The Information Techniques of Al Jazeera - Research Paper Example

Al Jazeera has become popular worldwide due to its coverage of the American and Iraq war in 2011 and the fight against terrorism by the United States forces in Afghanistan (Inseed, 2010). The Arab Spring uprising, which started in Tunisia, was covered by Al Jazeera and aired live to other Arab states in the region. This coverage attracted many viewers who were interested in following the happenings in that country. While Al Jazeera covered the first demonstrations and arrests of bloggers in Tunisia, their main aim was just to inform viewers and not exactly to influence the uprising.

The government of Tunisia closed down their internet site, news transmission and banished the reporters from working in the country indefinitely. Later, Al Jazeera resumed transmission of services through social networking sites and lived streaming on YouTube, which the government could not effectively control (Dabashi, 2012). Through their news correspondents, who mostly are locals of their host nations, the station was able to air live protests and demonstrations in the Arab Spring countries.

Their correspondents and bloggers used the internet to transmit their views and information to citizens in the countries and abroad. Al Jazeera again highlighted the issues facing these people through expert interviews and call-in shows that were aired throughout the Arabic region and globally (“Former Al Jazeera head”, 2011). Since the previous decades, the West has been seen as the driving force of democracy in the Middle East, and it was not thought that the Arab citizens could themselves be able to overturn regimes and become democratic.

This sentiment has since lost meaning, as Al Jazeera used its wide viewership and broad reach to cover issues that affected Arab countries, such as job creation, security, independence, and human rights (Khanfar, 2012). In Arab Spring countries like Egypt, the dictatorial regime was strongly criticized by local correspondents of the network. The cable network took the agenda-setting role, as it mainly concerned itself with highlighting what the government in Egypt was doing and what it was not to be doing.

Through the use of opinion leaders, the network actively shed more light on how regimes are misusing state resources to oppress citizens; for instance, Al Jazeera covered the plight of prisoners who were being tortured and the use of force and ammunition by security forces against unarmed demonstrators in the Arab Spring nations, especially Egypt (Hroub, 2011). According to Khanfar (2012), the cable network has an editorial team, which is independent, and their contents and coverage are not subject to censorship.

This made news coverage in Egypt and Arab spring countries factual, professional, and representative of happenings there, making people mobilize and demand their rights and change in regime. The Egyptian government closed the site and stopped the transmissions of Al Jazeera, jailing their reporters and prohibiting them from covering the news. This only served to increase the credibility of news coverage of the protests and revolution in the country. The Muslim Brotherhood party in Egypt, which was the main driving force of demonstrations, was given a chance to air their policies and changes they wished to see, democracy being among the main ones.

Souaiaia (2011) writes that the closure of the Al Jazeera sites and termination of transmission rights made them change their transmission techniques, and they began to stream news to mobile phones. Al Jazeera created a virtual reality for the people, depicting how things should be done in the country, especially in Egypt and Tunisia, which were the first to experience Arab Spring. With the shutdown of internet services and transmission rights, Al Jazeera now used mainstream transmission to television sets for their viewers and depended on news from local citizens, as security forces of Arab Spring governments continually harassed their reporters.

Their influence was noticed when their online sites became subject to hackers and constant crashing, caused by an increase in the number of viewers who wanted to get up-to-date information (Souaiaia, 2011). Al Jazeera has received some criticism from analysts reporting that the network has shifted its interests and is now, to a high degree, influenced by its Qatar owners. Recent findings from wiki leak a claim that the royal family, which may be having some political interest in other countries, is controlling the network’s editorial team to some extent.

Since the network’s inception in 1996, its members have been credited with high levels of professionalism and credibility by citizens of the Arabic states, and the station should strive to maintain that (“Former Al Jazeera Head”, 2011).