Abu Dhabi: Social media is gaining prominence in the Arab World, a senior official said on the sidelines of the Abu Dhabi Media Summit that concluded on Thursday.
Social media provides entities and individuals with greater voice particularly in the UAE, Nart Bouran, CEO of Sky News Arabia, told the Gulf News.
”We as a broadcasting media, refer to social media as a source of news after verifying these sources to cover major events where correspondents are not available for any reason,” Bouran said.
Bouran explained that at present, there are no boundaries and no barriers to news as ordinary people can work as corespondents by sending news and photos to any media channel.
“Media is moving from centralised regulated capital-intensive model that requried government liccenses into completely decentralised low-cost model. There has been validated news breaks first on social media before it breaks on agencies where audiences can find more indepth analysis and communications on social media networks,” added Bouran.
Khaldoon Tabaza, founder and CEO of Zad Capital, a media and internet company in Jordan, told the Gulf News: “The rapid development of social media as a major business tool has played a key role in transforming Arab communities, economically, politically and culturally and has leveraged media channels to increase the number of their viewers or audiences.”
“More than 65 per cent of businesses in the Middle East use websites such as Twitter to win new businesses by answering customers and audiences’ questions with openmindedness without being defensive,” Tabaza concluded.
