Al Jazeera Network Research Articles

A Study of Media Evolution and its Integral Role in Shaping Political Dynamics in the Arab World: The Case Study of Al Jazeera Network

This article delves into the transformative journey of media within the Arab world and its profound impact on shaping political dynamics. By tracing the evolution of media, this research explores the pivotal role media has played in influencing public opinion, political discourse, and governance structures. Through an interdisciplinary approach encompassing media studies, political science, and cultural analysis, the study examines the intricate interplay between media innovation and socio-political change. This study focuses on the Arab Spring as a pivotal moment in the recent history of the Arab world, investigating the transformative role of media in shaping political dynamics during these tumultuous events. By examining Al Jazeera network as a case study and offering insights into the evolving landscape of the Arab political scene and media, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between media evolution and political transformation in the region.

Social Change and Development in Qatar

Qatar, a small country, in southern Persian Gulf, in recent years has appeared as a most welfare state with high per- capita revenue. In some infrastructures, like Air lines, Qatar is one of the best in the world, and Aljazeera Network, is the prominent televised news channels in the region. It favors huge resources of oil and gas and then has been dependent in it's budget on exporting this natural resources, but some other countries in the region have this kind of natural resource and now are in many troubles. The political structure of Qatar, like many other Arab states, is inheritable. Although there are controversial theories about these development, it's worthy to study the developmental process of this state. The social structure of the country, as an ex-traditional socio-cultural context, it seems has been changing to a different formation. What are the causes of this social change? Which consequences has produced or probably will produce in other spheres of the country?

Demystifying Qatar’s Pro-Revolution Monarchy: Old Rivalries, New Geopolitical Motives

Unlike other Arab monarchies, Qatar has embraced a supportive position toward the Arab revolutions since the moment they broke out in late 2010. In fact, Qatar’s Al Jazeera network was an essential media mobilizer for the Arab masses and a major promoter of the revolutionary change process in the region, hosting pro-revolution Arab intellectuals, and broadcasting pro-reform messages. Qatar welcomed the Tunisian Revolution, financially backed the country in its transitional stage, and behaved the same with the subsequent Egyptian and Yemeni cases. What’s more, Qatar made efforts to encourage both Arab and international support for humanitarian interventions in Libya and Syria, and generously backed the revolutionary forces there both financially and militarily. Given the fact that Qatar’s political system is of the conservative-monarchic type, this paper aims to review the dynamics and geopolitical interests that drove Doha to embrace a pro-change policy in the region during the Arab Spring, with a view to better understanding what has become known as the ‘Qatari Oxymoron’ or ‘Qatari Exceptionalism,’ and the ensuing dynamics that led to the Gulf crisis of 2017 –the most difficult crisis among the GCC states since the organization’s establishment in 1981.

Qatar Soft Power: From Rising to the Crisis

Qatar has recently become a regional power and an influential actor in international politics. Qatar has adopted a foreign policy of soft power, which played a prominent role in the rise of the international scene. On 5 June 2017, a diplomatic boycott crisis has erupted against Qatar. The Arab Quartet imposed a complete blockade on Qatar and stated 13 demands. The study explores Qatar’s soft power tools such as lobbying, international mediation, scholarships, foreign aids, Al Jazeera network, which has created a national brand for Qatar. With the non-coercive foreign policy, Qatar’s stance in regional politics has transformed from neutrality to influence. This study will investigate the underlying political, ideological, and strategical factors of the 2017 crisis that has manifested the power struggles in the Gulf, the role of Qatar's foreign policy of soft power in the context of the crisis. Finally, the study will analyze whether the current situation demonstrates transient appeasement or a permanent resolution.

