The Arab and European digital native media coverage about each other: analysis of media in several countries

Author

Santiago de Compostela University, Spain

Abstract

This study examines Arab and European digital native media coverage of issues related to the Arab world and Europe in 2020, twenty years after the events of 9/11, when the world witnessed many events that posed new challenges (political, economic, social, and media), including terrorist acts and large immigration movements from the Arab world to Europe, the Arab Spring and large demonstrations that swept the world.
The study analyses media coverage in the two worlds from various formal and content aspects. We have worked with six digital native media, representing a sample from Europe and the Arab world (Spain, France, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Iraq).
The study found that, in the topics that were published, political news dominated in the six digital native media with 74%, health news was second with 12% of the total news published, economics news accounted for 6%, and sports and miscellaneous news were equal with 4% of the total news published. News about the Middle East was the most prominent in all six digital native media, as the percentage of news about the Middle East in Arab digital native media was 54% of all political news, followed by news referring to Europe with 27%, and news about terrorism ranked third with 12%. In terms of news trends, positive/neutral news was the most prominent, accounting for 83% of the total news in the Arab digital native media, 16% somewhat neutral and 1% non-neutral/negative. In European digital native media, the percentage of neutral/positive news reached 80% of total news, 19% somewhat neutral, and 1% non-neutral/negative.
The importance of the research in lighting focuses on analyzing the content of media coverage towards the other in the digital native media, especially as it addresses a large segment of readers and followers, not only local, but may also be global, especially with the rapid spread of the Internet and its users around the world.

Keywords

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