Social inequality and news media repertoires in seven MENA countries

Abstract

Social inequality shapes peoples’ chances and strategies to keep informed about current affairs. We study citizens’ news media repertoires – individual patterns of combining selected news media – in a world region of extreme social inequality within and between countries: the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA). We report a secondary analysis of a large-scale survey in seven MENA countries to develop news user typologies. We explore how digital forces shape news media repertoires to determine the influence of social inequality on the population’s information routines regarding current affairs, and investigate the diversity of the inhabitants’ media repertoires.

Keywords

Audience studies cluster analysis cross-national comparison media usage patterns MENA Middle East and Northern Africa news media repertoire secondary analysis

Media users have never enjoyed access to such a broad variety of media outlets as today (Papathanassopoulos et al., 2013). We live in a convergence culture where audience members can actively choose from a broad range of media outlets to meet their needs (Jenkins, 2006). This often leads to cross-media usage that is not restricted to a certain kind of traditional or new media (Dutta-Bergman, 2004) and to the formation of individual routines of combining specific offerings into habitual (news) media diets that have been labelled repertoires (Hasebrink and Domeyer, 2012). Various factors influence how individuals form their news media repertoires, among them technological affordances, economic resources, education and media literacies. The characteristics of such news media repertoires, in turn, affect citizens’ chances of keeping informed about current affairs and participating in public online and offline discourses.

Social inequality has been found to be an important source of people’s media use, news knowledge and political participation (Lindell, 2018; Scheerder et al., 2017; van Deursen et al., 2017). We, therefore, connect the social inequality perspective to the study of audiences’ news media repertoires to explore how social circumstances, digital media technologies and state governance structures interact in forming people’s habitualized patterns of news media consumption. We situate our exploration in a world region of extreme social inequality: the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. In this population-rich part of the world, strong social inequality is evident both within and between countries, and powerful social dynamics have been observed there that stem from demographic forces (i.e. a very young population) and the rapid evolution of mobile internet access and usage (Aliouat et al., 2016). At the same time, much less is known about news media repertoires and their dependence on social inequality in this region because most thematic work has focused on Western parts of the world (e.g. Taneja et al., 2012; van Damme et al., 2017). We, therefore, consider MENA a particularly relevant and interesting region to study social inequality and news media repertoires among citizens.

We first introduce news media repertoires to develop the theoretical perspective of our exploratory study. Subsequently, we address the digital media landscape, media-political set-ups and social inequality in the MENA region as our research context. From this analysis, we derive exploratory research questions that we seek to answer by re-analysing data from a large-scale survey conducted in seven MENA countries. Specifically, we create a typology of citizens with specific news media repertoires through cluster analysis and then examine dimensions of social inequality as potential determinants of repertoire types. We present the methodology of this study and its results and discuss our insights on social inequality and (changing) news media use in the MENA region.

News media repertoires as a concept in audience research

With the rise of digitalization, available news media have grown significantly and are accessible anywhere and anytime (Swart et al., 2017). People consume news media to structure their life (Swart et al., 2017) and to satisfy their need for information and understanding of the world (Schroeder and Kobbernagel, 2010). Users develop their personal media repertoire that is composed of certain kinds of consumption patterns over time (Reagan, 1996; Yuan, 2011). Media repertoires reflect the combination of various media platforms constituting subsets of media that users consume during their daily lives (Hasebrink and Popp, 2006). According to Hasebrink and Domeyer (2012), three principles have to be considered to characterize media repertoires. Firstly, the focus of media repertoires is user-centred and not media-centred. This means that the traditional media perspective generates audience shifts to the view of people arranging their media ecology (Hasebrink and Hepp, 2017). Secondly, media repertoires include the entirety of all media platforms regularly used by a single person. Thirdly, the concept stresses the interrelatedness of those media in a repertoire instead of the mere sum of different consumed media (Hasebrink and Hepp, 2017). These features reflect crucial differences to single-channel-focused research.

Even if some media repertoires can also mainly be characterized by a singular media platform (Hasebrink and Domeyer, 2012), the interrelatedness to other consumed media remains important. Hasebrink and Domeyer (2012) highlight the relevance of users’ favourite medium for characterizing repertoires (e.g. television, newspapers or the internet). They also emphasize that usage frequencies of other (non-favourite) media platforms are indispensable to developing a full account of people’s media usage habits. For example, the strong preference for television usage may be accompanied by high usage of radio but low usage of the internet and books (see Hasebrink and Domeyer, 2012). The constitution of media repertoires results from finding similarities and differences between individual users’ media consumption patterns. Describing the entire and interrelated media use is conceptually closer to people’s executed media usage patterns than exclusively focusing on a singular media platform (Hasebrink and Domeyer, 2012).

While media repertoires are individual configurations of habitual media use, similarities between media repertoires and patterns in their composition can be found among users (van Damme, 2017). Content preferences as well as constraints of availability and accessibility of media platforms affect different individuals in similar ways so that typical repertoires can be observed in people’s media use (Cooper and Tang, 2009). People decide either based on their preference for a specific medium or by relying on their interest in a specific topic to constitute their media repertoire (Hasebrink and Popp, 2006; van Rees and van Eijck, 2003). Considering the huge amount of news media sources available today, media repertoires help users to reduce complexity by limiting options to those media within people’s relevant and familiar set (Webster, 2011). Media repertoires are thus meaningful compositions of different media content (Hasebrink and Domeyer, 2012). They function as coping strategies to keep users’ choices and search costs under control (Webster and Ksiazek, 2012). Thus, users who have developed a similar news media repertoire are considered to face similar needs and to have access to similar sets of media platforms, and so they are highly likely to choose the same content to satisfy their needs.

