Media140: Internet political economy in Asia and Africa

This is my sixth and final post about the Media140 conference in Sydney last week. I've enjoyed putting together my reflections of an important event and I’d encourage readers to check out Julie Posetti’s (Sydney Media140's editorial director) excellent overview and discussion of where it might lead next. See also my prior posts about my initial impressions, and the speeches of Mark Scott, Posetti, Mark Colvin and Jason Wilson, and Jay Rosen. (photo by Derek Barry)

I wanted to finish off by talking about some of the underexplored political economy of the Internet. The presentations of Riyaad Minty and Jude Mathurine brought some of the brightest ideas of Asia and Africa to Friday’s events. Both presenters are South African of similar age with a fascination for all things new media working in different fields. Minty was a digital entrepreneur at 19 before joining Al Jazeera in 2006 as a new media analyst. Jude Mathurine went into education and advocacy and is now head of the new media lab at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape Province.

Minty’s presentation was a quick introduction to how the new media team in Doha promotes Al Jazeera online. Minty noted that Al Jazeera is broken into six major functions: Arabic, English, documentary, sport, training and research and his group is involved with all of them. Their job is to ensure the brand stays relevant in the new digital age. Their mantra is “people trust people” so Al Jazeera has been personalising its message in what Minty called a “virtuous circle” of old and new tools and old and new audiences.

He discussed how Al Jazeera covered Operation Cast Lead (Israel’s 2008 invasion of Gaza). According to the UN Goldstone Report this was a particularly brutal occupation and unsurprisingly Israel didn’t want the media around to question their actions. They made Gaza off-limits to westerners but Al Jazeera had two reporters Ayman Mohyeldin and Sherine Tadros inside the Strip who got their message of the devastation out on television, the website and Twitter. Al Jazeera also urged the people of Gaza to give their online “views from the ground”. Their Twitter live updates were a compelling real time unveiling of suffering that was otherwise unheard in the western media.

Al Jazeera used Ushahidi to integrate mobile, email and alerts for crowdsourced crisis mapping and provided Google maps mashed up with up-to-date bombing information. The site also enabled creative commons video footage which was used creatively by artists, activists and educators alike. Minty said that telling the truth was hard, but not telling it is even harder. His team give Al Jazeera the tools to make it just a little easier.

While Minty is doing great things in Asia, Jude Mathurine is determined Africa will not be left behind in the digital revolution. The theme of Mathurine’s presentation was that the future of journalism in that continent is firmly tied up to mobile social networks and its enormous array of tools.

The question for Africa is how many people will be able to access the tools. Although 15 percent of the world’s people live there, Africa has just four percent of the world’s Internet users. The continent is handicapped by huge income disparities, education issues, poor bandwidth and bad regulation. In South Africa the black and poor are digitally disenfranchised and online social media is biased towards the white and wealthy. Journalists suffer just as badly as the general population and have little by way of media education or exposure. Media organisations are staid and hierarchical and do not engage audiences.

Yet Mathurine says Africa will not be left out of the global village of social networks. He sees hope in the fact the social network sites such as Facebook, Youtube and Blogger are among the most popular sites in many African countries. Critically, this trend is further exacerbated on mobile services. “The revolution will be mobilised,” says Mathurine. In the last six years world mobile growth has outstripped landlines by a factor of over a hundred to one. By 2007 Africa had almost 200 million mobiles compared fewer than 30 million fixed phones. Mobile users are transforming the continent using SMS (and reconnecting the millions elsewhere of the African Diaspora).

Mobile growth is fastest among the young and are taking to the social networks in greatest numbers. Online tools such as Kabissa and Zoopy are changing the political landscape too as Africa looks to local and cheap solutions to get around its many problems. People can buy mobile handsets using open source operating systems with camera and recording capability for just $15 and the Internet backbone is slowly increasing around the continent. But SMS remains the killer app and sets the agenda often bypassing media censorship in the process. Young people and social media are Africa’s great hope for a truly democratic continent, concluded Mathurine. And mobile technology will be far more important than desktop access.

Egypt detains Al Jazeera journalist

In what can best be described as a battle of Arab powers, Egypt has detained an Al Jazeera journalist they believe is fabricating evidence. The Egyptian Interior Ministry said they stopped Huweida Taha Metwalli on her way to Qatar and found 50 video tapes in her luggage. Egypt claims that some of the material in the tapes is “tarnishing Egypt's reputation and harming Egyptian national interests.”

