English abstract
Economic journalism plays a vital role in oil and financial crises since it provides information, data and analysis regarding the causes and effects of such crises. It also compares the crisis with other similar crises according to officials, decision-makers and specialists, as well as it offers solutions to end the crisis or avoid its recurrence in the future.
This study according to the researcher's information could be considered as the first of its kind which concentrates on the role of oil and economic journalism in dealing with the crisis of low oil prices. The purpose of this study is to identify how much attention has been allocated by the Omani dailies interested in the crisis of low oil prices, in terms of type and extent from July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2016. In addition, the study also aims to analyze and identify the frameworks provided by opinion articles in the newspapers during the same period. The study uses content analysis tool for data collection, and unregulated interviews to explain some of the study results.
The study shows a number of important findings, one of which is that Oman Daily Newspaper is ranked first in terms of the allocated space for the published materials about the crisis, followed by Al Roya then Al Shabiba Newspapers. However, Al Watan and Al Zaman Newspapers came in last places .At the level of editorial patterns used in writing crisis topics, news report dominated other patterns, followed by press release pattern, then the analytical article. The results showed that almost half of the subjects about the crisis were local subject. Add to that, more than two-third of the crisis subjects is published in the inner pages of the main newspaper and the economic supplement, specifically in the upper right part of the page. The findings also show that the newspapers under study rely on their editors as a source of crisis subjects.
The findings reveal that the newspapers under study describe the crisis as an "economic crisis" caused by "Disputes in OPEC" One of the most important frameworks of the crisis repercussions is "Gulf annual budget deficits", while the most important framework of the crisis solutions is "The development of non-oil economic sectors".
