By Jonathan Hanahan

It is out of our hands and soon into yours: Volume’s special issue Al Manakh Gulf Cont’d — 536 pages on the Gulf region from 139 contributors based in over 20 countries will be launched in just under a month, on April 18, both in the Gulf and beyond. Over a year of researching, questioning, commentating, and evaluating topics that have evolved from the Gulf have been collated into this edition, limited only by the size of your postbox.

For many of us, there is no finality in a topic that is eternally evolving, and as the title indicates, continuing. It would be very easy to wipe our hands clean, claim its completeness and move on. But with the excitement of the process and its result still fresh in our memory, we still look for ways to continue the dialogue this journey incited.

The project of Al Manakh collects narratives over the year. And with a year of research comes a year of data. The intention now is to engage an alternative vantage into the making of Al Manakh.

What we present is a series of visualizations – a quantitative appendix to supplement the qualitative publication – in hope that from looking back, and the reader looking forward, we can enhance the conclusions that represent this schism in time of a continuing Gulf. The forthcoming blog series focuses on the sources, content and relationships that develop through its making: From Process to Production.

Visualization 1: A Year of Research
A cross-section of the editorial research team: topics, activities, networks, and biases.

Visualization 2/3: Sources to Subjects
Illustrating where the source and type of information came from to what becomes of it in the print outcome. This prompts questions such as: if 48% of sources are from business news agencies, yet 61% of our content was written by cultural professionals, does Al Manakh what sort of commentary does the project make?

Visualization 4: Looking Back and Forward
What this analysis means to Al Manakh: Gulf Continued and how it may influence future publications.