중동도 인쇄매체 ‘칼바람’…UAE국민 하루 4시간반 스마트폰 사용

* ‘아시아엔’ 해외필진 기고문의 한글요약본과 원문을 함께 게재합니다.

[아시아엔=라샤 압델라 UAE 아지만대학 심리학 교수·번역 최정아 기자] 지난 5년간 중동 미디어 시장은 놀라운 변화를 경험했다. 중동 지역은 정치, 경제적으로 국제사회와 더욱 긴밀한 관계를 맺어왔는데, 중동의 변화상은 미디어 산업에도 그대로 반영됐다. 하지만 중동의 언론들은 커다란 어려움에 직면해 있다. 지난 10년간 수많은 인쇄매체가 문을 닫았으며 수십년 경력의 베테랑 기자들이 펜을 내려놓았다.

2014년 아랍미디어포럼에서 발표한 보고서에 따르면, 2028년 들어 인쇄매체는 미디어 산업의 주인공 자리를 내려놓을 것이라 한다. 신문, 잡지 등 전통적인 인쇄매체 대다수가 사라진다는 것이다. 이에 대해 전문가들은 시장 다변화, 콘텐츠의 개인화, 수익모델의 진화 등 다양한 원인을 꼽는다.

신문의 위기를 더욱 가속화시키는 주요원인은 인쇄매체 생산 비용 증가, 스마트폰, 태플릿PC 등 다양한 기기의 등장, 디지털 미디어 광고 증가 등을 꼽을 수 있다. 아랍에미리트 국민들은 일평균 4.33시간 동안 스마트폰을 사용한다. 이제 사람들은 더 이상 신문을 스크랩하지 않는다. 스마트폰이나 노트북을 이용해 사이트 링크를 저장한다. 기자들도 이러한 흐름에 발맞춰 뉴미디어를 통해 기사를 독자들에게 전하고 있다.

아즈만사회기술대학(Ajman University for Science and Technology, AUST)의 카레드 엘 카자 정보언론대학 학장은 기자들도 이러한 미디어 환경 변화에 적응해야한다고 강조한다. 그는 “(전통적) 저널리즘에 익숙한 일부 기자들은 ‘어떻게 독자들이 이럴 수 있지?’란 입장을 보이기도 한다. 트위터, 페이스북과 같은 소셜미디어를 통해 여론을 형성하는 독자들을 이해할 수 없다는 반응이다”라고 밝혔다. 좋든 싫든 미디어 환경의 변화는 현실이다. 엘 카자 학장은 “다가오는 뉴미디어 시대에 생존하기 위해선 기자들도 디지털 미디어에 맞춰야 하며, 이미 아랍에미리트의 대학들도 학생들에게 다가올 미래에 맞춰 교육방침을 수정해나가고 있다”고 말했다.

Printed Media versus Online Media in UAE

Media in the Middle East has witnessed an extraordinary change over the past five years. The Middle East has become increasingly involved in world events and trade. Not only has it outdone its own accomplishments but has also placed itself on the global map of commercial success.

Arab media is a collective outcome of efforts by the Arab community to push back society’s strains and establish its presence on the world media map. To this day, there have been several challenges the media in the Middle East has faced. The news industry has had a rough decade, print readership is steadily declining, newspapers are closing, and journalists with decades of experience are being laid off work.

Some facts about Media in UAE:
According to the report of ‘The Arab Media Forum 2014’, newspapers in their current form will become insignificant by 2028. The extinction of traditional newspapers in the UAE is due to different factors that include consumption growth, fragmentation of the market, participation of the users, and personalization of content, evolving revenue models, generational change and increasing bandwidth.

The key factors that speed up newspaper extinction are increasing cost, performance of mobile phones, tablets, e-readers, changes in newsprint and print production costs, trends in advertising spend and uptake of digital news monetization mechanisms.

The social media report of 2015 explains that the use of new media is on par with global trends with high internet penetration levels in the Arab region. The UAE has the highest mobile internet usage. On average, people spend 4.33 hours using mobile phones every day; 1.28 of those hours are spent on the internet, and only 63 minutes on physical print.

What that means
We are in the middle of an industrial revolution in the media. At the center of this revolution is the rise of social media and the emerging Tablet PC, which brought with them new consumer demands and new ways of newsgathering and news distribution. Naturally, newsrooms are morphing and journalists are transitioning in response to the social, cultural and technological changes happening.

However, the changes happening in the news industry that are brought on by the rapid advances in technology should not be seen as a threat to traditional mass media, but as complementary – in reaching targeted audiences in a world of personalized media by offering digital narratives and customizable news experiences that allow users to share and participate.

Media companies are changing with time. Journalists in the UAE realize there is a need for journalists and journalism to transform and evolve along with the changes happening in the technological and cultural scenes. Most of the respondents say they are not worried about making the transition and many are already preparing themselves for the digital shift by learning multimedia skills.

Who are the journalists of the UAE’s future?
Journalism for its part is not dead but merely evolving and the journalists of the future need to reinvent themselves. Dr. Khaled El Khaja, the Dean of Information and Media College in Ajman University for science and technology (AUST) emphasizes the need for journalists to adapt. “Too often, it seems, those of us who have been about building a community through journalism react with a “how dare they?” attitude toward those who construct communities through social media”.

“We have to get over that. People are more powerful now as consumers and shapers of news. The less keenly journalists applaud this development, the further behind we will be left until we fade to irrelevance.” Like it or not, the journalists of the future have to be more technology-savvy as news organizations become more digital-centric. Many journalism colleges in the UAE are already preparing their students for this certainty.

What does this mean for journalists?
As a result, journalists need to master new skills in the following:
Multimedia (photos, graphics, video)
Adobe Flash (graphics software)
Video editing (Adobe premiere, Apple Pro)
Digital Narratives (Constructing stories with info-graphics)
Journalists will have to learn to work with an infographics team or a news visual design team to reinvent how to tell stories in digital platform.