Wednesday, November 17, 2010

The Influence of the Al Jazeera brand

Joseph Nye defines soft power as the ability to obtain outcomes through attraction instead of coercion, shaping others’ preferences through influence instead of threats. Related to this, he describes the three key dimensions of public diplomacy that may be used to gain this power: daily communication with the press, strategic communications, and creating lasting relationships. This can be accomplished by listening to your audience as well as telling them information, in order to understand your audience. Some of this soft power may also come from brands, in the US especially with global products like Google and Starbucks.

But it was surprising to hear that, in 2005, the Arab news network Al Jazeera was voted the number 5 most influential brand in 2005, beating out even Nokia and Coca-Cola (Powers and Gilboa 57). This is an astounding fact, especially considering the seemingly inescapable The network has portrayed the US conflict in a very unfavorable light, but perhaps they are just trying to present their view of the issue. Some of the issues could be resolved more quickly if both sides are given a chance to speak. The more I read this week about soft power and public diplomacy, the more I felt that much of the criticism, and even some of the decline in popularity for US foreign policy surrounding the war in Iraq, is due to the fact that American policy makers do a great deal of talking, and not as much listening.

I found a very interesting article by the Atlantic with the opinion that, while Al Jazeera has its faults, the station does present a decently unbiased report from a developing part of the world. At first I was surprised and shocked by this admission. But then, as I ready more, I was persuaded by his argument, and could understand his perspective the way some people may defend CNN or Fox News. This in fact goes back to our discussion on the public sphere and the way we are trained to consume the media. He writes:

“Al Jazeera is forgivable for its biases in a way that the BBC or CNN is not. In the case of Al Jazeera, news isn’t so much biased as honestly representative of a middle-of-the-road developing-world viewpoint. Where you stand depends upon where you sit. And if you sit in Doha or Mumbai or Nairobi, the world is going to look starkly different than if you sat in Washington or London, or St. Louis for that matter” (Kaplan).

The difference the perspective from which it is viewed -- are you in the Middle East, or are you in London, or Washington, DC? The article goes on to ask: could the US media, such as Fox News, present the news without an American perspective? The answer is no, since the American culture and expression of power are so deeply ingrained in its communications. In fact Al Jazeera is participating in the new public diplomacy, or as Powers and Gilboa state, “Al Jazeera places its role as a public diplomat in the international sphere at the center of its self-representation and organizational identity”, and in fact even serve as a tied to a “imagined pan-Arab community” (70). So even with all its criticisms, Al Jazeera as a non-state actor plays a major in the international sphere, and like it or not, it is a network that cannot be ignored.

1 comment:

  1. I think is interesting to understand the conditions that made possible the existence of Al Jazeera. This could help us to understand and forecast if could be possible something similar in places in the territories of others peripheries states located in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

    Probably among the variables that make viable such a possibility are the fact that the market (the receivers of the message) is big enough to make the effort economically viable for the entrepreneur and the fact that it is not satisfied with the product’s quality and content of the messages that are receiving. No doubt that the geo-linguistic variable could very important too.

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