It inevitable to avoid relationship with news providers, they know a lot. 

Audience analytics is changing the news construction process, 

Newsrooms in Qatar prefer journalistic integrity than catering to audience preferences in short run, 

Have you ever thought how the number of retweets on a news story, time spent on a news website and number of clicks impacts the editorial decision making in a newsroom? There are literally people glued to a big screen in the newsroom who document the number of impressions, views and likes on the posted content. Their job is to evaluate the data and formulate a report on the most read topics. In technologically advanced newsrooms like Aljazeera, the list of most viewed or circulated content is automatically generated. 

This continuous monitoring of the content allows the editors to record the preferences of the audiences and adapt in real time. Alongside, the digital department, consisting of people with specialization in social media communication, recommends journalists to cherry pick words for headlines and advise them on ways to optimize their productions on news aggregating websites such as Google News. 

Knowing someone to the core can be meaningful in a romantic relationship but raises certain moral questions when news providers view audience as disaggregated units to maintain traffic. To what extent can you know the audience? Can news organizations sacrifice journalistic integrity to accommodate consumer preferences? 

AJ+ use of metrics 

Haris Alisic, head of development and engagement at AJ+, communicated that AJ+ uses analytics tools such as CrowdTangle, Tubular, Social Bakers and Tablleau but does not compromise the organization’s journalistic integrity. Tools like Crowd Tangle allow news outlets to compare the longevity of content on up to five platforms simultaneously. “AJ+ remains to be audience centric in the sense that it serves audiences’ interest and not satisfy their sense of sensationalism,” Alisic said. 

However, AJ+ is state sponsored and run by Al Jazeera Media Network. Since AJ+ does not actively seek audience satisfaction to generate advertisement, it gives AJ+ liberty to interact with the audiences the way it deems appropriate. “We’re the only news organization that entire countries are trying to shut down,” Alisic added. “We don’t care for the satisfaction” 

Use of web and social media analytics can be better understood in environment where news organizations are continuously competing for audience. One such news media is Gulf Times. Gulf Times uses platform embed analytics for social media platform but relies on more sophisticated tools for website such as Alexa and Comscore. Jossy Abraham, head of digital at Gulf Times, told TechTallk that they are at the infant stage of digital integration in their newsrooms. Most important, Abaraham mentioned that they don’t target any specific group of audiences but analyze data on more holistic scale such as Gender ratio. 

Gulf Times use of metrics 

Abraham added that Gulf Times is not willing to compromise content for audience satisfaction but sometimes they add more interesting topics wider the audience base. “Asa publication, we have our own guidelines for the content we create, but sometimes we have to go beyond certain traditional content and add new topics to acquire and engage new audiences,” he said. 

 I love Qatar was also reached a number of times to probe them about the use of metrics in their editorial process but they didn’t reply. 

It seems like that newsrooms in Qatar are gradually incorporating newsroom metrics and are not willing to overstep conventions of journalism to bucket some additional financial incentives. 

In many countries, unlike Qatar, where media is pivoted on algorithms and data, it is inevitable to avoid a relationship with news providers. They will know what they want to because some argue that it is the only sustainable method in modern journalism. 

Reporter Maryam Al-Badr takes a look at Vine’s new revamped app, Byte and examines how this app will compete with the ever-popular TikTok app.

For an app that recently launched, Byte has already over one million downloads on the app and google store, which is higher than the initial Vine launch, according to Sensor Tower.

But, will Vine’s comeback be able to compete in the ever-changing social media platform and audience’s expectations?

• Facial recognition technology has been on the rise due to security and marketing demands.
• The technology stores your “face print” and you have no control over that.
• Is a bit more convenience worth undermining our intimate information?

First things first: No, I’m not typing this on a burner laptop inside an underground dungeon while wearing a tinfoil hat. But hear me out. It could be wise not to bombard our social media accounts with pictures of our daily activities, especially ones with our faces in them, because guess what: the government and the big corporations are keeping an eye on us…

It’s likely that in the past couple of weeks you might’ve come across the latest tech controversy that disrupted Silicon Valley and Washington D.C. alike. I’m talking about the facial recognition technology startup, Clearview AI, and the uncovering of its enormous database that contains more than three billion pictures scraped from all over the internet, according to its CEO, Hoan Ton-That.

