The Impact of Opposition Media Messages on Palestinian Public Attitudes Toward Official Media: An Analytical Study

Abstract

The study aimed to analyze the impact of the opposition media message on the attitudes of the Palestinian public towards the official media, by measuring the level of trust in the official media and its relationship with the contents of the opposition media, and the study relied on the descriptive analytical approach, and the study population included the Palestinian public in all its components, whose number was estimated until mid-2023 according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (5.48) million people, which is the number of residents in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where a random sample was selected to represent the study population, The size of this sample according to the method of Stephen Thampson in the sampling (384) research items, and the questionnaire was distributed by the researcher to the Palestinian governorates, and (401) questionnaire was retrieved for analysis and study. The study found several results, the most important of which were: that there is a strong relationship between the message of the opposition media and the confidence of the Palestinian public in the official media, where the value of the correlation R between the two variables (0.739), while the relationship between the message of the opposition media at the level of mechanisms to improve the level of trust in the official media was less strong, as the value of the correlation R Between the two variables (0.125), the results also showed that the overall degree of the reality of the message of the opposition media from the point of view of the Palestinian public was an average degree and a relative weight of (57.8%), as well as showed that the level of confidence of the Palestinian public in the official media was medium, which is evidenced by the relative weight of (63.2%). The study made a set of recommendations, the most important of which were: Benefiting from the impact of the opposition media and its messages in raising the levels of confidence in the official media by presenting the topics addressed by this media with accuracy and credibility, while trying to use the counter-media to the negatives of these messages and opening immediate interaction with the Palestinian public in deciding views and removing ambiguity and confusion if available in these issues. Media policies at the national level take into account the importance of the impact of opposition media on the Palestinian public and develop appropriate strategies to mitigate the negative effects of some negative discourses that affect societal peace in the Palestinian case.