Female Activism and Leadership through Social Media in Egypt during the Arab Spring

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 101-137
Author(s):  
Samar Al-Barghouthi
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Critical Period ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Female Voice ◽  
Egyptian Revolution ◽  
Arab Muslim ◽  
The Arab Spring

This article provides a detailed analysis of the blog of an Egyptian female activist, Nawara Negm, during the critical period of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. The analysis presents the contents of the blog thematically, through identifying strategies and values and in terms of the author’s shifting terminology by undertaking a quantitative and qualitative analysis of Negm’s changing lexicon. The intersection of gender, nationalism, political activism, and Islam make this individual and her blog important examples of new spaces for the female voice in Arab Muslim contexts.

From virtual space to public space: The role of online political activism in protest participation during the Arab Spring

2019 ◽  
Vol 60 (6) ◽  
pp. 409-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harris Hyun-soo Kim ◽  
Chaeyoon Lim
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Hierarchical Linear Modeling ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Media Use ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Virtual Space ◽  
Social Media Use ◽  
Online Social Media ◽  
The Arab Spring

This study examines the relationship between online social media use and protest participation during the Arab Spring, pro-democracy movements that swept across vast parts of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). What role did online communication media play in individual decisions to participate in these high-risk political activities? We address this question by drawing on microdata from the Arab Barometer Wave III (2012–2014), a large cross-national survey of citizens nested in administrative divisions across a dozen Muslim-majority countries. Using hierarchical linear modeling, we investigate the multilevel associations between online activities and the likelihood of getting involved in anti-government protests. Adjusting for individual- and regional-level confounders, as well as country fixed effects, we find that online political activism specifically, rather than Internet and social media use in general, is associated with higher odds of protest involvement during the Arab uprisings. In addition, we find that the positive linkage between individual online activism and protest is weaker in communities with a higher proportion of politically cyberactive residents.

scholarly journals Social Media and Power Relations during the Arab Spring Revolutions with Comparative Focus on Egypt and Tunisia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor R. Genovese
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
Communication Tools ◽  
Egyptian Revolution ◽  
The World ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Mass Protest ◽  
The Arab Spring

The rate and degree of success among the Arab Spring revolutions has varied. While the reasons for this variation is undeniably complicated, one behavior that continues to have a significant effect on the dynamics of these social movements is the use of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. This paper explores the role that these communication tools played in the 2011 Egyptian revolution where the revolution succeeded in overthrowing the Mubarek regime. Compiled from local social media reports, the data has been analyzed and displays a direct correlation between the use of social media and the organization of mass protest. Furthermore, the dissemination of the local’s emotional responses via social media sites allowed for a stronger personal association from the global community. There is enough evidence to show that social media directly assisted with the organization of protests and demonstrations that helped force leaders to either step down or start reforms. Furthermore, social media spread news about these revolutions across the world, educating and humanizing the activists, which in turn helped secure international support for their cause.

scholarly journals Exploring narrative linearity between Twitter and the news: Echoes of the Arab Spring in Brazil

2021 ◽  
pp. 095792652110232
Author(s):  
Helton Levy ◽  
Dan Mercea
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Narrative Theory ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
News Stories ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
Representation Of Time

This article explores the use of narrative theory as an analytical framework to investigate the extent to which popular hashtags and the news can develop into intersecting stories. It juxtaposes the case of hashtag-based reports seen during the Arab Spring to understand the coverage of notorious political episodes in Brazil. Namely, the 2016 impeachment of Dilma Rousseff and the 2018 election of Jair Bolsonaro. Here, narrative linearity emerges as a tool to observe the borrowing of Twitter hashtags in several journalistic pieces. It is contended that the linearity of authorship, narration and representation of time appears as a satisfactory pathway to trace the development of hashtags into popular news stories. Results suggested that hashtags can significantly follow narratives and agendas in journalism but differing from their original social media context.

scholarly journals THE SPRING OF THE NETWORKED NATIONS: SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE ARAB SPRING

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harel Chorev
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
The Political ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
The Arab Spring

This essay argues that social media played an important role in the Arab Spring and contributed to a change in the political culture of some of those countries that have gone through regime-change through 2011-2012. The article further posits that the contribution of social media was mainly instrumental, not causal, and that the main reasons behind the Arab Spring were problems generated by regional, local and global trends, affecting each country differently.  

Fighting Fundamentalism with Pluralism

2020 ◽  
pp. 994-1015
Author(s):  
Madhavi Sunder
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Social Attitudes ◽  
Popular Participation ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Muslim Majority ◽  
Traditional Authorities ◽  
Coordination Tool ◽  
The Arab Spring

What role can social media play in helping to bring forth social revolutions, inciting change not in government or laws but in social attitudes and real world behaviors? Social change relates not only to regime change but to change in people’s way of thinking. In this chapter, I argue that social media during the Arab Spring was used as more than a mere coordination tool promoting efficient street demonstrations. Bloggers and Facebook users employed these technologies in many of the same ways that the printing press was employed during the Enlightenment period—to upend traditional authorities, to engender popular participation in debates over governance and values, and to foster care and empathy for fellow citizens. Contrary to popular perception, the Arab Spring demonstrates how today’s technological tools can go the next mile and transform not just politics but societies themselves. In the particular context of religious democracies, through examples, the chapter explores how nonstate actors are helping to influence constitutionalism and other lawmaking in Muslim majority states by using technologies to elaborate plural normative and legal options, thus undermining fundamentalist stranglehold on social and legal authority.

Paradox of Globalization: New Arab Publics? New Social Contract?

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 114-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leila DeVriese
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Arab Spring

AbstractBecause social media is playing an irrefutable role in the Arab Spring uprisings the central question in this article is to what extent Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in general, and social media in specific, are contributing to the democratization of the public sphere and shifting the monopoly on agenda setting in the Arab Gulf, particularly in the case of Bahrain? How will these technologies continue to shape contentious politics in the Middle East and will their utility for democratizing and expanding the public sphere persist in the aftermath of the Arab Spring? Or will the increasing liberalization of media and freedom of expression that had preceded the Arab Spring experience a repressive backlash as authoritarian states attempt to clamp down on social and traditional media—or even harness them for their own purposes as seen by Facebook intimidation campaigns against activists in Bahrain last Spring. Finally—using the lens of social movement theory—what repertoires of contention and political opportunity structures will pro-democracy activists use to keep their campaigns alive? Activists in the Gulf have not only incorporated the ICTs into their repertoire, but have also changed substantially what counts as activism, what counts as community, collective identity, democratic space, public sphere, and political strategy. Ironically this new technology has succeeded in reviving and expanding the practice of discursive dialog that had once characterized traditional tribal politics in the Arabian Peninsula.

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