| dc.description.abstract | In an era of global communication where efforts are increasingly paid to communicate with people of widely-varying cultures across the world, this study examines how one news organization communicates to international audiences of different languages, cultural backgrounds and interests. This study aims to identify which values are more prevalent in the content in both AJA and AJE to communicate to their audiences with different cultural, language, and interest backgrounds. The study tests three models developed from the literature in news production: The professional values model, the marketing values model, and the cultural values model. A total of 592 news stories – 234 from Al Jazeera English and 358 from Al Jazeera Arabic websites – published from Jan. 1, 2014, to April 30, 2014, were analyzed.
The findings of this study indicate that Al Jazeera reflects professional values to a substantial degree, marketing values and cultural values were evident at a moderate level. However, a comparison of the news stories on the Arabic and English websites showed that Al Jazeera tailors its stories to the taste of the target audience in different ways. In fact Al Jazeera considers the cultural, social, language, religious, and interest backgrounds of its target audience when producing its contents. Specifically, although professional news values were most prevalent in both websites, AJA and AJE showed some differences in the prevalence of the three models. The findings show that AJE reflected a moderate level of marketing values, and a low level of the cultural values when communicating with its non-Arab readers. However, AJA reflects a moderate level of cultural values and a relatively low level of marketing values when communicating with its Arab readers. Scholarly implications, future studies and limitations were presented in this study. | en_US |