Here’s the gist of the controversy: Clearview AI claims its purpose is to help law enforcement identify unknown faces by matching these faces with their personal online images using the help of their facial recognition software, which feeds into their absurdly huge database. Major red flag alert! The startup claims that there are approximately 1,000 agencies across the United States and Canada that buy or request the scraped information Clearview AI collects, sometimes without any official approval from their respective cities or states, and that there is practically nothing to be done about their practices because no one can control what they do with the collected data.

Another major red flag alert!

This controversy is undoubtedly disturbing, but Clearview AI isn’t the only platform utilizing facial recognition technology for ominous purposes. So, in order to better understand the situation, we must first go through a facial recognition technology 101 crash course.

Essentially, facial recognition system is a technology capable of identifying a person from a digital source, whether from images or videos. The technology is able to detect and analyze the facial features of an individual (e.g. the distance between both eyes, the width of the nose, etc.) creating a “facial print” that could then be matched with images and videos online to identify that exact individual. Primitive facial recognition technologies create face prints through cameras’ 2D scanning, while more advanced ones, like Apple’s Face ID, use tens of thousands of infrared dots, or 3D scanning through invisible light, to create more accurate face prints.

The revolutionary technology is considered to be the most natural of all biometric measurements, compared to measurements such as finger prints and iris recognition. And for that, it’s being gradually integrated into airports to be used for boarding passengers, phones for security and encryption purposes , and in China, authorities are determined to make everything, from boarding an airplane to ordering a KFC bucket, based on facial recognition.

            And that’s another major red flag!

“It’s an issue of how much privacy are we going to sacrifice in the name of a bit more convenience,” said Dr. Anto Mohsin, assistant professor in science and technology studies at Northwestern University in Qatar, “I don’t mind spending one more second typing my password on my phone if it means my face isn’t stored in a database somewhere.”

The technology sounds very convenient, but also clearly invasive. Imagine that at the peak of the use of facial recognition technology, your face is constantly being scanned wherever you go; the bank, the mall, the grocery store, etc. And this isn’t like having your face on CCTVs, because they don’t create and store personal face prints that arguably violate a very personal detail about you which is your very own face.

Take it one step further and imagine that you are participating in a protest or a public demonstration, and your face is being detected and stored by parties you are unaware of. Such an eerie thought is enough to deter you from practicing your right to express yourself, and that could ultimately undermine the essence of any democratic society.

“I don’t want the government to know, or have it stored in a database that I went at this time to this place,” said Anthony Wallace, network engineer a computing security analyst at Northwestern University in Qatar, “I don’t have anything to hide, but that’s the argument you hear when it comes to a multitude of security related technologies.”

Here is the thing, deploying such penetrative surveillance technologies at that micro level, specifically facial recognition technology, obstructs our ability to stay anonymous. It becomes that you practically can’t do anything without someone, somewhere, harvesting your personal information. And while that might be less concerning under friendly governments, it becomes alarming under authoritarian governments, according to Wallace.

Take China for example. We talked about how the autocratic republic aims to integrate facial recognition technology into practically everything in the country, but considering their authoritarian reality, disturbing intentions and activities cannot be dismissed. For instance, China is already using the technology to ID and publicly shame jaywalkers by posting their personal information on public screens. And on a more sinister note, the technology is being used to track and control the Uyghurs, a largely Muslim minority in the Xinjiang autonomous region, in the first known example of a government intentionally using A.I. for racial profiling.

But at least governments can be held responsible for their actions, at least to some extent. Private companies on the other hand, are practically free as a bird. Companies like Google and Facebook are two of the world’s leading investors in facial recognition technology, but Facebook, for instance, is one of its most recognized abusers. Less than a month ago, Facebook agreed to a $550 million settlement following a class action suit that claimed that Facebook’s photo-tagging feature failed to comply to Illinois’ 2008 Biometric Information Privacy Act which states that permission is required before collecting biometric data.

However, as Hoan Ton-That said, once a company collects the data, anything that follows becomes trivial. Paying a fine, or discontinuing a software, does not insure that the already collected data is going to be deleted and not used for other purposes. Then again, how can we blame these companies for abusing our personal information if we actively feed them such information knowing that they profit astronomic figures from selling them to advertisers and other third parties. Not only that, but let me ask you a pretty embarrassing questions: have you ever read any of the fine prints of these companies’ terms and conditions before cluelessly agreeing to them?

Here is just a final example of how creepy – possibly sinister – facial recognition A.I. could be employed:

“They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” said Wallace, “and we can end up going down these bad paths with really great intentions if we don’t understand the implications that we have for the future.”

