Rebranding Al-Jazeera Children's Channel: The Qatarization Factor

Qatar's rulers established Al-Jazeera Children's Channel in 2005 to nurture Arab and Islamic traditions and values; the channel sought to differentiate itself by ensuring that material would conform to what its management considered to be culturally appropriate guidelines for content. However, having been set up as a child-centred, non-commercial, fully-funded enterprise that aspired to source most of its content within the Arabic-speaking region, its priorities shifted in 2011-13 towards maximizing commercial revenues through foreign imports. In light of the shift, this chapter explores the complex interweaving of commercial and political considerations behind production and commissioning processes. The channel's branding and re-branding shows how a children’s television project can be adopted to reinforce a country’s claim to regional cultural leadership, while being packaged in such a way as to depoliticize that country’s institutions and composition by rooting national identity in a combination of commercial interests and notions of traditional culture.

Methods, Models & Systems for Dealing with Some Business, Management & Engineering Problems

This keynote presentation will report some of our research work and experience on the development and applications of relevant methods, models, systems and simulation techniques in support of different types and various levels of decision making for business, management and engineering. In particular, the following topics will be covered. Modelling, multi-agent-based simulation and analysis of the allocation management of carbon dioxide emission permits in China (Nanfeng Liu & Shuliang Li Agent-based simulation of the dynamic evolution of enterprise carbon assets (Yin Zeng & Shuliang Li) A framework & system for extracting and representing project knowledge contexts using topic models and dynamic knowledge maps: a big data perspective (Jin Xu, Zheng Li, Shuliang Li & Yanyan Zhang) Open innovation: intelligent model, social media & complex adaptive system simulation (Shuliang Li & Jim Zheng Li) A framework, model and software prototype for modelling and simulation for deshopping behaviour and how companies respond (Shawkat Rahman & Shuliang Li) Integrating multiple agents, simulation, knowledge bases and fuzzy logic for international marketing decision making (Shuliang Li & Jim Zheng Li) A Web-based hybrid intelligent system for combined conventional, digital, mobile, social media and mobile marketing strategy formulation (Shuliang Li & Jim Zheng Li) A hybrid intelligent model for Web & social media dynamics, and evolutionary and adaptive branding (Shuliang Li) A hybrid paradigm for modelling, simulation and analysis of brand virality in social media (Shuliang Li & Jim Zheng Li) Network configuration management: attack paradigms and architectures for computer network survivability (Tero Karvinen & Shuliang Li)