Aljazeera in the age of new media

Aljazeera in the age of new media .it is very interesting thing to examine especially in the light of the events that the Arab world is living. During the last few months we have heard a lot a about the age of new media, social networks and even so called facebook revolutions. the historical events that the Arab world lived the last few months raised many questions about what is called new media and its relationship with the what we can call traditional media .throughout many events that the Arab world lived Aljazeera was a major characters in the story .for this it is not strange that al ghaddafi first blamed Aljazeera and drugs for the up rising in what he thinks his own  farm .it is clear that new media played a major role in events like the Egyptian and the Tunisian revolution ,but you cant really imagine those events without Aljazeera’s' outstanding and deference making coverage.

        Iconic and historical video footage of Men Riding Horses And Camels brutally Attacking Protesters in Tahrir Square . a young man shouting in the street in the middle of the night "Long live a Free Tunisia! Glory to our dead martyrs! Freedom to the Tunisians! Ben Ali have been exiled"    People happily and fearlessly tearing pictures of their oppressors. footage like these captured by ordinary citizens  through mobile phones are almost impossible for a professional reporter to get and so they would have never reached us without new media .new media have given traditional news reporting extra help in covering events in place that are  difficult to reach. New media exist everywhere at any time, which makes it great, but I have also to say that the picture is not that rosy.

Social networks like twitter facebook and websites like youtube for videos and flicker for photos are great tools for exchange materials between individuals, but when it comes to disseminating content to the mass there are a  lot of things that needs to be dealt with. The fist problem is related to verification. When having a media content that is attributed by new media verification becomes a real problem since you can’t trace or verify the origin of the contribution. The source of the contribution is often lost in floods of retweetting and sharing and so as a media agency you don’t really know if u is dealing a material protected by copyright or it is just creative commons material. Besides the problem of verification other problems shall be dealt with in the following parts. Aljazeera's new media strategy will be fully examined based how Aljazeera made use of new media in each coverage of major events during the last 5 years

 

-And Science proclaimed, from shore to shore,
-That Time and Space ruled man no more.

These two lines are only part of a long great poem written by Rossiter Johnson in the year 1866. After the successful lying of the first telegraph cable across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. At that time people were very happy about the telegraph now days people are enthusiastic about the new media .it turned out that technology didn’t only help people break the barriers of time and space but also the barriers of fear. When it comes to the events that the Arab world went through Aljazeera have always been the most dominate media agency with an outstanding coverage, but lately a new player joined the filed.

             Directly after the founding of Aljazeera’s new media team in 2006 there have been many attempts and projects to make use of the great potentials of new media and help viewers to provide their contributions .many projects like Aljazeera mobile, Aljazeera sharek for the Arabic network and yourviews for Aljazeera English were mainly lunched either to provide information to those who don’t have access to it or help people who have information to share it. Aljazeera mobile was not just some secondary service provided by Aljazeera as it helped people in places like Africa to have access to world news. Aljazeera sharek was also lunched to encourage ordinary people to share there opinions (which they are rarely asked for). Aljazeera live feed was also a great effort to help people in places like the USA to have access to Aljazeera service. it is obvious that Aljazeera was pioneering in realizing and making advantage of the power of new media.

The war on Gaza

Aljazeera , crowed sourcing and micro-reporting.

On Dec. 27, 2008, Israel launched a military offensive on the Gaza Strip. The Israeli Air force commenced a massive bombardment campaign which lasted about 30 day Israel called this operation Cast Lead  .According to the Israeli ministry of defense the objective of this campaign was preventing Hamas from lunching rockets on southern Israel and destroying arms smuggling tunnels into Gaza. For the Palestinians war was something that they had to live with since ever, but what was different this time is that they were more determined then ever to make their voice heard all over the world and make sure is that the international community know is Israel really doing.  For the Palestinians this war was not traditional in any way as Gaza was not the only battle field in this war the internet as well was a war zone. On the other side Israel suffered a significant defeat in the battle of public perceptions during the Hezbollah war in 2006and so it learned the lesson and was determined not to make the same mistake twice.  

