Slides from workshop for BBC Media Action and Radio Algerienne, held in London on 25th July 2014.

1. Media and Technology:
in MENA and Algeria
Damian Radcliffe
@damianradcliffe
July 2014

2. Damian Radcliffe is a journalist, researcher and analyst.
He runs the Rassed research programme at Ministry of
Information and Communications Technology in Qatar;
and is an Honorary Research Fellow and PhD Student at
Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies.
He has written about the Middle East, journalism,
technology and innovation for a range of outlets including:
Abramis Academic Publishing, BBC College of Journalism,
Huffington Post, journalism.co.uk, Knowledge Bridge
(Media Development Loan Fund), NESTA, Online Journalism Blog,
Ofcom, Routledge, Your Middle East and ZDNet.
About Me
View Damian’s extensive writing and research portfolio at:
www.damianradcliffe.wordpress.com/writing or email him damian.radcliffe@gmail.com

3. Running Order
1) MENA overview
• Key regional issues
• Social Media
• Youth Trends
2) Algeria in the Spotlight
3) Discussion

4. Overview
Key issues

5. My Top 5
1. Digital Pioneers
2. Digital Divide
3. Digital Content
4. Penetration vs. effective usage
5. Balancing ICT and cultural values

6. 1. Digital Pioneers
Key Data Points:
• UAE has the world’s highest level of both smartphone penetration and FTTH.
• 50% of YouTube views in Saudi Arabia - and 40% in UAE - are via mobile devices.
• Qatar and New Zealand the only non-European countries in the global Top 10 for
individual broadband penetration.

7. 2. Digital Divide
Key Data Points:
• Wide variance in advanced technologies usage e.g. 2G vs 3 or 4G. Tablets etc.
• Recent World Bank report noted that in many MENA countries prices for
broadband are akin to 40% of monthly incomes.
• 60% % of people in Algeria, Djibouti, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen, "cannot
afford fixed and/or mobile broadband services".

8. 3. Arabic Digital Content
Key Data Points:
• Only 3% of the Internet is in Arabic.
• But fifth most widely used language worldwide, spoken by at least 293 million ppl.
• More articles on Wikipedia in Norwegian than Arabic.

9. 4. Penetration vs Depth of Use
Key Points:
• High levels of take-up, especially in GCC.
But:
• Lack of awareness, skills, issues of DRM and availability, often means low breadth
and depth of technology usage (e.g. number of apps used, or even downloaded).

10. 5. Balancing ICT and cultural values
Key Data Points:
• Internet users in the region want to see more filtering of online content.
• Especially material which could be harmful to children, pornography and
racist/discriminatory content.
• Traditional methods of banking and commerce – face-to-face – prevail.

11. Social Media
Trends

12. Regional Picture
• Facebook dominates in most countries.
• Although there are differences e.g. Qatari’s prefer Instagram.
Egypt leads FB use.
But Algeria has one
of MENA’s largest
Facebook
populations.

14. Arab Youth: Behaviours and Attitudes

15. Wider Attitudes
• Rising living costs and unemployment are biggest concerns.
• UAE seen as the ideal country to emulate.
• 35% say values influenced by social media. 19% by TV celebrities.
“A rising number of Arab youth are adopting modern values as
digital technology reshapes behaviour and attitudes.
Nearly half of all youth polled (46%) agree with the statement
“Traditional values are outdated and belong in the past; I am keen to
embrace modern values and beliefs”, compared to only 17% in 2011.”

17. Digital Behaviours
Tech savvy. Entrepreneurial. Want Arabic content.
• 83 % use the Internet daily
• 40 % use the Internet for at least five hours a day
• 78 % prefer the Internet to TV
• 37 % are not satisfied with the availability of Arabic websites
• 43 % of ADG members would like to start their own business

18. Digital impacts
• Dating: Over 60% in North Africa and the Levant – and 44% in GCC - approve of a
male member of their family marrying a woman whom he had met online.
• eGovernance: 24% believe media content is totally controlled by government. 31%
cited lack of trust in leaders and fear of being targeted as the main reasons for not
communicating with political leaders.
• Impact on Family: Very heavy users of technology – yet also feel ICT is detrimental
to family relationships, despite preferring electronic interaction above face-to-face.

19. Implications for Media

20. News media: Sources

21. News media: Trust

24. World Economic Forum
Algeria ranks very low on this annual ICT index:
“With very poor general conditions for business
and innovation development (145th), a poorly developed ICT
infrastructure (127th), and very low ICT penetration across all
stakeholders, it is not surprising that the country does not
achieve higher economic (133rd) and social (140th) impacts.”

25. WEF high level assessment 2014

26. Putting this in context
1. 2nd lowest MENA Internet penetration (only Iraq is lower)
2. Nascent 3G
3. Lowest % of mobile share for a MENA country’s web traffic
4. 2nd lowest social media penetration (only Yemen is lower)

27. Social Media in Algeria
• Led by Facebook.
• Other major networks have a very small penetration.
• Twitter, for example, has just 37,500 users.

28. Facebook in Algeria
• 76% aged 15-29. (4th youngest FB population in MENA; only Palestine,
Morocco and Somalia skew younger)
• 76% post in French. 32% of users post in Arabic. Only 11% in English.
• 17% of FB users in Algeria (1m) joined Jan-May 2014.
• 68% of FB users are male. Among MENA’s most balanced FB populations.

29. Facebook Pages: Media

30. Facebook: All pages

31. Facebook:
Celebrities

32. What does this mean for you?
Discussion

33. APPENDIX: detailed MENA data

34. Where people access the web

35. Technology and
Social Media penetration

42. Rapid 2014 adoption of Facebook

48. YOUTH ISSUES AND OPINIONS

51. Recap: primary Algeria insights

55. Sources for this presentation
• We Are Social: Social, Digital & Mobile in The Middle East, North Africa & Turkey [July 2014]
• World Economic Forum: Global Information Global Information Technology Report 2014
(aka Network Readiness Index 2014)
• Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government: Arab Social Media Report (Issue 6) [2014]
• SocialBakers: Facebook data and analysis
• ictQATAR: Research round-ups (monthly and quarterly)
• World Bank: Report, Broadband Networks in the Middle East and North Africa: Accelerating
High–Speed Internet Access (2014)
• Arab Youth Survey 2014: Presentation, White Paper, Top 10 Findings PDF
• Booz & Co, with Google: Understanding the Arab Digital Generation (2012)