Abdullah Alhuntushi has been awarded a PhD for his thesis on ‘How Arab Journalists Engage and Use Statistics to Report Science: The Case of Statistics in Science News in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt'.
This study examines journalists’ use of statistical information within science news. The study focuses on how news reporters use statistics when articulating science news in two broad areas, that of health and technology news in Arab countries, specifically, of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. It does so by triangulating content analysis, close reading, expert panel and triangulating this with semi-structured interviews with journalists. Overall, the study found that despite a rich Islamic historical tradition of engagement with science in general and maths in particular in these societies, news reporting of science presents severe deficiencies and gaps when it comes to engaging and using statistics and numbers to articulate science news. The results suggest that a lack of professional autonomy influences the use and articulation of statistical data and attributes this to the constrains that the political system places upon reporters.
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