Al Jazeera English

Al Jazeera English: Global News in a Changing World, edited by Philip Seib, is an important book that provides a fresh analytical perspective grounded in a solid overview of the rising news channel. As Al Jazeera expands its audience in the United States, and as it plans to launch new channels in several languages, the book fills a gap in academic literature about the global news network. Thus, it is likely to appeal to a diverse scholarly and media practitioner readership. The volume includes nine chapters that analyze varied facets of Al Jazeera English (AJE) audience and coverage in the United States, Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East.

Major international conflicts tend to receive intensified media coverage, which is often framed differently when compared across distinct news networks. This study compares the framing of the 2014 Gaza War by two news organizations operating inside the United States at the time, CNN and Al Jazeera America (AJAM). A content analysis of 74 online news articles during the 50-day war was conducted to examine the type and nature of sources, the reporting on the death toll, the length of the articles and the use of multimedia. The study revealed that AJAM cited only Palestinian citizens in its articles and always differentiated between militants and civilians when reporting on the Palestinian death toll, while nearly 15 per cent of CNN articles did not clarify whether it had been a militant or a civilian who had died. AJAM and CNN would reference Haaretz newspaper in some articles, yet CNN would also reference other Israeli news outlets. In the meantime, unlike its sister channels Al Jazeera Arabic (AJA) and Al Jazeera English (AJE), AJAM seemed to be shifting to American journalistic practices with regard to the use of routine sources and social media in its coverage of the 2014 Gaza War.

After Al Jazeera English started to broadcast in 2006, international news flows were criticized for being Eurocentric. Whether the debates on this topic would lead to a new phase, in terms of news flows, 90% of which were Eurocentric. The will of developing countries to change the direction of the news flows lead to the emergence of non-Eurocentric media sources as well as diversifying of channels. Also Sputnik that started broadcasting in 2014 has tried to indicate the reality of a multipolar world by means of regarding national interests, cultures, histories and traditions of all countries. After Sputnik's attempts to propose different perspectives in terms of news delivery, TRT also worth to be analyzed for its aim to contribute to non-Eurocentric news flows. TRT World started its broadcasting on 27th of October in 2015 with a TV channel and a website. Within this context, the aim of this paper is to analyze TRT World website on the basis of its attempts to introduce Turkey to the world besides its efforts to introduce the world to Turkish people.

This report will describe the key factors which create hurdles in marketing operations of Qatar Airways (QTR), which is the national airline of the State of Qatar and also considered to be one of the youngest top airlines of the world. This report will further discuss the role of GCC crisis which intensified the challenges for QTR’s growth and also discuss the major opportunities for QTR in form of FIFA World cup (2022) which can give the airline a chance to grow exponentially. Being the national carrier of Qatar, QTR has always been in the centre of extremities of geopolitical conflicts, whether it is related to the sanctions imposed by its dominant neighbors or aggressive international competition who always seek reasons to criticize it. Furthermore, this report will appraise the current marketing strategies of QTR and also provide reasonable and unbiased recommendations to the airline for further growth and prosperity.

Overview of media laws, penal codes, and other regulations and their applications in the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates. Includes comparisons to international approaches. Research supported by Doha Centre for Media Education. Research finds several areas in which GCC laws differ from international standards that allow for a vibrant press. These factors incude: criminal defamation charges instead of civil lawsuits, licensing of journalists, broad prohibitions on types of coverage, banning of "false news," and truth as an absolute defense for libel.

The paper tries to link the gap existing in between the role of social media and democratization in the Arab world through the theory of social constructivism. It reveals why various scholars have perceived democracy to be incompatible with the Arab world, which eventually made it difficult to understand the sudden emergence of pro-democracy protests, particularly in countries like Tunisia and Egypt. It further explains what social media is, primarily taking into account the social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. It gives instances of how social media defied the earlier notions of being marginal or elitist and rather endowed a platform for the Arabs to voice their opinions and dissent, which they were unable to do so with the traditional Arab media. The paper scrutinizes democratic institutions in the Arab world as a structure and the emergence of social media as a process rather than a platform. The question of identities and interests of the Arabs are explained on the lines of family, clan, tribes, and ethnicities, religious and non-religious contexts. The impact of identity and interest in the process of transforming structures is further analysed.