Past thematic research mainly focused on the differentiation of media repertoires based on media platforms and content types. Thereby, most studies report on media repertoires centring on single media categories such as the internet or television (Edgerly, 2015; Taneja et al., 2012; Yuan, 2011). This does not reflect the interrelating news media usage patterns that have emerged in today’s convergence culture (Jenkins, 2006) but merely highlights the importance of users’ favourite media (Hasebrink and Domeyer, 2012). Furthermore, studies on media repertoires consistently revealed that there is a certain share of news ‘omnivore’ users on the one side and news-avoiding users on the other side (Edgerly, 2015; Edgerly et al., 2018; Hasebrink and Popp, 2006; Lee and Yang, 2014; Liu et al., 2021; Molyneux, 2019). Between these two massively contradictory repertoires, there is much room for media repertoires based on various combinations of media platforms and content types.

In this respect, past studies report different results, which may be also due to diverse methodological media repertoire approaches. Concerning the poorly investigated MENA region, only one study has investigated media usage in the context of media repertoires. Dvir-Gvirsman (2022) confirmed the existence of a news omnivore and a news-avoiding media repertoire. She furthermore identified a social media news-consuming and a social media news-sharing media repertoire. However, the study was based on a sample from Israel which is one of the advanced economies in the MENA region and thus more comparable to Western European countries than to the various developing countries in the MENA region. Only a single study by Liu et al. (2021) reported a cross-cultural comparison of media repertoires stating that less developed countries have lower proportions of digitally dominated media repertoires and higher shares of media repertoires based on traditional media. Unfortunately, no country from the MENA region was included in this analysis either. Therefore, the following research question is leading this study:

RQ1. How can news media repertoires of residents in the MENA region be typologized?

Social differences as determinants of news media repertoires

To uncover similarities and differences, it is essential to investigate which aspects of news media influence media users’ choice for the constitution of a specific news media repertoire. The media repertoire approach includes selection and exposure since users choose media to meet certain gratifications (Hasebrink and Domeyer, 2012). Concerning selective media exposure, the most prominent approach is Uses and Gratifications (Katz et al., 1973). Research in the Uses and Gratifications tradition usually covers single aspects of media use and corresponding gratifications, but no interrelations of different media or patterns of media use (Hasebrink and Popp, 2006). The media repertoire approach challenges this existing framework to cast light on more than a singular medium for a certain gratification.

Inherently problematic for the media repertoire approach is the assumption of Uses and Gratifications that users actively make rational decisions about what media they select to satisfy certain needs and wishes (Cooper and Tang, 2009). Users are restricted to media outlets that are available and accessible to them, which posits constraints on their rational (free) choices. This corresponds with what Webster (2011) called the duality of media. He argued that the media environment is mutually constructed by structures and agents. Agents are people who use media by choosing a certain medium and refusing another one (Webster, 2011). As individuals rely on structures and appropriate structural resources available to them, they reproduce and alter those structures (Webster, 2011). Structures and agents end up in a process of reciprocal causation (Webster, 2011). Therefore, the individual-related perspective of Uses and Gratifications must be extended to face the importance of structural characteristics.

Literature on media repertoires adapted this differentiation to explain what factors affect people’s media repertoires and identified significant influences of both individual and structural factors (e.g. Kim, 2016; Taneja et al., 2012). Individual factors comprise user demographics such as gender, age, education and income. Influences of some of these individual factors on the development of media repertoires were found repeatedly (Črnič and Luthar, 2017; Edgerly, 2015; Peruško et al., 2017; Trilling and Schoenbach, 2013). Structural factors can be divided into the structure of the media environment and audience availability (Yuan and Webster, 2006). Audience availability is generally measured as the total time of media use (Yuan, 2011). It is an indicator of the total amount of time media users would have had to use news media and of their interest in the news (Papathanassopoulos et al., 2013; Yuan, 2011). The underlying assumption is that the more people are interested in news media, the more time they spend on news media, and the more extensive their news media repertoire is (Yuan, 2011). Structural factors were found to have a significant impact on media repertoires (Kim, 2016; Taneja et al., 2012). Thereby, more time available also leads to higher content diversity (Ha and Lee, 2013), which directly impacts the constitution of news media repertoires.

Both individual and structural factors of news media repertoires relate to social inequality. The social circumstances into which people are born and grow up have a tremendous impact on communication behaviour, media access and media literacy – a general observation that is long known in communication scholarship that was informed by research on knowledge gaps (Viswanath and Finnegan, 1996) and digital divides (Rogers, 2001). In line with these traditions, media repertoire research has also connected individual and structural factors to social inequalities. In Austria, for instance, Prandner and Glatz (2021) found that lower education and lower income were associated with more narrow news media repertoires. Similarly, Lindell (2018) found distinct news media repertoires for elite segments of Swedish society that almost exclusively consume (and can afford) journalistic excellence and Picone and Vandenplas (2022) found comparable patterns in Belgium. More generally then, social inequality seems to cause systematic differences in people’s news media repertoires, which in turn will affect their knowledge about current affairs and their resulting chances of political participation. This way, existing social inequalities are likely to be reproduced and even intensified in and through news media repertoires (e.g. Hargittai and Hinant, 2008).

