Media,identity,and online communities in a changing Arab world

Abstract

Our Special Issue captures the interplay of media, politics, religion, and culture in shaping Arabs’ search for more stable governing models at crossroads of global, regional, and national challenges through systematic and integrated analyses of evolving and contested Arab visual and performing arts, including media (traditional and alternative), in revolutionary and unstable public spheres. This special issue examines the role of new media in the construction of online communities in the Arab world. It contributes to the understanding of how user-generated content empowers these new publics and the novel communities established by user comments on social media and news websites. Specifically, it explores these online communities and their perceptions of the role of user-generated content to contribute to politics, and potentially engage other citizens in the public debate.

An estimated 366 million Arabs live in 22 countries in the Arab world, extending from North Africa to Western Asia. These countries share a common language and cultural heritage and yet differ in many significant ways. They may be Muslims, Christians, Jews, agnostic, or atheists. They are rich, poor, and middle class. They may be socialist, nationalist, Islamist, or apolitical. As with all societies, dominant forces of class, gender, and racialized identities divide Arabs, but they still share a common cultural heritage and historical destiny. They used to say Arabs write their books in Egypt, print them in Lebanon, and read them in Iraq, and now it has been revealed they all take to the street in the Maghreb. How do media and new information communication technologies (ICTs) make sense of the politics of instability in Arab Spring countries? How can we assess the construction of gender and national identities in post–Arab Spring era? The theoretical reconfiguration of Arab identities, in both singular and plural terms, assumes particularly acute sensibilities at traumatic moments of collective experiences such as we have been witnessing since 2011. As Arabs across all such divides face an uncertain future, they have inherited an expansive body of shared cultures. Our Special Issue collections offer a nuanced and multi-faceted response to such disparate questions by proposing an interdisciplinary reading of the role of media and new media in this sociocultural formations at the center of political transformations in the Arab world.

Our Special Issue captures the interplay of media, politics, religion, and culture in shaping Arabs’ search for more stable governing models at crossroads of global, regional, and national challenges through systematic and integrated analyses of evolving and contested Arab visual and performing arts, including media (traditional and alternative), in revolutionary and unstable public spheres. This special issue examines the role of new media in the construction of online communities in the Arab world. It contributes to the understanding of how user-generated content empowers these new publics and the novel communities established by user comments on social media and news websites. Specifically, it explores these online communities and their perceptions of the role of user-generated content to contribute to politics, and potentially engage other citizens in the public debate. For these reasons, this Special Issue seeks to answer the following questions: What characterizes these online users’ communities? What are their motivations? How do they perceive the role of news websites’ commenting functions in promoting political engagement? How do new media and other artistic forms of expression inform and echo currents of transformation in the Arab world? Moreover, how do such forms theorize “transcultural identity” as a form of citizen engagement at the center of transformation politics in the Arab world? This Special Issue presents a unique attempt to investigate these forms of cultural productions as new modes of knowledge shed light on the nature of social movements with the aim of expanding the critical reach of the disciplinary methods of political discourse and social theory. The contributions in this Special Issue seek to articulate systemically the ways in which the Arab scene can contribute to the understanding of the rise of new social movements worldwide by exploring the methodological gaps in dominant Western discourses and theories. As theorists such as Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, Jacques Rancière, and Slavoj Žižek have confirmed, such methodological gaps became very clear in the failure to understand the irreducible heterogeneity of the crowds, the subsequent transformations in the public sphere, and the modes of social mobilization.

While the Special Issue casts a comparative look at the major hubs of Arab revolutionary momentums in specific Arab countries—from Tunisia to Egypt and Yemen, in addition to Lebanon, and the Gulf—it highlights the role of media research in contributing to the increasing demand for a richer, deeper, and more comparative understanding of Arab states and societies. The clusters of countries the Special Issue examines are selected predicated on particular phenomena each country has thematically entailed. They are not selected because of any geographical import but as nodes of research that will allow us methodologically to go beyond national boundaries, while helping understand the specificity of local developments geared toward an unprecedented theoretical inroad to comparative historical sociology of nations.

