Evaluating international mediated public diplomacy efforts to promote women’s rights in the Arab world through in-depth analysis of social media: a comparative study of the BBC, Aljazeera, Al-Arabiya, Russia Today, and France24

ABSTRACT

This research aims to examine the mediated public diplomacy efforts of the top five international broadcasters to the Arab world, namely the BBC, Aljazeera, Al-Arabiya, Russia Today, and France24 by evaluating their coverage of women’s rights issues. The study compared coverage by the BBC, Aljazeera, Al-Arabiya, Russia Today, and France24 of the “Rahaf” case. The author has applied Entman’s definition of framing: “selecting and highlighting some facets of events or issues, and making connections among them so as to promote a particular interpretation, evaluation, and solution.” Systematically, the current study applied social media sentiment analysis and framing content analysis methods, which combine different approaches to create insights. The chief finding indicates that international frame-building and public engagement played a major role in BBC and Al-Arabiya coverage, and did so more effectively than Al-Jazeera, France 24, and Russia Today in terms of promoting women’s rights in the Arab world.

KEYWORDS:

• Mediated public diplomacy
• international broadcasting
• women’s rights
• social media analytics
• international frame-building
• Arab world

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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Hamed Al-Hasni

Hamed AL-Hasni is Ph.D. Candidate in the School of Journalism and Communication at Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, P.R. China. His research interest focuses on comparative public diplomacy in contemporary global communication, specifically evaluating the foreign countries’ public diplomacy impact in the Arab world. E-mail: [email protected]