Media personalities rank among Middle East's 'most influential'

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COPYCHAR Tara Todras-Whitehill/AP     Wael Ghonim is included in Time magazine's top 100 list

Time

magazine's

of the 100 "most influential people in the world" does not pretend to be scientific.

It ranks

alongside

, and there are plenty of people listed who cannot be considered household names, despite their admirable achievements. Wisely,

Time

does not present its influential '100' in any particular order, preventing some potential embarrassments, which is important given that

is also on the list.

Time

puts forward a diverse selection of people from the wider Middle East. It names

, the leader of Hezbollah, and

, Afghanistan's only female prosecutor general, as among the world's influential people.

, son of the dictator Muammar Gaddafi, makes the list, as does

, the Libyan human rights activist.

Despite this diversity, it is notable how many personalities from the Middle East's media industry feature on the list.

, 30, the Dubai-based activist who became a face of the Egyptian revolution, is one of the most high-profile people featured. Mr Ghonim, who works for Google and helped galvanise the protests through social media, was detained for 12 days by Egyptian security forces in the early days of the anti-government protests there.

, an Egypt-based correspondent for Al-Jazeera, and

, the media mogul with businesses in Afghanistan and Dubai, are also in Time's top 100. Tunisian Rapper Hamada Ben Amor, 21, who is better known as

, also makes it. His song "Rais Lebled" is credited with helping inspire the uprising in Tunisia.

Given the regional unrest, the Arab world is under the spotlight like never before. And the local media is rising to the challenge in explaining tectonic shifts in the political landscape to international audiences.

It is only right, then, that those working in the Middle East media industry - in its broadest sense, including media moguls, social media pioneers and rappers - are acknowledged on the global stage.