Across differences in history and culture, it is compelling states to
establish their authority less and less on coercion and more and more
on social consensus. It is believed that the sense making of public
diplomacy would not only create a more participatory political systems
region, but also establish new communication platforms that can
overcome the current coercive governments and help marginalize the
growing sense of Occidentalism.
Indeed, the Academic Council on the
United Nations System has not given enough emphasis on this issue
before through such new field of sense making the ACUNS can have an
unprecedented opportunity now to help build a better and more
democratic world with the spread of information and technology that
challenges tyrants who seek to stifle the message of freedom.
Sense-Making assumes that dialogue pertains specifically to the
presence of difference to enable communication. Sense-Making, however,
acknowledges the potential of such difference to bridge any such
“global” moment. Surveying the various procedures humans use to
“discipline” dialogue of who, where, and when of talking, who gets to
speak, when, for how long, and where. Germany’s and France’s
International Satellite TV Broadcasters DEUTSCHE WELLE and FRANCE 24
not only report about their respective countries, but also about their
target regions which are usually torn by crisis and conflict with no
freedom of opinion and the press. Their Arabic TV Services are
considered to be of the most recent Free to Air (FTA) channels that
attempt to use the current TV culture to engage, inform, and influence
Arab audiences. Such soft power tools are a revitalization of public
diplomacy tools “to win the hearts and minds” of the Arab/Muslim people
with the aim promoting dialogue. “The sense-making’s theory of
dialogue” is theoretical framework of this research that attempts to
stipulate a meta-theorized strategy that addresses “connection”,
“content” and “contest”.
The main research question is how do Egypt publics perceive the
discourses of both European channels, and what material-interpretive
conditions might help improve the public’s understanding of the
message. In that attempts, queries related to time, space, movement,
gap, power, constraint, force, flexibility, and inflexibility must be
answered. Since audience research in the Arab world – and, even more
important, reliable instruments, methods, and standards of comparative
audience research between the Arab and the Western worlds – are
seriously lacking so far, this pioneer study is actually a pilot study
conducted by The Arab-European Media Observatory. It offers an
unprecedented research on the sense-making of DEUTSCHE WELLE and FRANCE
24 in the Arab streets, especially in Egypt to start with. This study
explores the public’s agenda with regards to importance, role, and
level of success of both channels. It also attempts to answer vital
questions of discourses such as level of satisfaction, credibility,
content comprehensibility, sufficiency, and effectiveness.
Methodologically, this study is of explorative nature and conducts
qualitative in-depth interviews, surveying a population of two
interrelated samples: the first sample consists of media professionals;
the second sample consists of media university students. The research
population has a purposive non-probability nature that helps give clues
and indications of the degree of awareness of Egyptian publics and
assess their perception of the quality of performance of DEUTSCHE WELLE
and FRANCE 24. In this stage, Egyptians are cross-examined. But in
later stages of the project, viewers from other Middle East and North
African states (MENA) will be also researched. At a time, when many
Western countries attempt to address and target Arab/Muslim audiences
through public diplomacy, it has become crucial to properly investigate
and analyze the cause-effect relationship between what and why viewers’
habits. The research follows the model of RACE
(Research-Action-Communication-Evaluation) to “sense-make” DEUTSCHE
WELLE’s and FRANCE 24’s potentials and challenges. It is only then, one
could assess the two channels’ performance based on empirical evidence
relying on observation and explanation of events in retrospect.
