Al Jazeera effect

The Al Jazeera effect is a term used in political science and media studies to describe the impact of new media and media sources on global politics. The term was coined by Philip Seib in his book "The Al Jazeera Effect". The primary example is the effect's namesake—the impact of Al Jazeera on the politics of the Arab world, which played a historic role in transforming the region's media.[2] Seib argues that the rise of emerging media has weakened governments’ ability to control flow of information.[3] The Al Jazeera effect can be seen as a parallel to the CNN effect.

Origin and use

William Lafi Youmans attributes the first use of the term to Philip Seib. However, Simon Henderson, who in turn attributes the term to "diplomats in the region", had used it as early as 2000.[4] As used by Henderson, the Al Jazeera effect originally referred to Arab Middle East governments’ losing their monopoly on information because of the popularity and easy access to the Al Jazeera's satellite television network,[4] and scholars still often use it in such a limited context.[5] Thomas L. McPhail used it to refer to the changes in all of the Arab media.[6] Seib generalized it to other, Internet-powered new media worldwide.

Founding of Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera was created in 1996 with the combination of the Emir of Qatar's money and talent from the defunct BBC Arabic service.[7] Audiences and journalists alike were drawn to Al Jazeera’s goal of reporting news without government censorship.[8] From the beginning, Al Jazeera became the most watched and the most powerful news network in the region.[9] The period from 1996 to 2004 is often referred to as the "Al Jazeera Era" because of its significance in Middle Eastern politics.[10] Al Jazeera's motto is "The Opinion and the Other Opinion", with the goal of covering multiple perspectives from all sides.[11][12][13]

Impact

Al Jazeera played a historic role in transforming media in the Middle East and globally by ending the one-way flow of information from the West and by giving Arab citizens a platform and an effective means to respond to Western media.[18][19][20] Al Jazeera is often called the CNN of the Arab world, and scholars argue that the launch of Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Jazeera English helped challenge the dominance of Western international news networks.[21] Al Jazeera's news programming with live, comprehensive coverage also challenged the controlled coverage typical of state media news outlets in the Middle East.[22][23]

See also

• Slashdot effect
• CNN effect

Further reading

• Khogali, Walied, and Anita Krajnc, Al-Jazeera Effect' Counters 'CNN Effect': Canadians Deserve Al Jazeera", Toward Freedom, 5 June 2009
• Miles, Hugh "The Al Jazeera Effect", Foreign Policy, 9 February 2011
• Ricchiardi, Sherry "The Al Jazeera Effect", American Journalism Review, March & April 2011