should refer to “the addition of multiple approaches to investigate problems in their proper context, so that factors such as culture, environment, ideology and power are not omitted from the theoretical framework or held to be constant (ceteris paribus)” (2010, p. 474). This is an issue on which Wasserman and de Beer principally agree, calling for in‐depth theoretical research rather than the mere provision of “descriptive comparative studies of journalism” (2009, pp. 428–429). One of the main problems of mainstream, Western media studies is its limited, Eurocentric and Anglo‐American coverage. For example, in their review of previous research done on news sharing, Kümpel, Karnowski, and Keyling surveyed a total of 461 research papers published between 2004 and 2014, and found that there was an obvious focus on studies that dealt with the United States (about 79%), with “only a few that addressed other countries and almost none that discussed possible cultural differences or actually made cross‐country comparisons” (2015, p. 10). Kümpel et al. recommend expanding news sharing studies “to multiple countries and cultural settings” (2015, p. 10). This suggestion was echoed by Wilkinson and Thelwall, who recommended examining “international differences in news interests through large‐scale investigations of Twitter” (2012, p. 1634). Hanitzsch, among others, has noticed obvious Western bias in the selection of academic research topics, which “giv[es] scholars from the Global North a considerable advantage” (2019, p. 214). Instead of relying on social media data in the English language alone, this book attempts to fill a major gap in the literature by examining data in the Arabic language as posted by a variety of news organizations, allowing a closer examination of international news.
Table 1.1 Facebook news pages and frequency of total reactions.
| No. | Page | No. of posts | Total reactions |
| 1) | CNN Arabic | 9993 | 739 369 |
| 2) | The Guardian | 3241 | 1 963 470 |
| 3) | The Independent | 6663 | 5 737 015 |
| 4) |
Youm 7 ( |
9995 | 3 547 479 |
| 5) | Al Arabi | 7081 | 1 328 947 |
| 6) | Hufftington Post‐Arabi | 8366 | 2 022 548 |
| 7) | RT Arabic | 9888 | 9 198 863 |
| 8) | DW Arabic | 9965 | 8 263 656 |
| 9) | Fox News | 7070 | 164 201 316 |
| 10) | Al Jazeera Arabic | 9740 | 36 529 076 |
| 11) | The Daily Mail | 4195 | 5 128 176 |
| 12) | SkyNews | 2166 | 1 299 939 |
| 13) | SkyNews Arabia | 9936 | 10 936 313 |
| 14) | France24 | 1657 | 107 467 |
| 15) | BBC News | 3846 | 7 914 869 |
| 16) | DW | 7956 | 827 397 |
| 17) | France24 Arabic | 856 | 942 889 |
| 18) | RT | 537 | 633 818 |
| 19) | XinhuaNewsAgency | 9983 | 1 805 994 |
| 20) | The New York Times | 3128 | 10 005 958 |
| 21) | CNN | 5675 | 20 063 233 |
| 22) | CBC News | 9981 | 3 519 474 |
| 23) | The Washington Post | 2283 | 953 095 |
| 24) | Al Jazeera English | 3363 | 2 743 514 |
| 25) | BBC Arabic | 6755 | 6 152 507 |
| 26) | The Hufftington Post | 3525 | 19 691 082 |
| ‐ | Total | 157 844 | 326 257 464 |
From the perspective of news consumers, I examine a variety of metrics, such as YouTube video views, number of Facebook comments, likes, and retweets. Here, the fact that some stories get viewed, commented on, liked, or retweeted more than others signifies that they are important, since online audiences not only select news articles to read but also disseminate them by liking or commenting on them. This activity can be linked to the concept of produsage (Bruns 2007; Horan 2013) because of its dual nature. According to Facebook, clicking like is an indication that someone is interested in a post or a story, which will also “be posted on [his or her] Timeline” (Facebook 2019), so liking a news story shows engagement and reflects a certain degree of interactivity with the online material. Indeed, human beings may have a variety of motives for viewing, liking, and commenting on social media posts, such as indexing materials in order to consume them