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 research analyzes the role of media in state-society relations nuancing policy between state and non-state actors, exemplified by the “CNN Effect” – the reflexive influence of new media agency with realtime policymaking, as promoted by the popular cable news network.  New Social Movement Theory aims to bridge dissonance between political communication practice, academia and policy discourse echoed in the digital gap of emerging global civil society, providing a new stage for political science in policy development and civic engagement.  Examining political agency through public opinion and policy exchange focuses on case studies highlighting social media's leverage as political capital across domestic and foreign policy narratives via electoral, social movement and media trends in the US, Central Asia, North Africa, Middle East, Europe, Russia and Latin America from 2006-2013.  New media trends are renegotiating identities, interests and proactive development of social innovation and civic engagement in next generation international relations.

This article aims to explore emerging trends for the Sunni religious elite and the Islamic legal tradition in the new context of the Arab Uprisings by focusing on Yusuf al-Qaradawi, arguably the most prominent of these ʿulamāʾ alive today. The article will follow al-Qaradawi’s articulation, transmission and reconstruction of the Islamic legal tradition in his own discourse as he has attempted to negotiate the politically fraught contexts of the Arab Uprisings while also maintaining his horizontal commitments to a diverse base of supporters be they the wider Arab Muslim public, the Muslim Brotherhood or indeed the Qatari royal family. The article will focus on al-Qaradawi’s highly publicised interventions and fatwas in relation to Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and Syria from the perspective of Islamic studies, and also draw on personal interviews with al-Qaradawi, his personal staff, as well as supplementary media. In so doing, the article will elucidate al-Qaradawi and his colleagues’ attempts, ranging from the highly creative to the markedly conservative, to respond to unfolding events through the legal tradition and play an increasingly active role in the public sphere while their own status simultaneously becomes ever more vulnerable and unstable.

This thesis explores the relationship between both American mass media and foreign international news channels on United States foreign policy. Initially, the paper examines the ability of contemporary global mass media to influence governments’ policy making. Then, it focuses on the ability of American mass media to influence the foreign policy decision making at the White House. The last part of this thesis examines the influence that foreign global mass media (in this case, Al Jazeera) can or cannot have on U.S. foreign policy decisions. Finally, the thesis ends with an assessment of both the CNN Effect and the Al Jazeera Effect in terms of the significance and the benefits and/or drawbacks of their influence. The thesis is concluded with thoughts on whether the United States government has the ability to control this media influence and use it to support its policy agenda, and with an accessment of the future of the CNN effect and Al Jazeera effect.

Key words: U.S. Foreign Policy, Media, CNN Effect, Al Jazeera Effect;

excerpt1 from Edward Said "Living in Arabic": " I have never escaped the amusingly dissonant jolt that comes with hearing a commonly used word that has totally incompatible meanings in the two languages. The name Sami, for example. In English one immediately thinks of Sam Weller, or Sammy Glick, a comic, or at least an inelegant nickname or a shortened, familiar form of the much grander "Samuel" with its biblical resonance not quite appropriate to our time. In Arabic Sami is also a common first name for a man (the feminine is Samia, which is also the word for "semitic"), but it derives from the word for "heaven", sama, and therefore means "high" or "heavenly" which is about as far from Sam or Sammy as one can get. They co-exist in the bilingual ear, unresolved, never at peace."

excerpt2: "Mahmoud Darwichطباق عن إدوارد سعيد"
نيويورك/ نوفمبر/ الشارعُ الخامسُ/
الشمسُ صَحنٌ من المعدن المُتَطَايرِ/
قُلت لنفسي الغريبةِ في الظلِّ:
هل هذه بابلٌ أَم سَدُومْ؟
هناك, على باب هاويةٍ كهربائيَّةٍ
بعُلُوِّ السماء, التقيتُ بإدوارد
قبل ثلاثين عاماً,
وكان الزمان أقلَّ جموحاً من الآن...
قال كلانا:
إذا كان ماضيكَ تجربةً
فاجعل الغَدَ معنى ورؤيا!
لنذهبْ,
لنذهبْ الى غدنا واثقين
بِصدْق الخيال, ومُعْجزةِ العُشْبِ/