Perceptions and attitudes of Qatar University students regarding the utility of arabic and english in communication and education in Qatar

This study investigates the linguistic attitudes and perceptions of Qatar University students regarding the utility and vitality of the two languages that define the education and communication scenes in Qatar, namely, Arabic and English. It also reports on the predictors of these attitudes in terms of demographic traits. 861 students completed a questionnaire that was divided into: Media Language Preference (MLP); Value and Symbolism of Arabic (VSA); Arabic in Education and Society (AES); Medium of Instruction (MOI); Impact of Al-Jazeera Network (IJN); English in Scientific and Professional Communication (ESPC); Qatari Cultural Identity (QCI); Arabic Books (AB); English in Society and Work (ESW); Language in Workplace (LIW); Arabic in Employment (AE); Status of Arabic (SA); and Manifestations of Sociocultural Identity (MSI). Results showed that Arabic got higher ratings for MLP, VSA, AES, MOI, QCI, and MSI, while English was perceived as more useful than Arabic in ESPC. Correlational analysis showed that Gender had significant correlations with MLP, MOI, ESPC, and MSI, while Nationality, Specialization, and Number of spoken languages had correlations with MLP and MOI.

Qatar’s Soft Power, Digital and Public Diplomacy in the Face of a Global Pandemic Walked Pass MENA Neighbours

Since the inception of the term soft power by Joseph Nye, Qatar a tiny state in the Middle East seems to have mastered the arts and sciences of soft power and is now outplaying her MENA peers through the crafting and implementation of her public diplomacy. With rapid globalization as a byproduct of public diplomacy, digital diplomacy is now a cornerstone in today’s 21st Century diplomatic communication. Wrapped in the bombastic advances in ICT, the internet, and social media, traditional diplomatic patterns have shifted robustly thus culminating in the strengthening of diplomatic relations. This paper argues that Qatar’s gains through its use of soft power via modern technologies stem from hosting a plethora of timely educational and diplomatic webinars and its attractions of “carrots” have added more flesh to its public diplomacy records from early 2020 to mid-2021. The paper went forth in x-raying those institutions and actors, whose digital actions, and programs catapulted the image of Qatar during the global pandemic such as Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), Aljazeera Network, and Dr. Evren Tok. Finally, despite the availability of resources and its soft power tools, this work pinpoints a few setbacks such as “Zoom Fatigue”. The paper concludes that Qatar’s digital diplomacy will continue to grow from leaps and bounds based on the results recorded via these virtual programs. The author Solomonicly suggests that the hosting of educational and diplomatic programs off and online would spearhead the public and digital diplomacy of Doha in an unpredictable Middle East Region.

Digital Journalism, Social Media Platforms, and Audience Engagement: The Case of AJ+

In 2014, Al Jazeera Network launched AJ+, a digital initiative intended to put it at the forefront of a changing journalistic field. Targeting an expanding mobile-centric generation of avid social media users and tech-savvy youth, Al Jazeera’s innovative media lab for digital storytelling engages audiences on a wide range of popular and emerging social media platforms. This qualitative and quantitative research study explores what AJ + reveals about the ability of established media organizations to adapt to changes in technology and adjust to the evolving ways news is produced and consumed. While shedding light on the opportunities and challenges ICT-driven innovation in journalism have brought to legacy media players in the digital era, the case of AJ+ also helps unravel intricate dynamics at the intersection of changing digital journalistic practices, retooled forms of political communication, and reconfigured geopolitical realities.

Periphery of the peripheries: Women in Al Jazeera Arabic news

Since its inception in 1996, Al Jazeera has branded itself as an alternative voice in the global media landscape. While scholars argue that Al Jazeera has brought the Global South’s voice from the periphery to the centre, there is little scholarship on Al Jazeera’s representation of women. Building on intersectionality literature, this article aims to investigate the intersection of gender and geopolitical positionalities in relation to Al Jazeera Arabic’s (AJA) representation of the Global South’s women. This article concludes that women were minimally represented in AJA news. Interviews and document analysis highlight that the Al Jazeera network does adopt gender-neutral policies on reporting news. By failing to recognize the intersectionality of gender and geopolitical positionality of Global South women, AJA privileges men’s experiences and voices and consequently women remain at the periphery of the peripheries in Al Jazeera news. Al Jazeera needs to address this gap through institutional and policy lenses.