The debate framed by Mubarak’s Egypt and his pharoahs-in-waiting is an effort to combat Al Jazeera’s growing power in the region as well as hide embarrassment at some of the country’s rougher tactics in maintaining power. It will be a fascinating battle of wills to see how this story unfolds. Egypt is a massive symbolic power both in the Arab world and the world beyond.

Egypt is geographically powerful. Mis’r is the name of Egypt in Arabic, the language spoken by Egyptians and Qataris alike. Mis’r. The name is old, slow and miserly like Egypt herself. Egypt has always been precious. It is where the world’s largest river reaches the sea. It helped formed the Mediterranean. The Nile’s slow warm current fed gentleness into the sea all the way to Gibraltar. It may even cause the Med to dam up.

Egypt was always politically powerful. Luxor is still the largest temple in the world. Egyptian paws and papyrus are all over the bible. The Jews lived for four hundred years under the Egyptian yoke. As the Greeks did to the hated Turkish Ottomans, the Jews picked up the culture of their conquerors. Joseph and Moses spend their formative years learning bad Egyptian habits which they took abroad. Though diminished by Roman times, Egypt retains that era’s most potent sex symbol – Cleopatra. But Egypt’s ultimate tragedy was not Biblical plague or Roman snake. Instead it was mostly likely a fire that burned books. No one can agree when the legendary destruction of Alexandria’s library occurred. Romans, Christians and Muslims have all copped the blame at one point or another. But whenever it happened, it was the consequential loss of its compendium of human knowledge led to the inexorable decline of the dream city named for one of the earliest Greats. Alexandria.

Modern Egypt is justly proudly of its ancient evenings. But Muslim Egypt and its 80 million people remain geographical and politically vital at a point on the Earth where three continental plates collide. It has Suez and Sinai. Britain and France duked out for it in Napoleon’s day. It has the magical Cairo. Australian troops got trained, drunk and laid there prior to Gallipoli. By 1956 those old imperial rivals Britain and France had so successfully patched up their differences to pal up with Israel and snatch the Suez Canal back from Nasser who nationalised it. But they were defeated by a rare strategic alliance of the two superpowers, the US and the USSR. The UN managed it until the Israelis parted the Red Sea once more in 1967. Egypt didn’t get it back until Carter wanted a pin-up moment to define his presidency. He brought Begin and Sadat together at Camp David in a move that proved fatal to all three. But Sadat’s replacement Hosni Mubarak has now been in power for over 25 years. That makes him one of the world’s statesmen despite the obvious lack of democracy that facilitated his long stint in power.

Mubarak has “won” re-election four times and critics say his latest victory in 2005 was tarnished by fraud, vote-rigging, police brutality and violence. Al Jazeera represents a new challenge to Mubarak’s authority with its apparent willingness to report on such matters. Al Jazeera has not been so forthcoming with the democratic challenges faced by their host country Qatar.

The capital Doha is a modern technological powerhouse on the Persian Gulf and home of Al Jazeera, Arabic for “The island”. Qatar is on the mainland of the Arabic Gulf but its capital Doha is an island in the desert. 80% of Qatar’s almost a million inhabitants live there. Unlike the ancient history of Egypt, Qatar is a new emirate. It was a useful stopping point for the sea-journey to India.

The British were here, like everywhere else. But the sun had set on the Empire, by the time Qatar struck oil. The end of World War II pumped up demand for new uses of petroleum. Newly independent Qatar got an increasing share of the profits of oil. After OPEC defeated the West in the oil crisis of 1973-1974, the country became seriously wealthy. Qataris are now a minority in their own country but still control most of the land. Doha, like Dubai, is moving away from the petrodollar and but not into tourism like Dubai. Instead it is spending big on education, infrastructure and sport. Doha is likely to bid for the 2016 Olympics.

Like Egypt, Qatar has a long-term leader. Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani has ruled Qatar since 1995. Al Jazeera was launched with his support a year later from the shells of a failed BBC experiment to broadcast an Arabic news channel. The BBC pulled out after Saudi Arabia objected to BBC coverage of a beheading. Most of the journalists ended up at Qatar’s new alternative. Now Al Jazeera is an international brand playing the BBC and CNN at their own game and beating them in many countries. But it is not yet a money-making organisation. Al Jazeera’s budget is still topped up with the Emirs hard-earneds.

Qatar does not have democracy, and Al Jazeera is not likely to bite the hand that feeds it. Its foray into Egyptian politics may well be seen as a personal insult to Mubarak from the Emir. There is bad blood between the two countries that date back to Qatar's 1998 accusation that the Egyptian government contributed to a failed coup attempt in Qatar at the end of 1996. Bad blood indeed. Watch this space.