Based on this research, social inequality appears as the most likely and most powerful determinant of people’s news media repertoires. Specifically, age, gender, education and income should be considered as relevant social status characteristics that may influence the composition of news media repertoires:

RQ2. How are social differences associated with news media repertoires in the MENA region?

Media and news audiences in the MENA region

One key structural factor that is likely to shape news media repertoires is a country’s media system. Media convergence has sustainably altered the relationship between media technologies, industries, markets and audiences (Jenkins, 2006). Therefore, national politics and news media economies set boundaries for the availability of various news media to the population; such boundaries may pertain to the pricing of news sources relative to citizens’ income, political regulation of access and censorship, and public availability of digital infrastructures (e.g. Allagui, 2009). Despite their shared history and common modern standard Arabic language, MENA countries are highly diverse regarding their political, social and cultural structures (Richter and Kozman, 2021) and are undergoing extensive disruption (Elmasry et al., 2016). The massive proportion of young people provides unique demographics and is the chance for a huge growth driver (Aliouat et al., 2016). Mobile time spent online with media is higher than ever before (Aliouat et al., 2016). Social media is the Arab youth’s first choice for news, reflecting that traditional media do not fit young people’s daily news consumption routines and do not cover those topics they consider important (ASDA’A BWC, 2020). Internet use and smartphone ownership in the MENA region are continuously increasing as well (Poushter et al., 2018). However, the Arab states’ enthusiastic support of digital adoption, including their narrative about empowerment through digital transformation, goes hand in hand with the reinforcement of their authoritarian governance (Zayani, 2018).

The development of traditional and digital media is closely tied to countries’ distinctive histories with varying extents of governmental control (Couldry et al., 2018). Digital transformation is highly dependent on each country’s political ideology and wealth (Richter and Kozman, 2021). Thus, the achieved progress of digitalization differs massively in the MENA region, both between countries and within a given country (Göll and Zwiers, 2019). The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar are leading the region with the highest network readiness (countries’ preparedness to reap the benefits of emerging technologies and capitalize on the opportunities presented by digital transformation), while countries with worse conditions even deteriorate (Baller et al., 2016). The UAE and Qatar belong to those countries with more than 100% smartphone penetration which is equal to or even higher than in Western countries (Elmasry et al., 2016). In Qatar and the UAE, almost every person has access to the internet, while internet penetration in Tunisia and Egypt is still under 70% (Internet World Stats, 2021). In both countries, as well as in Jordan and Lebanon, television remains the most popular media platform (BBC, 2021). Print media, in contrast, are not free and have to be purchased, so their consumption is common only in the wealthy Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (Mellor et al., 2011). All in all, the infrastructural conditions in the MENA region are highly different from previously studied countries. It is therefore not possible to simply apply findings on news media repertoires from Western countries to the MENA region.

Another important structural factor of news media repertoires, which differs between Western countries and the MENA region, is the freedom of the press and the internet. In the GCC countries, key media platforms are controlled by the regimes or businesspeople closely affiliated with them (Richter and Kozman, 2021; Zaid, 2018). In these countries, media laws restrict journalists’ work to a high degree. They especially serve to prevent public criticism of the ruling families, government officials, religion or state affairs (Duffy, 2014). In this sense, many MENA countries provide new media regulations to create the impression of liberalization but, instead, rulers strengthen their power and control (Zaid, 2018). Again, countries in the region differ from each other, as Lebanon and Tunisia provide the most pluralistic media landscape in the MENA region owned by a more diverse number of political and confessional actors but against a background of a politically unstable situation (El-Richani, 2021; Miladi, 2021). While Tunisia and Lebanon can be considered the only partly free countries within the MENA region (this applies to 2017, when the current data were collected), especially Egypt and the GCC countries show neither freedom of the press nor freedom of the internet (Freedom House, 2017). Journalists and media organizations suffer from harassment, threats and attacks, especially after publishing content that criticizes the government (Freedom House, 2017). While online technologies have facilitated the transnational flow of information, some regimes in the MENA region have installed various mechanisms to filter and block undesirable content (Szostek, 2018). Non-democratic countries often lack media pluralism combined with certain restrictions on news and information sources (Szostek, 2018). Governmental ownership of media and censorship remain key problems in the MENA region (BBC, 2021; Reporters Without Borders, 2021). For some countries, news reports in the Middle East could be described as a kind of echo chamber for the autocrats ruling the country (Dudley, 2018). Historically marginalized groups in the MENA region remain restricted in their freedom of action in the digital space, while groups with high economic power or cultural capital can more effectively take advantage of digital media’s benefits (Banaji and Moreno-Almeida, 2021). However, the increasing prevalence of the internet and social media fosters new forms of participation in social, cultural and economic life and makes it even harder to control news and information from the autocrats’ point of view (Couldry et al., 2018).

These circumstances have to be considered in the context of people’s news media repertoire. Citizens of these countries will frequently have to search the internet if they want to retrieve independent information from foreign sources. However, obstacles to internet access, the censorship of media content and violations of user rights frequently take place in many MENA countries (Freedom House, 2017). It is therefore unclear to what extent people try to evade censorship in their countries by using the internet and to what extent government control activities restrict people’s news media repertoires to national television or radio. In contrast to this, the United States and European countries can be characterized as countries with profound freedom of the press and the internet (Freedom House, 2017). Considering these differences renders the investigation of cross-media usage in the MENA region even more compelling.

