of the network’s digital development. This chapter also contributes to building the theoretical concept of digitisation and the risks involved, as well as the digital environment and its media and communications contexts, which help us understand the foundations of Al Jazeera’s vi- sion and policies in the digital field. This chapter focuses on the follow- ing five topics: 1. Digital environment variables 2. Al Jazeera’s experience on the web: varied news services and spe- cialised knowledge 3. Al Jazeera and social media platforms 4. Al Jazeera’s leadership in digital products: AJ+ as an example 5. From a new media “team” to a digital transformation “sector” 1. Digital Environment Variables The word “digitisation” has many different definitions depending on the context in which it is being used. The terms digital transforma- tion and digital representation have also been used to describe this sec- tor of media, as some researchers have noted (1) . Most Arabic and foreign dictionaries, such as Oxford and Webster among others, use a general definition for digitisation as the process of transforming information in a digital manner that makes it easy to read and process on a computer (2) . This data can be from different information sources: written text, an (1) For more on the contexts in which digitisation is used, see: Najla Ahmad Yasin, Digitiza- tion and its Technologies in Arab Libraries (Cairo: al-Arabi Publishing and Distribution House, 2013), p. 20. In her book, the author discusses digitisation in computers, digitisation in the context of information systems and digitisation in the context of long distance calls. See also: French sociologist Remi Raphael’s additional digitisation contexts, which, in his opinion, touch all aspects of society, such as the economic, service and cultural sectors. See his work: “The Digital Revolution: A Cultural Revolution?” translated by Said Belmabkhout, The National Council for Culture, Arts, and Literature , Issue 462, (July 2018), pp. 27-28. (2) Oxford English Dictionary. See also, Mai al-Abdullah, Dictionary of Modern Media and Communications Concepts: The Arabic Lexicon to Unify Terminology (Beirut: Dar al-Nahda al-Arabiya, 2014), p. 136.
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