5. BASE EXPERIMENTAL
5.2.1. ANUARIO DE ESTADÍSTICAS LABORALES Y DE ASUNTOS SOCIALES DEL
Before moving on and discussing television in the Arab world, it is important to define the meaning of the Arab world which is sometimes called the MENA region and stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean, including several countries in the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant region and North Africa. It generally refers to a group of countries that share, to some extent, a common history of language, culture, traditions, values, religion, economic, media and political developments. The definition also encompasses the sense of shared identity, psychological ties and sense of belonging. However, in spite of these similarities and shared history and background, most Arab countries, after independence and the end of colonialism in each state, gained a new sense of nationality and shared identity among the individuals in the nation. Also, each country had witnessed varying and different levels of political, economic and educational prosperity (Rugh, 2004).
This section briefly summarises the state of Arab media prior to the development of satellite television. After that it examines how media structures changed with the introduction of satellite television. The whole section will be mainly based on the work of some of the prominent Arab media scholars such as Douglas Boyd (1999); Naomi Sakr (2001, 2007); Marwan Kraidy (2002); El Mustapha Lahlali (2011).
Lahlali (2011) cites the work of Ayish (2001) who traced the existence of news media in the Arab societies as far back as 1797 to the time of the Western colonisation of the Middle East and which continued to flourish during and after the colonial period. During the colonial phase, the colonising powers worked to develop media technologies in order to promote their propaganda messages. However, the post-colonial period was different in terms of their message, as they worked to promote independence, national transformation and political institutionalisation (Lahlali, 2011, citing the work of Ayish, 2001).
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When looking at the development of the Arab press, it is important to highlight that each country had separate media laws, press environment, and time of launching their media institutions. For example, in Egypt the first newspaper was established in the 1800s, however, in other Arab countries such as Kuwait, the first publication was launched in 1928, whilst in Bahrain, it was in 1939. Similarly, it can be argued that literacy rates varied from one country to another in the region, which made it challenging for the media to flourish in some states. Yet, a common shared feature was the way in which the state and national media specifically television was used as a means of producing what is called
“imagined community” amongst a wide variety of individuals (Mellor, 2008; Phillips, 2013). With regard to the concept of imagined community, Anderson (2006) has developed this concept to talk about nationalism which essentially means how a group of people perceive and identify themselves within their nations and also the role that the media can play in creating imagined communities. The Arab national media message was
to boost their peoples’ national identity and sense of belonging to their state, and their
perception of a shared land within their country. Alongside the proliferation of satellite channels, state-run television channels continued their nation-building and pedagogical style (Rinnawi, 2006).
World War II had less impact on the press in comparison to World War I in the Middle East region; however, the impact of the war was felt on an economic level (Ayalon, 1995). During wartime, stiff censorship measures were imposed everywhere in the region. Alongside censorship, difficult licensing procedures were applied to discourage the private sector from establishing journals. However, privately run journals and newspapers started as commercial businesses and did not have the aim of challenging governments but instead serving those governments’ messages to their audiences (Ayalon, 1995). The press environment was not fully free. Also, private journals had to focus on revenues in order to survive and keep running.
In the area across the Jordan River from Palestine, which used to be called “Transjordan”,
the press was not as developed as the rest of the other Arab nations until World War II, when the press started to develop in the same manner as the rest of the countries in the region. In March 1921, a new political entity was forged under the name of Jordan, and a new press era started to exist. Before this, newspapers did not exist in the area. The publication of the first newspaper in the country, called Al-Urdenn, was in 1927, which
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started as a weekly newspaper, then became a daily in 1949 and lasted well into the second half of the century (Ayalon, 1995). Jazirat al-'Arab ("The Arab Peninsula"), Sada al-'Arab ("Arab Echo"), and Al-Shari'a ("The Holy Law") were among the few weekly newspapers that launched in Amman during the 1920s and 1930s, alongside a few periodicals, some of which did not last long. Some of these periodicals were al- Wafa'
("Loyalty"), Al-Hikma ("Wisdom"), and Al-Jazira al-'Arabiyya (Ayalon, 1995).
