Nineteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

Sharing news over social media has become an everyday practice among Arab social media users. This research investigates the factors that might predict the news-sharing tendency among youth in the United Arab Emirates. In this study, two variables are examined about news-sharing behavior: news credibility, and commentary on social media (SM) news posts. Using a convenience sample of 324 Arabs (Emiratis and Expats), results show no significant differences between Emiratis and other Arab nationalities in news sharing, commentary news sharing, and news credibility-checking. There is a significant difference between Emiratis and Arab ex-pats in news-sharing patterns and news source credibility-checking abilities. There is a positive significant correlation between news source credibility-checking abilities and news-sharing patterns while the correlation is negative and non-significant with news credibility. Commentary news sharing correlates positively with the perception of competency in source credibility-checking and negatively with news credibility-checking. The landscape of news sharing is continually evolving, influenced by technological advancements, and societal changes, among other factors. There are still some potential areas of focus that could shape the future of news-sharing research in the Middle East and Arab region. Some of these topics may focus on fact-checking techniques to combat the spread of misinformation, integration of technologies to verify the authenticity of news sources and platforms offering news content in multiple languages to cater to the linguistic diversity of the Arab world.