Tag Archives: Internet

03Sep/21

The Egyptian TikTok Girls

Beehive: Middle East Social Media

In August issue of Beehive, Nir Boms analyses the Egypt’s recent restrictive policy on social media and its impact on young bloggers.


Campaign to release Mawada al-Adham, from facebook
Campaign to release Mawada al-Adham. From facebook, 3 August 2020.

Amidst a new wave of authoritarianism and repression in Egypt, the Internet remains one of the only platforms of alternative expression, although perhaps, not for long.

Aside from Covid-19, the water crisis of the Rival Nile Dam, and the ongoing economic challenge, Egyptian news also dealt with the visible arrest of two young “TikTok stars.” Haneen Hossam, aged 20, was sentenced in absentia by a Cairo court to ten years in prison while Mawada al-Adham, aged 23, who appeared before the court, was sentenced to six.[1]


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23Jul/18

The Internet Hate Paradox

 

 

 

The advent of the internet was groundbreaking, allowing half the planet—from students to scientists—access to an unparalleled amount of information and resources acquired throughout the history of time. It has become an integral part of our lives, revolutionizing trade, finance, shopping, and banking, while changing the structure of communication and furthering globalization. Today, it is estimated that over4billion people have access to the internet. There are reportedly 6,000 tweets posted every second on Twitter, totaling a whopping 500 million tweets per day. YouTube claims that 400 hours of video are added to its site per minute.  Every hour, Facebook’s roughly 2.07 billion users world wide post around 30 million messages.

The internet has given a voice to those who previously had no means of expressing themselves to a wider audience. This phenomenon was first observed in 2009, when a Moldovan student protest was organized after cell phone coverage was halted by the government. This was considered the first “Twitter revolution.”3 After the disputed 2009 Iranian presidential elections, civilians took to the streets and were able to freely post hundreds of accounts, videos, and photos of clashes that were taking place. In 2011, Egyptians were able to organize, and garner public support, via Twitter in order to bring down the government. However, despite all of these positive uses, there are inherent dangers in the flow of information. This powerful engine of communication has also become a weapon of choice for extremist groups, crime networks, and terrorists, who use it to preach hate, spread dangerous ideologies and propaganda, and incite violence.

Full article here 

28Mar/15

Review of “The Journey to the Arab Spring:  The Ideological Roots of the Middle East Upheaval in Arab Liberal Thought”

Spring is always too short, it seems, yet it is always awaited. “Is the spring coming?” asks Robin, the locked child in Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden.

“What is it like?”

“Well,” answers Mary, “it is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine, and things pushing up and working under the earth.”

Four years into the Arab Spring, we have indeed seen the sun shining on the rain, the rain falling on the sun, and much movement beneath the soil and sands of the Middle East. With Islamist powers on the rise, a bleeding Syria, a crumbling Iraq, and a growing Islamic State, it might be considered brazen for someone to write yet another book on the Arab Spring. However, Govrin’s work is important and useful exactly because of this complicated context and “things working under the earth.”

The Arab Spring, Govrin argues, certainly did not occur in a vacuum. Although it was triggered by a certain sequence of events, he maintains that it was very much influenced by some two decades of liberal discourse. That discussion, enhanced and propagated by the developments of new means of media and technology, is one of the factors that led to the events that brought down so many Arab regimes and destabilized others.

Adapted from Govrin’s PhD dissertation at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, this book takes us on a journey with a unique group of Arab intellectuals, who have been working from inside and outside the Middle East since the 1990s to liberalize and modernize the Arab political reality. These individuals, often referred to as the “New Arab Liberals,” are characterized by their (often controversial) work, which offers a different understanding of core issues, including governance, morality, civil rights, and the role of religion in state and society. Govrin, a senior Israeli diplomat who served in Cairo and New York and who currently directs the department of Jordan and North Africa at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, presents a view that is mostly academic, although his perceptions had to have been influenced by the fact that he is a resident of the region and has experienced the turmoil up close. Continue reading

27Oct/14

Social media & global conflicts: #BinaryBattles

 A recent interview  about the social media wars published at the Tribune (with the international New York Times).

Social media & global conflicts: #BinaryBattles

War and conflict is no longer limited to battlefields. Every battle on the ground — whether it is for land, ideology or power — now has an equally strong and effective virtual dimension. In fact, even before you read this story, you may have seen hundreds of tweets, images and videos from the protests in Hong Kong. Some of you may have watched the Arab Spring unfold on Twitter as it happened, or winced in pain as your Facebook timeline flooded with updates or tweets from Gaza and Syria. This is an indication of the start of a digital battle in which each of us has a decisive role to play. Continue reading