Exploring the Semiotic Role of Audience Empathy in Recognizing Emotions in Levantine-Arabic Vocal Media Content رسالة ماجستير

Abstract

This thesis examines the vocal media reception from an interdisciplinary perspective, which focus on the semiotic role of empathy in recognizing emotions from Levantine Arabic vocal media content. the study was done by analyzing how perceived vocal cues mediate the listener’s interpretive process in order to interpret the speaker emotions, the study frames empathy not only as a psychological trait but also as a semiotic lens that shapes the micro-level of audience reception. The study conducted in Palestine during the spring semester of 2025, the researcher employed a descriptive, mixed-method with a cross-sectional design. The sample in this study included 384 participants of Palestinians universities students aged 18–45, recruited online. The data were collected through a digital questionnaire incorporating authentic audio clips from the Nafs podcast from YouTube (which published on February 2023–June 2024). Research instruments combined the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), an emotion recognition task, and open-ended questions, which validated through expert review and statistical testing. The study findings highlight that listeners embrace multiple paralinguistic cues in a probabilistic and interpretative manner influenced by individual traits and socio-cultural familiarity, and that higher empathy levels especially the two empathy scales of IRI, empathic concern and perspective-taking are significantly enhance recognition accuracy for the listener. Gender-based differences were also observed, and found that women participants outperforming men in voice emotion recognition process. This study contributes a novel theoretical framework for media studies scholars to examining audience reception of vocal media content at the micro level, by combining insights from semiotics, psychology, and communication studies. furthermore, this study underscores the need for culturally grounded Arabic emotion datasets and the integration of reception-focused perspectives into AI models and affective computing. More broadly, the research advances the interdisciplinary study of media reception by emphasizing how empathy mediates audience interpretation in vocal communication contexts.