Directly after Israel lunched the war it made it clear that this war will not be like any one. Israel made it clear from the begging that it will use social media as weapon along side with the traditional weapons against what it called terrorism . A pro Israeli twitter account Help Us Win says “the war is not only on the ground ,but also in the international media” The Palestinian also took  the challenge and started using social networks to preset some very profound and dramatic repots and footage form Gaza . Meanwhile a vicious media war was taking place between the Israeli government and the Palestinian and Arab activists .the Arab internet activist and bloggers started their online campaign to supports Gaza in what was called later( blogging resistance ) .The activist called for demonstrations against the governments of the Arab countries that were silence about the situation. The group Let’s Collect 500000 Signatures to Support the Palestinians in Gaza has 630,002 members while the I Support the Israel Defense Forces In Preventing Terror Attacks From Gaza group has 85,308 members so far .twitter and facebook accounts from the Palestinian side like (@Gazamom on Twitter)  (@nazek88 ) as will pro Israeli twitter accounts like help us win and accounts like the Israeli official twitter account ( @israelconsulate ) that was very active in holding press conferences and presenting videos and footage the prove that Hamas violated the Islamic law by lunching missiles from mosques. The account also presented videos of aerial ground attacks showing how clean they were and how no innocents life were taken during the process. Israeli Defense Forces on YouTube, the Foreign Ministry on Twitter also were very active and supportive to the war but many observers said that the Israeli videos proved nothing but the fact that israel is blowing up houses in Gaza.

  

 

        The relationship between Aljazeera and new media or citizen journalism was something that was really coined during the war on Gaza although it was established years before. For a long time citizen journalists and user generated content played a great role in covering events that ordinary media correspondents can’t reach. Citizen journalism contributed to the shaping of public opinion during peaks of political many moments, attracting both the attention of audiences and government. These peaks included the 2003 War in Iraq, the 2005 Hariri assassination, the 2006 Lebanon crisis .During Gaza war                             

  Aljazeera was the only network that had correspondents both in Gaza and Israel, this advantage made Aljazeera one step ahead  form most of, if not all other new networks. For many reasons, the war Gaza created the ideal atmosphere for the explosion of user generated content and the emergence of micro reporting. Firstly The Arab/Israeli conflict is major interest for the audience in the Arab world and so a decisive event that is related to this conflict cant pass without receiving an extensive media attention. Secondly, access to the conflict was very strict Aljazeera was one of the few networks that had access to Gaza. Moreover the situation in Gaza was not safe for ordinary reporters, news about reporters being targeted was usual and the Israeli soldiers didn’t hastate shooting press reporters with or without reason. During the war it was noticed that journalists were directly targeted especially the Palestinian ones. (Justice in The News: A Response to Target Media in Gaza, 2009).  Thirdly both sides of the conflict employed extensive use of social media as weapons with which they struggled to win the public opinion war. The war on the internet and the social networks .the battle in the internet was what really attracted attention to the role that social media can play.

Micro reporting

         The fact that covering events in Gaza was very difficult and the fact that the Palestinian journalist couldn’t also provide media material have to come from somewhere. As we said before Aljazeera was a few steps ahead mainly because it was the first to realize the power of new media and citizen journalism as it was also the only to invest a lot of time and efforts to make connections with the realm of citizen journalism and also to develop tools and techniques that can be useful for citizen journalist and creative commons .by the war of Gaza Aljazeera already had YouTube, Face book Twitter feeds unlike other channels.

