The participants will examine the role of state media, the situation of civil society and local media in Egypt, and the transformation of media systems from a comparative perspective. The conference will open with a lecture by Dr. Sahar Khamis from the University of Maryland, USA, who will talk about how journalism has changed in changing Egypt and what challenges it will face in the future. Her presentation will be commented on by Dina Fakoussa from the German Council on Foreign Relations.

The conference was organized by Prof. Dr. Carola Richter and Dr. Hanan Badr from the Institute for Media and Communication Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, within the framework of the Arab-German Young Academy for Sciences and Humanities and in cooperation with the EU Research Project "Media, Conflict, Democratisation." The conference is being supported by the German Council on Foreign Relations and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.