"Brand Al-Jazeera: a critical analysis of Al-Jazeera's self-branding and use of audience participation during the Arab spring"

• Main Author: Hoosen, Aneesa Goolam
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net10539/14791

Al-Jazeera English has elicited much attention since inception as a result of the station’s pioneering stance in the middle-east. Propagating a liberal media model with the first English based medium to set-up headquarters in the region, Al-Jazeera English exists as unique across both local and foreign media-scapes. In combining two previously separated fields of media studies; audience participation and branding the research seeks to explore the role of new media technologies in audience participation and the extent to which they form crucial elements of the network’s brand imaging. It does so in the wake of the Arab Spring using the Egyptian Revolution as the case study to explore Al-Jazeera English’s Facebook commentary and flagship programming. Drawing on themes like an anti-US sentiment and the alternative ‘Other’ the dissertation unpacks what has come to constitute brand Al-Jazeera in an age of convergence and social media where identity constitutes various factors.