Arab Spring

Slamming the “Continuing” Moroccan Revolution: Noussayba Lahlou’s Bittersweet Verses

30 Jun 2020

Slamming the “Continuing” Moroccan Revolution: Noussayba Lahlou’s Bittersweet Verses
Maha Tazi Article In this article, I am interested in looking at women‘s current mobilization techniques in Post-Arab Spring North Africa. To do so, I draw from the existing literature on the case of Egypt which identifies women’s contemporary resistance in creative disobedience patterns – that is women’s art activism that advocates, concomitantly, for social justice and gender equality. In my attempt to fill an existing gap in…

Article

The Rise of Fourth-Wave Feminism in the Arab region? Cyberfeminism and Women’s Activism at the Crossroads of the Arab Spring

30 Jun 2020

The Rise of Fourth-Wave Feminism in the Arab region? Cyberfeminism and Women’s Activism at the Crossroads of the Arab Spring
Maha Tazi, Kenza Oumlil Article This article explores the emergence of fourth-wave feminism in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region in the context of the Arab Spring, which was a series of uprisings that followed the self-immolation of Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi in December 2010 and spread through several countries in the MENA region. The uprisings protested authoritarian regimes and called for democracy, freedom, and social justice. Fourth-wave feminism finds…

Article

Techies on the Ground: Revisiting Egypt 2011

20 Dec 2019

Techies on the Ground: Revisiting Egypt 2011
Laila Shereen Sakr Article This article studies social media and popular social movements in the early 21st century in the Middle East and North Africa, with a focus on Egypt. Rather than ethnography or political theory exclusively, I employ a data analytics of analyzing tweets, posts, and blogs to describe the political culture of social media. And then I perform the results under the guise of the Arabic-speaking cyborg…

Article

Behind the Screen: the Syrian Virtual Resistance

10 Nov 2017

Behind the Screen: the Syrian Virtual Resistance
Billie Jeanne Brownlee Article Six years have gone by since the political upheaval that swept through many Middle East and North African (MENA) countries begun. Syria was caught in the grip of this revolutionary moment, one that drove the country from a peaceful popular mobilisation to a deadly fratricide civil war with no apparent way out. This paper provides an alternative approach to the study of the root causes…

Article

Middle Eastern Women’s ‘Glocal’: Journeying between the Online and Public Spheres

10 May 2017

Middle Eastern Women’s ‘Glocal’: Journeying between the Online and Public Spheres
Dina Hosni Article Despite the fact that the Arab Spring did not necessarily materialize with the political effects anticipated by some of its activists, it has brought into the spotlight the significance of the role of women in direct connection to the online space. In this respect, the article addresses the online world as Middle Eastern women subcultural capital in their traversal to the public sphere, which is…

Article

Five Questions About Arab Women’s Activism Five Years After the ‘Arab Spring’

10 May 2016

Five Questions About Arab Women’s Activism Five Years After the ‘Arab Spring’
Sahar Khamis Comment The Arab world witnessed unprecedented waves of revolt in 2011, which have taken the whole world by surprise, and led to many unexpected outcomes and varying results. Five years after this wave of revolt, it becomes necessary to examine its wide array of effects, especially on certain groups who played a significant role in the midst of these uprisings, such as youth and women. This…

Comment

A Safe Refuge? Minorities and the State in Iranian Cyberspace

10 Nov 2015

A Safe Refuge? Minorities and the State in Iranian Cyberspace
James Marchant, Bronwen Robertson Editorial The Iranian state has consistently restricted spaces in open society for minorities to express their identities, especially where such identities are construed as representing a threat to the religious, political and sexual orthodoxies promulgated by the clerical establishment. As a result, many members of assorted Iranian minority groups have taken to cyberspace to build communities, articulate self- and group-identities, organise to overcome discriminatory practices, and…

Editorial

A Page and Its Politics: Situating Kullinā Khālid SaÊżÄ«d in Egypt’s Ideological Landscape at the Time of Revolution

10 Nov 2015

A Page and Its Politics: Situating Kullinā Khālid SaÊżÄ«d in Egypt’s Ideological Landscape at the Time of Revolution
Rasha Abdulla, Thomas Poell, Bernhard Rieder, Robbert Woltering, Liesbeth Zack Article In discussions concerning the importance of social media in the 25January revolution, a central role is given to the “Kullinā Khālid SaÊżÄ«d“ [We’re all Khaled Said] Facebook page. Using an advanced data collection and extraction application called Netvizz, a research team consisting of Arabists and Media studies specialists has collected and analysed all of the posts and comments exchanged through the page. This data set…

Article

Violence and Visibility in Contemporary Syria: An Ethnography of the “Expanded Places”