In sum, the MENA region is highly diverse in terms of digitalization and political, economic and societal conditions. These differences are likely to shape the typical media repertoires of each country’s population as structural factors. A cross-national comparison of news media repertoires will thus add notable insights to discover differences between the countries and gather commonalities in comparison to Western countries’ studies. Thus, the following third question is stated:

RQ3. What differences exist between the MENA countries regarding the distribution of different types of news media repertoires?

Method

Data collection and sample

A secondary analysis of the data from the Media Use in the Middle East survey collected by Northwestern University in Qatar (Dennis et al., 2017) served to find answers to the research questions. This is the only survey of this kind in the region so far. It is part of a longitudinal project since 2013 and includes seven countries (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia (KSA), Tunisia and the UAE). Hence the data cover a substantial share of the diversity of the countries in the MENA region. A sample of more than 7000 respondents was collected. It included a subsample of approximately 1000 respondents per country, and sampling was designed to cover the different regions and specific ethnicities within each country. In Qatar, telephone interviews based on random digital dialling were conducted. In the other six countries, data were collected via face-to-face interviews. A master sample design governed the multistage random probability sampling, which aimed at generating samples that were representative of the population in legal households in the surveyed areas for each country. For statistical analysis, the total sample size had to be restricted to complete cases in the first step. As the focus of this study is on nationals from the MENA region, all expatriates were excluded in the second step. The total sample size for the present secondary analysis included N = 4685 respondents (Egypt: n = 660, Jordan: n = 824, Lebanon: n = 996, Qatar: n = 466, Saudi Arabia: n = 593, Tunisia: n = 419, UAE: n = 727).

Measures

News media

News media usage was measured on a six-point scale ranging from ‘never’ to ‘several times a day’. Items included (1) the internet in general; (2) social media; (3) instant/direct messaging; (4) news apps/applications; (5) television; (6) newspapers; (7) radio; (8) interpersonal sources; (9) books; and (10) magazines. News media usage differed from country to country to a certain degree. The most frequently used news media in GCC countries were online-related sources, whereas in other countries, television was used the most. Across all countries, the least frequently used media was magazines.

News content

News content usage was measured on the same six-point scale from ‘never’ to ‘several times a day’. As the Media Use in the Middle East study did not include any items regarding the preference of news topics, frequency items had to be used instead. Thus, the underlying assumption is that a high usage frequency of a news topic indicates a high preference for this topic. Items include (1) political and current affairs/news and current affairs; (2) sports; (3) arts and entertainment; (4) science/technology; (5) business/economy; (6) religious/spiritual; (7) education; and (8) fashion. The most frequently consumed news topics were either political and current affairs (Egypt, Jordan), arts and entertainment (Lebanon, Tunisia, UAE) or religion/spiritual (Qatar, Saudi Arabia). In five of the countries, fashion was the least frequently consumed news topic.

Individual factors

Individual potential determinants of news media repertoires included demographics (age, gender, education, income). Education was measured on a 10-point scale. Income was measured separately for each country, whereby six countries followed a 12-point scale, and Qatar followed a 15-point scale. To make scales comparable in this cross-national study, an aggregated three-point categorization was developed.

Structural factors

The only structural potential determinant of news repertoires measured in the questionnaire was audience availability. Following previous operationalizations (Kim, 2016; Wonneberger et al., 2011; Yuan and Webster, 2006), audience availability was measured as the total number of hours spent using the different media platforms (newspaper, radio, television, books, magazines and the internet in general), indicating the time available for news and information. Nevertheless, the argument of Taneja et al. (2012) has to be considered that time spent with media does not fully capture the possible options for using media. People are also able to use news media sources not included in the above-mentioned options (e.g. interpersonal sources) or to decide for alternative activities. Measuring the total time of people’s use of alternative news sources such as interpersonal conversations via self-response is nearly impossible. This study is restricted to the given data and must accept the conditions that only time spent with the given news media but no further time available for alternative news media is covered.

State-level structural determinants of news repertoires (e.g. GDP, censorship) were not measured at the individual level but considered within the comparison of news media repertoires between countries of the MENA region (see theoretical section above).

Data analysis

To identify different news repertoires among the respondents (RQ1), a hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) using Ward linkage was conducted. The media usage and news content usage items described above were entered into the analysis to establish the constituents of (different) news repertoires. A second HCA was conducted after defining the final number of clusters based on the first iteration. Consequently, each respondent was categorized into one of six defined clusters that represented distinct news media repertoires. To assess the effect of social differences on news media repertoires (RQ2), the groups of respondents who were categorized into the six news media repertoires were compared regarding the theorized individual and structural factors. Finally, regional differences within MENA (RQ3) were investigated through country comparisons of the relative distributions of the six news media repertoires.

Results

News media repertoires across the MENA region

From the HCA results, six distinct news media repertoires emerged (Table 1): (1) News Media Omnivores; (2) Versatile Print Avoiders; (3) TV and Internet Combiners; (4) Online Devotees; (5) TV Lovers; and (6) News Media Hermits. The differentiation of clusters is mainly grounded on varying patterns in news media usage frequencies. Less variation between repertoires was found regarding news content use. Many respondents stated consistently low or consistently high usage of the measured content categories. Differences in topic usage frequencies are therefore less salient in the profiles of the identified news media repertoires than differences in media usage frequencies. However, for some news repertoires, specific topic interests stand out and will be highlighted to help characterize the observed patterns.

Table 1.

Media use and content use per news media repertoire.

