Communication and Media in the UAE 50 Years Ago Report

Introduction: Interviewee’s Background and History

Mustafa Abdul is a 78-year-old resident of the UAE and a retired archivist and newspaper editor. After several decades of working in the field of media and communications, he is able to evaluate the changes that occurred to media with the advent of the new technology and define the positive and negative effects of these changes.

Changes in the UAE Communication and Media

According to Mustafa, the basic change that happened to media and communication concerns the speed with which information is transferred and processed. What used to take several hours, like the process of having a film developed, takes several minutes nowadays with digital cameras.

What Seems to Have Improved: New Opportunities

In the course of the interview, Abdul admitted that the introduction of new media into the culture of the UAE has resulted in more opportunities for communication between the UAE residents (Appendix A). According to Abdul, the “information landscape” has changed drastically.

The fact that with the help of the new media, information can be conveyed not only in a much faster, but also in a much more efficient and convincing manner, should also be viewed as a positive change, as Mustafa explained.

For instance, the interviewee claimed that new media tools, such as YouTube and Facebook, as well as other social networks (Al Jenabili, 2012), were soon recognized as a powerful tool in reaching out for not only the UAE citizens, but also major companies and organizations (Appendix B).

Regarding the Downsides: Obstacles to Regular Communication

Unfortunately, the introduction of new media also has its downsides, the primary one being the obstacles to the traditional communication. According to the results of the interview with Mustafa Abdul, an impressive shift towards the use of social media can be observed in the UAE, which leads to the deterioration of the live communication culture of the Emirati people (Healy, 2010).

Another obvious change that occurred to the UAE communication and especially media concerns the content and its underlying message. While in the past, the significance of a particular idea was valued in media and communication, nowadays, the marketability of the idea is considered the priority (Appendix C).

In Search for Solutions: What Can Be Upgraded

The current informational evolution is rather natural, given the fact that the current society is defined as informational one. However, it is still necessary to reinforce traditional cultural values to make sure that the national identity of the UAE citizens is not going to be lost in the process of updating the sphere of media and communication (Al-Khazraj, 2009).

Seeing how the traditional values have already been shifted towards marketability, as Mustafa claims, there are reasons to consider the reinforcement of traditional cultural values (Appendix D).

Conclusion: Greater Changes Are Yet to Come

To sum up the results of the interview, new media in the UAE is clearly changing the current cultural landscape. The UAE culture is merging with the ones of other states and becoming more flexible towards the influence of other cultures. While the given tendencies show that the state is ready to evolve culturally, socially and technologically, the necessity to filter the information that is provided by modern media arises.

Reference List

Al Jenabili, B. N. A. (2012). Use of social media in the United Arab Emirates: An initial study. Global Media Journal Arabian Edition, 1(2), 3–27.

Al-Khazraj, N. (2009). The culture of commercialism: globalization in the UAE. Web.

Entrepreneurship Organization in the UAE (2013). Web.

Healy, F. (2010). Response to the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority consultation on the definition of Relevant Markets for the purposes of ex ante market reviews. Web.

It’s happening in the UAE. Web.

Maqta Bridge. Web.

Tends and culture (2010). Web.