News blogs provide the media and individuals with analyses and information about crises. The researcher looked at the differences between journalist and citizen bloggers in their coverage of crises: natural disaster, terrorist attack and civil unrest. In particular, the researcher examined frames, topics, sources, and modalities. A quantitative content analysis was conducted of 214 Egyptian journalists blog posts and 227 citizen blogs posts. The researcher collected blog posts about each crisis (in both Arabic and English) from the first day and two weeks after each crisis date in 33 journalist blogs and 33 citizen blogs. The researcher analyzed posts about Sinai terrorist attacks and flooding because they were small samples, and took a random sample of 140 blog posts about the revolution from each type of blogger because it was a large sample. The researcher found citizen bloggers were more likely to cover a natural disaster (flooding) than journalist bloggers. The researcher also found that journalist bloggers were more likely to cover a terrorist attack in the coverage of a civil unrest crisis, whereas citizen bloggers used the attribution of responsibility, and human-interest frame more than journalist bloggers. In framing a terrorist attack crisis, journalist bloggers were more likely to use a conflict frame than citizen bloggers, while citizens were more likely to use human interest than journalist bloggers. According to the frames used in the natural disaster crisis, journalist bloggers used the morality frame more than citizen bloggers. Politics was the topic most frequently used in the lead and the one that got the most space in journalist and citizen bloggers. Journalist bloggers are more likely to put the topic that got the most space in the lead paragraph than citizen bloggers. On the other hand, journalist bloggers are more likely to use sources than were citizen bloggers. Journalist bloggers are more likely to use scientists, eyewitnesses, and media sources than citizen bloggers, while citizen bloggers are more likely to use documents and governmental sources than journalist bloggers. With regard to post modalities, citizen bloggers were more likely to use images in their posts than journalist bloggers, while journalists are more likely to use video posts than citizen bloggers. Journalists used hyperlinks in their posts more than citizen bloggers. Citizen bloggers when compared to journalists were more likely to use images that looked professional and had people in the photos while journalists were more likely to use info-graphic images than citizen bloggers. This dissertation expands the existing knowledge about two types of bloggers, journalists and citizen, and how they used frames, topics, sources, and modalities in the coverage of crises. Future studies could look at the comparison between types of bloggers in the coverage of two continuous crises or sudden crises to make sure that the duration does not make a difference.
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