The Special Issue provides a timely assessment of the shifting dynamics in the region. Our collection, therefore, seeks to advance scholarly research, intellectual conversation, and knowledge dissemination related to the impact of identity politics (e.g. tribal, sectarian, Islamist) in undermining local regimes and drawing people to adopt transnational religious/social means of belonging, and instituting a critical dimension of the “transcultural.” The framework makes sense of these new formations and their role in delivering meaningful social, cultural, and political support to power actors who lost faith in nationalism as a Western construct. This Special Issue examines new modes of media and new media expressions that articulate new social realities. This is in addition to examining the emergence of new dramaturgic techniques in the context of street performances and arts as well as new online activism and music performances. The range of examined phenomena includes the role of new media in the construction of an online Arab public sphere. So, in this sense, it attempts to understand how user-generated content empowers this new public and the new communities established by user comments on news websites. Specifically, it researches the commenting users’ perceptions of the role of these user-generated content when it comes to politics and how they are engaged in the public debate.

The significance of our Special Issue lies in its contribution to the aforementioned scholarly conversations in three ways. First, it adopts a critical standpoint with respect to the term “Arab Spring,” recognizing its multiple constructions and interpretations, which invoke complex and yet fraught connotations tied to geographical, historical, and political realities and perspectives. The contributions therefore zoom in on localized revolutionary dynamics and modes of collective action. Second, the focus on the carefully selected case studies, that is, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Lebanon, or the Gulf, conceived not as geographic units but as thematic clusters, adds depth to analysis of Arab revolutionary politics by revealing their multi-layered complexities and cultural denominators that operate fluidly across the Arab world. Third, the Special Issue presents a rigorous theoretical intervention based on thick descriptions and critical intimacy with primary sources, based on a methodological case study of specific nations on a transnational public sphere for the growing population of researchers on and in the region.

One more dimension for this Special Issue is re-visiting the question of the Arab public sphere and how online mediated public debates are facilitating Arabs’ re-engagement with politics. One important way of conceptualizing user-generated comments that online Arab media facilitate is to examine their linkages to the construction and maintenance of a new online public sphere. Scholars concur that user-generated comments promote a vibrant public sphere although question of how inclusive and public these deliberative spaces are has been a subject of frequent critique elsewhere. Lines of criticism such as these focused on Habermas’s original public sphere concept as being male-dominated, emphatically rational, and “western-centered” (see Fraser, 1990; Warner, 2002). Fraser and others have convincingly argued that the public sphere is made up of discrete units, instead of Habermas’s ideologically coherent construct. In liberal democracies, argues Fraser, the “public sphere” can include previously marginalized social groups who form “subaltern-counter publics” (Fraser, 1990). Studies of the Arab public sphere have sought to address the theoretical and methodological implications of the Habermasian concept, especially in its later developments as represented in The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere (2010) and other works. For instance, Zayani (2008) stresses the “contentious” application of the concept in a non-European context, pointing to “social particularity” as an impediment. Lynch (2006) usefully circumvents the traditional debate and emphasizes the rise of “public argument” as part of “the new Arab public.”

Simply put, few prior works have yet to explore the socio-political formations of modern Arab citizens. This Special Issue fills a niche because it is the first attempt to understand the relationship between the cultural products and the social/political change movements in the Arab world crowned with Tunisia’s “Jasmine Revolution,” Egypt’s “Lotus Revolution,” Libya’s Revolution, and other movements for democracy in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Algeria. Tunisia’s uprising invigorated frustrated people around the region. Few works have begun to understand how cultural texts like music, media, new media, and online activism function in the process of social change. This Special Issue fills this gap by interrogating the theories of social change in media theory, integrating the cultural studies literature, and contributing to the prevailing theoretical trends in Arab studies. Works analyzing the role of culture in shaping and echoing politics are limited. Viola Shafik’s Arab Cinema (1998), Andrew Hammond’s Popular Culture in the Arab World (2007), and Lina Khatib’s Image Politics in the Middle East (2013) are examples of works that advance textual analyses of the relationship between Arab culture and politics. They do not, however, offer a comprehensive reading of transformation in the way this Special Issue intends to deliver, that is, an intersectional textual reading of new media, media, and culture in light of the multi-layeredness of Arab socio-politics.

