Al Jazeera

The article discusses the distinctive features of Qatar’s contemporary public diplomacy influenced by the contesting for the regional dominance. Main approaches to conducting public diplomacy and corresponding instruments are being analyzed, including media holdings, educational, humanitarian and peacekeeping initiatives. The research also covers the role of Qatar in Arab Spring and Al Jazeera’s innovative approaches to reporting on protest actions in the Middle East.

This essay has examined how local cultures have risen up to counter the one-way flow of media content from developed to developing nations by focusing on Al-Jazeera Channel – which provides an alternative contra-flow in global news. Al-Jazeera’s case shows that resistance to long-established media imperialism will not bring a quick and drastic shift in the global power play. However, Al-Jazeera proves that an effort has been made to counter the absolute dominance of Western media and news, and while this attempt is not perfect, at the very least, the means have been created through which alternative narratives can be communicated. So while Al-Jazeera cannot be viewed as an alternative media, the network has been effective in providing airtime to those who would otherwise have remained silent. While it is too optimistic to say that this is turning the tides of media imperialism, the absolute dominance of Western and US media has been shaken. As a more diverse media-centric world slowly emerges the world is getting more information than ever before, the balance of information power is gradually changing and Western media voices no longer hold the world’s attention by default.

The main objective of this comparative study of five transnational media channels is to observe the news broadcast of media institutions that address a wide-ranging diverse viewership as distinct from media that addresses a citizenry within the geographical boundaries of sovereignty.

According to Cook (1998), the news media “make up a collective institution - a site of systematized principles of action enduring across time and supervising a central area of social and political life” (p. 15). This comparative study is an endeavor to delineate the boundaries of the tacit social and political areas sighted by the different transnational media. It further seeks to identify the gray areas seen by some and ignored by others.

Bourdieu’s (1998) theory of fields that represents journalism as a field of power contestation is in use as the basic theoretical model since it helps to explain the dynamics of the framing processes within a wider context of intersecting fields of power. A framing approach is embedded within the Bourdieu theory and is used as a tool of content analysis, where the question of how “issues are being framed as a result of social and institutional interests” (Reese, 2008, p.9) is crucial to unveiling the workings of all different forces.

This paper explores the changing political economy of Al Jazeera satellite television network by examining three broad yet interrelated themes. The first concerns the extent to which Al Jazeera’s overall editorial line has aligned with Qatar’s foreign policy, in contrast to the initial stance, in which Qatari officials avoided any flagrant interference in Al Jazeera’s affairs. The second theme considers the centrality of the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and its resulting impact on Al Jazeera’s editorial line.
Cold and cautious at best, relations reached their lowest ebb in February 1996, when a Saudi-backed coup was foiled in Qatar. The failed coup compelled the Qatari rulers to invest heavily in soft power, and especially media. However, after 2007, for a few years, the Qatari and Saudi royal families addressed their longstanding differences and seemingly aligned their foreign policy objectives vis-à-vis certain dossiers, although the relationship between both parties has become tense again more recently. The third theme addressed is the considerable airtime provided by Al Jazeera in support of the Arab uprisings and particularly the Muslim Brotherhood. The reasons for this stance are examined as well as their implications. The intersection of these themes illustrates the geopolitical rationale which allowed Qatar to develop a distinctive international media presence and to become a player in the international community. This article examines the challenges posed by such developments for Qatar and Al Jazeera.

