the proposed model can efficiently classify and analyze toxic tweets