Mohammed el-Nawawy is a Knight-Crane endowed chair and assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Queens University of Charlotte. He is the senior editor for the Journal of Middle East Media and an ex-officio board member on the Arab-U.S. Association for Communication Educators. He teaches international communication, media globalization and Middle Eastern media courses. His research interests are focused on the new media in the Middle East, particularly satellite channels and the Internet, and their impact on the Arab public sphere. He is also interested in issues of public diplomacy and ways of initiating effective dialogue between the Middle East and the West. He is the author and co-author of three books: “Al-Jazeera: The story of the network that is rattling governments and redefining modern journalism;” “Al-Jazeera: How the free Arab news network scooped the world and changed the Middle East;” and “The Israeli-Egyptian peace process in the reporting of Western journalists.” He has also published in several national and foreign journals in the international communication field. His work on Arab media in general, and Al-Jazeera in particular, has attracted the attention of the popular press inside and outside the United States. He is currently studying the impact of Islamic websites on the Muslims’ public sphere for his upcoming book.
Dr. el-Nawawy has professional journalistic experience in the United States and the Middle East. He was born and raised in Egypt, where he got his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in mass communication at the American University in Cairo. He has a doctorate degree in journalism from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
Email: nawawym@queens.edu
Shawn Powers is a PhD candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication and a Research Associate at USC’s Center on Public Diplomacy. His research interests are focused on the use of media in times of war and conflict and the potential roles that media technologies can have on resolving cross-cultural disagreements and international tensions.
He previously worked at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and has conducted field and media research in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
Email: spowers@usc.edu