Amin Elsaleh

Although satellite channels still have a central importance for the circulation of news in the Middle East and North Africa, the attention of many scholars has recently shifted towards the development of social media and their political use in the region. This article aims to focus on the convergence between the two media fields, specifically looking at how social networks’ contents have been selected and amplified by Al Jazeera English during the Tunisian and Egyptian 2011 revolutions. These issues are illustrated through the analysis of a selection of videos and posts published online by Al Jazeera English from 4 January to 11 February 2011.
Even though other media brands previously experimented with user-generated contents, the article argues that Al Jazeera English promoted a new configuration of ‘big’ and ‘small’ media in the MENA (Middle East and North African countries) region, based on the already well-established local media convergence.
The article also intends to explore the profile of the international public interacting with the channel’s website during the Egyptian Revolution. To do so, it analyses a selection of the comments left by the readers from 28 January to 11 February 2011, showing how during the revolts the channel became a reference point for a large international audience.

Revolts did not knock on the door, they just sneaked in the Arab region, toppling some regimes while shaking the thrones of others. Analyses began to heap in an attempt to examine this state of affairs; some choose to factor in this context a new foreign conspiracy, aiming at dividing of what is left from the region. Others suggest that the revolts are a long awaited revolution of pride and dignity and were ignited by plain domestic forces. As a prelude to this analysis, in today's article we wish to address the common views, widespread not only among academics and politicians, but also amongst the Arab masses which started to question, doubt and lose confidence in the current spate of Arab revolts. in order to keep readers abreast of the latest developments, this article espouses a nuanced approach in addressing a third view which considers the events mere scientific material that can serve as a platform to examine existing theories of International politics in a region, described for long time as idle and sluggish towards transformations.

Public Sphere in the Arab world has been under rapid and steady transformation with social media becoming an alternative medium of interactive communication. In 2011-12, Facebook had emerged as the main site
of these interactions and user-producer convergence
that helped the Arab uprisings to be communicated to
a wider audience by their actors directly to the people
who were equally able to interact with the process. On
the other hand, the satellite channels like Al Jazeera and
Al Arabiya found themselves challenged by the reach
and interactivity of social media and were forced to
meet the expectations of an over-ambitious Arab street.
Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, Al Sharq Al Awsat, Al Hayat,
and many transnational Arab news organizations became active on cyber-sphere, none of them achieved
the popularity of social media, nonetheless. The Arabic
page of Kulluna Khaled Said, for example, was created
in June 2010 in reaction to a local police case became
a global news maker when it became the leading media against Hosni Mubarak after the uprisings erupted.
This paper discusses the role of social media as a New
Medium when most of traditional mediums were trying
to censor or remain wary of covering the anti-regime uprisings. The new medium became a new message in itself where new ways of interactions and new discursive
traditions started appearing. A case study was conducted on the Facebook campaign of Kulluna Khaled Said
along with other pages which were actively engaged in
staging anti regime protests. The paper refers Jurgen
Habermas’ Public sphere as a theoretical point to what
the Arab street used to be at the time of the uprising.
Key words: Al Jazeera, Arab Uprising, Facebook,
Public Sphere, Social Media

Despite it has a small geographical area, Qatar is a country that is closely followed by the international community and attracts attention with its differences in attitudes in regional policies. Naturally, this difference must have a number of reasons. It can be mentioned that Qatar is geographically sitting on the largest natural gas reserves in the world.  Morever, the fact that the 2022 FIFA World Cup will be held in Qatar will make this country more visible in the international arena.  Qatar is also a strategic ally of the West and has a geography where political and military mobility intersect. All of these are just a few of the features that make Qatar more visible in the regional and international arena.
Morever, Qatar, which attracts attention with its Al Jazeera media organization, which is stated as independent, and with its high gross national yield, continues to increase its effectiveness in regional and international arena with each passing day.  This situation leads us to think about Qatar's potential to have a voice in the Middle East in terms of real-political and opportunities. When evaluating Qatar, it is necessary to draw attention to not only the opportunities it has, but also how it uses them in foreign policy. In this study, Qatar's opportunities and the attempt to turn regional crises into opportunities will be analyzed. Furthermore, the possible effects of Qatar in the Middle East will be examined its position and visibility in the regional power equation.

