Jordan-based Shezomedia has made a name for itself by tackling subjects that are often difficult to discuss openly across the Arab world.
Founded by Osama Issa in 2017, the media company grew out of a satirical YouTube show that tackled religion, women’s rights, refugees, extremism, sex education, and individual freedom. Today, hundreds of thousands of people follow Shezomedia’s Arabic platforms, where its team reports on many of the political and social debates shaping the region.
Shezomedia is now launching Shezomedia English, bringing that work to English-speaking audiences.
This builds on something IBB has been doing for years. Through House of Wisdom 2.0, we have made knowledge and ideas from around the world accessible to millions of Arabic speakers. Shezomedia English opens that exchange in the other direction, helping conversations already taking place across the Arab world reach audiences outside it.
Over the years, Osama and his team have seen how many of these conversations never make it into international coverage. Shezomedia has covered everything from reactions to Mahsa Amini’s death and life for women under Taliban rule to sex education, religion, personal freedom, and what people make of the wars and armed groups dominating headlines abroad.
The answers often complicate familiar assumptions. For example, young Arabs are sometimes portrayed as broadly supportive of Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Houthis because these groups present themselves as resistance movements. Shezomedia has heard plenty of young people question these groups and whether they speak for them at all.
The same is true beyond politics. Osama sees long-held attitudes beginning to change. He has witnessed some of those changes within his own family, where subjects once considered too taboo to discuss have become ordinary conversations.
As he writes in his announcement for Middle East Uncovered:
I want people interested in the region to hear directly from those living there.”
👉 Read Osama Issa’s full announcement on Middle East Uncovered and follow Shezomedia English on Instagram.