Research Papers
Research papers by Mohamed Soufan on Lebanon, media, AI, digital behavior and computational social research, with links to full papers, summaries and code.
Explore research papers by Mohamed Soufan on Lebanon, media, artificial intelligence, digital behavior and computational social research. Each entry links to the full paper and, where available, a research summary, code and data.
Geographic Disparities in International News Coverage of Fatal Israeli Attacks in Lebanon, March 2026
SSRN · 2026
Analyzes 229 fatal location-days during Lebanon’s March 2026 escalation and finds that South Lebanon and Nabatieh had about 65% lower adjusted odds of receiving international English-language news coverage than fatal events elsewhere in the country.
Full paper · Research summary · Code & data
Online Remembrance of the Beirut Port Explosion: Justice, State Failure, and Digital Memory on X and Reddit
SSRN · 2026
Analyzes 7,191 Arabic- and English-language posts and comments about the Beirut port explosion, finding that unresolved justice and state failure accounted for 71.7% of online memory around the five-year mark, far outweighing personal grief.
Full paper · Research summary · Code & data
Visibility Without Guidance: Measuring the Actionability of Public Crisis Communication in Lebanon
arXiv · 2026
Audits 182 public crisis-communication items from nine Lebanese state, emergency and UN sources, finding a mean actionability score of just 1.98 out of 5 and no access or contact information in 89.6% of items.
Full paper · Research summary · Code & data
Linguistic Uncertainty and Reply Engagement on X: A Cross-Domain Replication of the Uncertainty-Reply Asymmetry
arXiv · 2026
Analyzes 2,258 English-language posts on Federal Reserve policy, inflation, and electoral politics, finding that posts expressing linguistic uncertainty received 82% more replies on average and about 13% higher expected reply engagement after controls.
Measuring the Gap Between Media Coverage and Public Information Demand: Evidence from the 2026 Lebanon Conflict
arXiv · 2026
Analyzes 11,623 English-language news articles and Google Trends data during the March 2026 Lebanon conflict, finding that conflict dominated 94.9% of media coverage while accounting for only 36.9% of public search interest.
Full paper · Research summary · Code & data
The Structure of Participation and Attention in Arabic-Language Hezbollah Discourse on X
arXiv · 2026
Analyzes 15,767 Arabic-language posts about Hezbollah on X and finds that audience attention was highly concentrated, with the top 1% of users capturing 61.5% of all engagement despite broad participation.
Linguistic Uncertainty and Engagement in Arabic-Language X (formerly Twitter) Discourse
arXiv · 2026
Analyzes 16,695 Arabic-language tweets about Lebanon and finds that posts expressing linguistic uncertainty received about 25% higher expected engagement, with the strongest association observed for replies.