The Gulf Crisis, also known as the GCC Crisis, and Qatar Crisis, began when several countries – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and Egypt (henceforth ‘the quartet’) – abruptly severed ties with Qatar during June of 2017. This paper aims to analyse the GCC Crisis from a public diplomacy perspective, and will subsequently focus on four major themes. The first one consists of exploring the projects and initiatives implemented by Qatar, including its reliance on public diplomacy to build a more favourable image. The second theme will discuss the political warfare that unfolded after the start of the Gulf Crisis (24 May 2017). Thirdly, Qatar’s response to the subsequent blockade imposed by the quartet will be investigated. Last, and stemming from the previous theme, this paper will also examine the international broadcasting aspect of the crisis, including Al Jazeera’s (AJ’s) reporting during the same period. Through the Gulf Crisis case study, this paper aspires to uncover the contours and limitations of public diplomacy in the context of inter-state political dynamics.

Al Jazeera English struggles to gain wide TV distribution in the United States. This paper is a case study of one of the few communities it is available. The story of its carriage and the debate over it says something about the network‟s chances in the United States, as well as American receptivity to the channel. Reviewing the local debate in Burlington, VT over AJE by the local public, city-funded telecom company illustrates the discourses of support and opposition to the global news channel in the United States. The arguments reflect cosmopolitan and nativist outlooks towards AJE as a global news channel. Ultimately, local supporters of AJE who mobilized to speak out for it in townhall meetings and local media won the day and the channel stayed available in Burlington. The unique political economy of Burlington Telecom as well as the political orientation and history of Burlington make it difficult to generalize this case of AJE distribution elsewhere in the United States.

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.

This analysis will look into the Qatari media coverage of the abuse of migrant workers in Qatar during the construction of the World Cup stadiums for 2022. The issue is controversial and has had an impact on the way journalists report. It has created a stir among news media in the West, like The Guardian and Russia Today, and Human Rights organisations. This in turn has impacted the way journalists are now covering the story. There are certain structural influences imposing order on parts of the Qatari media’s coverage and therefore it is important and relevant to the field of journalism studies. The aim of the analysis is to explore the reasons behind the Qatari media’s selective reporting and whether its lack of transparency was indeed journalistic or due to “influences originating primarily from outside the media organization” (Reese, 2001). This analysis will use two theoretical approaches to explore and further analyse the issue: the news framing approach and the news sources approach.

Since the African independence movements of the 1960s and 70s and subsequent calls for a New World Information Communication Order (NWICO) free from Western dominance, there have been frequent discussions about how to ameliorate sub-Saharan Africa’s relegation to the margins of global news flows.  Multiple scholars have documented that, while international news flows into the continent with increasing volume and speed, very little flows outwards (e.g. Katz & Wedell, 1977; McBride, 1980; Cavanaugh, 1989; Franklin & Love, 1998; Golan, 2008).  When it comes to global news, Africa remains the “dark continent,” which significantly influences the ability of African countries to negotiate in the international arena.  Over the last four years ago, Al Jazeera English has made covering and reaching Africa a corner stone of its editorial mission – to “give voice to the voiceless.”  It highlights the fact that it has twelve bureaus on the African continent, more than any other global news broadcaster, and features more in depth coverage of African issues told from an African perspective.  Drawing upon interviews and qualitative network analysis, this chapter scrutinizes Aljazeera’s English’s activities in sub-Saharan Africa.  It examines the extent to which AJE has provided an alternative to the prevailing discourses on sub Saharan Africa adopted by its peer news organizations and has moved Africa out of the global news periphery.

This study examines whether news broadcasts across nations are more cosmopolitan or parochial in their essence. To answer this question, the article proposes two unique theoretical concepts: "global newsworthiness” and “reversed domestication." Global newsworthiness refers to news broadcasts that include ranges of countries, selected by several different reporting criteria. Reversed domestication refers to the connection made between the country of origin of the broadcasting media and the news content. Four television news networks were compared - CNN International, BBC World News, Al Jazeera English and France 24. The findings point to different levels of global newsworthiness and reversed domestication.

Özellikle de Trump’ın hâlihazırda “fake news” olarak adlandırdığı liberal haber platformları düşünüldüğünde el-Cezire’nin Trump üzerinde tesir etmesi daha da zorlaşmıştır. Nitekim el- Cezire’nin “Rightly” girişimi bu eksikliği gidermeyi amaçlıyor olabilir.

