NEWS
A Saudi Researcher Detects Greater Interaction with Journalists’ Tweets Containing Digital Content A Thesis at UoB Calls for Developing Strategies for Digital Transformation in The Saudi Press
Sakhir – University of Bahrain (Ali Al-Sabbaq)
1 August 2023
A scientific study at the University of Bahrain (UoB) found that the audience interacts more with Saudi journalists’ tweets that include digital media, compared to tweets that are not associated with digital media.
The study was prepared by Hajar Bader Al-Dossary, a student in the Mass Communications Master’s Program at the College of Arts at UoB, which called on the Saudi Journalists Association to develop strategies for the transition towards digital media.
The thesis, which was supervised by Dr. Adnan Jassim BuMetea, Assistant Professor of Journalism and Media at the Department of Media, Tourism and Arts at the University, was titled: “Saudi Journalists and the Media Content Industry on Digital Platforms – Twitter as a Model”.
The study aimed to identify how Saudi journalists use digital media content on Twitter, and the connection of such employment with the audience’s interaction with the digital media content produced by Saudi journalists on Twitter.
The researcher used the media scan method, using the content analysis tool to identify the content of 375 accounts of Saudi journalists on Twitter, while the sample of the analytical study was 1225 tweets that were taken from these accounts.
The study findings showed that there were statistically significant differences in the level of audience interaction with the tweets due to the topic. As the leading highest percentage of interaction was with sports topics, although it represented a 19.9% of the study sample, followed by social topics, which represents the largest percentage of the sample of 39.4%, and in third place are the security, educational and economic issues, which represent varying percentages.
The researcher, Al-Dosari, suggested that the Saudi Journalists Association should interact more with content creators on social networks, qualify them professionally to serve journalism, and form specialized bodies for this purpose.
An examination committee discussed the researcher in her thesis recently, and it consisted of Associate Professor of Journalism and Media at the Department of Media, Tourism and Arts at UoB, Dr. Shuaib Abdul Moneim Al Ghobashi, as an internal examiner, and Professor of Media at King Saud University in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Professor Dr. Abdulmalik Abdulaziz Al-Shalhoub, as an external examiner.
