19
Weekly Word Counts: Egypt and Saudi Arabia
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
7000
9/13/02
11/2/02
12/22/02
2/10/03
4/1/03
5/21/03
date
Egypt
Saudi Arabia
3 per. Mov. Avg. (Egypt)
3 per. Mov. Avg. (Saudi Arabia)
When the Pakistani papers are disaggregated, as in the following scatterplot, this last point
becomes even more evident. In the following chart, the two major Pakistani media groups (the
Jang/News and Nawa-I-Waqt/Nation publishing houses) were merged together, and plotted
along side the next two largest-n newspapers in the sample. While all four trendlines begin to
peak in late January and continue to increase in words per editorial though March, the Nawa-I-
Waqt group of papers reacted the most dramatically in terms of volume. Considering the
previously low level of coverage in Khabrain, its peak is also impressive. This reinforces the idea
that although the same events may capture editorial interest, the degree to which editorialists feel
inspired to comment does vary. The same events may not be seen as having the same level of
importance, which may reflect underlying political factors.