This report will focus on the newsroom convergence and the network as a multimedia storytelling organisation. Additionally, this report will look at the journalist’s responsibilities and roles with the “emergence of convergence” (Verweij 2009: 75). I spent two months at Al Jazeera in Doha just before I started at Rhodes University and shadowed producers and presenters behind the sports desk. I am eager to explore and expand more on the responsibilities of the journalists I worked with, especially considering its current involvement in the Qatar-Gulf crisis, as well as the network’s other tribulations such as when seven journalists were kidnapped in Egypt during protests in 2011.

A few months after the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian revolts, the satellite news channel Al Jazeera English, broadcasting from the Middle-Eastern region for an international public, launched 'The Stream', presented as " A television show based on a social media community ". By integrating the social media into the news production process, The Stream is expected, according to its authors, to transfer the geographic and cultural variety of the internet into a television format. This paper aims to explore how a transnational media like Al Jazeera English uses the convergence between television and social networks to 'give voice' to the changing relations of power and cultural influence between the West and the Rest, particularly through the category of the 'diaspora'. By analyzing some episodes of the program, this paper will look at how in The Stram this term, loaded with historic and cultural meaning in migration studies and media-and postcolonial theory, becomes part of the everyday language of a multi-media community. The article analyzes how the term 'diaspora' is used and transformed within The Stream media environment: as a field for 'social change'; as an element contributing to discussion, democracy, modernization; as a key aspect to elaborate the cultural complexity of contemporary societies.

The way in which different media portrayed and constructed the notion of the Arab Spring has received a great deal of scholarly attention since the start of these revolutions in late 2010. However, the role of media in the news construction and framing of the Yemeni Uprising, in particular, has been less well­examined; that is perhaps attributed to the fact that Yemen’s socio­political features are complex, and it is often an intimidating task to analyse the media’s interrelation with the country’s political developments. Hence, in tackling this gap, this thesis focuses on the first stage of Yemen’s 2011 Uprising and how media portrayed it, by specifically displaying a comparative analysis between the BBC World and Al Jazeera English online­published articles during the first 100 days of the Yemeni uprising. These articles represent the initial portrayal that shaped the early understanding of the events in Yemen. This study uses the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach which provides an in­depth understanding of how language is used in its social, political and cultural contexts. The study’s analysis is mainly focused on Fairclough's CDA three­dimensional framework to examine the texts on textual, discursive practices and social practices levels. Additionally, the thesis analyzes the data with different textual strategies stemming from CDA; examination of topicalization, lexicalization and predication, verbal process, intertextuality and framing. Thus, the thesis provides a comprehensive explanation of the media discourse adopted by these two media outlets during the early stage of Yemen’s 2011 Uprising. Through the study, emerging themes suggest that the two media outlets go through two phases; the pre and post the ‘Friday of Dignity’ and the ‘GCC deal initiative’. In the first phase, the two media networks have no differences in their coverage: they characterize the events as ‘protests’ and ‘unrest’, and their group polarization characteristics are similar: the ingroup for both BBC and AJE are the protesters and the outgroup are Saleh and his government. Then in the second phase the two media outlets slightly differ in their coverage in terms of the textual and discursive practice features. While both BBC and AJE similarly start to describe events in Yemen as an ‘uprising’, the BBC has more emphasis on the positive features of the ingroup (the protesters) more than AJE does. Moreover, AJE does more direct sourcing of voices from the GCC than the BBC in regard to the GCC deal initiative. In explaining that slight shift, the geopolitical factor is fundamentally relevant.

Les révoltes n’ont pas frappé à la porte avant d’entrer, elles se sont glissées furtivement dans le monde arabe, renversant certains régimes tout en secouant le trône des autres.
Les analyses ont commencé à pleuvoir dans la tentative d'examiner cet état des choses : certains penchent, dans ce contexte, pour la théorie d’un nouveau complot étranger, visant à diviser ce qui restait de la région. D'autres suggèrent que ces révoltes sont une révolution longuement attendue, teintée de fierté et de dignité, déclenchée par des forces populaires internes.
En prélude à cette analyse, nous souhaitons dans cet article aborder le point de vue commun, non seulement répandu parmi les universitaires et les politiciens, mais aussi parmi les peuples arabes qui ont commencé à remettre en question, douter et perdre confiance dans la vague des révoltes arabes.
Afin de tenir les lecteurs au courant des derniers développements, cet article prône une approche nuancée en ouvrant un troisième point de vue, qui considère les événements comme simple matériel scientifique pouvant servir de plateforme pour examiner les théories existantes de la politique internationale, dans une région décrite depuis longtemps comme léthargique et peu encline à se transformer.

