Recent trends in mass communication theories in the context of the digital media environment

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to monitor recent trends in digital media research theories in Arab, Western, and Asian schools, through the analysis of (141) studies, during the extended period (2016-2021), based on the second-level analysis method. The results of the study concluded that there is a difference between the Arab and foreign schools in the application of mass communication theories in the digital media environment. Most of them test a topic related to the developments of digital media in the Arab environment, in contrast to the Western school, which tried to benefit from those theories while expanding the analysis of the development of its hypotheses for considerations related in their entirety to the different nature of digital media from traditional ones, and the diversity of the digital media audience.