Whereas, looking at the development of Arab state broadcasting from its inception until the coming of satellite television, starting with radio, according to Boyd (1999) radio broadcasting was established in the early 1920s, predominantly in the Arab states that they were under European colonisation. Radio was mostly used as a tool to promote the state agendas and political messages (Mellor et al., 2011).
Mellor et al. (2011) argued that the monopoly of the state over radio broadcasting was exercised from the 1920s until early 1990s which afterwards started to weaken due to the presence of commercial and nonstate broadcasters which established a new content agenda and an entirely new era for radio broadcasting. The content shifted from a very governmental formal style of radio content to a wide range of entertainment, social and cultural radio content offerings.
In Transjordan (Ayalon, 1995), radio broadcasting was started in 1936 by the British mandate authority. On the other hand, Gunter and Dickinson (2013) stated that the first Arab country to have a radio station was Algeria in 1925, followed by Egypt in 1926 and Tunisia in 1935 and then Jordan 1936.
Gunter and Dickinson (2013) stressed that radio news was faster than newspapers in its delivery of the latest developments and in the 1950s, radio even appeared to be a force that could be used in politics in the Arab world, for example, during the revolution in Egypt, radio was used as the main platform to reach the people (Gunter and Dickinson, 2013).
Whereas, according to Gunter and Dickinson (2013), television in the Arab countries began in the mid-1950s. Mellor et al. (2011) stated that television broadcasting in the Arab world was not any different to radio and the broadcasters delivered the state agenda and version of national and international issues until the late 1980s. Gunter and Dickinson (2013) stated that television broadcasters were affiliated to government
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ministries of information and that the news format, stories and coverage were not comprehensive. Also, when looking at the content provided in these news stories, Sakr (2001) similarly added that national and international visits by heads of states alongside with the performance of the government and its policies were what televised news was mostly about. However, Ayish (2001) stressed that television was seen by the governments as a medium that could be used for the progress of the Arab nations in terms of nation-building and cultural integration.
After that period, television broadcasting in the Arab world has witnessed considerable changes as the private sector came into the picture to change the landscape and the quality of the television content offerings. Guaaybess (2013) emphasised that states exercised their dominance over institutions that ran broadcast media. However, Lebanon was argued to be an exception in the Arab world (Althusser, 1976). Generally, television in the Arab states has developed from terrestrial national television in each country to a global and regional market (Mellor et al., 2011).
On the other hand, when looking at the technological aspect of the media and particularly television development in the Arab countries, Lahlali (2011) believed that media technologies kept developing from a moderate base; however, the prominent shift in the media landscape in terms of technology, style and content approach came after the Gulf War in the early 1990s. During the war, it was clear that CNN had dominance over the flow of information to the world in general and the Arab world in particular. This led Arab countries to invest heavily in the development of their media institutions for their political interests as well as in order to keep the interest of their audiences. This happened at the same time as the appearance of satellite services which opened up a new era of diversity, and the encouragement of the private sector to be part of this transformation in the media landscape. Therefore, this period witnessed the proliferation of satellite channels which became an essential part of the media environment and media sphere that many Arabs share through their exposure to the content on these new global channels (Lahlali, 2011).
Examples of these active privately-owned satellite channels are the London-based Middle Eastern Broadcasting Centre (MBC), the Arab News Network (ANN), the Arab Radio and
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Television Network (ART), the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation (LBC), and Al Arabiya (Lahlali, 2011).
These channels broadcast from different countries inside and outside the Middle East; according to Lahlali (2011): “The dissemination of news information had gone beyond the geographical boundaries of these channels headquarters”. He continued that:
The advent of these satellite channels has put Arab state television under enormous pressure. Arab governments have found it extremely difficult to control the flow of unfiltered information generated by these satellites. (p.12). To sum up, this section has reviewed a brief historical background about the media landscape development in the region, particularly Jordan, highlighting the prominent shift that happened to the media, especially television as a news source, in the early 1990s after the Gulf War which as a result made Arab governments start investing heavily in their television news institutions ultimately resulting in a proliferation of a new breed of Arab satellite channels which in my opinion is hard to control. The next section will discuss the media environment and freedom of expression in the region in order to gain a better understanding of how young people in Jordan consume news on television.