The way in which different media portrayed and constructed the notion of the Arab Spring has received a great deal of scholarly attention since the start of these revolutions in late 2010. However, the role of media in the news construction and framing of the Yemeni Uprising in particular has been less well­examined; that is perhaps attributed to the fact that Yemen’s socio­political features are complex, and it is often an intimidating task to analyse the media’s interrelation with the country’s political developments. Hence, in tackling this gap, this thesis focuses on the first stage of Yemen’s 2011 Uprising and how media portrayed it, by specifically displaying a comparative analysis between the BBC World and Al Jazeera English online­published articles during the first 100 days of the Yemeni uprising. These articles represent the initial portrayal that shaped the early understanding of the events in Yemen. This study uses the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach which pro...

On 1 November 2021, Al Jazeera celebrated its 25-year-anniversary. Since inception, it has been beset with an astonishing number of threats and attacks that were supposed to intimidate the network and prevent reportage in one of the world’s most conflict-stricken regions. Al Jazeera has been a trailblazer in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, putting forward stories and perspectives that would have otherwise never been covered by local or regional media. The network has tapped into a 350 million plus audience of primarily Arab-speaking viewers in more than 22 countries. The network’s championing of democracy and human rights amidst popular uprisings has attracted the ire of dictators in the region. Here it is important to acknowledge the international context. Since the collapse of the first, second, and third worlds and the globalisation of media communication, framings of geopolitical reality have become essentially contested. Such was evident in Al Jazeera’s daring coverage of the 2000 Intifada, the 2001 War on Afghanistan, and the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. In the latter context, the human cost of the war and the despoliation of Arab/Muslim sovereignty and heritage was emphasised. Significant airtime given to anti-war reactions and oppositional worldviews exemplified the de-Westernisation of global media communication. In this commentary, all these aspects will be examined as will the corporate, socio-political, and geopolitical complexities surrounding the rise of this resilient news media organisation.

The growth and expansion of the Internet has enabled many people to communicate and engage in different manners and it is easier than ever now to obtain news and information content via different online sittings. However, concerns grow about the effects of misinformation that has been circulated via different online media sites to influence public views. This research was aimed at exploring online academic news users' behaviour and their attitudes towards news information given by Al-Jazeera.net during the Egyptian transformation (2013-2014) in Egypt. Based on an online survey (450 users) and focus-group interviews (six respondents) with Egyptian academics, the research discussed whether users were aware of the media interest or agenda and how users became informed about the political conflict and the transformation, their perceptions of news sites and their evaluation of information regarding this period. The research confirmed that every media has its own interest or agenda when delivering news content, which might favour one side over another. Users indicated that misinformation was found in different forms and, although others underlined the importance of freely accessing online content, there was concern about the spread of misinformation the morality and credibility of online news.

The article analyzes to what extent news reporting on terrorist attacks globalized, regionalized, or country specific. We compare coverage on four terrorist incidents in the main news shows of the US edition of CNN, of Al Jazeera's Arabic language service, of the British BBC, and of the German ARD. The analysis shows cross-national similarities in several dimensions: the analyzed media devote nearly identical amounts of attention to the four events, employ similar stylistic devices to describe them, and evaluate them similarly. At the same time, there are notable differences. These differences are not found between Western channels and Al Jazeera – as proponents of a 'clash of civilizations' might expect – but between CNN and Al Jazeera on the one hand, and the BBC and ARD on the other. The former interpret the attacks as an expression of a global ''war on terror'', whereas the latter see them as criminal attacks by a few individuals against the human civilization itself.

Al-Jazeera English is the first English-language satellite news channel broadcasting globally from the Middle East. The channel aims to redress the balance of news flows, and the present article presents a comprehensive, quantitative content analysis of the channel’s news. The article finds that the channel airs more news items from and about the global South than the global North, and

La chaîne d’information en continu Al Arabiya est une télévision saoudienne qui lutte pour s’imposer dans l’espace arabe. Devant elle, il y a des conquérants qui travaillent eux aussi pour des agendas et des lignes éditoriales prédéfinies. Par conséquent, cette chaîne a devant elle des enjeux à lever de natures médiatiques multiples et politique complexes. Dans cet article, il s’agit d’examiner les défis de ce canal et d’en dégager son positionnement vis-à-vis les autres acteurs afin de déterminer les stratégies de son agissement dans le champ télévisuel arabe. Il s’agit d’une approche critique qui mit en avant les caractéristiques communicationnelles de cette chaîne.