Image Analysis of Online News Coverage of the 25th January Egyptian Revolution

Media discourse is considered a good example of how different modes of communication are employed to produce meanings which construct ideological representations of events and situations. The study seeks to investigate the role of images in media discourse as an important mode of communication in constructing different representations of the events of the Egyptian revolution. Over the last two or three decades a revolution has taken place in the area of communication, and particularly in media. The images of news events have come to play an increasingly central role in the discursive practices of media channels whether they are printed newspapers, online newspapers or TV news programmes. The effect of this revolution is that language has lost its position as the central mode of communication, whereas, other modes such as visual, music, gesture,…etc., have become dominant. Thus, multimodal texts have increasingly come to dominate the sphere of social communication. There emerges the need to explore the role images play in influencing our perception to and reaction towards different events. Adopting Kress and van Leeuwen's (2006) theory of multimodal discourse analysis, the study attempts to analyze the visual structures used in media discourse in order to construe different representations of the revolution. The study adopts a visual analysis of the online news of Egyptian and Arabic media that report on the 25th January Egyptian Revolution during the period from 25th of January till 11th of February 2011. Particularly, it examines ten images accompanying the news stories selected from the coverage of four major news networks: Alahram electronic gate as representative of state media on one side, and Alwafd electronic gate, Alyoum7, and Aljazeera network as representatives of oppositional media on the other side

Qatar in Egypt: The politics of Al Jazeera

This article argues that, although Al Jazeera may have been founded with the idea of giving Qatar influence in the Arab world and beyond, it was through a form of slow Islamist takeover within Al Jazeera Network that first the new Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr (Al Jazeera Live from Egypt) and second the classic Al Jazeera Arabic were ideologically transformed. This transformation led both of these Al Jazeera subsidiaries to damage Qatar’s political relations with its neighboring states of Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Analysis reveals that Al Jazeera and Qatar’s foreign policies are not identical. Rather, each institution manifests its own internal logic and enforces external ties. Moreover, there are many Al Jazeera(s): Al Jazeera Arabic (AJA), Al Jazeera English (AJE), Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr (AJMM), Al Jazeera Documentary etc. Each one is different. The article also examines the case of the three Al Jazeera English journalists who were jailed, tried, and eventually pardoned, in Egypt, as an example of the worsening political relations that developed between Qatar and Egypt as a result of confusing AJE’s professional work with the ultimately shut down AlJazeera Mubasher Misr’s Islamist editorial policy and unprofessional journalistic practices. Methods include: examining primary documents, qualitative content analysis of officials’ media interviews, fieldwork research in Egypt, and anthropological research in Qatar, interviewing journalists, public officials, and academics on various research trips between 2007 and 2017.

Why Has There Been No People’s Power Rebellion in North Korea?

One scenario put forward by researchers, political commentators and journalists for the collapse of North Korea has been a People’s Power (or popular) rebellion. This paper analyses why no popular rebellion has occurred in the DPRK under Kim Jong Un. It challenges the assumption that popular rebellion would happen because of widespread anger caused by a greater awareness of superior economic conditions outside the DPRK. Using Jack Goldstone’s theoretical expla-nations for the outbreak of popular rebellion, and comparisons with the 1989 Romanian and 2010–11 Tunisian transitions, this paper argues that marketi-zation has led to a loosening of state ideological control and to an influx of infor-mation about conditions in the outside world. However, unlike the Tunisian transitions—in which a new information context shaped by social media, the Al-Jazeera network and an experience of protest helped create a sense of pan-Arab solidarity amongst Tunisians resisting their government—there has been no similar ideology unifying North Koreans against their regime. There is evidence of discontent in market unrest in the DPRK, although protests between 2011 and the present have mostly been in defense of the right of people to support themselves through private trade. North Koreans believe this right has been guaranteed, or at least tacitly condoned, by the Kim Jong Un government. There has not been any large-scale explosion of popular anger because the state has not attempted to crush market activities outright under Kim Jong Un. There are other reasons why no popular rebellion has occurred in the North. Unlike Tunisia, the DPRK lacks a dissident political elite capable of leading an opposition movement, and unlike Romania, the DPRK authorities have shown some flexibility in their anti-dissent strategies, taking a more tolerant approach to protests against economic issues. Reduced levels of violence during periods of unrest and an effective system of information control may have helped restrict the expansion of unrest beyond rural areas.

