Media Use in the Arab Gulf

Project Description

This project builds on five years of longitudinal data on news, information, and entertainment media use among residents of six Arab countries: Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunisia, alternating year by year between news/information use and entertainment media use.

The project has generated important knowledge about media use among both Qatari nationals and non-national residents, and how media usage in Qatar compares to other countries in the Arab region.

In continuing this project for three additional years, the research team will work to meet three primary goals: collect nationally representative, longitudinal data on media use and related attitudes in Qatar and five other Arab countries, and to place Qatar’s media use and information needs in the context of a changing region; publish the findings in a dynamic, online interactive in which users can filter results by country, age, gender, nationality, education levels and other variables; and utilize the resultant raw data for secondary analyses, so as to explore in greater depth the behavioral, attitudinal, and demographic predictors of media use and information needs among Qatari nationals and residents, as well as respondents from the other countries under study.

Researchers

Everette E. Dennis, Justin D. Martin

Collaborating Institutions

Al Jazeera Network, Doha Film Institute

Funding

Qatar National Research Fund – National Priorities Research Program (NPRP 10-0112-170157)

Publications

Dennis, E., Martin, J.D., & Wood, R. (2013). Media Use in the Middle East. Doha, Qatar: Northwestern University in Qatar. 2013 Media Use in the Middle East: An Eight-Nation Survey

Dennis, E., Martin, J.D., & Wood, R. (2014). Entertainment Media Use in the Middle East. Doha, Qatar: Northwestern University in Qatar. 2014 Entertainment Media Use in the Middle East: A Six-Nation Survey