	1	2	3	4	5	6
	News media omnivores	Versatile print avoiders	TV and internet combiners	Online devotees	TV lovers	News media hermits
N	792	895	1937	223	598	240
Media usage
Internet	+	++	+	+	–	–
Social media	+	++	+	+	–	–
Messenger	+	++	+	+	–	–
Apps	+	++	–	–	–	–
Television	–	+	+	–	++	–
Newspaper	++	+	–	–	–	–
Radio	++	+	–	–	–	–
Interpersonal	+	++	+	–	+	–
Books	++	+	–	–	–	–
Magazines	++	–	–	–	–	–
Content usage
Politics	+	++	–	–	+	–
Sports	+	++	–	–	–	–
Entertainment	++	+	–	–	–	–
Science	++	+	–	–	–	–
Business	++	+	–	–	–	–
Religion	++	+	–	–	+	–
Education	++	+	–	–	–	–
Fashion	++	+	–	–	–	–

All items were measured on a 6-point scale (5 = several times a day, 0 = never). ++ highest value; + above average; - below average; – lowest value.

Users of the first news media repertoire are labelled News Media Omnivores. It is the third biggest media repertoire with a share of 16.9% of all respondents. News Media Omnivores compose the most diverse media repertoire. They have a high usage of all media platforms reaching the highest score of social media (M = 5.03, SD = 1.13) to the lowest score of radio (M = 3.97, SD = 1.45). Related to the average user, all media usage scores are comparably high. Especially the use of print products (newspapers, books, magazines) and radio is higher than in all other media repertoires. Even if the use of television and the internet is also at a high level, it is lower than in other, less heterogeneous media repertoires. Regarding the news topic frequencies, all scores depict relatively high scores. Fashion (M = 3.99, SD = 1.40), which has the lowest score in this media repertoire, is still used more frequently than in any other media repertoire. In addition, a further five news topics (except for politics and sports) are used more frequently than in any other news media repertoire. Seemingly, News Media Omnivores use as many news messages as they can attain across all possible news media platforms, no matter what topics those news messages are about (‘newsjunkies’, cf. Martin and Sharma, 2023).

With a share of 19.1%, Versatile Print Avoiders are the second-largest news media repertoire. Respondents belonging to this media repertoire dominantly use online media, television and radio. Their media usage scores all are above average except for the score of magazines (M = 1.17, SD = 1.09). The absolute values of the internet in general, social media and messenger are higher than in any other news media repertoire. This media repertoire mainly differs from the News Media Omnivores in its print media usage. It is lower than the News Media Omnivores’ print media usage, even though usage of newspapers (M = 3.00, SD = 1.82) and books (M = 2.36, SD = 1.61) is still above average. Compared to all other media platforms, print media usage is by far the lowest. Concerning news topics, Versatile Print Avoiders consume news of all topics more frequently than the average user and more frequently than four of the other news media repertoires. The topic frequencies mostly are lower than the News Media Omnivores’ news topic frequencies. The most frequent news topics are politics and sports which have the highest scores of all media repertoires and thus characterize the topic preference of the Versatile Print Avoiders. The least frequently consumed news topic is fashion.

TV and Internet Combiners are the most frequent news media repertoire with a share of 41.3% of all respondents. It is dominated by media use of the internet (and related media activities like social media and messenger) on the one side and high usage of television on the other. However, internet usage in general, social media, messenger and TV usage are lower than in the Versatile Print Avoiders’ repertoire. In addition, usage of print products and radio is below the overall average and lower than in the News Media Omnivores’ repertoire. Surprisingly, the usage of news apps is also below average in this media repertoire. Regarding news topics, nearly all means are lower than the means of News Media Omnivores and Versatile Print Avoiders. All means are below the overall averages. This highlights that there are no dominating topic interests among the TV and Internet Combiners. Entertainment and politics are the most frequently consumed news topics while business and fashion are the least frequent ones.

Online Media Devotees are the sixth largest news media repertoire with a share of 4.8% of all respondents. Users are characterized by high usage of the internet in general, and related to this, also high usage of social media and messenger (not news apps though). All three media platforms are overrepresented in this media repertoire. Television, radio and print sources are less used than in the previously described media repertoires. Thus, Online Media Devotees differ from TV and Internet Combiners primarily in their use of television. Low usage of television (M = 1.32; SD = 0.70) is unique for Online Media Devotees in comparison to all other news media repertoires. News topic frequencies are below average and nearly at the same level as the topic frequencies of the TV and Internet Combiners. Religion, entertainment and sports are the most frequently consumed news topics while fashion and business are the least frequent ones. Furthermore, the topic interest in politics is the lowest of all news repertoires. It characterizes Online Media Devotees as comparably disinterested in politics.

TV Lovers are the fourth biggest news media repertoire with a share of 12.9% of all respondents. Media usage mainly consists of watching television (M = 5.47, SD = 0.62), which is higher than in all media repertoires. In contrast to this, hardly any other media platform is as frequently used. Taking interpersonal sources out of consideration, radio (M = 2.59, SD = 2.03) is the second most frequently used media platform. Its value is higher than in the Versatile Print Avoiders’ and the TV and Internet Combiners’ repertoire but still below the overall radio usage. Television seems to be the only news source for most people within this media repertoire. Regarding news topics, politics and religion are the most frequently used content. In addition to their reliance on television, TV Lovers can be characterized as politically and religiously interested news consumers. All remaining topics are consumed less than average by TV Lovers.

