By David Alpern

With global frustration rising over the stalled peace talks in the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Los Angeles Times reported in January on how the region could easily descend back into an intifada (uprising) just one year after last year’s devastating Gaza war. But is the conflict eternally destined to simmer, or are there ways that the fourth and fifth estates could begin to be harnessed for the purpose of changing local attitudes and expectations?

Local Media and its Influence

Local media in the region has traditionally been geared toward super-serving prevailing sentiments, in effect fanning the flames of the conflict. Since its launch in 1996, Al-Jazeera, the Qatar based satellite television station, has had a significant impact on molding public opinion in the Middle East. From the United States’ perspective, much of Al-Jazeera’s coverage is inflammatory with its airing of disturbing footage from the region serving to both incite and reflect the popular views of the proverbial “Arab street”.

The Internet is increasingly where viewers are venturing to watch video, and social networking sites and citizen journalism are beginning to adjoin traditional news coverage in the region. As such, the Obama administration should consider adopting a multi-pronged approach for communicating its vision and intent to the Arab street, by employing multiple new media tactics such as:

SMS messaging mailing lists can be created to send appeals and updates. Souktel, an organization in Ramallah known for its SMS-job matching service, is an example of some nascent non-political efforts that can be harnessed and emulated for the purpose of developing new channels of communication.

YouTube – Posted content such as the Israeli Defense Forces’ Capt. Avichai Adraee, an Israel officer speaking Arabic, who appears in an excellent video directed specifically toward the residents in Gaza showing and explaining in full clarity what was occurring in Gaza during the war and how Hamas operations in the midst of civilian neighborhoods, schools and mosques, were endangering local Palestinian civilians.

Print – The distribution operation required by newspapers, a media that typically serves as a core vehicle of US based print efforts, is largely not accessible in a combative zone like Gaza. However magazines and direct mail, which are much more dependent on the postal infrastructure for mail distribution, can easily be employed along with the placement of advertising in local newspapers such as Amlalommah, Quds News, and Samidoon.

Interactive media including e-mail marketing, web portals, alongside direct response telemarketing could rely on the prevailing Internet and telephone access available to Gaza’s residents, who like the rest of the Arab world, are some of the world’s heaviest adopters of mobile smartphone technologies.

Television is widely viewed in the region as the most influential form of media. The local stations are operated and run by Hamas. Residents also have access to many of the above mentioned Middle East satellite stations as well as Egyptian and Israeli stations, albeit Israeli television airs just a couple hours of Arabic language programming each day. Yet, none of these non-Hamas stations are Gaza focused, a glaring opportunity for adjacent studios and transmitters to be constructed for sending over the air broadcast channels into Gaza.

Radio is pervasive in the region. While its influence has waned in recent decades with the onset of the satellite television channels, it still penetrates widely and deeply, and is quite simple to design, produce, and transmit into a small region like Gaza which comprises just 360 square kilometers, slightly more than twice the size of Washington, DC.

Local not Foreign

The U.S. sponsored Arabic news and entertainment channel “al-Hurra,” was conceived in 2004 to help spur democracy and free speech in the region, in an effort to harness local media to inspire and educate in addition to its traditional roles of entertaining and informing. It has not succeeded in part because it has been viewed as a foreign mouth piece, and as such generally not trustworthy.

Since al-Hurra’s launch, the station has been criticized in the United States, Israel and much of Western society as propagandist, cheesy, serving a US-sponsored messianic mission, and much worse. While these views are indeed valid to a degree, should it be al-Hurra’s role alone to generate a holistic change in regional attitudes?

America has always been a world leader in advertising and the effective use of media. The use of media in pursuit of the Arab street’s public opinion is sorely lagging behind. Al-Jazeera is already engaged in streaming its controversial video content on its website, while also taking advantage of emerging online media, such as Twitter, to provide real-time updates.

The challenging post-Gaza war era in which no noticeable progress has been achieved despite the administration’s focused efforts provides a tremendous laboratory in which to test the potential effect of using multiple forms of media. Rather than follow the failed al-Hurra model, multiple local media platforms can be utilized to reach, inform, and most importantly, shift public opinion from combative to collaborative.

Gaza, with its compact geography, provides an opportunity for President Obama’s team to begin to harness a myriad of local platforms in both traditional and new media. By using these local mediums to convey ideas designed to shift public opinion, the administration can communicate directly to the Arab street a message of why Middle East Peace is beneficial and desirous, and worthy of achieving, maybe even during President Obama’s first term.

David Alpern is an Interactive Account Director at a local Internet agency in Southern California. He can be reached at http://www.InternetOMG.com