Riyaad Minty

Leader Al Jazeera‘s Social Media initiatives

Riyaad Minty leads Al Jazeera‘s Social Media initiatives. As part of the Network’s New Media team, Riyaad ensures that Al Jazeera has a presence and is part of the conversations held across Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. He was part of the team that was nominated to an Emmy Award in 2009 (International Digital) for the coverage of the 2008 US Presidential Election.

During these last years, his work has focused on the use of social networks to inform in periods of crisis, especially concerning recent uprisings and political changes in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya (2011), the war on Gaza (2008/9) and the 2009 Iranian elections. Riyaad has been interviewed by the New York Times, Fast Company, the International Herald Tribune, National Public Radio and Al Jazeera English, as well as by several digital platforms including Mashable and Harvard Nieman Lab to discuss the challenges and opportunities new technologies provide to the improvement of news coverage.

Prior to joining Al Jazeera, Riyaad co-founded Future Technologies which focused on mobile content production and on aggregation and content distribution. It was his company that took the award winning cartoon strip “Madam and Eve” to mobile phones across South Africa.