Digital diglossia: Arabic between X and Facebook

Fahad Al Hussen, Mohammed Q. Shormani

This study highlights the distribution of Standard Arabic (SA; H(igh) variety) and Colloquial Arabic (CA; L(ow) variety) across X and Facebook. 16754 public posts were collected via Python, with 10000 retained as the net dataset. Posts were classified into 7 discourse categories: *politics, technology, science, business, culture, fun,* and *sports*. Bivariate analyses, including Chi-square tests and Cramer's V (CV), examined associations among platform, discourse category, and diglossic choice, while binary logistic regression with Platform x Discourse Category interactions tested whether these associations varied across platforms. Findings reveal that there are significant associations between discourse category and diglossic choice on X, chi-square(6, *N* = 5000) = 600.35, p < .001, CV = .347, and Facebook, chi-square(6, N = 5000) = 1249.52, p < .001, CV = .500. Across platforms, platform was also associated with diglossic choice, chi-square(1, N = 10000) = 262.16, p < .001, CV = .162. Binary logistic regression further shows higher odds of SA use on X than Facebook in the political reference category (*OR* = 1.31, p = .0028), with significant platform-by-domain interactions…