Tag: media
Has news journalism been sabotaged by Twitter?
Talking Twitter on the Business Breakfast is always a pleasure and this morning no less so than usual. The question was, “Has news journalism been sabotaged by Twitter?” and my answer was pretty much a resounding “Yes!” There are three major problems with Twitter and news journalism, I think. One is the challenge of real-time […]
A wake-up call for aspiring citizen journalists in the UAE (and lessons for Middle East marketers)
The story is now well known and has received media coverage around the world. An incident of road rage in Dubai captured on video by a bystander and posted online inadvertently breaches United Arab Emirates laws, resulting in the arrest of the citizen journalist a couple of days later, even though he removed the video […]
Flipboard and the future of content
It’s no secret that the Internet has radically changed the way we create, consume and share content and continues to do so. Spot On often talks about concepts such as disintermediation, the atomisation of communications, the social consumer and the pressure on all organisations to become publishers of content. It’s easy to spot the big […]
Taking a bite out of the CITC
‘Biting the hand that feeds IT’ is UK-based The Register’s amusing theme line, a reference to the IT news website’s irreverent editorial style, which often has harsh criticism for IT company announcements, spokespeople and other IT news. This week, Saudi Arabia’s English language newspaper the Arab News seems to have decided to do some biting of its own, running a […]
Causing a stir: Twitter and the news media
The latest in a long line of Twitterpower case studies came last week with the news piece in The National highlighting Twitter outrage at the decision to send 25 Emirati women to Bahrain to watch the UAE play Bahrain in the Gulf Cup. The prevailing tide of expressed opinion was strongly against the activity, rallying […]
Are brands at risk from the UAE’s new cyber-crime law?
Taking many media watchers by surprise, the United Arab Emirates President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan has approved a new cyber-crime law for the UAE, Federal Legal Decree No. 5, this week. The online law was duly announced by the Emirates official news agency WAM yesterday evening (you can find the contents […]
Honest statistics
As any politician, publicist or PR person knows, one can prove absolutely anything with statistics! And in a region, such as ours, where reliable statistics for many things are so hard to come by, people certainly try! As veteran journalist and long-term UAE resident Peter Hellyer rightly says in Tuesday’s National newspaper, scarcely a week […]
What were those Facebook stats again?
How many Facebook subscribers are there in ‘the region’? It all depends on your point of view. Those that are confused by the different social media statistics being shared on ‘the region’ can be excused. It is confusing. Here are some alternative figures on Middle East and North Africa and Arab world Facebook users. 1. […]
Can we say Twitter revolution now? Can we?
There’s already been quite a lot written about the role of social media in the ousting of Tunisia’s President Ben Ali. Here’s our 2 cents worth, plus a list of useful links for anyone interested in learning about the role of social media in Tunisia’s regime change.
Introducing social media in the Arab world
The April issue of O’Dwyer’s PR Magazine has just come out in the USA and it features a report I wrote on social media in the Middle East and North Africa. It’s a very top-level view of social media and Internet trends in the region and primarily intended as an introduction to the Arab world […]
