According with the article The Public Diplomacy of Al Jazeera (Powers/Gilboa), this Organization is a new powerful actor in international politics with a self adopted agenda relevant to the Arab and Western world and with a successful new public diplomacy. Moreover, It hava been able to brand itself through the articulation and projection of an identity that won the hearts and minds of an Arab citizenry like no other actor in today´s geopolitical environment.
It easy to see how relevant the role of Al Jazeera is in the international arena –among others reasons- because is giving space to a certain leaders of opinion; crafting the public sphere and the public opinion; creating currents of opinion; acting and being informed by a particular epistemic Arab frame; and, framing and reframing the ‘news’.
These facts, plus the information that Rupert Murdoch, in partnership with the Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, plans to launch a new Arabic television news channel (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jul/06/rupert-murdoch-stake-rival-al-jazeera), give us an interesting panorama of the non bloody conflict for the hearts of minds of and Arab citizenry that is taking place between a challenger and an incumbent of the international communication governance structures.
Agustin Fornell
Al-Jazeera like any other news organization frames news and tries to give an alternative opinion. The mainstream American media "manufacture consent" by focusing on certain "issues" at the expense of certain "real" issues.
ReplyDeleteFor example, CNN and other U.S. media outlets--both print and electronic--portray the dark side of the outer world, especially Africa, the Arab world, China and Asia.
These regions make it to the contents of news channels like CNN when something bad happens there. Like, drought, famine or other disasters. People in the U.S. know these areas only for their problems.
Channels like Al-Jazeera try to report the "softer" side of these regions. After all China is more than a dictatorship, Arab landmass is not only oil, violence and monarchies.
We need more diversity and plurality in media to understand the world which is shrinking day by day. We need to know the world the way it is, not the way it is portrayed by a monopolist media.