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Collective Memory and the 'Arab Spring' Narrative
Abstract
This paper examines the spatial and temporal tensions that led to the diffusion of the “Arab Spring” narrative across Arab countries in the beginning of the year 2011. It focuses on the significance of anti-colonial metaphors and on the centrality of the political agency of the “new Arab generation” in news media discourse. Through conducting a textual analysis of more than 50 Arab press articles and opinion pieces, published between 15 January and 15 April 2011, the paper interrogates the ways that news media enabled actors in different Arab spaces and contexts to construct, have access to, and claim a single Arab memory narrative. My paper contends that in their coverage of the Arab uprisings of 2011, Arab media, despite their diverse political leanings, constructed a coherent collective Arab memory of anti-colonial struggle and solidified imaginations of common Arab generations. These temporal imaginations about the past struggles of an age cohort served as the main pillars of the “Arab Spring” narrative – made accessible to the youths of countries as diverse as Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria. This broad and simplistic narrative strengthened the link between the different uprisings and contributed to shaping their outcomes across spaces. The paper argues that the way Arab media focused on nostalgic depictions of the region’s anti-colonial history and constructed a new generational identity contributed to shaping popular understandings of the protests and their outcomes. The core of the paper’s argument is that the significant differences between Arab countries’ histories and current political systems and contexts were collapsed into a single journalistic narrative of the “Arab Spring Revolution,” which focused on anti-colonial symbolism and the idea of a “new Arab generation” and that this temporal and spatial flattening contributed to the ‘domino effect’ aspect of the uprisings across several countries in a remarkably short period of time.
Discipline
Journalism
Geographic Area
Arab States
Sub Area
None