News Media Hermits are the fifth biggest news media repertoire with a share of 5.1% of all respondents. It can be considered the opposite of the News Media Omnivores. News media usage of nearly every media platform is low. The media repertoire is dominated by television usage (M = 3.43, SD = 2.04), which is still remarkably below the overall average. All other media platforms and even interpersonal sources (M = 1.94, SD = 1.38) are averagely used less than once a month. This is unique for News Media Hermits. Seemingly, a certain proportion of these people do not regularly use most media platforms, including interpersonal sources. News topic frequencies are consistent with these findings. Except for entertainment, politics and religion, news topic frequencies are used less than once a month. All topic frequencies are remarkably below the overall average. The appearance of these media usage patterns can be considered the most underdeveloped news media repertoire.

Social differences and news repertoires

Profound differences were observed between the obtained news repertoires regarding the social characteristics of the respondents (RQ2; see Table 2). People who were categorized into the two repertoires with high news topic involvement and a broad range of used news outlets (i.e. the News Media Omnivores and Versatile Print Avoiders) displayed high average education and income whereas the opposite was true for the low-involvement repertoires (TV Lovers and News Media Hermits). Versatile Print Avoiders were characterized by a striking overrepresentation of men, while Online Devotees were mostly discovered in relatively young participants. In contrast, TV Lovers and News Media Hermits were, on average, relatively old. In sum, substantial social differences were observed between the repertoires, which indicates the profound effects of social inequality on how people in the MENA region compose their routine sets of consumed news media.

Table 2.

Means of user characteristics per news media repertoire.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	All
	News media omnivores	Versatile print avoiders	TV and internet combiners	Online devotees	TV lovers	News media hermits	All
Gender^a
Male	46.3	71.2	46.4	58.7	47.2	39.2	51.4
Female	53.7	28.8	53.6	41.3	52.8	60.8	48.6
Age	32.36 (11.75)	32.91 (10.81)	33.17 (11.56)	28.76 (9.91)	48.56 (14.60)	42.41 (16.07)	35.21 (13.32)
Education^b	7.50 (1.88)	7.61 (1.52)	6.99 (1.74)	7.41 (1.49)	4.45 (2.36)	5.26 (2.69)	6.80 (2.13)
Income^c	1.99 (0.69)	2.11 (0.73)	1.99 (0.71)	2.08 (0.78)	1.76 (0.69)	1.80 (0.65)	1.98 (0.72)
Audience availability^d	55.19 (30.26)	60.65 (29.15)	52.28 (26.70)	48.18 (30.56)	46.56 (20.05)	49.86 (33.92)	54.30 (28.52)

Values are in percentages.

10-point scale.

3-point scale.

Total time spent using the media indicated in hours.

Distribution of the news media repertoires in the MENA countries

State comparisons serve to understand structural factors that may influence populations’ news media repertoires (RQ3; see Table 3). Discrepancies in the distribution of news repertoires were observed between various MENA countries. Considering the wealthy GCC countries, similarities but also differences appeared in the data. The populations of Saudi Arabia and the UAE are both mainly composed of three different media repertoires: News Media Omnivores, Versatile Print Avoiders and TV and Internet Combiners. These three media repertoires are the ones with a broader variety of frequently used media platforms. In the UAE, Versatile Print Avoiders are strongly overrepresented, whereas in Saudi Arabia, the News Media Omnivores are overrepresented. The remaining three media repertoires in both countries make up a share of less than 10% altogether. Qatar is notably different. Here, the shares of TV and Internet Combiners and Versatile Print Avoiders are quite similar to the overall share of both media repertoires. News Media Omnivores are strongly underrepresented. In contrast, Online Media Devotees in Qatar constitute the highest share of all investigated countries, which is more than three times larger than the overall share. Surprisingly, News Media Hermits also account for a share that is two times larger than the average. Online Media Devotees and News Media Hermits together form a quarter of the Qatari respondents.

Table 3.

Distribution of news media repertoires per country.

	EGY	JOR	KSA	LEB	QAT	TUN	UAE	All
Cluster no./n	660	824	593	996	466	727	419	4685
1	7.1	14.6	47.7	3.9	7.7	25.4	19.6	16.9
2	13.0	14.0	26.0	15.4	21.2	19.1	35.6	19.1
3	39.7	43.6	20.2	64.5	38.6	27.8	40.1	41.3
4	2.7	6.8	2.9	1.6	18.2	2.2	3.6	4.8
5	27.9	15.5	2.7	10.3	4.5	19.8	0.5	12.8
6	9.5	5.6	0.5	3.9	9.7	5.6	0.7	5.1

Values are in percentages. Clusters: 1 = News Media Omnivores; 2 = Versatile Print Avoiders; 3 = TV and Internet Combiners; 4 = Online Media Devotees; 5 = TV Lovers; 6 = News Media Hermits.

In Egypt and Lebanon, News Media Omnivores and Versatile Print Avoiders are underrepresented. In both countries, TV and Internet Combiners constitute the largest media repertoire. Nearly two-thirds of the Lebanese are categorized as TV and Internet Combiners, which implies a remarkable overrepresentation. In Egypt, the least diverse media repertoires (News Media Hermits and TV Lovers) make up an above-average share of respondents.

