Global Conversations MINNEAPOLIS: Media and Foreign Policy

Online registration closed. Walk-ins welcome.

State and non-state actors today must maneuver in a complex and rapidly evolving media landscape. Conventional journalism now competes with user-generated content. Official channels of communication can be circumvented through social media. Foreign policy is tweeted from the White House and “fake news” has entered the zeitgeist. Cyberwarfare, hacking, and misinformation pose complex security threats.

Join us for a thought-provoking conversation with Ethar El-Katatney, Executive Producer for AJ+ an Al Jazeera Media Network, on how actors are using media to pursue and defend their interests in the international arena and what the implications are for U.S. policy.

About the Speaker

Ethar El-Katatney is an Executive Producer for AJ+, an Al Jazeera Media Network and global online news community that experiments with storytelling and social media strategies for an American millennial audience. An international-award-winning multimedia journalist and published author, she began her career as a student reporter in 2005, and in the decade since, has worked as a reporter, staff writer, columnist, researcher, blogger, and producer. El-Katatney has traveled and reported from more than 40 countries, spanning the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe. She’s written stories from China and Denmark to Russia and Ghana, interviewed ministers and sat on a panel with the president of Catalonia, reported from a slum in Sudan and a mosque in Russia and talked at dozens of panels and conferences worldwide. El-Katatney is the first Arab and Egyptian to win a CNN MultiChoice African Journalist of the Year Award. She has also received the Samir Kassir Freedom of the Press Award and the Anna Lindh Mediterranean Journalist Award. Born in Saudi Arabia, and raised in Egypt, El-Katatney has a bachelor’s degree, an MBA, and a master’s degree in television and digital journalism from the American University in Cairo.

Global Conversations in Minneapolis is produced in partnership with the Friends of the Minneapolis Central Library. This Global Conversations is presented in partnership with the World Press Institute.