Doha: Since its establishment on May 25, 1975, the Qatar News Agency (QNA) has undergone a rapid technological journey that has transformed it from traditional journalism based on paper, telephones, and primitive transmitters, into an integrated digital media institution that uses the latest artificial intelligence technologies and provides its news services in multiple languages through smart and interactive platforms.
According to Qatar News Agency, over five decades, technological development within the agency has not been merely an update of equipment or publishing tools, but a comprehensive strategic transformation that has completely reshaped the news work system, in line with global shifts in the digital media industry. In its early years, QNA relied on simple journalistic and technical tools that represented the latest available at that time. News work was done through handwritten texts, telephone calls, fax machines, and "tickers" devices that were used to send news via wires and a private landline network to subscribers and various media outlets.
The press archive was also entirely based on paper files and manual classification, where news, pictures, and documents were kept inside specialized files that required a great deal of time and effort to access the required information. Journalists recall that period as the era of traditional journalism, when obtaining and transmitting news was a complex process that required a long time and limited capabilities, compared to the speed and instant flow of information witnessed in the media today.
With the development of technology, QNA gradually began to modernize its technical infrastructure and move from traditional paper archives to modern digital archiving systems. This transformation marked a qualitative leap in news content management, as the process of saving and retrieving news and images became electronic and very fast, after it had previously relied on manual searching within paper files. The new digital systems also contributed to building an advanced database of news, reports, and images, which enhanced the efficiency of editorial work and the speed of access to information.
Journalists who lived through both phases confirm that the difference between the previous archive and the current one reflects the magnitude of the technological revolution that the agency has witnessed over the past decades. With the global expansion of the digital revolution, QNA has entered a new phase of technological development, characterized by its transformation into a multi-platform digital media outlet. QNA no longer relies solely on traditional news bulletins, but has expanded to include its website, mobile applications, social media platforms, and multimedia broadcasting.
This phase witnessed the launch of advanced online news services, enabling the transmission of news moment by moment with audio, images, and video, in addition to written texts. QNA has also developed its presence on social media platforms, becoming an essential part of the modern digital publishing system, relying on interactive content and visual media that suit the nature of the digital audience.
QNA has witnessed a remarkable development in photography and visual production technologies, as it has moved from relying on traditional photographs to an integrated digital system for producing high-quality images and videos. QNA has begun producing diverse visual content, including news videos, infographics, videographs, and interactive materials that combine image, sound, and text. Modern broadcasting technologies, satellites, and high-speed internet have also contributed to accelerating the transmission of images and videos directly from event sites, after the process of receiving images used to take many hours in the past.
With the development of digital media, short videos and visual content have become one of the most important elements of the agency's media presence across various platforms. Figures indicate the size of this growing presence, as the number of followers of QNA's accounts across various platforms reached more than 1,252,000 followers by 2026, while the number of views during the first quarter of the same year exceeded 63 million views, reflecting the wide impact of the digital content provided by the agency.
From May 2018 to April 2025, QNA broadcasted more than 228,000 digital publications, covering various local, Gulf, Arab, and international events, in addition to producing more than 9,225 infographics and 5,585 news videos, reflecting the major shift towards visual and interactive content. As part of its technological development, QNA expanded its multilingual services, moving from broadcasting in one language to providing its news services in several international languages.