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arabic p r int med ia and the ne w cul tur e of ne wspaper r ead ing | 73 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 five Arabic Print Media and the New Culture of Newspaper Reading The changes in the media structure, which were initiated either by private Arab citizens or by political parties, especially in the print media, have been translated into collective communicative behavior and patterns of media consumption. Shedding light on the communicative behavior of the Arab minority in each of the media forms is an important issue to explore. There are well-known differences between newspaper reading patterns and television viewing. The following analysis is based on two sets of data. The first is a representative survey among a random sample of the entire Arab population in Israel. The second is a selective survey of representatives of the different elites within the Arab minority. The two surveys, conducted in different periods, posed the same questions, aiming to enable a deep examination of the assumption set forth in the introduction of the book and facilitate comparisons that are of analytical and theoretical importance. The following analysis will be selective and does not utilize all the data available from the surveys. It delves into the patterns of newspaper reading relevant for this book. For reasons of space, it does not analyze the ratings of all newspaper reading, but rather takes the most widespread newspapers, according to the data, and delves deeper into their patterns of reading. Newspapers were the first means of communication to provide Arab citizens of Israel with an independent voice, a platform from which to express themselves politically and culturally in their native language, with limited governmental interventions. Thus patterns of press reading, satisfaction with the press, and trust in its messages are important indicators of the politics of contention of the Arab community in Israel. The data made available by the general survey shows that the Arab public in Israel has developed a unique culture of reading newspapers, adapting 74 | the arab public s pher e in is rael to the structure of the Arab newspaper industry. Responses to the question regarding frequency of reading newspapers revealed that 9.3% of the population of the survey read Arabic newspapers daily; 45.3%read these newspapers on the weekend. Another 25.1%of the respondents who read Arabic newspapers do so infrequently, and 20.3% do not read Arab newspapers at all. Various factors can account for the differences in the number of people who read newspapers daily and those who read them on the weekend. Before we delve into explanations, it is important to pay attention to the factors that explain the patterns of reading weekly newspapers, on the one hand, and the factors that explain the low percentage of readers of daily Arabic newspapers, on the other. These factors are not necessarily identical, although some may overlap. The first factor explaining the difference between daily (9.3%)and weekend (45.3%)reading of Arabic newspapers has to do with the supply structure . The dominant Arab newspapers are weeklies, a format dictated by financial factors and the availability of advertising revenues. The Arab public has become accustomed to awaiting the weekly newspapers, which are mostly distributed for free in gas stations. Another factor that can explain the gap is the fact that the public habitus of newspaper reading has been constructed so as to primarily look for and consume “soft” news. The weeklies cannot compete with the electronic media and daily newspapers in transmitting “hard” news (current events). Specializing in “soft” news is, consequently, a strategy adopted by all weeklies to overcome their own limitations , turning this type of news into the most widespread type of news consumed by the Arab newspaper-reading public. Concentrating on this type of news has turned the weekly newspapers into tabloids, publishing superficial stories with sensational titles and large photos. They may be considered “supermarkets,” selling a wide range of news items in small doses, written in simplistic language. This approach creates a sense of superficiality and lack of seriousness. Although it can be argued that the lack of daily newspaper reading habits in Arab society may prevent expansion of the daily Arabic-language press, the character of existing publications is...

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