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.

Five years after the inception of the Aljazeera satellite news network in 1996, the organization created a companion Arabic Web site (www.aljazeera.net), effectively increasing its reach to any reader of Arabic with Internet access worldwide. While a fairly stable entity, Aljazeera.net has faced a number of challenges over its short history. Some mirror those of the parent organization such as criticisms from many governments about its reporting as well as struggles to move to an advertiser-funded model. Other problems have been unique to the web experience including difficulties with video streaming, hacker attacks, and the challenges of developing a foreign language (English) version of the site. This essay will review the past, current status, and future prospects of Aljazeera’s companion Web sites from a public relations perspective. It will deal with the Web site’s startup, its link to Aljazeera TV, the difficulties with video streaming, and the challenges with English Aljazeera.net.

With its news coverage of the Arab uprisings, the Qatar-based global news network Al Jazeera English (AJE) made major journalistic waves by scooping global news media. International praise of AJE’s reporting led some to analogize it to “CNN’s moment,” when the nascent network established a global media presence with coverage of the first Gulf War. Even in the United States, where AJE’s audience was small, it became the news source of reference for Egypt’s events. The network and its supporters began to push for wider American distribution. At the same time, AJE critics raised their voices in protest. Using data from an online experiment, this study gauges how Americans in general view and assess AJE after the network’s new found prominence. The findings suggest that there remains substantial prejudice against AJE among segments of the American public. Central to the experiment was a test of how respondents evaluated AJE and CNNI after watching an AJE-produced news clip edited to carry CNNI branding compared with when it featured AJE’s branding. We found evidence of prejudice against AJE, and it correlates highly with conservative political ideology and anti-Arab sentiments.

A few months after the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian revolts, the satellite news channel Al Jazeera English, broadcasting from the Middle-Eastern region for an international public, launched 'The Stream', presented as " A television show based on a social media community ". By integrating the social media into the news production process, The Stream is expected, according to its authors, to transfer the geographic and cultural variety of the internet into a television format. This paper aims to explore how a transnational media like Al Jazeera English uses the convergence between television and social networks to 'give voice' to the changing relations of power and cultural influence between the West and the Rest, particularly through the category of the 'diaspora'. By analyzing some episodes of the program, this paper will look at how in The Stram this term, loaded with historic and cultural meaning in migration studies and media-and postcolonial theory, becomes part of the everyday language of a multi-media community. The article analyzes how the term 'diaspora' is used and transformed within The Stream media environment: as a field for 'social change'; as an element contributing to discussion, democracy, modernization; as a key aspect to elaborate the cultural complexity of contemporary societies.

As the world marked World Press Freedom Day on 3 May 2015, Al Jazeera English (AJE) interrupted its regular programming for its senior management and journalists to discuss the state of media freedom around the world (Al Jazeera English, 2015). The Qatar-based network has long championed freedom of speech in the Arab World by giving airtime to dissenters, opposition groups, and controversial figures. Al Jazeera Arabic (AJA) has made its name in the 1990s and 2000s exposing the misdeeds, human rights abuses, and corruption of Middle-Eastern regimes. This stance came with a hefty price: Al Jazeera’s anchors became persona non grata in many Arab countries, and its offices were forcibly and regularly closed throughout the Arab World. During the past two decades, strained relationships between the Qatari government and other Arab governments became the norm rather than the exception, and ambassadors were often recalled from the Qatari capital in protest against the network’s coverage. The latter’s journalistic culture struck a chord with viewers. When Al Jazeera English (AJE) was launched in 2006, it was available in more than 80 million households worldwide. By early 2012, this number had jumped to about 250 million. According to the AJE website, the channel’s programmes can be seen on television in more than 100 countries on six continents.

This is a special issue devoted to the study of media. It has articles on age and gender in film, media convergence, news media as popular culture, Wittgenstein and film theory, literacy and time on the Internet, a study of Poopreport.com, and an essay on identity in video games. There is an interview with Theo van Leeuwen and a series of reviews and review essays on related topics.