While most previous research on cyberactivism in the Arab Spring, in general, and the Egyptian revolution, in particular, focused on analysing the role of social media in mobilizing the masses for political action, coordinating protest movements and rallying support for regime change. Other aspects of social media use for different purposes, such as online campaigning and framing the image of presidential candidates who are running for office and competing in elections after regime change, have been largely understudied. Similarly, most previous research which tackled framing focused on ‘news framing’, rather than ‘image framing’, or how different media can be used to create images and conceptions of different individuals or groups. Therefore, this study tries to fill these gaps in prior research through conducting a content analysis of the Facebook pages of the five top runners in the Egyptian presidential race of 2012 to find out how and why they used them to frame their own images online before, during and after the elections. In doing so, it revealed how this process was influenced by several factors, such as emerging events, and how it had distinct functions, such as asserting the unique identity of each candidate, juxtaposing and comparing the ‘self’ to the ‘Others’, and launching attacks on other candidates.

An online survey was conducted with Egyptian users who visited commercial websites. A total of 296 people responded to an Arabic survey that questioned the reasons they use commercial websites as well as what gratifications they obtain from the experience. Education level and type of job were found to be significant predictors of commercial website use. Social interaction and information gathering were found to be key predictors of how long a respondent stayed on a website. Positive attitudes about a commercial website were found to be correlated with gratifications sought from using the site as well as perceived gratifications obtained from the experience. As expected, gratifications sought were positively correlated with gratifications obtained. Amount of time spent these websites was correlated with gratifications sought and obtained.This study attempts to clarify the motives, attitudes and obtained gratifications from commercial websites, as well as the relationships among these elements. The present research has demonstrated that the intersection of uses and gratifications theory and online marketing can lead to a deeper understanding of the marketing constraints and utilities offered by interactive computer-mediated communication technology.

This study attempts to investigate the uses and effects of companies’ Facebook pages among Jordanian users and examine the relationships with uses, reasons for use, interactions on the pages, and effects of these pages among them. The current study is theoretically guided by a uses and dependency model through a questionnaire survey administered to a convenience sample of 395 Facebook users who live in Jordan, from 1 August to 30 September 2015. The results indicate that most respondents use companies’ Facebook pages as a source of brand information. Our findings also indicate that the reasons for using companies’ Facebook pages, the interactions on these pages, as well as their uses are positively associated with the effects of its use.

No abstract

This study attempted to investigate the exposure to YouTube ads among Egyptian college students, their attitudes towards these ads, behavioral intentions to watch them and the effects of this exposure and to examine the relationships among these variables as well. The current study was theoretically guided by the theory of reasoned action (TRA) and cognitive-affective behavioral model (CAB) through a questionnaire administered to a purposive sample of 390 college students, who watch YouTube videos, from Cairo University, Egypt from February to May 2019.