  The war on Gaza was the breaking point in the relationship between Aljazeera and new media. Because of the situation in Gaza Aljazeera had to develop new and untraditional methods of information collecting and news reporting. Aljazeera network also lunched it own official twitter account @AJGaza through in which people can tweet Aljazeera about the events in Gaza . AlJazeera also was receiving viewer’s opinions and contributions about what happening on this site: Yourviews for English Channel and Sharek for Arabic channel. But this wasn’t enough a new reporting method was needed. The war on Gaza witnessed the shaping a new method and genre of reporting which is micro-reporting. Micro-reporting was a great add to Aljazeera coverage to the war on Gaza because it provided much more details and gave repots more accuracy. For example it helped detailing the coverage on the airstrikes and ground offensives in Gaza. Micro-reporters helped contextualizing the events by providing information about the place that was targeted and in what time exactly and who was targeted and who was killed . Micro-reporting added an important dimension to the mainstream reporting of the war (Zeitzoff, 2009; Ward, 2009), micro-reporting added a  new dimension to Aljazeera coverage to the war on Gaza  not only because it was well planed but also because it was never been used by Arab media.

         Aljazeera was the first to develop a profound and comprehensive understanding of citizen journalism, individual bloggers, social media and creative commons . Aljazeera personnel first began to notice user- generated content during the 2003 war in Iraq when the bloggers inside of the country began to give their personal account of the situation at hand When all the mainstream media could bring was a report of an attack in a Baghdad suburb, the bloggers could add detail, context and personalization to the account. Of course at the begging there was that problem that most of blogs materials provided by citizen journalists couldn’t be verified and so Aljazeera made sure to make a distance between citizen and professional journalism ,but eventually bloggers and micro reporters proved themselves to be a trusted source of information. Yet, Aljazeera did not use citizen reports until the 2008 siege of Gaza. In 2008 when the new media team was formed Aljazeera  slowly realized that such reports made by non journalists and not editorially supervised had a strong following and people were interested in it .Previous developments also included citizen opinions gathered from the Obama elections edited into video packages and broadcast. “Your view” on the English Channel and “Sharek” on the Arabic Aljazeera were created. Audience members could send pictures, comments and videos to the online site. A portion of this material could then be fed for broadcast on television. This would also increase interactivity with citizens.

          Aljazeera’s new media unit was created late 2006 in order to outline and implement a strategy of new media that would push the network to the forefront in this field. In fact, this became evident when the decision was taken to stream broadcasts through the Live station service, to create Twitter feeds that refer back to its online material, and to use the most unrestrictive licensing for copyright. During the war on Gaza it was noticed that channels were allowed to use Aljazeera’s exclusive materials for free as long as they attribute them to Aljazeera.

        Aljazeera quickly recognized the unique value of micro-reporters and their strong presence on the ground in Gaza and capitalize on that by deciding to aggressively use the Internet to distribute its content and further its reach. Video material of the war became wide spread through a Creative Commons license, making footage available to any user who gave credit to Aljazeera, and a dedicated YouTube channel was created.  The most visible result of the Aljazeera’s Internet effort has been its global reach. This was translated to a jump of 600% in worldwide viewership of the AJE’s website. Some rapports indicate an increase from 3 million to 17 million within minutes means that the Website is penetrating audiences who have not had access the television station (Meade, 2009; Cohen, 2009). The Aljazeera network focused on killings and injuries of Palestinians, the bombing of mosques, schools and apartment buildings. The popularly viewed Aljazeera had a strong psychological impact on the majority of the Arab masses. This was the war that people saw thought the Arab and the western audience watch two different wars.

Aljazeera and ushahidi platform.

        Reporting news from Gaza was almost impossible so creating or making advantage of an already exciting tool was a vital need for Aljazeera to have an out standing coverage of the war in Gaza . "Ushahidi is an interactive mapping platform, which can be used to aggregate data from a wide variety of sources on one location-specific website."www.ushahidi.com." Ushahidi which means “witness” or “testimony” in Swahili was created by a group of developers to provide a platform for reporting and sharing information about violent incidents or environmental disasters or other events in a certain geographical zone. Ushahidi was first used to map the reported incidents of violence after the 2007 Kenyan elections and was used later in 2009 to monitor the election in India  and also use in Haiti earthquake in 2011.according to moheed ahmed the head of Aljazeera’s new media team micro-reporting was first used by Aljazeera during the war on Gaza. In Gaza  there was a lot of events that needed to be covered and many people had information but had nothing to do with it .Ushahidi was a great crowed sourcing tools that enabled Aljazeera to make an  outstanding and detailed converge to the war on Gaza .

