The Egyptian public's exposure to refugee issues through social media and its relationship to their formed mental image-  A field study

Ibrahim, Rbab

doi:10.21608/jsb.2025.372738.1906

The Egyptian public's exposure to refugee issues through social media and its relationship to their formed mental image- A field study

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Rbab ibrahim

كلية التربية النوعية

10.21608/jsb.2025.372738.1906

Abstract

The current study aimed to explore the refugee issues encountered by the Egyptian public through social media platforms and their relationship to the mental image formed among them. This study falls under descriptive research, employing a survey methodology with a sample-based approach. The study utilized a questionnaire as a tool to collect the required data, drawing on the hypotheses of the Media Dependency Theory. The questionnaire was administered to a random sample of 642(Egyptian participants. The study identified the most prominent refugee issues exposed to the Egyptian public via social media. The top issue was the spread of rumors about "enormous numbers" of refugees straining the economy, followed by barriers to refugee children enrolling in public schools. Among the social media platforms where the public follows refugee issues, Facebook ranked first, Twitter second, and WhatsApp third. The results also indicated a statistically significant positive correlation between the intensity of reliance on social media for information about refugee issues and the mental image formed by respondents regarding refugee issues in Egypt.

Keywords

Main Subjects

Press and publishing

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