The danger of Israel according to Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi

Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, widely considered the most influential Islamic scholar alive today, is the author of over 120 books and a spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. He is a member of many international Muslim organizations and the sharia advisor for a number of Islamic banks. Qaradawi is considered a part of the political centre (wasatiyya), positioned between those relying on ancient sunna and Qur’an (salafiyya) sources and the more moderate new stream. His sermons are broadcast live on television to millions of Muslims throughout the world. He also appears on a popular weekly television show dealing with current affairs regarding the sharia on the Al Jazeera network. His beliefs about the Palestinian‒Israeli conflict exert great influence over the Muslim public across the globe. This article represents his views and explains why the war against Israel is so important to the Islamic world.

Al Jazeera and Qatari Foreign Policy: A Critical Approach

Our paper explores the Al-Jazeera network and its relationship to the state which set it up and continues to fund it. We suggest that, while the network may provide perspectives for Western viewers that other large, but Western-owned networks do not, it is far from immune from the problems of state influence. Behind a cultivated veneer of providing perspectives from 'the Arab street', the network reflects foreign policy perspectives of the Qatari state and the small elite which controls it. This paper surveys Al-Jazeera Arabic news coverage (August 2014-August 2015) of conflict in Iraq and three AJA current affairs programmes coverage (January 2014-August 2015) of conflict in Iraq, Syria and Egypt. The results indicate that, on foreign policy issues which the Qatari elite regards as particularly important, the network promotes the perspectives of the state. The relationship between the Qatari state and Al-Jazeera also constrains the network's independence and objectivity.

Based on the peace journalism model: Analysis of Al-Jazeera’s coverage of Bahrain’s uprising and Syria’s chemical attack

The Al-Jazeera network, founded in 1996 and financed directly by Qatar’s royal family, is attributed with a significant catalytic role in the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings that swept the Middle East from 2011. However, the Qatar-based network has been criticized for facilitating and supporting the Tunisian, Egyptian, Syrian and Libyan revolutions, while not giving the same attention to the uprisings in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, close allies to Doha and members (Bahrain and Saudi Arabia) of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Using peace journalism as a source of evaluative criteria, this study examines to what extent Al-Jazeera’s online coverage (Al-Jazeera Arabic (AJA) and Al-Jazeera English (AJE)) reproduced and supported key framings of GCC foreign policy in coverage of two stories: Bahrain’s uprising during the first two weeks of the military Saudi intervention and the Syria conflict in the week that followed the Al-Ghouta Chemical Weapons (CW) attack in Damascus. Al-Jazeera’s online coverage was dominated by the war journalism frames in both countries, but AJA’s coverage of Bahrain’s uprising was more propagandistic than that of AJE. However, AJA and AJE generally agreed on Syria, as both of them were dominated by pro-GCC framing.

A microeconomic approach to international broadcasting

In this article, we borrow from microeconomic theory of market interventions to conceptualize international broadcasting as a form of information intervention. Using Price's market for loyalties model, we explore the US's Middle East Broadcasting Network and Qatar's Al-Jazeera Network, identifying how both governments are using new and traditional information technologies to compete for influence, and highlighting both effective and ineffective strategies.

AL JAZEERA ENGLISH ONLINE

Al Jazeera English is the Arab world’s largest purveyor of English language news to an international audience. This article provides an in-depth examination of how its website employs Web metrics for tracking and understanding audience behavior. The Al Jazeera Network remains sheltered from the general economic concerns around the news industry, providing a unique setting in which to understand how these tools influence newsroom production and knowledge creation. Through interviews and observations, findings reveal that the news organization’s institutional culture plays a tremendous role in shaping how journalists use and understand metrics. The findings are interpreted through an analysis of news norms studies of the social construction of technology.

