Given the above, Al Jazeera is a media project that is unique to the modern Arab context. It is the most important Arab achievement that has managed to build a different relationship between public authori- ties and societies in the Arab World. Among its apparent successes is its ability to “accommodate diversity and shape pluralistic discourses, giving room for all Arab political and ideological spectra to express themselves” (1) . 3. Al Jazeera’s Audiences and Elites Al Jazeera’s audience is a general description of all recipients of the media message communicated by Al Jazeera regardless of their size or experience. (2) . Although it might be accepted and used in theory, it is not an approach so easily taken in practice. In reality, there is no such thing as a totally homogenous audience falling under one single category. Within every audience, there is a number of distinctions that should be made such as age, gender, level of knowledge, and political awareness that enables people to deal with news stories in a critical manner and understand their political ramifications. In the following paragraphs, we will distinguish between “audience” and the “elite”. - Audience here means the general public that watches or follows Al Jazeera and receives its media content. It is a wide sample of view- ers interested in political news across the channels of the network. The members of the general public may have preliminary knowledge of the news as presented by mass media, but they are automatically influenced by Al Jazeera’s content without necessarily having the ability to figure out the details of such an influence. This is the type of audience that Al Jazeera addresses more and sees as its ‘target audience’ within the larg- er competition with other media networks in order to make and shape a homogenous public opinion regarding particular issues. - By elite, we mean specifically the political elite, which is a spe- cial type of audience. It is an audience with more detailed knowledge (1) Mufeed Al-Zaidi, Al Jazeera Channel: Breaking the Taboos in the Arab Media Space , (Beirut: Dar Al-Tali’a for Printing and Publishing, 2003), p. 34 (2) Tariq Al-Aswad, Public Opinion: Social Phenomenon and Political Power , (Baghdad: Directorate of Dar Al-Kutub for Printing and Publishing, 1991), p. 91.
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