RIYADH — Researchers at King Abdul-Aziz University and Monash University (Australia) have conducted a study on how camels are referenced in the English-language press in three countries: Saudi Arabia, Australia, and China. The study, led by A/Prof Louisa Willoughby, Dr. Zhichang Xu, and Dr.
Lulu Alfurayh, explored all references to camels in eight major English-language publications throughout 2023. They found that camels were mentioned much more often in Saudi Arabia than in the Australian or Chinese press, with 233 articles in Saudi Arabia compared to 56 in China and 117 in Australia. In Saudi Arabia, camel-related news is dominated by camel races and camel beauty pageants, neither of which are reported in the Chinese or Australian press.
In both China and Australia, camels are frequently mentioned in terms of tourist activities – particularly camel rides – and in terms of camel foodstuffs such as milk and meat. In the Australian press, these are often discussed in highly exotic terms, suggesting that Australian tourists have an emerging interest in camel-based tourist activities as an escape from the grind of everyday life. In China, camels are strongly associated with the Silk Road and its modern incarnation, the Belt and Road initiative, some components of which are also referred to as the “steel camel fleet.
” Across all three countries, camel-colored items occur in fashion reporting, and the corpus bears witness to the enduring popularity of the camel hair coa.