AL-JAZEERA ENGLISH:
CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS OR CROSS-CULTURAL DIALOGUE?
Dr. Mohammed El-Nawawy, Queens University of Charlotte
Shawn Powers, Annenberg School for Communication &
USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School
What is the Al-Jazeera English Research Project?
Why Study Transnational Media?
What exactly is a Conciliatory Media?
What’s the Purpose of the Project?
What is the Al-Jazeera English Research Project?
Al-Jazeera English (AJE), a subsidiary of Qatar’s Al-Jazeera Arabic network, represents a new form of transnational media that has the declared purpose of revolutionizing the global mediasphere. Launched on November 15, 2006, AJE is already accessible in over 100 million households worldwide, and recently has agreed to provide free distribution via multiple video sharing websites, making it accessible to anyone with a connection to the World Wide Web. Hyped as “the voice of the South,” AJE promises to contain the technological capacity and the ideological wherewithal to provide new and productive fora for cross-cultural communications. According to its proponents, AJE presents a tremendous opportunity for a new direction in the discourse of global newsflows. With its avowed promise of giving a “voice to the voiceless,” AJE could represent a new style of media that challenges to existing research regarding transnational media organizations and media and conflict scholarship more broadly.
We propose doing a purposive sample survey in Malaysia, Indonesia, Qatar, the United Kingdom and the United States to analyze the demographics, worldviews, and cultural dispositions of viewers of AJE. Drawing from existing research, each of the countries was chosen because of their relative levels of viewership as well as their ability to signify existing cultural perspectives in the context of growing resentment between the “Islamic” and “Western civilizations.” The total sample size surveyed will be between 400-500 participants, with approximately 80-100 participants surveyed at each of the proposed locations. Accordingly, the survey data will provide an empirical record with which the cultural dispositions of viewers of AJE can be examined to test the possibility of AJE’s function as a “conciliatory media.” We will also conduct interviews with select groups of respondents, as well as with a number of Al-Jazeera English journalists, editors and bureau chiefs in order to realize a holistic and accurate view of the entire organization.
Why Study Transnational Media?
Contemporary international antagonisms are becoming increasingly defined by the global newsflow. Perceptions of success, failure, injustice and heroism are all regulated by the ability of a global citizenry, tied together through information communication technologies, to see and hear about events taking place. These conditions place a tremendous amount of power in the hands of media networks, particularly in today’s tumultuous post 9-11 environment. While media research has established the existence of an active audience, media organizations continue to play an important epistemological role in shaping what is seen and heard throughout global public spheres. Unfortunately, today’s maturation of media influence in the context of international conflict coincides with a Western and Arab media that has fallen into antiquated, stereotypical and harmful methods of covering international conflicts. Extensive research has demonstrated how important media outlets have relied on a “clash of civilizations” frame in describing all issues related to the Arab world and the Islamic faith, particularly in the context of the US-led War on Terror. This phenomenon has resulted in a cycle of fear mongering and stereotyping worldviews that have increased the propensity for cross-cultural tensions and weakened the capacity for a global dialogue among “civilizations.” Recent events, such as the Danish cartoon affair, have demonstrated both the impetus and the power that media organizations can have in furthering international tensions and violence.
What exactly is a Conciliatory Media?
The concept of a conciliatory media embodies certain idealized roles of media in the development and maintenance of a peaceful, democratic civil society. A conciliatory media is one that works to offer in-depth and diverse perspectives with regard to issues of collective social importance. Our typology draws on existing research by Cottle (2006), Lynch & McGoldrick, and Howard which outline seven characteristics of media that best serve a conciliatory function: (1) “image to the invisible”; (2) “claims, reason and public argumentation”; (3) “public performance and credibility”; (4) “personal accounts and experimental testimonies”; (5) “reconciling the past, towards the present”; (6) “media reflexivity”; (7) “bearing witness in a globalized world”; (8) Avoiding victimizing and demonizing terminology; and (9) demonstrating a commitment towards finding mutually agreeable political solutions rather than enflaming existing hostilities. It is proposed that, when a media organization embodies such characteristics, it can work towards debunking cross-cultural stereotypes, inject a multicultural knowledge into the public sphere, and even work to produce reconciliation among cultural antagonists. While this is an idealized media form, it is one that exemplifies journalistic excellence.
To day, no empirical work has been done to test this conceptualization of a conciliatory media, nor has there been any scholarship with regard to the cultural and identity characteristics of those who view AJE. This study proposes to analyze AJE as a test case to examine our typology of a socially productive media that can create the conditions for cultural reconciliation.
What’s the Purpose of the Project?
The nature of today’s War on Terror, and its close associate, the battle for the “hearts and minds of the Arab world,” provide an analytical challenge for existing frameworks for analyzing media and conflict. Interestingly, theoretical work explaining the media’s influence in conflict rarely tackles the question of cross-cultural compatibility, the consequence that cultural antagonisms can have in the conflict and peace-making processes, and most importantly, what, if anything, the media can do to minimize the negative influences that contrasting cultural identities have on the path to reconciliation. Our project hopes to alleviate this hole in existing media and conflict research by analyzing Al-Jazeera English as a case study of a potentially conciliatory media. This would be the first research project done on a global scale analyzing Al-Jazeera English’s viewers, their cultural values, and their attitudes, as well as the first research project testing the capacity of a transnational news organization to function as a conciliatory media.
This project will produce a multi-level examination of AJE and its ability to negotiate cultural tensions, results that can be drawn from media and policy practitioners on how to best think about and structure the media.
