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(Re)Visiting Digital Authoritarianism and Diasporic “Cyberactivism” a Decade After the Arab Spring: The Cases of Egyptian and Saudi Exilic Resistance Communities
Abstract by Dr. Sahar M. Khamis
Coauthors: Randall Fowler
On Session V-27  (Exile and Diaspora Mobilization after the Arab Spring)

On Wednesday, December 1 at 2:00 pm

2021 Annual Meeting

Abstract
Ten years after the eruption of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, which had a wide range of eclectic outcomes (Lynch 2016), anti-authoritarian activists continue to resist dictatorships across the Arab world. A key dimension to this resistance is the online activism directed toward shifting public perceptions of undemocratic regimes, while coordinating and organizing opposition movements against them in the diaspora. The advent of “cyberactivism” (Howard 2011; Khamis 2011) opens up new horizons in this ongoing tug-of-war between authoritarian rulers and their opponents in the Arab region. In this qualitative study, we use a comparative framework to analyze the online political activism and opposition discourses of prominent Egyptian and Saudi activists in exile, while unpacking the broader dynamics of their governments’ responses to their activism and resistance, using the same digital tools. In conducting this comparison, we seek to complicate overly simplistic understandings of Arab anti-authoritarianism and the role of internet technologies in activism across the Arab world that have unfolded in the last decade. The study relies on conducting a textual analysis of the online resistance discourses shared by some diasporic activists from an Arab Spring country, Egypt, and a non-Arab Spring country, Saudi Arabia, in addition to conducting in-depth interviews with some activists and journalists from both countries. The study attempts to answer a number of important questions. First, what are the contributions of these two exilic communities to the ongoing struggles against their regimes, and how do they employ a wide array of tools furnished by new communication technologies to disrupt, expose, and resist them. Second, what are the most important similarities and differences between these two diasporic resistance communities, in terms of the tools, tactics, and strategies they deploy, and which ones are more effective, and why. Third, what tools, tactics, and strategies are used by their respective regimes to sabotage and undermine their online resistance efforts, and which ones are more effective, and why. We argue that the differing tactics that both the regimes and their opponents deploy trigger disparate outcomes, both online and offline, which could only be fully understood when contextualized within the complex post-Arab Spring political and mediated environments, while staying away from the simplistic notion of technological determinism, or “techno-euphoria” (Khamis 2019), and acknowledging the surge in the phenomenon of “digital authoritarianism” (Dragu and Lupu 2020) and its numerous implications in the post-Arab Spring era.
Discipline
Communications
Geographic Area
Arab States
Sub Area
Arab Studies