Suchergebnisse

This essay aims to shed light on the cultural and mediated communication practices that have altered the heretofore dominance of political institutions while describing the mechanisms and expressions of resistance shaping the post-2011 Arab public sphere. Whether they are accomplished artists, experienced activists, or simply individuals who happen to have access to reach out to the world, activists have exerted disruption and contributed to the political and sociocultural transformations in the region through a variety of cultural and creative soft methods along with more mainstream actions such as street occupations, protests, and sit-ins. Digital communications have been used at different moments in activism events and have been tied to their progress. This article and the collection of papers in this special section use case studies to narrate genres of activism and discuss the roles that digital communications have played in the Arab spring mobilizations.

The usual narrative about Arabian Gulf countries has been one of unity and close relationships. The air and trade blockade on Qatar from its neighboring countries, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, as well as from Egypt, proves that the aspired unity is probably just a myth and that the political divide is worse than ever nearly two years into the blockade. Media, information, and new technology are at the core of the divide and have contributed to igniting the crisis. This Special Section, with the scholars' contributions, offers some perspectives to think about media and technology as foci in this political conflict. It launches a debate about the information war, and this introduction notes a possible vulnerability for members of the larger academic community in the region who take part in this debate.

While the uprisings during the Arab Spring had a significant influence on the adoption of technology and its insertion into peoples' daily lives, the COVID-19 pandemic has been paramount to the new disruptions in the media landscape, provoking accelerated changes as well as novel relations between social actors on mediatised platforms. Whereas the first paradigm shift with media usage can be found in the adoption of the internet and user-generated content on media platforms, the second paradigm shift observed at the time of the pandemic is an acceleration of media consumption, as well as interwoven relations between work and play on mediatised platforms, creating both solidarity and distance between the users of digital content. The pandemic marks a new technological milestone in audiences' media usage and habits, one that has thus far been both positive - through the interconnectedness and agency - and negative - because of a lack of access for some - for cultural diversity and intercultural relations. The adoption of mobile internet skyrocketed in the region, and some countries, particularly Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have ranked among the countries with the highest penetration rates globally for platforms such as Facebook and YouTube.