Media in post-2011 Authoritarian Countries: The Cases of Jordan and Morocco

Five years after the Arab Uprisings, authoritarian governments in Jordan and Morocco seem to have resisted the quake of protests and revolutions that has shaken the whole region. Latest evolutions in the two countries will be reviewed from the perspective of Democratic Transition and Authoritarian Resilience theories, with a particular focus on the media sector. Following the Uprisings, several countries in the region started to reform the national media system. This has been only partially the case both in Jordan and Morocco, where the media sector continues to be tightly controlled by the monarchy, despite some important differences between the two countries. This Paper argues that analysing the status quo and the latest evolution of the media environment in authoritarian countries can offer important insights for the general understanding of the social and political transformations that are happening at some level also in authoritarian countries, despite the ‘resilience’ of their authoritarian structures. Based on survey data collected within the EU funded “ArabTransitions” project, the Paper will present some of the findings regarding the values, and behaviour of residents in Jordan and Morocco, focusing on the media consumption and political priorities of the respondents.