The rise of Al Jazeera

Al-Jazeera is an Arabic word meaning ‘the island’ or ‘the peninsula.’ It is also the name of an Arabic television station based in the Gulf state of Qatar which has received international attention, plaudits and brickbats in equally large measure in the last ten years.

In a 2005 poll conducted by branding consultancy Interbrand, Al-Jazeera came out the No. 5 "brand with the most global impact," behind Apple, Google, Starbucks and Ikea. Al-Jazeera built its reputation as a genuine alternative to the global English-language networks and broke the West’s monopoly on news. It rivals the BBC in worldwide audiences with an estimated 50 million viewers.

Al-Jazeera has been a pioneer of free expression in a part of the world not renowned for it. It has taken on sacred cows both by criticising Arab regimes and interviewing Israelis. It has incurred the wrath of Gulf States such as Bahrain which banned it for supposed pro-Zionism and bias against Bahrain. The ban is more likely a result of Al-Jazeera airing footage without permission of anti-US protests in Bahrain which ironically were spurred by Israeli military action in the West Bank.

Al-Jazeera has several channels including sports and children’s channels. It also has English and Urdu language channels planned. But it is the main 24 hour news service for which it is most justly proud. It has an important presence on the internet. The station is most famous for its role as a conduit for Al Qaeda communiqués and videos to the Western World.

This fame is double edged, Al-Jazeera have become imprinted in the Western conscience as a result but are also sometimes seen as a mouthpiece for Osama Bin Laden and are thus greatly feared and mistrusted in the US. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has accused the network of lying and getting "advance notice" of attacks from terrorists. Al-Jazeera International (AJI) are hoping that their English language channel, with American backers, will change this perception. They have already signed a deal with satellite distributor BSkyB, which is partly owned by News Corporation.

The launch has not been without problems and they have already missed three deadlines to start the channel. There is a fight for identity between Western AJI and its Arabic parent channel. Critics, most notably on the Friends of Al-Jazeera website, have attacked the executive team for being overloaded with "ex-corporate" types. These include Sir David Frost who, by his own admission, sought a seal of approval from Washington and London before signing on.

Al-Jazeera is based in Doha, the capital of Qatar. Qatar is ruled by the Sandhurst educated Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani. Sheikh Hamad is the staunchest ally of the United States in the Middle East. He has permitted the US to begin building military facilities within Qatar and has normalised relations with Israel. He overthrew his father who was vacationing in Switzerland in a bloodless coup in June 1995. The Al-Thani family is the only one off-limits from Al Jazeera criticism.

The origins of Al-Jazeera also date to the same year of Al Thani’s coup – 1995 - when the BBC signed a deal with the Saudi Orbit Communications to provide Arabic news for Orbit's main Middle East channel. However, the BBC's insisted on editorial independence which did not sit well with the Saudi government who baulked at reporting issues such as executions and the activities of prominent Saudi dissidents. It took only until April 1996, and a BBC story which showed footage of a Saudi beheading, for Orbit to kill the deal. A few months later, the then new Emir of Qatar, al-Thani, took advantage of this to hire most of the BBC Arabic Service's editors, reporters and technicians to form the nucleus of a new channel. The Emir, who had started a campaign to end censorship in Qatar and abolished its notorious “information ministry,” contributed $140 million to finance its operations for the first five years. It aimed to become self-sufficient through advertising by 2001. When that failed to transpire, the Emir committed to a further $30 million a year until further notice.

During the Iraq war, the US bombed the Al-Jazeera Baghdad office killing three journalists in a missile attack. The Daily Mirror published a story in which they claimed that President Bush had considered bombing Al-Jazeera's Doha headquarters in April 2004, when U.S. Marines were conducting an assault on Fallujah.It was intimated by the report that the Iraq war incident and other bombing of Al-Jazeera offices (such as Afghanistan 2001 and Basra 2003) were also deliberately targeted by presidential order. British Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith gagged the newspaper 24 hours after it published details of what it said was a transcript of talks between Bush and the British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Blair is said to have talked Bush out of launching "military action" on the television channel's headquarters.

Al Jazeera and one of its many new imitators, the Dubai based Al-Arabiya, both embarrassed the American funded Iraqi Al-Hurra channel ($60 million seed money plus $40 million added by Congress to reach 80 percent of Iraq's population with over-air transmitters) by broadcasting from inside the city during the siege of Fallujah. Al-Hurra has been exposed as an American propaganda exercise and is losing the battle of the airwaves as a result.

Al-Jazeera are annoying everyone which would most likely mean they are doing a very good job of reporting the truth.