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date: 07 February 2025

(Re)Visiting the Potentials and Limitations of New Media as Tools for Resistance Among Arab Diasporaslocked

(Re)Visiting the Potentials and Limitations of New Media as Tools for Resistance Among Arab Diasporaslocked

  • Sahar KhamisSahar KhamisDepartment of Communication, University of Maryland at College Park

Summary

When the Arab Spring uprisings erupted in 2011, the high hopes for democratization and reform were accompanied by an equally high degree of confidence in the liberating potentials of new media. These new media, especially social media, were perceived as viable alternatives to state-controlled mainstream media, excellent tools for resisting autocratic regimes, and unmatched platforms for amplifying marginalized voices.

However, over a decade later, just like the Arab Spring uprisings took unexpected detours, resulting in far-from-ideal outcomes in the so-called post-Arab Spring countries, there were equally disheartening reversals in the role of social media from tools for liberation in the hands of freedom fighters to tools for repression in the hands of autocratic regimes. This raised many questions over the validity and effectiveness of new media and their democratizing potentials, thus necessitating a careful scrutiny and reassessment of their shifting roles.

This qualitative study relied on in-person and virtual in-depth interviews with ten activists, journalists, and artists living in the diaspora from three Arab countries—Egypt, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia—to investigate the deployment of new tools of communication by Arab diasporic communities to resist their autocratic regimes at home. The study pays special attention to the various potentials and limitations of this complex phenomenon and its varied implications.

Providing examples from these three Arab resistance communities in the diaspora, this article illustrates the similarities and differences, and the overlaps and divergences, in their deployment of social media tools in the domains of political and social activism and resistance.

It examines how diasporic Arab communities contributed to the struggles against their dictatorial regimes through deploying new communication technologies to disrupt, expose, and resist authoritarianisms back home. It also explains why, and how, some of these efforts and techniques have been more successful than others in achieving these goals.

Moreover, through the voices and experiences of these Arab diasporic dissidents, the potentials, limitations, and future prospects of “cyberactivism” will be explored.

Subjects

  • Communication and Technology
  • Communication and Social Change
  • International/Global Communication

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