Le débat sur la déontologie des médias ne peut évidement jamais être clos. Il est renouvelé par l'évolution des techniques, comme par celle des mœurs et de la société. Nombreux sont les groupes professionnels qui ont placé les questions éthiques et déontologiques comme le fondement de la construction de leur forme identitaire, ainsi comme un cadre structurant des savoir-faire et savoir-être des membres du groupe. À partir des années 1990, le problème déontologique n'a cessé de s'amplifier dans le monde arabe, en s'interrogeant sur les conditions du travail de la profession, sa morale et les dispositifs pour définir les normes et les règles professionnelles. Ainsi, les expériences éthiques se sont succédées, mais, en favorisant un point intrinsèque : la construction et la protection d'une identité professionnelle. Dans ce contexte, le cas de la première chaîne d'information satellitaire arabe Al-Jazeera est très révélateur. Forte de son slogan « L'opinion et l'opinion opposée », elle a élaboré et publié sa charte déontologique interne en 2004. L'apparition d'un tel texte maison, dans un cadre un peu particulier qui est celui du monde arabe, suscite des interrogations sur les conditions dans lesquelles le code de conduite a été publié, ainsi que, sur les objectifs de ce texte déontologique interne ?

Information manipulation and false content has been perceived and defined differently over time. In the Arab media context, fake news is not a new dilemma, and is more likely to be used as an instrument of content control, influence and public opinion manipulation. This is related to the issue of news dis/misinformation. Audience trust and credibility in Arab media outlets – especially government-owned – is at an all-time low (under 20 percent in various countries). Controlling fake news is becoming a primary concern for the Arab media industry. Source verification and managing organisational resources is an acute dilemma. Using Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning and NLP to automate the process of identifying fake news is looked upon as the cornerstone to separate the ’truth’ from ‘fake’ in the news field. This study aims at assessing the efforts of the Al Jazeera network in controlling fake news in its newsrooms. The study is based on qualitative structured and semi-structured interviews with Al Jazeera newsroom teams and artificial intelligence technology developers. The results showed a variety of efforts being conducted by various Al Jazeera teams to control fake content and prevent Al Jazeera content from being misused. They also showed the importance of the role of artificial intelligence, especially anticipation technologies, in detecting fake sources and managing newsroom operation.

Al Jazeera has set a benchmark in the field of newsgames where the term ‘newsgames’ enables the player not only to follow the news but also interactively engage with the content to gain a deeper understanding of it or essentially, any intersection of journalism and videogaming (Bogost, Ferrari, & Schweizer, 2010; Plewe & Fürsich, 2017). In the last four years, Al Jazeera has come out with two newsgames – Pirate Fishing and Syhacked. Pirate Fishing (2014) is based on illegal foreign fishing off the coast of Sierra Leone that was adding to the impoverishment of the country whereas Syhacked (2016) is based on cyber warfare in the Syrian civil war. In both games, the user plays as the investigative journalist to uncover abuse of power and report on their respective events. The evidence, the places, the videos, the investigations including people and their names, everything is non-fictional and exists in the real world. Both newsgames have been nominated for and won several awards. Both games are based on documentaries and have received accolades for turning ‘news story into a highly playful narrative, capturing the nuances of a hard news story without needing to reduce the quality of the reporting at any moment’ (Ferrer Conill, 2016). In my essay, I will be elaborating on how Al Jazeera’s interactive investigation newsgame ‘Syhacked’ effectively employs gamification techniques as an effective tool for advocacy journalism through procedural rhetoric and brand-building through procedural reality.

Abstract/This study surveyed Al-Jazeera viewers through a survey posted on the network's Arabic-language website to examine how credible Al-Jazeera viewers judge the network. Not surprisingly, Al-Jazeera viewers rated the network as highly credible on all measures. They rated CNN and BBC high on expertise, but ranked them low on trustworthiness. Consequently, BBC and CNN were also rated low on other credibility measures. Local Arab media were judged lowest on all credibility measures. Those who were younger and who ...