10 May 2015

Violence and Visibility in Contemporary Syria: An Ethnography of the “Expanded Places”
Donatella Della Ratta Article This article reflects on the relationship between visibility and violence as redefined by the combined action of warfare and networked communication technologies. Drawing on the author's own ethnography conducted in Syria in 2010, and on anonymous YouTube videos, it introduces the concept of “expanded places” to look at sites that have been physically annihilated; yet, at the same time, they have been re-animated through multiple…

Article

Mobile Revolution: Toward a History of Technology, Telephony and Political Activism in Egypt

10 Nov 2014

Mobile Revolution: Toward a History of Technology, Telephony and Political Activism in Egypt
Kira C. Allmann Article This article examines the use of everyday mobile technologies, and mobile telephony in particular, in political activism and protest during the 2011 Egyptian uprisings and throughout its continuing aftermath. The Arab revolutions have their own, now familiar, nomenclature, derived from the semantics of revolution and the digital age. Much of the language used to describe and analyze events in the Middle East has emphasized the…

Article

Arab Women’s Changing Identities, Activisms and Resistances in a Changing Region

10 May 2014

Arab Women’s Changing Identities, Activisms and Resistances in a Changing Region
Sahar Khamis Editorial The wave of uprisings which swept the Arab world in 2011 did not just instigate a "political awakening" that has shaken the power structures in a number of Arab countries and resulted in dictators fleeing their countries, resigning from office, or facing brutal death. Rather, it also instigated a "social awakening" that has shaken Arab societies' commonly held assumptions about gender roles and women's ability…

Editorial

Gendering the February 20th Movement: Moroccan Women Redefining: Boundaries, Identities and Resistances

10 May 2014

Gendering the February 20th Movement: Moroccan Women Redefining: Boundaries, Identities and Resistances
Houda Abadi Article The Arab Spring opened up social and political spaces for women to make demands for gender quality, political and social reform, human rights, and equality. It has produced, changed and reinvigorated contestations around space, citizenship, femininity, religion, and sense of belonging, as women played an increasingly significant role in the revolutionary processes and developments in the region. This article will analyze the online and offline…

Article

Sowing the Seeds of The Message: Islamist Women Activists Before, During, and After the Egyptian Revolution

10 May 2014

Sowing the Seeds of The Message: Islamist Women Activists Before, During, and After the Egyptian Revolution
Mona Abdel-Fadil Article This article focuses on the activities and experiences of a group of Islamist women activists, socialized within the ranks of Islam Online Arabic (IOL). These activists engaged in a range of significant social, political, and media practices, before, during and after the ousting of Mubarak; as individuals, as journalists, as counsellors, as agenda setters and creators of media campaigns. Drawing on longitudinal and ethnographic research,…

Article

Women and Media: Libyan Female Journalists from Gaddafi Media to Post- revolution: Case Study

10 May 2014

Women and Media: Libyan Female Journalists from Gaddafi Media to Post- revolution: Case Study
Fatima El Issawi Article This article examines the representation of women in Libyan national traditional media before, during and after the February 2011 revolution that led to the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime. What roles did female journalists assume within national traditional newsrooms and how did these roles evolve from activism in the defense of women’s causes and the official revolutionary ideals of the former regime to spreading the…

Article

Social Media As an Opportunity to Bahraini Women

10 May 2014

Social Media As an Opportunity to Bahraini Women
Nada Alwadi Comment Since the uprising in February 2011 the Bahraini female activists but also ordinary Bahraini women have emerged as new leaders in the society, and this due to the increasing role of social media. Their ideas, voices and activities have been receiving stronger support from within their - often conservative - communities. It is now more accepted by the public that the democratic transition cannot be…

Comment

Orchestrating Hip-hop Culture Online: Within and Beyond the Middle East

10 Nov 2013

Orchestrating Hip-hop Culture Online: Within and Beyond the Middle East
Anders Ackfeldt Editorial This current issue of CyberOrient brings together academics active at Scandinavian universities focusing on hip-hop from different aspects and fields. From different perspectives the authors seek to make sense of the impact, functions and dynamics of Middle Eastern and/or Islamic representations in hip-hop music online, both within and beyond the Middle East.

Editorial

Global Story

10 Nov 2013

Global Story
Mark LeVine Comment Hiphop has long been described as a quintessentially globalized music. Similarly, it has been understood as a unique window into the lives', fears and dreams of young people across the Arab and larger Muslim worlds for most of the post-September 11 era. Since young Tunisians revolted against long time dictator Zine El Abidin Ben Ali to the music of El General (or so the story…

Comment

Online and Offline Continuities, Community and Agency on the Internet

10 May 2013

Online and Offline Continuities, Community and Agency on the Internet
Jon W. Anderson Article How the Internet spawns community and gets its features into offline life is a recurring problem met in searches for “impacts” of its successive iterations in the Middle East and arises particularly in assessing equivocal findings most recently about social media in the Arab Spring uprisings. But the problem is more methodological than ontological: it lies in viewing the Internet through a media lens on…

