Transformations of Egyptian identity in the context of short digital media

This study explores how short-form digital media — with YouTube Shorts as a case in point — is reshaping Egyptian cultural and ideological identity in today’s digital age. As short videos have rapidly spread across Egypt and the Arab world, platforms like YouTube have become more than just sources of entertainment; they are now key battlegrounds where identity, news quality, and public debate are symbolically contested. Using a mixed-methods approach that combines quantitative content analysis of 100 trending Shorts with qualitative digital ethnography of 550 user comments, this research examines how production quality, storytelling, and audience interaction come together to create new meanings and shape social attitudes.
Grounded in mediatization approach, Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model, entertainment theory, and digital ethnography, the study shows that short videos increasingly favor engagement, relatability, and symbolic messaging over traditional journalistic benchmarks like depth, factual accuracy, and objectivity. It finds that humor, sarcasm, hybrid language, and coded symbols — seen both in videos and comment threads — help create a lively digital discourse in which Egyptian youth actively negotiate and contest ideological meanings.
The findings point to a clear shift: news quality today is not just defined by professional standards but is co-produced by platform algorithms, user behaviors, and the logics that shape what gets seen and shared. This evolving media environment breaks down linguistic barriers, intensifies echo chambers, and opens up parallel spaces for public debate. It reveals how Egyptian users blend local and global cultural references to navigate and redefine their identities within an ever-changing digital ecosystem.