Al Jazeera’s August 2015 editorial decision to substitute ‘refugee’ for ‘economic migrant’ in its coverage of ‘the Mediterranean Migration Crisis’ provides an opportunity to re-frame the relationship between the politics of race, immigration and media representations of refugees. Situating the broadcaster’s publicly-announced rationale for the decision within a critique of the migrant-refugee dichotomy enforced by European public policy, we first demonstrate that the policy couplet mobilizes oppositional yet interdependent identities. The discursive distancing of ‘migrant’ from ‘refugee’ in news content does not dislodge their mutually reinforcing power to define the parameters of ‘inclusion’. Second, we demonstrate how the policy onus placed on refugees to justify their claim as ‘victims’ reproduces racialized codes of belonging that perpetuate the denial of autonomy. Persons seeking refuge in Europe must sustain an identity of ‘non-threatening victim’ if they are to gain recognition in a securitized culture of (mis)trust. Al Jazeera’s intervention strengthens the media representation of refugees as human beings without choice; yet, the broadcaster’s decision to ‘give voice’ by ‘challenging racism’ does not break the European political consensus on immigration and asylum that positions ‘non-western’ peoples as victim/pariah, to be ‘saved’ and ‘suspected’. The media-policy-migration nexus ensures that refugee exclusion is always possible.

Mujeres Rumbo a Gaza Es el nombre de la campaña activista inédita que se llevó a cabo en septiembre de 2016. 13 mujeres (incluida su tripulación) de distintos países del mundo arriba de un velero en una travesía por el Mar Mediterráneo, su destino era Gaza, Palestina. Su objetivo era llevar ayuda humanitaria y participar allá de un festival.  La experiencia del trayecto, la decisión, el activismo político y el relato de una de las mujeres que participó en la travesía.

Al-Qa'ida leader in Iraq who propagated his message by beheading hostages on video. Killed in an air-raid Baquba, Iraq 7 June 2006. He started as a petty criminal in Jordan, then radicalised in local mosques and went to fight in Afghanistan after the Soviet army left. He ran al-Qaeda terrorists training camp in Kandahar before going to Iraq to fight against Shia Muslims there.

The Internet provides great opportunity for news as well as entertainment. One such use is to keep abreast of public health concerns. As news outlets’ websites give the audience the privilege of interacting and posting comments as an ‘anonymous user’ following the posted story, these initial comments trigger further comments—which can lead to speculation, rumor, and inaccurate information. The purpose of the current study was to compare one year of news and comments about the outbreak of Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome from two major Middle Eastern online news outlets from June 2013 to June 2014. All stories and reader comments about this topic were collected from Al Jazeera and Al-Arabiya and reviewed using framing analysis to determine their framing and approach to the outbreak. The research focused primarily on how discussion and rumor may spread through both the stories as well as the controversial commentary sections.

This paper examines the coverage of terrorism by Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya TV networks. It focuses on how the two networks differ or are similar in covering news about terrorism and identifies factors that may influence each network’s news selection processes and the framing of terrorism stories. The paper applied a media framing approach using content analysis to examine several framing devices such as framing types, framing perspective, geographical locations, sources used, perpetrators, victims, episodic versus thematic, and responsibility. It was found that the narrative that ‘the terrorist is Muslim’ prevailed in the news coverage analyzed. Furthermore, contrary to the pattern among Western media, both networks were consistent in at least implying that the majority of terrorism victims are Muslims. In addition, the findings reveal that substantial focus was placed on disseminating and supporting official positions and decisions, and that humanitarian suffering from terrorism is...

"""Brand advertising by using celebrity endorsement is a very popular strategy among marketers. This practice has been used for almost a century and its popularity has been constantly growing. Frequent use of this strategy is based on the assumption that the positive image and certain personal characteristics will be transferred from a celebrity to a brand. In this paper, we have presented four basic theories/models relating to the involvement of celebrities in brand advertising: the source credibility model, the source attractiveness model, the meaning transfer model, and celebrity/product fit model. These four models are the basis for most of the research in this area. In addition, the review of previous studies on the impact of this strategy on the effectiveness of advertising and brand image has been presented. Generally, studies have provided the evidence that the involvement of a celebrity in advertising produces significantly more favorable consumer reactions (higher level of attention, the better recall of the message and brand name, more favorable attitudes and purchase intentions etc.), as opposed to the involvement of an unknown person in advertising.
Key words: brand; celebrity; advertising; endorsement; consumer
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http://www.zrefis.com/images/zrefis2013-7/147-161%20Sladjana%20Starcevic.pdf
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DOI SRPSKA: http://doisrpska.nub.rs/index.php/zrefis/article/view/790

