Mapping Digital Media in the UAE

Digitalization and digital technologies could be confused by many as a trend issue that will be forgotten soon after its dust settles. It should be noted, however, that digitalization is a revolution, similar to the agrarian or industrial ones; and it will cause immense and innumerable changes in this era. The digital media platform has equally influenced crucial economic and social facets of the society, as it has been affected by other economic and political tenets. Therefore, digitalization in media in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is associated with a myriad of key highlights expressed in the social indicators, media consumption, social and cultural diversity, relationships of digital media with technology and society, as well as digital business scenarios https://advanced-writer.com/

Social Indicators

By mid-2016, the population of the UAE was estimated at around 9.627 million people with the number of males prevailing. 85.5% of the residents live in urban areas with only 14.5% in the rural regions. The native Emirati population is a meager 11.6%, and an overwhelming 88.4% include immigrants. Islam is the dominant religion for over 76% of the population, 9% are Christians and other religions are followed by 15% of inhabitants. Arabic is the official language in the Emirates, but it is spoken alongside Persian, Hindi, Urdu, and English as documented in The World Factbook by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Digital Take-up

The Emirates is a leading media hub globally, with the television and other electronic platforms as well as print media being the dominant ones. At the least score, 90% of Emiratis have access to a mobile phone and a staggering 8.5 million are the Internet users according to 2016 statistics as documented by BBC. The Abu Dhabi Media Zone, the Dubai Media City and twofour54 were established to attract media players.

The majority of media outlets in the UAE are state-owned and cater for all the inhabitants in the UAE regarding language and content. At least 0.4 of the population access Facebook at least once in a month; hence, this is an indicator of how people have adapted to the media. However, there exist considerable filtering of information that could be perceived as a threat to public order, defamatory or contemptuous to religion (Islam). Additionally, there has been a huge leap in TV (both cable and IPTV) consumption, a decline in radio acquisition and a rise in PC ownership in the UAE, and the rate of Internet penetration (both broadband and mobile telephony) is way above 90% as suggested in the Dubai Press Club’s Arab Media Outlook 2009-2013 .

UGC use and online activism keep growing, slightly in the UAE but considerably in other Arab countries, especially in the MENA region. Therefore, such an activism of the poorer northern Emirates has induced the government turn to develop those Emirates. The majority of broadcasting houses in the UAE are state owned. There are very few individually owned broadcasting corporations, but the nation is open to this option. Amongst the biggest internationally-based companies broadcasting in the UAE include the Reuters, Fox, Sony, CNN and most recently, Sky News. The federation has also seen a massive swipe from the traditional terrestrial TV broadcasting to the booming satellite and Cable TV production.

Media Preferences

The UAE has experienced the massive turn from the traditional print and telecommunication platforms to the more digitized areas. Print media has been hard hit, and most of its followers are in their mid and advanced ages. The availability of magazines, especially on digital platforms, may have influenced the youth's inclination and attitude. As the Dubai Press Club, documents in the Arab Media Outlook 2009-2013 , at least 90% of the people read a newspaper once a week, with Al Khaleej, Gulf News, and Al Ittihad topping the preference log. However, online news is quite popular and the most preferred news website is Gulf News. TV viewers favor news and sports genres (in particular, men) and women would rather watch the entertainment programs. MBC channels take the lead among the most viewed channels in the UAE.

The studies dated back to the Arab Spring of 2010-2011 in Yemen, Tunisia, and Egypt show that the use of UGC materials is on the rise, not only in the Middle East but also in the rest of the world. People upload text, audio, video or image contents on the Internet every day to advocate for the issues without any apparent monetary gain or loss. According to the article ‘Top sites in the United Arab Emirates’, Google.ae is the leading website in UAE. Other websites in the top ten chart include Youtube.com, Facebook.com, Google.com, Yahoo.com, Manoramaonline.com, Souq.com. Wikipedia.org, Onclkds.com, and Live.com. All of the listed websites are operated and run by a reputable organization with at least 6 of them led by Facebook.com, and Youtube.com offering UGC platforms. Most dominant UGC content is networking, photo and video sharing, commentary, as well as blogging. According to the January 2017 report by Khaleej Times , the social media apps chart are as follows: Whatsapp (97%), Facebook (86%), YouTube (73%), as top three apps, and LinkedIn (16%), and Snapchat (27%) as the bottom two.

Other Key Factors in the UAE’s Digital Media

The United Arab Emirates like other counterpart states in the Arab world have very strict policies pertaining censorship of harmful or inappropriate content aired across the digital media platforms. The Open Net Initiative has reported that the UAE is one of those Arab nations that employ Western Technologies to digitally eliminate the Internet content that is deemed to be skeptical of the Islamic religion or content that propagates secularism and atheism, sex, dating services, proxy and anonymity tools, as well as GLBT sympathizers. Despite the innumerable, immense censorship efforts made by the government, UGC users are continuously devising mechanisms and protocols to overcome the digital locks as well as continue to network and perform activist activities on the digital media platforms.

The UAE is an entirely cosmopolitan nation with a majority of people being expats. However, the most influential factor on the media scene is a religion rather than origin. The Emirates are Sharia-law-governed, Islamic, Arabic-speaking states. The views and practices that seem to contravene the Sharia laws or that are inappropriate according to Islam lead to the confrontation with the government. Westernized living is highly discouraged especially with regard to sexual orientation, but the freedom of worship is not hampered in any way by the UAE government.

One of the changing facets of technology that have been greatly impacted by social media is conducting business. Therefore, numerous reforms were introduced in the banking system, particularly launching the banking apps for Android, Windows, and IOS mobile devices. Due to these platforms, many business transactions have been rendered cashless and without the use of credit cards to the extent that online selling and buying are operational in the entire federation. Furthermore, state businesses aim at creating websites to widen their market niche with a majority of these websites running on the .ae domain according to the UAE ICT Survey . In addition, the IPTV platform has emerged as a good business tool through customers’ subscription to paid television services and advertisements.

In the discussion of digital media in the UAE, it is apparent that the federation has also been affected by the digital revolution experienced all over the world. The federation has seen varied trends in broadcasting and followership of the media due to the impact of digitization. Even the traditional print press is not sourced as hard copies but is rather accessed from a PC or a smartphone device. Digitization of the media is a phenomenon, which has become an integral part of the modern society; hence, the requisite infrastructure and policies should be implemented in anticipation of even bigger changes in future.