Paired with calls for cultural independence, expressions of fear about a cultural onslaught from “the West” have formed the bedrock of official post-revolutionary discourses in Iran, with the state variously attempting to deploy the media at its disposal in order to forestall perceived external threats and to promote a political culture in tune with the revolution’s ideals. Despite the state’s direct control over broadcasting services and its means of regulating and restricting other forms of media, the highly splintered and contentious nature of Iranian politics has been a continual obstacle for attempts at monopolizing media messages. The advent of new technologies--from satellite to the Internet--has similarly undermined such efforts, causing great concern within the ruling system. At the same time, the ruling establishment and its supporters recognize the potentials of new technologies for furthering their agendas and have actively engaged them as they emerge. The tensions between the anxieties and excitement about new media have long reflected themselves in the state’s contradictory stances towards the media, with the factionalized nature of power struggles only exacerbating the inconsistencies in its approach to media technologies. The rise of discourses and outlets for the practice of “soft war” that have intensified in the wake of the fallout from Iran’s disputed 2009 presidential election provide particularly fertile ground for examining the complex interplay among media, state power, and the blurring of boundaries between foreign and internal enemies in the battle to influence Iran’s political culture. Often explicitly referencing western proponents and instruments of “soft power” while insisting on the distinctiveness of Iranian “soft war,” discourses on the latter betray an uneasy relationship to concepts and media which are hatched in ostensibly enemy territory but which are being re-purposed with the goal of safeguarding the ideology of the ruling system. This paper will uncover the contradictory dynamics behind the newly celebrated tactic of soft war through a focus on several sites designated for its cultivation, and will conclude with highlighting the importance of examining the soft war phenomenon for what it reveals about the identity crisis faced by the Iranian state.

It took the dramatic suicide of Muhammad Buazizi, demonstrations across the country, a week of bloody attempts at police repression, and the refusal of the army to support the regime, for Tunisia’s president to leave the position he had occupied for 23 years. And for much of the international community to discover the routinized corruption of the Ben Ali-Trabelsi family and their stranglehold on the infrastructure of a country lauded as an economic success. For casual observers Tunisia is summed up by its beachside resorts, political stability and general security, an example of a moderate, democratic and Western regime, and a bastion of women’s rights. These images owe as much to the stereotypical despotism and misogyny of Middle Eastern states as to any serious study of Tunisia. The contrast between these images and the eleventh-hour revelations of political corruption and socio-economic inequalities cannot be attributed to secrecy. Journalists, human rights activists, and bloggers had actively challenged the postcard clichés of Ben Ali-era Tunisia long before the Wikileaks cables were published. This paper historicizes the role of the internet as opening a space for Tunisian dissidents through blogs, discussion forums, and music where they went past the surface of Ben Ali’s regime. It also traces the process of extending state repression into cyberspace which offered increasing possibilities for policing citizens earning Tunisia the reputation as an internet enemy. Hailed as the first internet-based revolution for the role that social media played in overcoming regime censorship, media blackouts, and galvanizing the population, I examine whether crowd sourcing and increased media coverage challenged the stereotypical images of Tunisia. I problematize the speed with which international attention turned away from a revolution-in-progress concerned with the potential of a regional domino effect or an “Islamist threat.” What role did bloggers play in sharing information within Tunisia and abroad, and in publicizing the abuses committed by Ben Ali? Did this lead to increased transparency by the transitional government? While their music, cartoons, videos and photos sharing contributed to direct coverage of the protests by January 2011, this paper questions the impact of their voices in coverage of the revolution and the policies of the interim government.

During the uprising in Egypt, which began January 25, 2010, Al Jazeera English (AJE) emerged as the leading English language outlet for news. It served as a central source for English language publics and media to absorb information and analysis. Even as the Mubarak government and its affiliates blocked the internet and undertook coercive campaigns against journalists, AJE functioned as a communications node for Egyptian activists to reach western audiences, especially activists and public sphere participants who put pressure on their governments. This effectively undermined the strategic narrative being forwarded by the Egyptian government and helped constrain the allied governments, in particular the United States. The reason for AJE’s success was its proximity to activists on the ground, and the network’s willingness to retransmit their “citizen journalism,” calling on notions of “networked journalism.” Using mobile phone lines, flip cameras, videos uploaded to YouTube and social media content (i.e. Facebook and Twitter) that made it past the Egyptian information blockade, AJE became the primary conduit for Egyptian activists to spread their messages and counter-propaganda campaigns. The relationship with activists was facilitated by AJE’s correspondents and staff of Egyptian descent and its longer and deeper pre-existing newsgathering presence there. It also was well-versed in circumventing state repression. These were advantages no other English language global news media enjoyed. While AJE’s management disavows serving as an advocate and maintains an official commitment to traditional journalism norms, the paper argues AJE served a role as a node in an informal transnational advocacy network. Constructivist theorists of international relations consider transnational advocacy networks as potential counterweights to state power in the information age. State-media relations no longer tilt clearly in the direction of states. This paper contends that new and social media as they pertain to social movements, must be contextualized within multi-media networks and increasingly complex media environments. Social media, in short, interact with old media and activists’ strategies (including traditional coalition-building), and are therefore instrumental tools but not mono-causal drivers of change. Traditional forms of mass media are still important for activism aimed at shifting public opinion, but the Egyptian popular movement for reform thrived on the communicative interaction between old and new media. Methods used: interviews, discourse analysis, content analysis.

In The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (1991), Samuel Huntington argued that the world was on the verge of the third democratic transition, one that would substantially increase the number of stable and healthy democratically governed nation-states. A crucial part of Huntington's argument for the emergence of this third wave relied on the "demonstration effect," or the idea that modern communications technologies allowed for effective democratic protests in one country to be visible and modeled in other countries where fermenting popular discontent needed a spark to turn into open and organized political protest. The domino-like fall of communist rule in Eastern Europe in the direct aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union served as compelling evidence for such a theory at the time, and Western media at the time were happy to equate the political protests in Eastern Europe with the emergence of a more democratic society. Despite the fact that, twenty years later, the state of democratic governance around the world has actually weakened since the end of the Cold War, Western media continue to portray political protests in non-Western countries as synonymous with democracy. Recent political transitions in Tunisia, Egypt and growing political protest movements in Yemen, Algeria and throughout the region offer an interesting series of case studies in understanding how Middle East countries transition towards more democratic society and governance, while at the same time offering yet again compelling evidence for Huntington's proposed demonstration effect. Yet, it is important to differentiate the emerging political protests from what, exactly, a stable democracy entails. This study historicizes the current political reform movements in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Algeria in the context of similar movements in Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union and looks at precisely how important new communications technologies, platforms and organizations are in fostering alternative political discourses and groups. Drawing from comparative and historical measures of democratic governance, this study looks at the relationship between mediated political protest events, such as those occurring in the Middle East in January-February 2011, and the state and strength of democratic society and governance, and suggests that such mediated political protests may not only weaken the state of civil society needed for a healthy democracy and work against efforts towards sustainable democratic reform.