Abstract

With the growing ratio of Internet inundation in Morocco, digital media, including social media, epitomize an increasingly important part in the spread of news in Moroccan society. Admittedly, digital Media has completely transmuted the manner of which Moroccans socialize and interact, conduct business, experience culture, raise political issues, and acquire knowledge. Today, YouTube, blogs, online broadcasting, Facebook, and Twitter have offered new openings and possibilities of expression among youth in Moroccan political and social sphere. Overall, young Moroccans has become the most digitally literate in the country and consume a wide range of online media. In such a context, Morocco’s mosaic linguistic and cultural scenery, media literacy and preferences add an additional layer to the study of the spread of digital media. This paper explores the way Moroccan youth consume new media content. The study uses a researcher-designed online survey questionnaire of 60 respondents to collect data about their major motivations behind the use of media content.  Specifically, the study seeks to identify the most commonly uses and gratifications for using digital media, which are social interaction, information seeking, pass time, entertainment, relaxation, communicatory utility, convenience utility, expression of opinion, information sharing, and surveillance/knowledge about others and their implications on Morocco’s nation building state and identity.

The purpose is to provide a better and more comprehensive understanding of why consumers use digital media content and whether the latteryields to a fragmentationof the public sphere, or strengthening of the general collective consciousness of Morocco linguisticallyand culturally.

Keywords: Digital media, uses and gratifications, fragmentation, media implications.

Bio-Data:

Sadik Madani Alaoui (Ph.D) is an Associate professor at the department of English Studies, Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences. He received a Ph.D in Media and Cultural Studies. He has been teaching English for more than 20 years. Currently, he is teaching Linguistics, Media & Cultural Studies, and Intercultural Communication. His general research interests include Applied Linguistics, Media and Cultural Studies.. He has published a myrriad of papers on Media Studies and Applied Linguistics. He is the author of Promoting Multilingual Communicative Competence for The Labor Market (2017); Media and Cultural Identity Adjustment in Morocco (2017), and Visual Semiotics and Interpretation in the Moroccan Television Advertisements: The Case of ‘Garlic Cube Knor’ and ‘Prince Biscuit’. (2016); Global Television and Cultural Identity Reconstruction Among Moroccan adolescents (2011).