Qatar Untold

Almost 90% of Qatar’s population are expats, and that single fact changes everything about how online media works here. The publications, the audiences, the advertising — none of it behaves the way you would expect if you are used to working in media elsewhere. Here is what the landscape actually looks like.

A company blog is one of the most underused communications tools in Qatar — and in a market this starved of good information, that is a bigger missed opportunity than most businesses realise. But before you publish a single post, you need a plan.

Qatar has one of the highest internet penetration rates in the world, yet walk through most of its businesses online and you would think the country had only just discovered the web. Corporate blogging is one of the clearest examples of that gap — and the numbers bear it out.

This is not just a story about foreign policy. It’s about what it means to call a place home.

If you work in communications in Qatar, chances are you have turned down a media request at least once — maybe because the outlet seemed too small, the question too probing, or the timing just wasn’t right. I am here to tell you that was a mistake, and more importantly, how to avoid making it…

Before Qatar became a skyline, there was a neighbourhood in Matar Qadeem where Qatari grandmothers returned from the market with jellybeans for every child on the street — regardless of where their parents had come from. I was one of those children, and this is that story.

With slightly over 10 percent of a 2.6 million population comprising locals, Qataris are a huge minority in their own country. Authorities are notoriously careful about releasing exact citizenship figures, leaving us to piece together the reality from various public data sources. But has it always been this way? This is the story of how…