Factors affecting the future of paper newspapers in the digital age:

Document Type : Original Article

Author

PhD researcher in the Department of Journalism, Faculty of Mass Communication, Cairo University

Abstract

Social media has played a major role in light of the growing social and economic issues in various areas of life, as it is a tool that uses elements to attract followers from all segments of the society, so one of its societal responsibilities is to provide information to form public opinion among Egyptian youth, increase their culture knowledge and urge them to adopt many positive values. Therefore, the communicators were interested in engaging the advantages of modern technology to transfer ideas and opinions related to particular issues to a large number of people, which results in a positive change in some people’s opinion trying to solve the social problems.
This study aims to find how communicators deals with social and economic issues by using graphic materials through social media websites, and determining the role that content plays in those graphic materials, and its impact on youth perception of these issues. The study used "New Media Dependency Theory” as a theoretical framework, and the study used the descriptive methodology, as it relies on description, analysis and interpretation.
The study analyzes some of the content of some Facebook pages that use graphic materials to present social and economic issues, including: «Egyptioon - Warka», the content analysis will cover one month (January 2021).
The field study sample composed of youth aged between 18-25 years; the sample was random and consisted of 100 students from public and private universities who follow these pages, in order to find out the reasons of following these pages, and its role in forming their public opinion.

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