I think something that surprised me about this class so far is how much the government controls the public sphere and how so tightly locked down the political systems are across the region. I knew that there was a lot of censorship among different governments but I did not know there was post censorship where governments let the media go out and then threaten that journalist or organization with punishments if that news continues out. I thought they would just block everything they did not like, but that is a good strategy because it makes an example out of someone, and helps send a message to the rest of the region to not do that.

I definitely have a new different relationship with media, which is not just looking at things at the surface, and digging deeper and finding out there real story if that is the case. I think not accepting things at face value all the time and looking a little deeper into things. This has allowed me to create that new habit to dig deeper and get the real story.