Naomi Sakr delivers keynote on “Media and Cultural Production Platforms in the MENA Region”

25 April 2025

Keynote

Emeritus Professor Naomi Sakr delivered the keynote speech at a conference on “Media and Cultural Production Platforms in the MENA Region” held at the Ecole Supérieur des Arts Visuels in Marrakesh, Morocco, on 9 April.

Focused on the phenomenon of streaming platforms in the region [Platforms in MENA Region | VOD and Media production platforms in the Middle East and North Africa], the event grew out of two research initiatives launched at the Université Sorbonne Paris Nord: one a long-running series of research seminars on the production and circulation of cultural goods in Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries and the other, backed by the Maison des Sciences Humaines et Sociales (MSH) Paris Nord, specifically researching digital streaming platforms in the MENA region.

The Marrakesh conference, conducted in French and English, brought together scholars based in Europe, North Africa, Turkey, the Gulf and Iran.

Sakr’s keynote, introduced by Asmaa Azizi, Associate Professor at the Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, was entitled ‘Platforms, Portals and Ecosystems: Contours of a Media Landscape in Transition.’ Intended to set the scene for the two days of exchanges, it compared the main players’ business models and performance and assessed the impact of their interactions.

Sakr also chaired a session in which two papers explored inequities in data collection and knowledge production in relation to streamed music.

Learn more and see the full conference programme here.

Images by Dominique Marchetti, CNRS, CC-BY-NC-ND license.