Navigating Cultural Boundaries: The Impact of Digital Media and Western Food Industry Campaigns in the Middle East’s Virtual Landscape

This paper explores the impact of digital media within the digital world in the theocratic Islamic context. The study's distinctiveness lies in its focus on campaign messages through internationally imported food and drink products from the Western World countries to the Middle East. This aspect is underscored by the widespread promotion of the food industry’s digital messages on social media. To reach conclusions, the authors use content analysis of 215 social media posts from six social media accounts, on the same social media platform (Instagram), owned by food and beverage companies from Western World countries. The posts have been accrued between March 2022 and April 2023, while the accounts were selected based on the companies’ activities within the geographical region studied. The specific accounts have been selected due to the higher availability of data following the digital footprints of the food and beverage sector. The primary objective is to determine the nature of the relationship between the two cultures by examining the messages conveyed by the companies’ social media advertising campaigns. This analysis considers the messages that are allowed to be displayed according to the techno-politics of the region, as well as the degree of appropriation affected by the mutual respect between Western and Eastern cultures. Finally, the research’s results can contribute to the understanding of the challenges of promoting long-term effective intercultural communication in the real world, the digital media, and the virtual world and suggest potential strategies for improving this communication, consisting of co-production of messages in the digital and virtual worlds, in this multi-dimensional realm.