DOHA: Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q) has won two National Priorities Research Programme grants of over $1.5m through the Qatar National Research Programme.
The projects entitled ‘Media Use in the Arab Gulf: A Longitudinal Study’ and ‘Content Innovation Strategies for Mobile Media in Qatar’ were among 162 selected from nearly 800 proposals.
“NU-Q’s growing research programmes represent our commitment to create knowledge about the media in a region which has traditionally been studied by outsiders looking in,” said Everette E Dennis, Dean and CEO, NU-Q.
“The grants emphasise the value of systematic research in solving practical problems —both of our awarded studies help us understand media audiences and messages better.
The mobile content study could be quite important in terms of technology advances.”
The first grant of nearly $850,000 will support the continuation of NU-Q’s two-year running survey on media use in the Middle East. For the three-year grant period, an NU-Q research team, including Dennis, Lead Principal Investigator, and co-principal investigators Justin Martin, Assistant Professor in Residence, and Robb Wood, Media and External Development Strategist, will continue research in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE as representatives of the Arab Gulf region. NU-Q will continue surveying countries outside the Gulf, such as Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunisia, which were included in this year’s study.
The second grant of over $700,000 was awarded to a project that will probe innovation strategies around mobile media — folding in computer science methodology around big data analysis and media studies to create a model for the innovation of mobile media content.
Leading the study is John Pavlik, expert on the impact of journalism, media and society based at Rutgers University, who will join co-principal investigators Dennis and Rachel Davis Mersey, Associate Professor at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism.
Findings will be based on data from Qatar and the UAE collected through social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as surveys and interviews. The project paves way for public education and engagement via mobile media, promoting advances in entrepreneurial and business innovation to support economic growth in the media, and setting a research baseline in mobile media content development and diffusion.
The Peninsula