Once the Huawei Mate 30 was released in Qatar, Sara Nasser rushed to reserve and get her own. Upon its arrival, she realized there was no Google Play, and she could not download the apps she wanted. What she found instead, was the AppGallery, a Huawei replacement that downloads all the apps, except for the newest update of Snapchat and the Commercial Bank.

“I was not aware that Google Play is not available, and when I contacted the store they told me it was because of some ban that the United States imposed on China,” Nasser said.

What is the US-China Trade War?

In 2018, US President Donald Trump began imposing tarrifs and trade barriers on China. The US accused China of “unfair trading practices,” and “stealing intellectual property, but it wants Beijing to make changes to its economic policies, which it says unfairly favour domestic companies through subsidies,” according to BBC. US imports from China saw an increase of tarrifs, and Huawei was banned from the US.

Huawei being banned was partially caused by the trade war, and partially due to it being considered a “national threat” to the United States. Allegations made by the US government involved “bank and wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the US, and stealing tade secrets,” according to Vox. Although the ban is relatively new, US suspicion of Huawei dated back to 2011, as investigations were made to see the connection between the company and the Chinese government.

The ban had a major effect on the tech company as it was not expected. Al Jazeera reported that Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei said “We cannot get components supply, cannot participate in many international organisations, cannot work closely with many universities, cannot use anything with US components…”

Although the ban affected Huawei in many countries, Huawei in Qatar was not affected.

How is the US-China Trade War affecting Huawei in Qatar?

Many people in Qatar are still buying Huawei phones, regardless of the ban, and have not lost trust in the company. Sara Hamdi, sales person at Huawei Qatar, says the ban did not negatively affect sales. Instead, people were determined to get their hands on the new Mate 30 and started reserving it online.

“The company was concerned about the phone being released without Google, and if people would be accepting of it. Turns out, people were accepting it because they released a new app store called AppGallery,” Hamdi said.

Huawei has been working on being independent from foreign companies and has been working on it since 2012, Hamdi explained. AppGallery allowed users to sign up and download all the apps they want, including all social media apps. However, one setback was that, currently, users cannot use the latest version of Snapchat and Qatar Commercial Bank app. In order to use Snapchat, users must download an older version of it, Hamdi clarified. (This did not sound right, why is the latest version of the app not available, is it because it’s a first copy of the app?). When asked if Huawei used a first copy of the apps, Hamdi denied and said Huawei has been working closely with Snapchat.

Another reason why sales in Qatar were not affected by the ban, was because many people limited their usage of Huawei to photographing. After interviewing many users in Qatar, it has become clear that Huawei is used as a second phone, one solely for its Leica camera feature. Amna Abdullah, a Huawei Mate 30 user, is an example of that.

“If we are speaking about daily usage of the phone, then I never use it except for taking photos. It has a really good camera which surpasses any other camera in any smartphone, but the quality of social media apps is disappointing. Like, I would never use the snapchat camera on this phone to take a photo because it is unclear,” Abdullah said.

Are people in Qatar aware of the ban?

Many people in Qatar are not aware of the ban, and google trends search shows that. For example, the timeline shows that there were 93 searches of ‘Huawei’ between April 7-12, 2019 in Qatar, which was a few days before the release of the P30 elite. Moreover, there was a decrease in searches on May 2018. This is significant because on May, 2, 2018 the US Pentagon banned the sales of Huawei products. In addition to that, most of the search topics revolved around different models of the phone.

On another hand, between May 19-25, 2019 there was an increase in searches. This could have been due to the Google ban that was issued during that time, however upon searching, it has become clear that it could be for another reason. As also, during that time Huawei launched three new phones, Honor 20, Honor 20 Lite and Honor 20 Pro, according to Qatari news The Peninsula. Huawei’s sales not being affected in Qatar and many people’s unawareness on the ban could be due to extensive advertising by Huawei done in the region.

Huawei Arabia’s efforts in advertising through Social Media Influencers

Huawei Arabia has gone on a mission to recruit Arab social media influencers, and have them join the team. Well-known names in the region have all appeared on HuaweiArabia’s Instagram account.

Majority of the video advertisements emphasized on the camera quality in Huawei phones and the ‘excellent’ snapchat quality.

This creates a false sense of hope, and disappointment in users when they, like Amna Abdullah, find out the quality of Snapchat on Huawei. Nevertheless, the extensive advertising has benefitted Huawei as it continues to boom in sales in Qatar.