Offering a new(s) view of the Arab world: A study of the news production of Al Jazeera

This thesis examines the production of the Al Jazeera broadcast news programme based in Qatar and pays particular attention to the Al Jazeera news form for programme production and journalists’ practice. Acknowledging the significant differences between the programme form adopted by Al Jazeera and other news programming in the Arab news ecology, it explores these as collective knowledge shared by journalists within the production domain and underpinned by a visualisation of the programme’s audiences. The study draws on observations of news practice, in-depth interviews with news workers, and analyses of news content to demonstrate connections between these professional understandings, journalists’ news practices, and the shaping of news discourse. The research shows how the news form and the imagined audience – while representing wider organisational, cultural, and political influences - shape the production process and structure its news output. By tracing the selection and presentation of story themes, actors, language, and images, the thesis concludes that Al Jazeera news programmes mediate significant issues in the Arab world in two ways: first, issues are shaped according to constructed national perspectives; second, others are reconciled according to a view of a particular Arab region frought with conflict and disagreement

Addressing a region? The Arab imagined audience and newsworthiness in the production of Al Jazeera Arabic

Based on a production study of Al Jazeera Arabic, this paper examines news professionals’ visualisation of the Arab news audience and its importance for their ideas about newsworthiness and an ideal news agenda. In applying the concept of the imagined audience to Al Jazeera, it uncovers a view of Arab news consumers as constructed as (i) heterogeneous in character and origin and as sharing (ii) a ‘mindset’ and an experience of (iii) voicelessness. Further, it shows that these understandings help to grasp the specifics of journalists’ news making practices, including their efforts to prioritize potential stories for an ideal news agenda that demonstrate relevance for, or interest to, these imagined news consumers in addition to those stories that address their perceived ‘powerlessness’ in the Arab region. The paper concludes that these ideas mark clear boundaries around the countries and the issues that Al Jazzera seeks to report on