The Baseera Egyptian Center For Public Opinion Research conducted a survey of Egyptians opinions of Netflix’s controversial ‘Queen Cleopatra‘ documentary, which portrays the titular Egyptian queen as being a dark-skinned African.
The survey aims to identify the percentage of Egyptians who subscribe to Netflix and the extent of their confidence in how factual it is.
According to the results, three percent of Egyptian households are subscribed to the streaming service – estimated at about three-quarters of a million households.
Respondents who indicated that they have a subscription to the platform were asked about their confidence in the information provided by Netflix through its documentaries.
Twenty-one percent stated that they trust it to a great extent, 33 percent said they trust it to some extent, and 34 percent said they do not trust it.
Twelve percent could not specify.
Divided views
Regarding the nomination of an actress of African origin to portray Queen Cleopatra, 24 percent believe that the choice is a falsification of history, 31 percent believe that the series makers have the right to present a different vision, and 45 percent said that they could not decide.
The percentage of those who believe the series falsifies history is 18 percent among those with less than average education, rising sharply to 43 percent among those with a university education.
This stands in contrast to the percentage of those who answered that they cannot determine, which decreases from 57 percent among those with less than average education to 25 percent among those with a university education or higher degrees.
The percentage of those who believe that the makers of the series have the right to present a different vision was 36 percent among youth in the 18-29 age group, compared to about 26 percent among those who have reached 50 years old or above.
Among subscribers of Netflix, the percentage of those who see this choice as falsifying history is 40 percent, compared to 43 percent who believe that the creators of the series have the right to present a different vision.
Seventeen percent answered that they cannot decide.
The survey was conducted using landline and mobile phones on a potential sample of 1,560 citizens in the age group of 18 years old and above, covering all governorates of Egypt.
The interviews took place from May 1-4. The response rate was about 42 percent and the margin of error in the results is less than three percent.
The survey was conducted with self-financing from the Baseera Center.
One of Netflix’s most disliked trailers
The “Cleopatra” documentary trailer has officially become one of Netflix’s most disliked trailers on YouTube, with more than 250,000 dislikes, which forced Netflix to close comments on the trailer, in an attempt to control the accusations brought against it of falsifying history, and preventing audience from expressing their opinions, according to the Mirror newspaper’s website.
