The study looks into the 2008 American Presidential Election from two sides; the way the news channels frame the event and the way a sample of the audiences interpret it. Drawing on literature concerning framing theory which describes the practices employed by mass media to present world events in familiar and understandable formats to audiences, the study examines the coverage of the 2008 American Presidential Election on three trans-border news channels broadcasting in Arabic. A number of stories covering the American election campaign broadcasted on Alarabiya, Alhurra and Aljazeera, are included. The study assesses general frames used to describe the event by each channel. The analysis reports the frames generally employed by the three channels are relatively similar, suggesting a global effect on the media in following the Anglo-American model of journalism when reporting international events. The differences appear when reporting regional issues between the two Arabic trans-border channels Alarabiya and Aljazeera on one side and Alhurra on the other suggesting a link between journalistic ideology and framing. The second part of this thesis is the exploratory audience study which attempts to provide insights into perception of Arab news coverage - particularly in Saudi Arabia. The audience study uses a questionnaire and focus group methodologies on a sample of participants with high television news consumption levels, measuring the perception of news channels credibility in specific and credibility of media in general, and exploring the possible presence of a link between consumption level of news and perceived news credibility. Moreover, examining how audience analyse news and how their opinions about the event have been shaped by media framing.

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This study focuses on the factors shaping innovation in online newsrooms in three nations of the Arab World, with particular interest in the adoption of multimedia news innovations. Applying theoretical perspectives from the social shaping of technology and the diffusion of innovation literature, this study sought to identify the key factors shaping the innovation process. Field studies were based in three Arabic newsrooms: Aljazeera Net in Qatar, Almasry Alyoum in Egypt, and Almassae in Morocco. The case studies are grounded in two weeks of participant-observation field research within each online newsroom, along with over 100 in-depth interviews with those involved in the production of online news, and online archival reviews of the three news portals since their inception. Field research began with participant observation at Aljazeera in 2010, prior to the uprisings of the Arab Spring, and continued through early 2013. The political context of each newsroom during the field research became a major aspect of the innovation process of each case study. The thesis reinforces a wide range of social, economic, and organizational factors in the adoption and adaptation of multimedia technologies in the newsrooms studied, supporting earlier research on newsroom innovation across other regions of the world. For example, conceptions about ‘ideal’ industry multimedia models for the modern newsroom were important in each case. However, in the political context of events related to the Arab Spring, the overriding importance of the larger political context emerged in each case. The significance of this observation suggests that research on news organizations cannot take the political context for granted and should more explicitly embed it in discussion of the social shaping of innovation, even under more stable and liberal political conditions. There is a relative lack of systematic empirical research on Arabic newsrooms among studies of news innovation. Looking at the political context of emergent or weak democracies and their influence on modern multimedia newsrooms especially during crisis events, therefore, can contribute to the development of theory and research in Western democracies; and reintroduce politics into theories of innovation within modern newsrooms. This study suggests that future scholarship brings politics into the study of the social shaping of newsroom innovation without losing the many significant advances of existing research in more liberal democratic Western contexts of the multimedia newsroom.