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There is no doubt that smartphone devices have completely transformed the prospects of the media landscape. They have managed to both captivate and attract people towards them through their features and applications, replacing digital cameras, video recorders and several different media which were once considered to be the pillars of communication in our world (Bhatia, 2018).
Today, we are living in a globalized and multicultural world where something new happens every hour of the day. Having access to the daily news is therefore a fundamental part of many people’s lives. According to a report by Pew Research center “Americans favor mobile devices over desktops and laptops for getting news”, four-in-ten Americans aged 65 and older (38%) often get news from a mobile device, around six times the share in 2013. Furthermore, people in this age group are now roughly as likely to get news from a mobile device as they are to get it from a desktop or laptop (38% vs. 34%). Additionally, the share of Americans ages 18 to 29 who often get news from a mobile device has more than doubled since 2013, increasing from 34% then to 72% today. During the same period, the share of Americans ages 18 to 29 who often get news from a desktop or laptop computer has decreased 9 percentage points (from 34% in 2013 to 23% in 2019) (Walker, 2019).
The Middle East is one of those regions where something new happens every day. In such a region, accessing and being up to date with the latest news is crucial. According to the Media Use in the Middle East Report (2016), 84% of young adults use the news on the Internet and 40% of them use it every day. The use is higher among those with higher education (88%) compared to those with secondary education (82%), preparatory (76%) or primary (60%) education. As for the degree of confidence relating to social media networks as a source of news, the audience aged 18-24 years is considered more confident (75%) than those aged 45 years and older (40%). Young adults are those who tend to access the news the most via the internet in comparison to the older generation (“Media Use in the Middle East”, 2016).
Today, the UAE is considered the 26th most networked nation in the world, according to the World Economic Forum ranking (“UAE's Media Landscape”, 2018). In 2016, the number of smartphone users in the United Arab Emirates was estimated to have reached 3.7 million, with the number of smartphone users worldwide to have exceeded 2 billion users in 2016 (“Smartphone users in the United Arab Emirates”, 2019). The increasing popularity of smartphones in the UAE has resulted in them being used as communication tools for sending and receiving emails, chatting, sharing photos and documents, reading news, browsing the Internet, and even online retailing and purchasing. This makes the UAE, with a growing population of 9.8 million and the majority of it falling in the age group 25 to 54 years (United Arab Emirates Population 2020”, 2020) a good case-study for examining the growing popularity of smartphones as a news source especially amongst young adults.
News Consumption
The term “News” has been defined in numerous ways by different scholars. According to Hartley (2013), news comes to us as the preexisting discourse of an impersonal social institution which is also an industry. As we get used to its codes and conventions we will become 'news-literate' - not only able to follow the news and recognize its familiar cast of characters and events, but also spontaneously able to interpret the world at large in terms of the codes we have learnt from the news. The news shapes how we think and determines why we tend to think what we think. With the growth of digital communication today, news is no longer consumed through traditional media such as television, radio and newspapers, as newer and more exciting media such as smartphones have taken the lead. More than any other technology, smartphones are at the forefront of technological convergence (Madianou, 2014). Smartphones’ capacity to install and launch countless applications accentuates the already extraordinary plasticity of the mobile phone (Goggin, 2011; Jenkins, 2006). Effectively the launchpad for scores of popular web applications a smartphone resembles a miniature media ecology in its own right. The combination of internet capabilities with portability contributes to the emergence of an ‘always on lifestyle’ (Boyd, 2012).