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research-article2018
NMS0010.1177/1461444818821360new media & societyMohamed
Introduction
Media, identity, and online
communities in a changing
Arab world
new media & society
2019, Vol. 21(5) 1035­–1042
© The Author(s) 2018
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444818821360
DOI: 10.1177/1461444818821360
journals.sagepub.com/home/nms
Eid Mohamed, Aziz Douai and Adel Iskandar
Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar
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.
Keywords
Arab Spring, identity, media, online communities
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
Corresponding author:
Eid Mohamed, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha, Qatar.
Email: adameid@gmail.com
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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
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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 maledominated, 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
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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,
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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 interviewbased 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
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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
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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 forebearers 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.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This special issue was made possible by NPRP grant NPRP9-225-5-024 from the
Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar Foundation), titled “Transcultural Identities: Solidaristic
Action and Contemporary Arab Social Movements.” The grant is led by Dr. Eid Mohamed and is based
at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. The findings achieved herein are solely the responsibility of the
author(s).
References
Fraser N (1990) Rethinking the public sphere: a contribution to the critique of actually existing
democracy. Social Text 25/26: 56–80.
Lynch M (2006) Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, Al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics. New
York: Columbia University Press.
Warner M (2002) Publics and Counterpublics. Cambridge, MA: Zone Books.
Zayani M (2008) Arab media, corporate communication, and public relations: the case of Al
Jazeera. Asian Journal of Communication 18(3): 207–222.
Author biographies
Eid Mohamed (PhD in American Studies from George Washington University) is an assistant
professor of Transnational American Studies and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies at
Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. Mohamed’s work is located at the crossroads of several areas
of inquiry in American and Arab studies, including media studies, cultural anlaytics, and Arab
contemporary public spheres at the interplay of politics, religion, and culture. His recent
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publications include a sole-authored book on American imagery in the Middle East (I.B. Tauris,
2015, and a paperback edition with a new introduction 2017), and a co-edited volume about the
2011 Egyptian uprising and its aftermath (Indiana University Press, 2016).
Aziz Douai (PhD in Mass Communications from Pennsylvania State University) is an associate
professor of Communication and Digital Media Studies at the University of Ontario Institute of
Technology, Canada. He is the author of Arab Media and the Politics of terrorism: Unbecoming
News (Peter-Lang Press, 2019), and co-editor of New media influence on social and political
change in Africa (IGI Global, 2013), and Mediated identities and new journalism in the Arab
World: Mapping the “Arab Spring (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2016).
Adel Iskandar (PhD, University of Kentucky) is an a ssistant professor of Global Communication
at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver/Burnaby, Canada. He is the author, co-author, and editor
of several works including “Egypt In Flux: Essays on an Unfinished Revolution” (AUCP/OUP);
“Al-Jazeera: The Story of the Network that is Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern
Journalism” (Basic Books); “Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation”
(University of California Press); “Mediating the Arab Uprisings” (Tadween Publishing); and
“Media Evolution on the Eve of the Arab Spring” (Palgrave Macmillan).