Challenging Authority in Cyberspace: Evaluating Al Jazeera Arabic Writers

Abstract: The Arab Spring has been widely branded as a social media revolution. Evidence has shown that many Arab citizens consider Al Jazeera one of the most popular and credible Arab news networks, making it important to explore the manner and the extent to which this media network may have impacted the Revolution. One way to do so is by examining the meaning, configuration, and providers of the Al Jazeera network’s news content. This exploration seems to raise important questions: what are the contents of Al Jazeera’s Arabic politico-religious articles? Are political writers revolutionaries in their views? Do they identify with the Arab mainstream or with a political/ideological group, or do they court the interests of Arab states? To what extent are writers affected by their country of origin, their ideological affiliations, or the country in which Al Jazeera is based—Qatar? This article attempts to answer these questions by analyzing the fluidity and the complexities of a sample of articles collected from Al Jazeera’s Arabic political columns between 30 January and 31 August 2011. In doing so, this article contributes to a timely discussion of social media, religion, and authority in the Arab world by presenting a case study of the political content of one of the Arab world’s leading media outlets.

Debating Arabic on Al-Jazeera: Endangerment and Identity in Divergent Discourses

Eight debates on Al-Jazeera specifically, on the Arabic language, highlight the divergent and convergent discourses about the status of the language and its use today in the Arab world. All address the issue of the weakness of the Arabic language, both internally between formal and dialect, and externally in the face of globalizing English. The participants also link the Arabic language to issues of identity and who the Arabs ‘are’ during this era of globalization. The article outlines the intellectual roots that many of the participants draw upon—that of the Arab nahda of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Finally, the article points out that there is a divergence between the general direction of scholarship produced in the West on the Arabic language and about the Al-Jazeera network and the broader intersection of language and nationalism addressed by the Al-Jazeera participants. Beyond noting the obvious linkage between language and nationalism, how actual participants deal with their intellectual legacies while attempting to prescribe and influence the present deserves greater analysis in the case of the Arabic language and its most noted vehicle today—the Al-Jazeera satellite television network.

Al-Jazeera vs Al-Jazeera: A comparison of the network’s English and Arabic online coverage of the US/Al Qaeda conflict

In light of US criticism that Al-Jazeera network is biased in its coverage against the United States by aiding the terrorist cause and the fact that most of the accusations of bias continue to be based on the claim that Arab media such as Al-Jazeera Arabic include the language of terror organizations, while its English-language counterpart, Al-Jazeera English, is being cleansed by changes and omissions, this research sought to investigate whether these claims could be validated. Examining online coverage of the US/Al Qaeda conflict in the Arabic-language Al-Jazeera website, these claims were measured against online coverage of the conflict in the English-language Al-Jazeera website. By content analyzing prominence of news stories (frequency and placement), use of sources and tone of coverage, the research demonstrates a significant difference regarding the placement of news stories between the English- and Arabic-language Al-Jazeera websites, but no further differences were found. The overwhelming majority of attributed sources were from the United States and its allies. Furthermore, results revealed Al-Jazeera websites did not shy away from negative coverage regarding all those involved in the conflict. By and large in a highly competitive media environment, our findings suggest that in reporting the US/Al Qaeda conflict Al-Jazeera websites did not provide different perspectives of the war to Arabic- and English-language online users.

Framing the Iraq War

Some of the key findings are reported from a cross-national comparative content analysis of the flagship main evening TV news programs in five countries, as well as of the flagship Arab-language TV news on the Al-Jazeera network, during March and April 2003, the “official” 3-4-week period of the war in Iraq, to investigate the similarities and differences in the framing of the war in TV news. Despite some differences among networks within countries, the study reveals major lines of cross-national difference in the subtopics emphasized in the coverage, the tone of the coverage of the opposing sides, and the volume of news devoted to the Allies (the United Kingdom and the United States). It is concluded that the reporting of the war was conditioned by the national and international contexts in which the news was produced. The cross-country comparisons raise serious questions about the credibility and impartiality of TV news in the reporting of the war.