Week 3 – Research – Low Res Thesis 2022

There are a number of researches and academic papers written that I look to inspire myself or/and expand on my subject:

First on topic the one from The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Saudi Arabia’s Religious Reforms Are Touching Nothing but Changing Everything

I look to illustrate that contrarily to some claims while indeed the changes are coming from the top, many of the measure are happening because for many years the people wanted these changes. It is true that reforms started King Abdullah but the changes really took place during King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed. Even for implementation of what would seem the most trivial changes such as Women Driving or the end of Gender Separation in restaurants, enormous resistance and counter-claims (even bogus one) were put forward right until the day of enactment.

Other trivial changes to the West such as Women in the labor force or Women Directors which existed already in many neighboring Gulf countries but not really in Saudi in the last 3-4 years is truly changing the nature of the landscape in the country. Women who were before dependent of male guardianship are now earning an incomeand in cases given position of authority which is completely changing the workspace and contributing to women freedom and independence. I hope to give on the ground testimonies with such examples including in my work environment.

While indeed in the West little is mentioned or little is being paid attention, I aim to show that locally these changes are highly welcomed in the younger generation (under 45 years – 75% of the population) and the urban one (~60% of the population), many of whom have travelled or even studied abroad, many can speak and have access to Western Media. I hope through my analysis to highlight the difference in perception in US, Saudi and other countries and try to identify different theories with quantitative data why this discrepancy could occur.

Other researches I aim to inspire myself:

Newsroom Diversity – Is More Better? Effects of Newsroom and Audience Diversity on Trait Coverage of Minority Candidates

NiemanLab – How much political news do people see on Facebook? I went inside 173 people’s feeds to find out

The Markup – Split Screen – How Different Are Americans’ Facebook Feeds?

NYU Cybersecurity for Democracy – Summary of Findings: An Audit of Facebook’s Political Ad Policy Enforcement

NYU Cybersecurity for Democracy – An Analysis of United States Online Political Advertising Transparency

NYU Cybersecurity for Democracy – Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook

Some tools:

Gallup-Analytics: https://analyticscampus-gallup-com.proxy.library.nyu.edu/Charts

Open Secrets – https://opensecrets.org/

NYU – AdObservatory – https://adobservatory.org/

Media Consumption: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aay3539