Abstract
Al Jazeera network brands itself as the “voice of the voiceless” and adopts diversity as one of its main principles. On its website, it claims “the more diverse the angles, the clearer the picture becomes.” Al Jazeera has more than 4000 staff members around the world drawn from 70 different nationalities. In 2012, Al Jazeera claimed that 46% of its international workforce was female. Drawing on the Global Media Monitoring Projects of women portrayal in mass media as a point of departure, this chapter investigates the representation of women in Al Jazeera news through quantitative content analysis of news bulletins for the period of October 2017–April 2018. Findings were triangulated with in-depth interviews and documents’ analysis. The literature concludes that Al Jazeera, through its talk shows, broadened the debate about women’s issues in the Arab world and brought to the public sphere issues that have hitherto remained taboo and private. However, the content analysis of Al Jazeera Arabic’s news reveals that women issues are underrepresented as they constitute only 1.5% of the total stories aired. Sources quoted in the news were mostly elite men and women who represent 16% of all sources quoted. Excluding elite women and the channel’s editorial staff, the percentage drops to 1.8%. Through interviews, the chapter concludes that the channel has no clear policy on gender-sensitive reporting but rather adopts a gender-blind policy. Conservative social norms and news-gathering routines remain challenges that face women in the channel, in addition to the lack of representation of women in leadership positions. While Al Jazeera succeeded in bringing the voice of the Global South from the peripheries to the centre of global media landscape, women remain at the periphery of the peripheries and the channel needs to exert more consistent and institutionalized effort for a better women’s representation in its news.
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Appendix
Appendix
List of news bulletins analysed
October 30, 2017 | First bulletin |
November 07, 2017 | Second bulletin |
November 15, 2017 | First bulletin |
November 29, 2017 | Second bulletin |
December 1, 2017 | First (m) bulletin |
December 8, 2017 | First (m) bulletin |
December 16, 2017 | Second bulletin |
December 24, 2017 | First bulletin |
January 1, 2018 | Second bulletin |
January 9, 2018 | First bulletin |
January 17, 2018 | First bulletin |
January 25, 2018 | Second bulletin |
February 22, 2018 | First bulletin |
February 10, 2018 | Second bulletin |
February 18, 2018 | First bulletin |
February 26, 2018 | First bulletin |
March 6, 2018 | First bulletin |
March 14, 2018 | Second bulletin |
March 22, 2018 | Second bulletin |
March 29, 2018 | Second bulletin |
April 7, 2018 | Second bulletin |
April 15, 2018 | First bulletin |
April 23, 2018 | First bulletin |
May 1, 2018 | First bulletin |
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Guta, H.A. (2019). Gender in Policy and Programming: An Analysis of Women Representation in Al Jazeera Arabic News. In: Sadig, H. (eds) Al Jazeera in the Gulf and in the World. Contemporary Gulf Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3420-7_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3420-7_9
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