The contribution of the Emirati electronic press to enhancing awareness of sustainable development concepts

This study sought to identify the extent of contribution of the Emirati Electronic Journalism on promoting the awareness of concepts and issues of sustainable development. The study is categorized as a descriptive research based on the media survey methodology to analyse the journalistic content of the sustainable development topics published in the study websites. It is situated within theories of social responsibility and informational richness. The content analysis method was used as a research tool to collect the study’s sample which consisted of (260) journalistic articles published on four selected Emirati news websites, identified as the research population: (Bayan online), (Ittihad online ), (Gulf online), and (The Emirates Today online), during the period extending from (1/3/2023) to (1/6/2023).
The results of the study indicated that the four study websites showed great interest in addressing  the issues of sustainable development through their pages, the most prominent of which were  (Bayan online) and (Ittihad online) websites, with an equal percentage of (33%). The results revealed that the issues of sustainable development addressed were dominated by topics related to (climate and climate change with a percentage of 14%) within the category of the issues of environmental sustainability. Encouraging investment, trade and establishing partnerships came with a percentage of (15%) within the issues of economic sustainability, while a high-level educational system gained (15%) topping the list of the issues social sustainability. The results of the study hypotheses, according to the Chi-Square Test, showed that there are no statistically significant differences between the issues of sustainable development which were addressed and type of the journalistic websites of the study sample. The study proposed that electronic newspapers and their digital media platforms expand further in employing the latest communication technologies, multimedia applications, podcasting technologies, visual and reading blogging, videos, digital platforms, and infographics in presenting and addressing the issues of sustainable development to contribute to spreading the community awareness of their topics.