Attitudes of the Elite about the Mechanisms to Counter the Discourse against Egypt and Saudi Arabia on Social Media

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Associate Professor at Journalism Department Faculty of Communication - Al-Azhar University

2 Assistant Professor at Radio and Television Department Faculty of Islamic & Arabic Studies

Abstract

The present Study aims to monitor, analyze and interpret the elite’s attitudes towards mechanisms to counter the discourse against Egypt and Saudi Arabia on social media networks. In doing so, the Study attempts to identify the extent of the elite’s response to the content that counters the hostile discourse, the motives of this response, the pages facing this discourse, the themes focused, the type of conflict, and the mechanisms and strategies of responding to hostile discourse. It also attempts to measure how the elite assess the effectiveness of these mechanisms, and their suggestions for development. The Study depended on a sample of 100 individuals distributed equally among the Egyptian and Saudi press elites (professionals/ academics), where the researcher relied on the survey approach and questionnaire tool, within the framework of the concept of 5th generation wars.
The Study found that the elite relied on official pages in following the content that counters hostile discourse, and that spreading facts comes at the top of the mechanisms to confront hostile discourses. The Study found also that the strategies to respond to the hostile discourse adopted refutation, followed by attack, raising doubts, confirmation, mobilization, interpretation and analysis, then providing news and justification. The majority of the elite sample of the study describes the conflict between the two discourses (hostile discourse and confrontation discourse) as being fateful and crucial. Developing the media discourse on the social media pages comes at the top of suggestions provided by the sample of the study to develop mechanisms to counter hostile discourse.
The Study finds a statistically significant correlation between the elite’s attitude about the impact of hostile discourse and the effectiveness of the mechanisms to counter this discourse. In addition, there are statistically significant differences between the elite’s attitudes about the effectiveness the mechanisms of countering hostile discourse according to their attitude about the type of the conflict.
 

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