This Special Issue corresponds to the intense process of “change” that has swept the region in the past few years, and produced conditions for political uncertainty. Ever since the youth embrace of the public arena demanding for “regime change” (2011) in a fervor once referred to as the “Arab Spring,” a sense of polarization has intensified in countries like Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, and Yemen around certain issues of local, regional, and global relevance. Echoes of this polarization reverberated around the politics of Islam with its various sectarian and tribal articulations. The resurgence of counter-revolutionary forces further complicated the public search for more stable and inclusive governing models. At the core of these dynamic interchanges among the various power players in the aforementioned countries is the role played by culture and media in circulating political rhetoric to advance clashing geo-political encounters. The Special Issue seeks to address this role and capture the complexity of communication tools utilized to facilitate, if not hinder, political conversations.

The accelerating changes in the Arab media landscape over the last few decades have given Arab people the opportunity to critically evaluate and assess literature, culture, media, and political rhetoric that they are faced with, and will be faced with as they live out their daily lives. Moreover, alternative media paved the way to express and disseminate political opinions. Moreover, young people got the tools to critically evaluate what the media is telling them, selling them, and pushing them to believe. Traditional media is no longer the only player on political and social transformations in the Arab world. The new Arab alternative media has not received much attention from Arab researchers, despite its critical importance in creating a new period where new media can be used to facilitate a transition to democracy in the Arab region.

We define media in its broadest sense to include traditional and new media outlets as well as local cultural productions. The revolutionary wave of the “Arab Spring” unfolded in real time on print, televisual, and electronic media; thereby, leading to live global interaction with the protestors. Commentary about the impact of transnational social media technologies like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube proclaimed the rise of a new generation capable of transgressing state controlled media. Our Special Issue reflects on the emancipatory role of such media alongside other traditional means of communication that still have strong impact in mobilizing the public. This includes mosques and social forums. Equally important, there remains a need to explore the impact of such cultural productions as graffiti messages, poetry, drama series, films, music, and caricature in mediating political change.

For a more focused analysis, our Special Issue pays particular attention to the multiple constructions and interpretations of the term “Arab Spring,” which invoke complex and fraught connotations tied to geographical, historical, and political realities and perspectives. Our focus on the carefully selected case studies adds depth to analysis of Arab transformation politics by revealing the multi-layered complexities of Arab Spring countries while sustaining a contextualized reading of sociocultural denominators that operate fluidly across the Arab world. Thus, the Special Issue offers a thorough study of the complexity of media outlets in circulating the revolutionary sentiment of citizen activism and engagement in the Arab world.

The Special Issues addresses two major and inter-related issues with regard to new media and the politics of social change in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings: online activism and authoritarian controls, privacy and surveillance, and cultural and identity politics. In their article, Evronia Azer, G. Harindranath, and Yingqin Zheng examine social media and the leadership structure of social movements in the context of the “Arab Spring.” They interrogate the premise of “leaderless” and “self-organized” social movements that new communication technologies are claimed to facilitate. Their interview-based findings underscore the tremendous organizational effort Egyptian human rights groups make to mobilize and to challenge state oppression. These advocacy efforts are made possible through re-imagined, complex new forms of leadership they describe as “connective leadership,” one that is both “decentred” and “collectively performed.”

The flow of information in the Arab infoscape continues to be restricted. Saifuddin Ahmed and Jaeho Cho’s article on Internet news use and protest participation is an ambitious attempt to demonstrate statistical correlation between consumption of news through social media and political mobilization. By using data from an extensive multi-country study of Arab youth sentiments, the authors look at specific metrics of Internet news use and political participation in protests since the Arab uprisings of 2010–2011. The study also examines the role that press freedoms in each of the 11 Arab countries contribute to such action. The hypotheses and research questions range from relationships between socioeconomic status and protests to the extent to which press freedoms in each country affect the likelihood of protest participation. Ahmed and Cho’s findings showed the likelihood to participate in protests increases among higher socioeconomic status communities particularly those who consume Internet news. The introduction of press freedom as a variable in the study illustrates the importance of national context in determining the effect of restrictions on reducing the propensity for protest participation. This article contributes to the wider (and long-standing) debate around the Internet as a mobilizer versus reinforcer in motivating individuals and collectives to participate in political protest.