During the war on Gaza “crowd sourcing” reporting platform (Ushahidi) was used by Aljazeera to allow a large mass of citizens and reporters in the conflict zone to contribute to the coverage with SMS and Twitter messages .the messages were then authenticated by editors and used to add a real time coverage and monitoring of the war dynamics . Aljazeera was advertising a phone number which people could text saying this or that  place was just hit and all Aljazeera had to do is verifying the information by sending ground reporters. Micro reporting made a great add to Aljazeera’s coverage in the way that it didn’t only helped detail and contextualize the reports.

Tunisia

Citizen journalism and user generated media content

            It is very ironic how the first Arab country to have the internet was also the first to have a revolution that inspired other revolution in what is called the Arab spring. Tunisia was the first Arab country to have the internet in 1991 and was also the third in the rank for people who have access to the internet but that mean that the Tunisian people really enjoyed the internet. Before 2011 there were many bloody events and clashes between the Tunisian people and the regime of Ben Ali and the crackdown on protesters was usually successful ,so why the last events of revolt of gafsa mining basin spread world wide. Part of the answer might be the fact that communication technologies have developed a great deal during the last years. Between the year 2008 and 2011 a lot is changed. More people have YouTube, face book and twitter accounts applications and tools dedicated for citizen journalism are more available and so people could easily document what was going on the ground. The revolt in Gafsa mines in 2008 was very violent, but its new didn’t spread world wide. A part of the answer may be in internet data access. in the past few years only few people have the means to document all the events that was taking place in Tunisia and even if they could they didn’t have a way by which they could make it available for the world .

            For many years the governments of many Arab countries were making sure to have full control over all kind of media .among all the governments of the Arab countries if not of the whole war the Tunisian government was the most vicious media and internet censor. The government controlled all media outlet .TV was completely owned by the government and Channels that can’t be censored or controlled like Aljazeera were forbidden for access to the Tunisian territory and so could cover events in Tunisia no matter how much resource they had . . State TV was mainly used to praise the government and   promote the image of President Ben Ali as the savoir, the hero and the visionary leader. For the wild master that cant be controlled which is the internet the government found a perfect solution ( error 404 )or as many like to call it( ammar 404) . ammar 404 prevented the Tunisian people from accessing  to many web sites that apposed the Tunisian government including the political parties that were authorized by the government.

          The Tunisians people start paying more attention to the pan Arab channels like Aljazeera to get informed about what is happening around the world and even in their country. Aljazeera as most of other channels was forbidden from access to the Tunisian territory so it depended on materials provided by Tunisian bloggers and net activists .In its coverage to the revolt of the gafsa mining basin and what followed it Aljazeera was fully dependent on new media. The tragedy of Gafsa would be unknown to the world without that alliance between Aljazeera and new media

      During the revolution in Tunisia user generated content and materials provided by citizen journalist were helplessly needed. User generated content played a big role in covering the Tunisian revolution sine no media agency could access to Tunisia to cover events for inside. although citizen journalism is not as new as people think as we can trace it back to the 18 century .later in the 20 century video footage of the assassination of president john F Kennedy  . Footage videos of the police beating Rodney King in Los Angeles in the ‘80s were both captured by citizens on the scene. UGC also took the form of phoning and letters to editors. What gave UGC a push is the advancement in communication technology. The Tunisian revolution made every citizen a journalist. People with third generation mobile phones took high-quality images that were also geo-tagged, using the phone’s GPS function as any provisional reporter would do. This provided the exact location of where the shot was taken, which allowed Al-Jazeera’s new media team to plot the route of the reporters’ journey and trace and check every event and fact.

