With the ongoing protests in Algeria and Lebanon, and violence in Syria, Libya, and Yemen, scholarly and policy attention remains firmly fixed on regime development in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). While debate still rages over the applicability of the term "Arab Spring," few specialists and scholars question the enduring legacies this unprecedented wave of unrest has had on specific countries and the region more broadly. Indeed, the tenth anniversary of the ousting of Tunisia's President Ben Ali recommends a fresh look at what has happened in the region in the intervening years.Accounts and analyses of regime development in the region tend to fall into one of two categories: structural or actor-centered. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. Structural approaches, as Tolstrup (2013: 717) notes, "are useful for explaining interregional differences," but often struggle "to address the cases that do not adhere to the overall structural pattern-that is, intra-regional differences." Actor-centered approaches, on the other hand, "cannot produce the same compelling parsimonious explanations of clear-cut regional patterns" but can often capture "some of the intra-regional differences that puzzle the structuralists." This tension helps explain why so many scholars and specialists of the region were taken aback by the developments of the past decade. While many structuralists missed the subtle on-the-ground shifts that meant that these protests did not resemble the many that had taken place previously, many actor-centrists missed some of the key regional dynamics that help explain the starkly different outcomes between countries that ostensibly share many similarities.This special issue is an attempt to bridge the divide between these two positions. It is also an attempt to put flesh on the bones of a set of key actors that is often highlighted but less frequently studied by regime transition scholars: the media. The media has