Much was made of the importance of Twitter and other forms of social media during last year's Iranian election. But were the tweets out of Iran really representative of the view on the ground? Social media sites are being embraced throughout the developing world: even in countries where repressive regimes limit freedom of speech and media access. It's a situation that presents new opportunities - and pitfalls - for journalists.
Moeed Ahmad is the head of New Media at Al Jazeera, and he provides a unique, inside perspective on the use of these websites in the Middle East at the Media 2010 conference in Sydney.
Bio
Moeed Ahmad
Moeed Ahmad is based in Doha, Qatar and is the Head of New Media for the Al Jazeera network. In this role he is responsible for utilizing new media to broaden audience use, distribution and engagement with Al Jazeera content.
He was born in Pakistan and moved to Canada in his teens. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 2003.
Arabic-language cable news network founded in Qatar in 1996. It was established by the emir of Qatar and was transmitted from its capital, Doha, and from bureaus around the world. It began continuous programming in 1999. The editorial freedom exercised by its staff was unique in the Middle East, and its broadcasts were occasionally blocked by Arab states. It was the only network to broadcast from Kabul during the 2001 U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan.
I am curious to find out what happened to the Al Jazeera Talk.net experiment which started a couple of years ago in both English and Arabic. It never really took off in English and the Arabic site is full of very alarming spam at the moment. It looks like AJE is experimenting with all kinds of emerging technologies but has not yet found the way to integrate it into their daily workflow. Compare this presentation to a more recent one on Fora from the editor of the Guardian. Guardian is really cutting edge. AJE seems to be falling behind, despite ambitious press releases.