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Political Mobilities and Smartphones in MENA: A Case Study of AJ+ Araby.
Abstract
The convergence of multiple trajectories in media, communication technologies and everyday politics converges in Al Jazeera’s new digital media project, AJ+ Araby — which delivers short, punchy, editorial videos through apps and social media platforms — a novelty in the region. Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based news network seeks to use AJ+ Araby to revitalize a brand heavily diminished by perceptions of bias and a loss of standing in a region (despite high ratings). What was once the buzzing new media of satellite television has become old media. The distributional technologies of satellite allowed a convergence of national public spheres, a regionalization tat transcended state authorities — an media technological environment Al Jazeera exploited to become a center of mediated political life in the region at its height, as Marc Lynch argued (2006). Today’s new media included smart phones, which connect citizens to media with even greater rapidity and intensity. In other contexts, the mobility of news media has been related to new sorts of political mobilities, from flash publics to ad hoc demonstrations — or fleeting collective action. In the context of AJ’s struggle with old institutional politics, from the dominance inside the newsroom of partisans and the greater controls of the foreign ministry that have rendered it an instrument of foreign policy, AJ+ Araby taps into these new mobilities, in particular, by appealing to Arab youth. Do the mobile attributes of their hardware devices direct AJ+ Araby’s content in such fleeting directions, as technological determinism and post-modernism might suggest, or does its output sustain longer political narratives consistent with core themes of Arab political identity? This question matters for both AJ as an institution and the prospects of maintaining a regional Arab publicness, as the channel began to do. This question is furthered through interviews with AJ+ Araby employees and a content analysis of its output — the first of its kind.
Discipline
Communications
Geographic Area
Arab States
Sub Area
Media