An analysis of the languages used through social media shows that Arabic is a dominant language within Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE. Findings of the research reveals that 90 per cent of the posts, across the studied industries, were in Arabic, compared to only 10 per cent in English. However, the majority of the users in both Egypt and Saudi Arabia wrote in Arabic, most users in the UAE,  prefers to post in English.

The study has been conducted by Crowd Analyzer, the Dubai-based data intelligence provider and social media monitoring platform, in collaboration with digital and social media experts – Hootsuite and APCO Worldwide.

Under the title of ‘State of Social Media 2019’ report the study examines social media trends and usage, derived from over 180 million users across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

The annual report  pointed out the most followed social media influencers in the three countries. The report indicated that the UAE’s interests lie predominantly in culture and nationalism, with users expressing interest in leaders and artists. Meanwhile in  Saudi Arabia, users mainly showed interest in religion, nationalism, social development and culture, whereas in Egypt, they were interested in a variety of topics, including but not limited to politics, religion, sports and social development.

Using different research methods, the study shows an overview of the languages used, gender participation, sentiment analysis and location analysis across eight industries, including automotive, telecommunications, finance, banking, fintech, ride hailing, media and e-commerce.

The study reports that while the internet was one of the most talked-about topics, there was little interest in 5G technology, which could possibly suggest that it remains unknown among the studied countries. Furthermore,  “horror movies took the lead when it came to on-demand TV conversations, and Twitter emerged as the most popular platform for discussing TV series overall,” said George Mikaelian, Chief Operating Office at Crowd Analyzer.

Mikaelian added that the automotive industry was the most talked-about sector across all social media platforms, accounting for 60.7 million interactions out of the total 172.8 million interactions analyzed. In second place was the telecommunications industry with 38.4 million interactions, followed by the media industry with 22.8 million interactions. The fintech sector came in last with only 5.1 million interactions.

According to the report, Millennials are the most active users within the three countries on social media platforms.