Article

Review: Arabités numériques. Le printemps du Web arabe

10 May 2013

Review: Arabités numériques. Le printemps du Web arabe
LuboĆĄ Kropáček Book Review The book under review examines the phenomenon of the Arab Spring in greater depth, which step by step takes into consideration all relevant political, social, cultural and technical aspects of the complex nature of the Arab e-revolutions. They were revolutions (the term is favoured by the Arabs) without leaders, their role being played by modern media. The ideas of anti-establishment protest were conceived and discussed…

Book Review

Cyberactivists Paving the Way for the Arab Spring: Voices from Egypt, Tunisia and Libya

10 Nov 2012

Cyberactivists Paving the Way for the Arab Spring: Voices from Egypt, Tunisia and Libya
Sahar Khamis, Mohammed El-Nawawy Article The wave of Arab revolutions and uprisings that has been shaking all corners of the Arab Middle East since 2011 and that has come to be known as the Arab Spring owed a major portion of its success to online activism. The spark that ignited these revolutions in the offline world was ignited by the Arab cyberactivists’ well-coordinated campaigns, calling for the toppling of corrupt…

Article

Tweeting like a Pigeon: The Internet in the Arab Revolutions

10 Nov 2012

Tweeting like a Pigeon: The Internet in the Arab Revolutions
Miriyam Aouragh Comment The extraordinary uprisings since December 2010 represented the long-prepared transformation from fatalism to people power. The online–offline dialectic allowed the revolution to be mediated with global ramifications - from Wisconsin to Barcelona to Athens. This techno-social nexus forms a crucial element of the overall push and pull factors and this contribution reassess the "Net Worth" from a critical perspective. The fetishizing flora and fauna labels…

Comment

The Net Worth of the Arab Spring

10 May 2012

The Net Worth of the Arab Spring
Ines Braune Editorial When I was asked to be the guest editor of the current issue of CyberOrient, I realized this is a welcome opportunity to arrange and re-sort some aspects, points, and arguments about the role of the media during the Arab Spring. In the course of the events late in 2010 and early in 2011, I felt enthusiastic and overwhelmed - not primarily as a scholar…

Editorial

Al Jazeera’s Framing of Social Media During the Arab Spring

10 May 2012

Al Jazeera’s Framing of Social Media During the Arab Spring
Heidi A. Campbell, Diana Hawk Article This study investigates how Al Jazeera framed social media in relation to the revolutions and protests of the “Arab Spring” within its broadcast media coverage. A content analysis of Arabic language broadcasts appearing from January 25th through February 18th 2011, covering the protests in Tahrir Square, was conducted using the Broadcast Monitoring System (BMS) and Arab Spring Archive. Through this analysis we see a number…

Article

Remixing the Spring!: Connective leadership and read-write practices in the 2011 Arab uprisings

10 May 2012

Remixing the Spring!: Connective leadership and read-write practices in the 2011 Arab uprisings
Donatella Della Ratta, Augusto Valeriani Article This article discusses the connections between the unfolding of the 2011 Arab uprisings and the “culture of the net”. Being far from overestimating the role that Internet has played in the uprisings, we propose to look at it not as an ensemble of tools, applications and technologies; but as a specific set of values, behaviors, skills and strategies that define the cultural dimension of the…

Article

Beyond the Soapbox: Facebook and the Public Sphere in Egypt

10 May 2012

Beyond the Soapbox: Facebook and the Public Sphere in Egypt
Anton Root Article The question of the internet as a forum for political debate is continuously contested. My research grows out of such scholarship but focuses specifically on Facebook as a virtual public sphere in Egypt. Based on an analysis of a note posted by Wael Ghonim during the January 25 uprising on the Facebook group ‘We are all Khaled Said,’ I discuss the structural and technological benefits…

Article

Egyptian uprising: Redefining Egyptian political community and reclaiming the public space

10 May 2012

Egyptian uprising: Redefining Egyptian political community and reclaiming the public space
Anup Kumar, Mervat Youssef Comment The purpose of this paper is to understand and explain the emergence of a public sphere and the articulation of a new Egyptian identity. We argue that the Egyptian revolution, catalyzed by the social media, was possible because the young men and women succeeded in reclaiming the public space from the apparatuses of the post-colonial state. There was a contest between the protesters and the…

Comment

Review: The Arab Revolution: The Lessons from the Democratic Uprising

10 May 2012

Review: The Arab Revolution: The Lessons from the Democratic Uprising
Marek Cejka Book Review Filiu's book The Arab Revolution: The Lessons from the Democratic Uprising provides an overview of the context of the indirect circumstances of the Arab Spring and also takes into account the related sociological and psychological factors, which makes the book more interdisciplinary. It focuses on events in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya but also covers other parts of the MENA region.

Book Review