Click here to view or download an introduction to the literature and an outline of the research project.

Method:

In order to measure AJE’s ability to meet its goals, we launched the Al-Jazeera English Research Project (AJERP) in August 2007. Funded by the Knight Foundation, AJERP is a joint project of the Department of Communication at Queens University of Charlotte and the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School. The project has two primary purposes: to measure how AJE’s approach to covering international events is different from other global news networks, and to measure whether or not AJE is actually impacting the way its audiences think about international and cross-cultural conflict. In order to answer these questions, we conducted a multi-level method examining AJE as an organization, as well as its audiences in 6 different countries. To evaluate AJE as an organization, over 25 qualitative, in-depth interviews were conducted with members of its journalistic, editorial and administrative staff. These interviews took place at each of the broadcaster’s main broadcasting bureaus: Doha, Washington D.C., London, Kuala Lumpur, as well as in Jakarta.

To evaluate AJE’s impact on its viewers, we conducted a cross-sectional survey on a purposive sample of AJE audiences in Malaysia, Indonesia, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Kingdom and the United States to analyze the demographics, worldviews, and cultural, political, civic and cognitive dispositions of viewers of AJE. Drawing from existing research, each of the countries were chosen due to 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.” In the United States and the United Kingdom we distributed a paper questionnaire to the respondents. In Malaysia, Indonesia, Qatar and Kuwait, we hired research firms that identified AJE viewers and conducted the survey either over the phone or in person. The total sample size surveyed was 597 participants, approximately 100 participants surveyed in each of the countries. The survey focused on sampling existing viewers of AJE only, though the sample included participants that had both just started watching AJE as well as those that had been watching since it was first broadcast. Accordingly, the survey data provides an empirical record of numerous dispositions of viewers of AJE that are examined, relative to how long they had been viewing AJE, to test the possibility of AJE’s function as a “conciliatory media.”

Primary research questions include:

  • Are Al-Jazeera English (AJE) viewers more likely to think in less dogmatic terms, value political and cultural tolerance, and be more civically engaged than those who who depend on other sources of news?
  • Is there a correlation between viewing AJE and opinions of:
    • American values
    • U.S. foreign policy
    • The war on terror
    • U.S. policy in Iraq
    • U.S. policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
    • American brands and products
  • Is there a correlation between the frequency of watching AJE and the ranking of the importance of different types of global issues, especially those that impact the non-Western world?
  • Do respondents consider AJE a conciliatory medium?