Purpose This study examines the use of social media by individuals during protests in China (Hong Kong), Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon. Method Surveys in the four countries assess the relationship between people’s attitudes toward the protests and their selection bias on social media, manifested through selective sharing and selective avoidance. Findings Regardless of the different political and media systems in each country, social media usage was largely similar. Overall, our findings established that people’s attitude strength toward the protests was associated with their selective sharing behavior; those who scored high on supporting the protests were more likely than those who scored high on opposing the protests to share news that supports the protests, and vice versa. As for selective avoidance, social media protest news use emerged as the strongest predictor. The more individuals followed and shared protest news on social media, the more likely they were to engage in selective avoidance by hiding or deleting comments, unfriending or unfollowing people, and blocking or reporting people for posting comments with which they disagreed. Implications For selective sharing, our findings are consistent with extant research that found individuals with strong attitudes toward certain issues are more likely to express their opinions on social media. Also, for selective avoidance, our study supports the literature, which shows individuals practice selective avoidance to clean up their environment from attitude-inconsistent information, especially on social media, and exceedingly so during protests and crises. Value Selection bias places individuals into secluded groups and contributes to political divisions and polarization. Research has focused on online selective exposure and on offline selective avoidance, but online selective avoidance and sharing have rarely been studied. Our study contributes to emerging research on selective sharing and selective avoidance online during a period of polarization in multiple countries.

The spread of fear of the coronavirus and related insecurities around the pandemic have fuelled nationalist and increased exclusionary tendencies in countries all over the world. In North America, for instance, anti-Asian racism increased when former US President Donald Trump dubbed the virus the ‘Chinese virus’. A nationalist agenda has been strengthened in many places, including the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region; and hateful narratives blaming ‘others’ for the pandemic, legitimizing a retreat to the protection of national borders and policies, are being spread in different media outlets. This article comparatively investigates processes of othering with regard to COVID-19 in four MENA countries – Egypt, Iraq, Oman and Yemen – and asks, who is held responsible for the coronavirus crisis in different countries? How is othering revealed in media coverage related to COVID-19? What (in)sensitive language can be identified? The study looks at mass media coverage at the peak of the global lockdown during the spring of 2020. The media analysis reveals a strong emphasis on mostly national identities as articulated lines of demarcation in all four cases. A homogenizing and demonizing othering was detected in particular in the cases of Yemen and Egypt, but also Iraq, when blame was attributed to political adversaries. The Omani case was characterized by a more subtle othering that focused strongly on the importance of citizenship.

Global Communications is a book series that looks beyond national borders to examine current transformations in public communication, journalism and media. Books in this series will focus on the role of communication in the context of global ecological, social, political, economic, and technological challenges in order to help us understand the rapidly changing media environment. We encourage comparative studies but we also welcome single case studies, especially if they focus on regions other than Western Europe and North America, which have received the bulk of scholarly attention until now.Empirical studies as well as textbooks are welcome. Books should remain concise and not exceed 300 pages but may offer online access to a wealth of additional material documenting the research process and providing access to the data. The series aspires to publish theoretically well-grounded, methodologically sound, relevant, novel research, presented in a readable and engaging way. Through peer review and careful support from the editors of the series and from the editorial team of Open Book Publishers, we strive to support our authors in achieving these goals.Global Communications is the first Open Access book series in the field to combine the high editorial standards of professional publishing with the fair Open Access model offered by OBP. Copyrights stay where they belong, with the authors. Authors are encouraged to secure funding to offset the publication costs and thereby sustain the publishing model, but if no institutional funding is available, authors are not charged fees. Any publishing subvention secured will cover the actual costs of publishing and will not be taken as profit. In short: we support publishing that respects the authors and serves the public interest.

In periods of political unrest, media habits change significantly, allowing for new patterns of selectivity. This study's main contribution lies in its application of selective exposure theory and its comparison of people's media uses in five Global South polities that witnessed widespread protests in 2019: Chile, Hong Kong, Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon. It examines the relationship between people's trust in the media and selective exposure at a global comparative level and within the contexts of political upheavals and hyperconnected media systems. The study also assesses the relationship between issue publics and participation in protests. Using cross-sectional surveys in each of the five countries/regions, it compares participants’ support for the protests and their exposure to legacy and social media. The findings reveal that media trust and issue publics play a significant role in determining the level of preference for pro-attitudinal news content. Trusting pro-attitudinal TV channels relates to following pro-attitudinal TV channels, and trusting counter-attitudinal TV channels relates to following counter-attitudinal TV channels. In addition, the strong issue publics group was more likely than the weak and moderate issue publics groups to participate in street protests.

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