     Aljazeera was pioneering in the use of user generated content .before many broadcaster took a position against this relatively new method of reporting claiming that only a trained journalist can understand technique involved in news reporting . Other broadcasters had very strict methods for checking and sorting UGC before broadcasting .Aljazeera on the other hand didn’t only use UGC but also encouraged and helped developing it even before the events in Tunisia .Aljazeera was asking people to present thier views and contributions about current events through sites like Yourviews for English Channel and Sharek for Arabic channel.

              On one level there are many benefits for Aljazeera using UGC. First provided free access to materials which they might not be otherwise obtained. Like in post election riots in Iran and the attacks on Mumbai.  Second audience could generate news stories by suggesting ideas and providing new materials and insights .the most important benefit was beyond what audience could provide. Using UGC helped strengthening the relationship between Aljazeera and its audience, and helped people feel that they contributing to the covering of an event Like  in Tunisian revolution . They say the best media stories comes form ordinary people rather then politicians. Aljazeera benefited from the use of user generated content in the way that it provided historical and iconic materials. The footage of the young man shouting in the street at night "long live free Tunisia .Ben Ali fled the country" The video of the Tunisian old man saying in a dramatic way" it is time for our young people because we got old "footage like this can not be generated even by the best professional reporters simply because user generated content is innocent and spontaneous. The use of UGC provided materials that are unique both in number and mature. It didn’t only tell what was going in the ground but also added a human dimension to the event reported.

Egypt

            Citizen journalism and user generated media content

                  

              Linen once said (There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen).the political atmosphere in most of the countries in the Arab world in the last years was characterized by inactiveness. Although the Arab world has witness great events there was not a great movement on the popular level, and even when there was some movement the government's crackdown was very successful. The last few months in the Arab world were so condensed with events and massive revolts. The events were so great in nature and number that it made impossible for traditional media agencies to cover which led people to seek refugee in new media.

      Calling the Egyptian revolution facebook revolution really reeks of amateurism and superficiality as it doesn't not only ignore the role of traditional media such as Aljazeera and its contribution to that great event but as it also favour a tool on people who used it .It is true that  the Egyptian revolution started online ,the social and economic condition that Egypt has been living through were more determining factors.

Aljazeera was the first to pay attention to the power of new media and social networks and was the first to have a strategic use of new media. this use can be traced back to even before 2003 when most of Arab bloggers ad internet activist were referred to just as a bunch of crazy day dreaming kids who write crazy stuff in the internet .it futuristic and visionary administration is what really gained Aljazeera an outstanding coverage to all the events in the Arab world .

      Although the Tunisian and the Egyptian revolution had a lot in common on the level of media out put, still each one was unique. in the case of Egypt Aljazeera had access to the ground unlike in the case of Tunisia .During the Egyptian  revolution Aljazeera had the ability to make fairly good coverage but the problem is that there were many events in too many distant places. The fact that having too many events at the same time in distant places made it  impossible for any media agency to cover. Aljazeera had too many reporters spread all over Egypt providing hour by hour reports but this was not enough. The Egyptian case proved the fact that citizen journalism is indispensible even if you had reporters on the ground.

           In one of his interview with Aljazeera channel Omar izz one of the founders of the 6 April movement said «we were aware of the power of face book but we knew that if we really need to have access to traditional media If not directly we will use backdoors." What he meant by back doors is using face book a meant to have access to traditional media. For example there was an announcement in the face book page of the 6 of April movement. The announcement called for protesting in Friday in tahrir square. The announcement in the facebook page wouldn't reach more then 10.000 people, but when Aljazeera reported that the  6 April movement called in it facebook page for protesting in tahrir square that would each millions .it is clear that even people who were deeply involved in what is called facebook revolution realized the power of traditional media institutions .new media although powerfull they are they still new compared to channels like Aljazeera for many reasons.  Internet accessibility is very serious problem in the Arab world. of course we cant put all the countries of the Arab world under one category ,but in general we can say the internet access in the Arab world is very poor .although internet access have greatly  increased in the last 10 years especially in countries like Egypt, morocco and Saudi Arabia. Since not all people have access to the internet Aljazeera comes to caver that shortage on accessibility

   In the case of the Egyptian revolution the problem was not having the intent service, but preventing the government from cutting it off. The Egyptian government decided to cut off the internet service to prevent independent media from covering and so opening the door of official media to work more effectively .at a certain Pointe Aljazeera was forced to close I bureau in Cairo.

