Framing Natural Disaster, Terrorist Attack And Civil Unrest Crises By Egyptian Journalist And Citizen Bloggers

News blogs provide the media and individuals with analyses and information about crises. The importance of news blogs in coverage of crises brings attention to the importance of examining journalist and citizen bloggers, and their coverage of three crises: natural disaster, terrorist attack and civil unrest. The researchers looked at the differences in using frames, topics, sources, and modalities. A quantitative content analysis was conducted of random-sample 441 Egyptian blog posts. Results showed that citizen bloggers were more likely to cover a natural disaster, while journalist bloggers were more likely to cover a terrorist attack and use conflict frame. The topic most frequently used and got most space by both bloggers was politics. On the other hand, journalist bloggers are more likely to use sources (i.e. scientists, eyewitnesses, media) than were citizen bloggers. According to the modalities, citizen bloggers were more likely to use images that looked professional and had people in their posts than journalist bloggers, while journalists are more likely to use video posts than citizen bloggers. The implications of these results were discussed. Future studies could look at the comparison between types of bloggers in the coverage of two continuous crises or sudden crises to make sure that the duration does not make a difference.