Negotiating Credibility: Al Jazeera, Transnational Audiences, and the Cultural Interpretation of Global News

This paper examines how global news media functions as a site of cultural negotiation for

transnational audiences, focusing on how credibility, meaning, and affiliation are interpreted

across differing cultural and geographic contexts. Drawing on cultural studies and audience

theory, it approaches news consumption not as a passive reception of information but as an

active, interpretive practice shaped by history, identity, and lived experience (Hall, 1980; Hall,

1997). Using Al Jazeera as a case, the paper explores how audiences situated across the Global

South and Western media environments engage with transnational news platforms in ways that

reflect both continuity and adaptation (Appadurai, 1996). Rather than assessing political posi-

tioning, the analysis foregrounds audience trust, recognition, and interpretive agency, empha-

sizing how global news media operates as a communicative space through which belonging

and legitimacy are negotiated. The paper argues that for transnational audiences, news media

serves not only as a source of information but as a cultural and communicative resource through

which global events are understood in relation to local histories, identities, and affective ties.