   

Libya

Exposing the limitations of new media

            At the begging of the revolution in Libya there  were many indications  that Libya will also have a new media led revolution  .fist the Libyan youth were making advantage of new media  and social networks like twitter and facebook .at the begging there was a lot of activeness in social networks in organizing and calling for demonstrations and reporting the demonstrations again the ruthless dictatorship of al ghaddafi .facebook and twitter accounts calling for the day of anger in Libya were very popular and got tens of thousands of members ,but the way in which the Libyan security forces responded to the legitimate demands of the Libyans took things to a different direction. At a certain point the Libyan youth decided that keyboards and the cameras would do any good and so the decided to carry rifles instead.

        The Libyan case was exceptional in all means the same way the Libyan regime was also exceptional  .unlike the case of Tunisia and Egypt where there were advanced communication infrastructures. although in Tunisia where the internet service was heavily censored and in Egypt where the internet was cut off there was a tiny Marge of space  .the  blackout of internet in Egypt made a reversal effects as it only incited activists who were sitting behind their monitors to get to the ground which gave a push to the protests. The situation in Libya was deferent from all other countries as Libya have been through excusive international economic and military sanctions. Communication companies like (al aflak) and (Libya telecom and technology)  were also affected by the sanction and so the communication infrastructure was not very developed . the fist footage coming from Libya were unclear .most videos coming from Libya were in poor quality .The fist footage about protests and the crack down on protesters were very unclear and people could question them by say that they belong to events took place years ago.

               In facing the revolution in Libya the regime thought of everything but reconciliation cutting of communications and using vicious military force was the fist thing the Libyan regime though of. By preventing channels like Aljazeera for having access to Libya and cutting of the internet, the Libyan regime was planning to have an easy crackdown on protestors but gone are those days when you could wipe out a whole city without anyone saying anything.

                                                                               

        The Libya case represents a good evidence of the limitation of new media especially in places of military conflict. Aljazeera was forced to send reported to unsecured area with led later on to the assassination of one of its camera man .( the martyr ali hassan al jabber) . It is clear that all new media such as social network and web site like YouTube heavily depend on the internet service. the case of Gaza media reports were targeted ,but still media could successful function because there is no central key station that can be condoled. New media heavily depend on the central servers that can be easily targeted.

                                                    

Aljazeera and new media where to?

         Based on many indications we can say that future of new media in relation to Aljazeera is very promising. citizen journalism is in continuous progress , people are joining social networks , people are learning how to report events getting more familiar with new born phenomenon like blogging .as a matter of fact  many universities today are training future journalists how to write specifically for the Internet.

        Citizen journalism became a whole bossiness that brings back millions of dollars for companies. Companies like Apple realized early the importance of citizen journalism and so provided tools and application dedicated mainly to citizen journalism .many applications like (Camera Genius 3.0 .and Pano) for photo-editing. (Color .fastsociety and tweetdeck) for geo-locating. (IA wrinter, I talk lite and textforce) for note taking. (Word pres, twitvid and scribblelive) for mirco-reporting.all these great tools would enhance the future of new media and get more people interested in things like citizen journalism.

         Through many historical breaking points the Arab citizen has been forbidden from having access to Aljazeera. Aljazeera have been targeted many times with different means form the most criminal way like targeting its reporters to more diplomatic ways like closing it bureau and Restoring its accreditation like in Egypt during the revolution. there have been more bold attempts to halt Aljazeera's coverage like what happened during the Libyan revolution when the Libyan intelligence service were gamming on  Aljazeera's signal .other attempts were more crazy like in Algeria when the Algerian government reportedly cut power to many cities to prevent people from watching a show that dealt with allegation of the involvements of some highly ranked army officials in massacres during the civil war .A good and strategic use of new media may help Aljazeera overcome issues of this kind .