Media, the mind bender

The battle for hearts and minds in the Middle East is being fought not on the streets of Baghdad but on the newscasts and talk shows of Al Jazeera,'' says The Al Jazeera Effect by Dr Philip Seib.

During the book-signing event coordinated by the Dubai School of Government and the Dubai Press Club, the author in his lecture said Al Jazeera was a paradigm of the new media's influence.

Ten years ago, there was much talk about the “CNN effect'' — the theory that news coverage, especially gripping visual storytelling, was influencing foreign policy throughout the world.

Seib's latest 190-page book defines the changing role of the media and how the new global media are reshaping world politics.

“The ‘media' are no longer just the media. They have a larger popular base than ever and, as a result, have unprecedented impact on international politics. This phenomenon, the Al Jazeera effect, is reshaping the world,'' he said.

According to Seib, American president-elect Barack Obama relied on the internet heavily to organise and raise funds and was “tremendously successful .... They were able to categorise their volunteers by geographic location .... From what I heard, he used his campaign effectively more than anyone ever has.''

Seib believes efficiency in internet usage was one of the reasons behind Obama winning the presidential election, particularly early on, when he was running against Hillary Clinton.

He explains in his book how the use of new media a as tool is increasing in every aspect of global affairs — ranging from democratisation to terrorism and including the concept of “virtual states''.

“The de facto nation, Kurdistan, is a good example of the virtual state. It is not officially recognised by governments and does not appear on commonly used maps but it exists, knitted together largely by a combination of radio and television stations and an array of websites and online communication,'' the chapter titled The Rise of the Virtual States mentions.

In another striking example used during his interview with Weekend Review, Seib mentioned how the 2002 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) saw the Chinese government tie itself in knots as it tried its best to control information about the virus.

“Although by the beginning of February 2003, 900 people were ill with SARS in Guangzhou (45 per cent of them healthcare workers), regional Communist Party officials continued to ban news coverage about the disease.

"The public learnt about the outbreak through a terse text message sent on February 8 to mobile phones: ‘There is a fatal flu in Guangzhou.' During the next three days, that message was resent 126 million times and internet chat rooms and e-mail messages also spread the word,'' he said.
On February 11, a Guangzhou daily received permission from the provincial governor to run a story about SARS and report that 305 people had been infected and five had died.

This book is new in the sense that the internet has become an avenue that offers freedom of expression, where people are addressing sensitive and controversial issues.

That, though, is not possible in many states, including some Arab countries.

One such example is when Al Jazeera's coverage of Egypt in 2005 illustrated how the channel can infringe on a government's control of politics.

“On election day in September, when President Hosni Mubarak won the country's first multicandidate election, Egypt's state-run television made no mention of anti-Mubarak protests in Cairo or calls by opposition parties to boycott what they claimed was a rigged process to keep Mubarak in power,'' Seib said.

According to him, Al Jazeera aired an interview with political commentator Mohammad Hassanein Heikal, a well-known opponent of the president.

Not allowed to appear on Egyptian channels, Heikal in his Al Jazeera appearance voiced scepticism about Mubarak's promises to enact democratic reforms.

In the Gulf, the new global media can have a transformative effect on societies such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

“I think people in the audience mentioned the growing number of blogs in KSA, for example, women using blogs in Kuwait,'' he said.

But these changes don't mean instant freedom as the new medium has its restrictions, such as jail terms for bloggers in Egypt.

“When they do that and when you have three more bloggers who say, ‘look they are locking up bloggers', real democratic change takes place in political institutions,'' Seib said.

On the other hand, the media also fuel operations planned by terrorists. Groups such as Al Qaida have used the internet tremendously well, he noted.

“How do you stop them? You can hack their sites and deal with their servers to a certain extent. That part of the communication world is not all good,'' he said while explaining the role of cyber-jihad in new media.