Saudi Mediated Public Diplomacy: Exploring the Agenda Building of Government-Sponsored News Before and After the Vision 2030 Announcement

Abstract

The current study explored the Saudi mediated public diplomacy efforts by examining the agenda building of government-sponsored news before and after the Vision 2030 announcement on all three levels. The study aimed to examine the role of the Saudi Press Agency in affecting the news coverage of The New York Times and The Guardian. Content analysis was used to measure the agenda-building process. Because the study examines the coverage before and after the Vision program, the timeframe for the first sample was from March 1, 2013, to March 31, 2016, and the second sample's timeframe was from May 1, 2016, to May 31, 2019. The findings showed that there is a partial correlation between the Saudi Press Agency and the American and British newspapers in the first level agenda. For the second level, results showed that the Saudi Press Agency could not promote its attributes, and for the last level, findings showed a correlation between the Saudi Press Agency and the American and British newspapers. These findings suggest that Saudi mediated public diplomacy practitioners should adopt the transformation that may increase the chance of affecting other media outlets and help different issues to be more salient. Because the current study contributes to the field by discussing mediated public diplomacy for a long time, the finding showed that the process faces limits that subsequently decrease the degree of success of mediated public diplomacy efforts.