In Tunisia and Jordan, the four largest media repertoires are the most important ones. In Tunisia, News Media Omnivores, Versatile Print Avoiders, TV and Internet Combiners and TV Lovers make up a share of about a quarter each. Compared to the overall shares, this is an overrepresentation of News Media Omnivores and TV Lovers, and at the same time a strong underrepresentation of TV and Internet Combiners. Online Media Devotees and News Media Hermits play a less important role, even though there is a certain number of Tunisian people assigned to these repertoires. In Jordan, the shares of all six media repertoires are approximately even with their overall shares. TV and Internet Combiners are the greatest identified media repertoire. News Media Hermits and Online Media Devotees are the least common media repertoires.

Discussion

Diversity in MENA news media repertoires and its social determinants

The reanalysis of survey data from the seven MENA countries revealed six distinct news media repertoires that are represented to massively different degrees across the states and that are associated with social inequality. The configuration of repertoires indicates that MENA populations are in transition towards primarily digital media consumption (Aliouat et al., 2016; Allagui, 2009), and that strong social differences exist within and between countries regarding the share of citizens making active use of multiple (digital) news sources as well as the share of citizens staying behind in this process (e.g. due to reliance on TV only). The majority of the populations display mid-level heterogeneity of used news sources (TV and Internet Combiners), so MENA news repertoires display similar cross-platform and cross-media characteristics as those repertoires studied in Western countries (e.g. Hasebrink and Domeyer, 2012). Moreover, in most MENA countries, the integration of online channels into daily news routines has become a common and mainstream phenomenon. As news topic preferences were measured as topic usage frequencies in this study, they are (with some minor exceptions) consistently high for the source-diverse news repertoires and consistently low for the less diverse ones. They seemingly mirror people’s general tendency to acquire more or less news, which is connected to the platform diversity of people’s news media repertoire.

Various social differences were observed that demonstrate strong influences of social inequality in the news repertoires of MENA citizens (RQ2). Young people predominantly belong to news repertoires with a focus on online media. Two of the internet-centred news repertoires are associated with higher shares of males. Furthermore, the Versatile Print Avoiders, as the media repertoire with the strongest focus on politics and sports, display an even higher share of males than the Online Devotees repertoire. In contrast to this, the highest share of females is in the News Media Hermits’ media repertoire. The two media repertoires with the least online media usage are associated with the highest average age and the lowest average education level. The TV Lovers, the repertoire with the averagely oldest and lowest-educated people, seem to be focused on the topics of politics and religion, probably the most traditional news topics. In contrast, diverse multi-source news repertoires are much more common among well-educated citizens with high incomes. Such results mirror findings from previous work in Western countries (e.g. Hargittai and Hinnant, 2008; Lindell, 2018; Prandner and Glatz, 2021), but they need to be qualified in the MENA context by the combined effects of social inequality within a given country and the consequences of state-level wealth and media ecology.

Structural determinants of news media repertoires: Country differences within the MENA region

The country comparison in the MENA region reveals that state-level wealth and technological infrastructure facilitate a high prevalence of richer and more source-diverse media repertoires, which is manifest for Saudi Arabia and the UAE and to a smaller degree for Qatar (when looking at the many Online Media Devotees). In Saudi Arabia and the UAE, high shares of the clusters with regular usage of online and print media (News Media Omnivores, Versatile Print Avoiders) can be observed. This reflects these countries’ wealth and their investments in technological progress (Baller et al., 2016) as well as people’s financial resources to consume print media in GCC countries (Mellor et al., 2011: 41). Based on technology, media infrastructure in the UAE is by far the most developed in the MENA region and enables the UAE to host the headquarters of major global media networks (Allagui, 2019: 22–23).

However, the media repertoires’ shares in Qatar are notably different. While there is a comparably low share of Media News Omnivores, Online Devotees and News Media Hermits are strongly overrepresented. This might be because only a small number of print media (all with a strong pro-governmental focus) operate in Qatar. The regime has focused its efforts and investments in media development to reach out to other audiences than local (Galal, 2021). As a consequence, the news channel Al Jazeera is sponsored by the Qatari regime and has been serving as a tool of public diplomacy and international relationships. That is why the Qatari youth rely heavily on social media to consume and discuss news topics in a more personal context outside of the governmental sphere (Ahmed et al., 2022; the Online Devotees). The overrepresentation of media repertoires that reflect distance to intensive news exposure in Qatar may also reflect the specific socio-political set-up in the country and its intentionally underdeveloped public sphere. Government-controlled media and the traditional influence of tribal structures in administrative decision-making shape Qatar’s public sphere, which in sum deters individual citizens from active political participation in exchange for substantial wealth (Galal, 2021). This combination of political factors and media system factors can plausibly explain the differences between Qatar and the other similarly rich GCC countries concerning the prevalence of highly versus lowly involved news media repertoires.

At the other end of the spectrum, poorer states such as Lebanon and Egypt display much smaller shares of information-rich news repertoires and greater fractions of the populations that have developed narrower (e.g. TV Lovers) repertoires. In Lebanon, most of the population is categorized as TV and Internet Combiners who regularly use online sources as well as television. This suggests that digital transformation is one step behind the GCC countries here due to Lebanon’s lower wealth and its higher political instability (Richter and Kozman, 2021). In contrast to Lebanon, where the economic crisis limits the demand for print media, the strong overrepresentation of News Media Omnivores in Tunisia might reflect the fact that a new era of a diverse media market has begun after the Arab Spring (Miladi, 2021). However, in poorer states such as Tunisia or Egypt, there seems to exist both a ‘news elite’ (News Media Omnivores and Versatile Print Avoiders) of a considerable number but also a strong population segment with merely limited access to daily news (News Media Hermits and TV Lovers), which makes clear that the countries face striking informational and participation-related inequalities. Furthermore, the number of TV Lovers and News Media Hermits mirrors the fact that Tunisia as well as Egypt and Jordan struggle with the challenge of ensuring internet connectivity of the same quality in rural areas as in urban areas. Especially in Egypt, the high share of TV Lovers, who have a rather limited set of frequently used media platforms but a comparably high interest in politics and religion, might also reflect the high illiteracy rates among the older and less-educated inhabitants (Badr, 2021). By the same token, the News Media Omnivores, the repertoire with the highest preference for print media and a more diverse set of media platforms and topic interests, are strongly underrepresented in Egypt.