Looking beyond Western-centric interpretations of online user privacy and social media users’ priorities, Justin Martin, S. Shageaa Naqvi, and Klaus Schoenbach investigate citizens’ perceptions about internet surveillance and privacy in the “post-Arab Spring” context. Their article examines demographic and cultural predictors of concern about online surveillance. The researchers present data from a five Arab country survey indicating that Arab nationals fret more about corporate control and surveillance than government surveillance, in contrast to (Western) expats living in the Gulf who were more worried about government surveillance. Interestingly, greater level of digital engagement and Internet use—for example, number of Facebook friends, social media platforms/accounts used, online gaming, and news consumption, among other indicators—did not lead to greater concerns about online surveillance and privacy. Their research challenges commonly held Western stereotypes about authoritarianism, surveillance, and privacy in the Arab world.

The transnational dimensions of privacy among Arab diasporic communities raise important questions about evolving identities and their increased fluidity. Norah Abokhodair and Adam Hodges’ contribution in this issue is a compelling article on transnational social media privacy among young Saudis. They propose a “rubber band” model to illustrate the push–pull and elastic nature of transnational privacy dynamics facing Saudi youth who traverse different sociocultural locales each with their own normative value-laden particularities. Since they have to negotiate these differing spaces, Saudi youth regularly stretch the norms and values in such a way so as to accommodate expectations and modalities in both societies—Saudi and their diasporic locales. By amalgamating interviews and ethnographic methods in their examination of practice of online privacy, the authors spoke to young Saudis at various stages of their travels and residence between Saudi Arabia and the United States. Their findings showcase the extent to which privacy is dynamic and adaptive. It demonstrates fluid and contoured identities that are in flux as interlocutors move between contrasting cultural enclaves. Abokhodair and Hodges help move the research on transnational privacy beyond the supposition that cultural proclivities are static and fixed, but rather recognizes their malleability.

The blurring boundaries of cultural and identity formations require closer attention from scholars looking at social media and youth cultures of the MENA region. Mohamed Ben Moussa’s investigation contributes to this area of study by exploring discursive dimensions of identity construction online of Moroccan youth particularly when it comes to the production and circulation of rap videos. Multimodal discourse analysis of textual, visual, and reception modes of Moroccan rap addresses the following question: To what extent does Moroccan rap contribute to the production of a progressive and alternative social youth movement that challenges dominant cultural and political power relations? With Morocco having one of the highest youth Internet penetration numbers in the Middle East and North Africa, and the exponential popularity of rap among youth inside the country and in the diaspora, the topic of this study couldn’t be more timely and poignant. With a small but vibrant protest movement in Morocco, albeit less successful at creating genuine threats for the regime, there is substantial disenchantment and disillusionment among youth in the country. The rappers whose videos are analyzed range from some of the fore-bearers of the genre in Morocco to more contemporary musicians. The author goes beyond typical studies by not reducing his study to the discourse and style of rap video production to include an analysis of viewer comments on each of the songs. While the genre of rap itself is an outlet for emotions and perspectives that are at their core a critique of the status quo which disadvantages youth in Morocco, it is clear from the discourse of the songs, videos, and audience responses that limitations and restrictions continue to define these products particularly as identity issues rise to the fore.

The Special Issue concludes with a fascinating empirical examination of social media’s contribution to the formation of Arab counterpublics. In “#EndMaleGuardianship: women’s rights, social media and the Arab public sphere,” Einar Thorsen and Chindu Sreedharan investigate the gendered politics of the post–Arab Spring landscape and examine the Saudi women’s rights campaign to end male guardianship. They closely analyze thousands of Tweets with #EndMaleGuardianship hashtag to understand the communicative dynamics between women and men in these online communities and alternative public spaces. Their study demonstrates that online platforms empowered Saudi women and offered safe spaces to challenge the pre-existing gender segregation in Saudi society. Their research raises intriguing questions about the development of “counter-public spheres” in these “closed” societies.