At a time when many in the U.S. and around the world encounter religion as a polarizing subject, one especially revered by some and utterly contested by others, this special issue of Reconstruction explores questions arising at the intersection of religious experience and popular culture. To engage the relationship of religion and popular culture requires discipline-based, trans-disciplinary, and inter-disciplinary approaches in order to interpret these broad ranges of human experience. As a result, the articles in this issue demonstrate a myriad of methodological approaches.

... ethic of fear*fear of originality, fear of innovation, fear of spontaneity, fear of life itself*and have had instilled in them the need to accept orthodoxy, dependence and submission?'' (Turki, 2006 ... It is epitomized by Saudi Sheikh Waleed al Ibrahim, whose sister is married to King Fahd ...

Cuando la cadena de televisión Al Jazira ofrece en directo y en exclusiva desde la plaza Tahrir-después de la caída de Mubarak-el sermón religioso del viernes pronunciado por un líder religioso de los hermanos musulmanes en presencia de miles de personas sentadas en el suelo, silenciosas y absorbidas con sus plegarias, estamos asistiendo en directo a un espectáculo visual de alto contenido simbólico. Ante esta insólita exhibición se desvanece el carácter secular de la plaza Tahrir y su mensaje político revolucionario se reduce ahora a unas plegarias cuyos códigos sólo pueden descifrarse en términos religiosos. Así lo insinúan los símbolos que completan la puesta en escena de este espectáculo religioso. La ceremonia sugiere un duelo simbólico entre el referente terrenal de la revolución y el referente imaginario de lo sagrado y se desvela asimismo como una reconstrucción pública instantánea de las formas elementales de la vida religiosa en la cual «la noción de sagrado está ligada al carácter retrospectivo que resulta del carácter al-ternativo de la fiesta o de la ceremonia» (Durkheim, 1912). Este espectáculo visual tiene un inconfundible paralelismo con el distópico universo totalitario imaginado por George Orwell y llevado a la pantalla por el célebre spot publicitario realizado por Ridley Scott  para el lanzamiento del Apple Macintosh en 1984. En ambos escenarios observamos una muchedumbre uniforme hipnotizada ante el discurso apasionado del Gran Hermano en el primer caso y del líder religioso, en el segundo. El espectáculo de esta masa rendida en la plaza Tahrir reproduciendo al unísono los rituales religiosos y movimientos corporales que marca el líder religioso, contrastaba brutalmente con la rebeldía de los miles de revolucionarios que llenaban las calles de El Cairo con sus manifestaciones, gritos y proclamas improvisados
En la plaza Tahrir el líder religioso encauzaba la masa desatada ocupando este nuevo espacio público, huérfano ya de los símbolos del
régimen autoritario de Mubarak, redefiniéndolo con nuevos significados. Este relevo de poderes al que estamos asistiendo no se anuncia en un discurso público sino que acontece gracias a un sutil procedimiento simbólico y metalingüístico. Si el anterior régimen se apropió de la plaza Tahrir con las gigantescas fotos del presidente y con la fuerza coercitiva, el líder religioso en cambio se adueñó de dicho escenario con la fuerza simbólica del imaginario religioso y con el hábil manejo de los códigos culturales e identitarios que estructuran el subconsciente colectivo.

This writing tries to understand Michel Foucault’s the notion of ‘sovereign’ and Achille Mbembe’s ‘necropolitics’ with a view to analysing Josef Ahmed being granted a presidential pardon, as well as Haris Ahmed and Anis Ahmed being able to attend their nephew’s wedding, though they are described as wanted criminals in Al Jazeera’s ‘All the Prime Minister’s Men.’ But the state claimed that they had been granted presidential pardon too.

