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Abstract
This article investigates the online comments of news items posted on the Facebook pages of two popular Arabic-language radio channels: Radio Monte Carlo—France24 and Radio Netherlands Worldwide (RNW). This study examines over 184,000 comments with a special focus on the most liked posts in order to understand how audiences of regular radio interact on social media. The results indicate that audiences seem to be more engaged with posts that encourage participating in broad issues, interacting with clever quotes, and entering contests and less so with reading breaking news. With regards to news events and serious issues, this study also examined how social media users of these two Facebook “radio” sites responded to postings that differed from their own opinions, and seemingly actively engaged with contrasting or oppositional views or sentiments.
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Ahmed Al-Rawi
Ahmed Al-Rawi (Ph.D., University of Leicester) is assistant professor at the Department of Communication Studies of Concordia University in Canada, and a research fellow at the Department of Media & Communication at Erasmus University in the Netherlands. He specializes in global communication and Arab media. He is author of Media Practice in Iraq (2012), and his research appears in a variety of journals including Information, Communication, & Society, Public Relations Review, International Communication Gazette, and Global Media and Communication.