Media Power and Global Television News: The Role of Al Jazeera English

(Paperback)

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The Middle East has been a particular focus of global crisis reporting. Yet, international coverage of these conflicts has historically been presented through a 'Western' perspective. The absence of Arab voices in the global public sphere has created a discursive gap between the Middle East and the rest of the world. The arrival of Al Jazeera English might, therefore, be regarded as an attempt to bridge this gap by broadcasting discourses from and about the Arab world. Using a framing analysis of selected news reports by Al Jazeera English before and after the so-called 'Arab Spring' protests, this book considers Al Jazeera English's position in the global news environment and identifies the extent to which it addresses this gap between the Arab and global spheres.

Author Bio

Saba Bebawi is Professor of Journalism at University of Techology Sydney. She holds a PhD in international news and has published on media power and the role of media in democracy-building, in addition to investigative journalism in conflict and post-conflict regions. She is author of Media Power and Global Television News: The role of Al Jazeera English (2016); Investigative Journalism in the Arab World: Issues and Challenges (2016); and co-author of The Future Foreign Correspondent (2019); in addition to co-editor of Social Media and the Politics of Reportage: The 'Arab Spring' (2014) and Data Journalism in the Global South (2020). Bebawi was an Australian Research Council (ARC) DECRA Fellow (2018-2020) for a project on Developing an Arab Culture of Investigative Journalism. She is also Chief Investigator of an ARC Discovery Project (2018-2020) on a project titled Media Pluralism and Online News. Bebawi is founder and project director of the Foreign Correspondent Study Tour (FCST), funded by the Australian government's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). She is also co-editor for the book series Palgrave Studies in Journalism and the Global South.