of geographical coverage or time span of attention and the engagement generated by such phenomenon. Given Al Jazeera’s relatively recent entry into the Arab media landscape and its inconsistency with the tra- ditional Arab media narratives, the early studies were primarily focused on exploring and finding out more about the network. They mostly tended to gather and present as much information as possible on this new phenomenon. Among the early works in this category is Mohamed El-Nawawy and Adel Iskandar’s book, “The Story of the Network that is Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism” (1) , Heiða Björk Vigfúsdóttir’s Master’s thesis on Al Jazeera and the Arab world (2) , Christina Øvestad Eikeland’s Master thesis on Al Jazeera’s revolution and its impact on the Middle East (3) , Sarah Jurkiewicz’s Master thesis, “Al Jazeera on Site” (4) , and Maha Al Bashir’s PhD on Al Jazeera’s role in setting news agendas in the Arab and Islamic worlds (5) . These exploratory studies were dominated by the concept of a me- dia “phenomenon” and related connotations, and the methodology was mainly descriptive with a clear tendency to generalise and address the Network in its entirety. The concept of Al Jazeera as a phenomenon first appeared in Louay Bahry’s study in 2001 (6) , and strongly exempli- fied in Mohamed Zayani’s book “The Al Jazeera Phenomenon” which promoted the notion more widely and became a reference for subse- (1) Mohammed El-Nawawy and Adel Iskandar, Al Jazeera: The Story of the Network that is Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism (US: Westview Press, 2003). (2) Heiða Björk Vigfúsdóttir, Al Jazeera: A Window into the World of Arabs (Master thesis, University of Iceland, 2009). (3) Christina Øvestad Eikeland, The Media Revolution of Al Jazeera (Master thesis, Oslo University, 2004. (4) Sarah Jurkiewicz, Al Jazeera on Site (Master thesis, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2007). (5) Maha Al Bashri, The Opinion & Other Opinion: Al Jazeera’s Agenda Setting Function in the Arab Islamic World (PhD thesis, University of South Carolina, 2007). (6) Louay Bahry, “The New Arab Media Phenomenon: Qatar’s Al Jazeera”, Middle East Pol- icy , Vol. 8, No. 2, (2001).
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