All in all, considerable heterogeneity of news repertoires was observed within most countries (except for the richest states in the sample for which less diversity occurred given the high prevalence of repertoires with many different consumed media). Country wealth seems to be a crucial determinant of people’s media repertoires. While the UAE and Saudi Arabia already have high shares of inhabitants with diverse media repertoires, poorer countries with a rather pluralistic media landscape (Lebanon and Tunisia) show the potential to close this gap in the future. The relatively high share of News Media Hermits in Qatar needs to be interpreted in the context of a small, wealthy high-tech nation that differs strongly from the state environment of Lebanon or Egypt – having acquired a ‘hermit’ repertoire in such poor countries is likely to imply dramatically lower chances of participation in society than a ‘hermit’ would face in Qatar. However, it is noteworthy that a young digital avant-garde (the Online Devotee repertoire) who might represent a future trend of change towards greater news involvement is virtually absent in poorer MENA countries such as Lebanon and Egypt. The well-known discrepancies among MENA countries in digital infrastructure and economic development (Göll and Zwiers, 2019; The World Economic Forum, 2018) will thus interact with state-level social inequality, which will cause particularly precarious opportunities for acquiring news knowledge and participating in political processes among the disadvantaged (low education, low income) citizens of poorer MENA countries. In future analyses, it will be valuable to investigate social inequalities at the state level to understand media usage patterns within each MENA country in a more detailed way.

Limitations and research outlook

Regarding the study’s method, some limitations have to be addressed. Firstly, all data are based on self-reports of the respondents that are susceptible to various measurement errors. Secondly, the great discrepancy of case numbers within the identified media repertoires has to be considered. Compared to the quite small case numbers in the fourth and sixth media repertoire (Online Devotees, News Media Hermits), case numbers in the third media repertoire (TV and Internet Combiners) suggest that cluster computation might/should be optimized – even though the interpretation of the TV and Online Combiners repertoire as a ‘mainstream’ type is highly plausible. Thirdly, as a secondary analysis was conducted, not all existing data were exactly fitting to the study’s purpose. Especially the measurement of frequencies of consumed news topics (instead of topic preferences) may have obscured the actual influence of news interests on the individual composition of news repertoires. Fourthly, the current measure of audience availability was limited to the time using the media and did not include the potential time to use news media.

From the present typology of current news repertoires, their diversity and dependence on social inequalities, audience studies in the MENA region have been conceptually connected to the media repertoire tradition from Western countries (e.g. Hargittai and Hinnant, 2008; Hasebrink and Domeyer, 2012). The social inequalities in the region affect how citizens can be and wish to keep themselves informed about current affairs, and through differentially informative news repertoires, social inequalities affect the chances of political participation. They are thus also likely to drive further continuity and even fortification of inequalities. At the same time, the tremendous economic differences between neighbouring countries that share many cultural foundations seem to add an extra level of news use inequality in MENA that exceeds state differences in the Western world. Future research should thus approach the consequences of socially determined news repertoires for citizens’ political participation and associated outcomes. For instance, future studies should investigate the role of news repertoires in support of and opposition to autocratic regimes (e.g. Allagui and Kuebler, 2011), for economic welfare and chances to overcome poverty (in low-income states such as Lebanon in particular), or for active engagement against traditional social exclusion practices (e.g. gender stereotypes). The current findings on socially unequal news access and news use in the MENA region suggest that news repertoires will play an important explanatory role in understanding how societies in the MENA region evolve between tradition and progress. This perspective is both of high theoretical potential for communication scholarship and applied utility for local and international agents of social change.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Robin Leuppert

Author biographies

Robin Leuppert, MA, is a Research Assistant and PhD student at the Department of Journalism and Communication Research (IJK) at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media, Germany. He earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Media Management at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media. Since 2021, he has been working at IJK Hanover. His research interests focus on information behaviour, news media usage and its determinants as well as computational methods of empirical social research.

Ilhem Allagui is a Professor and the Director of the Journalism and Strategic Communication programme at the Northwestern University in Qatar. She graduated from Université de Montréal-Canada (2006) with an MSc and a PhD in Communication Sciences. As a Northwestern scholar, Dr. Allagui conducts research at the intersection of strategic communication and new media adoption, and its impact on economic and socio-political transformations. She serves as the President of the International Media Management Academic Association (IMMAA) and is an editorial board member of the International Journal of Communication and Internet Histories.

Christoph Klimmt, PhD (Hanover University of Music and Drama, 2004), is Full Professor of Communication Science at the Department of Journalism and Communication Research (IJK) at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media, Germany. He has served as Associate Editor of the Journal of Media Psychology (2011–2017) and as this journal’s Editor in Chief (2018–2020). His research interests are focused on media entertainment, media effects, journalism research, new media technologies and science communication.

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