Beside the disenchanted Saudi Yemeni dissenter, there is the cosmic warrior, in large part a partnered project with Al-Jazeera, dovetailing with the 'end' of the Cold War and creating a new Arab/Muslim enemy. In the aftermath of his death in May 2011, OBL and his legacy need to be assessed. This essay begins that still unfinished, and perhaps ever receding, process.

La televisora Al Jazzera ha ofrecido desde su fundación una plataforma de proyección internacional a Catar, país que ha aprovechado la transmisión de Al Jazeera para comunicar la imagen de un Estado mediador, humanitario y moderno en el Medio Oriente. En un intento por adquirir un nuevo rol en la estructura de poder de la Península Arábiga, y en el contexto de la primavera árabe en Egipto, Catar estableció vínculos con la Hermandad Musulmana egipcia, detonando una respuesta de contención por parte de Arabia Saudita.

This paper analyzes the use of captions in Al Jazeera Plus (AJ+) news videos. In particular, it looks at those videos created in response to Facebook's autoplay feature. Analysing two recent AJ+ videos, I show how captions add new layers of meaning to the already multimodal form of the video, and how they change the way that news stories are communicated. I also take a political economic view of captions, considering the role they play in audience engagement, branding and profit-making within current " economies of attention. " I end with a brief inquiry into the implications of captions for our understanding of literacy in an age of constantly shifting media.

Though Al Jazeera's early bid to enter the United States television system was halting, noncommercial avenues permitted the news provider early exposure to American audiences hungry for in-depth international news. This analysis examines how Al Jazeera used these noncommercial sectors as a means to overcome steep barriers to entry that define US commercial media distribution economics.

In the years after 9/11, the Bush administration repeatedly charged that the Arab media are biased against the United States. A cross-border survey of 601 Arab journalists found that much of the conventional wisdom that has shaped U.S. public diplomacy policy toward the region lacks substance.Arab journalists see their mission as that of driving political and social reform in the Middle East and North Africa. Iraq and Palestine fall well below such internal Arab issues as political reform, human rights, poverty, and education as priority concerns.They draw a clear distinction between U.S. policy and the American people; criticize the U.S. for failing to live up to its ideals, which they largely share; and exhibit skepticism about the role of the clergy. Politically, half call themselves “democrats,” and they most closely identify with the pan-Arab region and the broader Muslim world, not with an individual nation-state.

This book examines the complexities of the news coverage of the 2003 Iraq War and discusses the correlations between culture, religion, and geopolitics in creating a fundamental gap in worldview, perception, and communication between the United States and the Arab World.
The book received praiseworthy reviews, such as by Professor Philip Seib, author of “Beyond the Front Lines” and “the Al Jazeera Effect”, who concluded it has “made a valuable contribution to the literature of media and war.”
The originality of this research was three-fold. Firstly, it uniquely captures in real-time, fundamentally opposed constructions of epochal world events. I noted that the 2003 Iraq war had become a defining event of the 21st century primarily because its prosecution and representation via US media-military networks was globally challenged by Al Jazeera and its diasporic constituencies. Secondly, I detailed the geopolitical and ideological legacies of Western-Middle Eastern conflicts. Thirdly, my explanation of the contesting frames at critical stages of the conflict was rooted in social and political visceralities.
In terms of theory, this book brought together the insights of propaganda critique, news framing, and media sociology to show how orientalist/counter-terrorist discourses are constructed and challenged. It was rendered possible via the good use of keyword analysis, critical discourse analysis, and visual semiotics.

Colloquy with Ayman Mohyeldin, "Covering Egypt’s revolution and Al-Jazeera’s success", Social Media in Politics and Foreign Policy: Can it Transform Eurasia?, Caucasus International, Vol. 1 • No: 2 • Autumn 2011, http://www.cijournal.az/post/caucasus-international-vol-1-no-2-autumn-2011