Digital Resistance in the Middle East: New Media Activism in Everyday Life

ISBN-13: 9781474422550 / Angielski / Twarda / 2017 / 320 str.

Deborah Wheeler

Opis

This book argues that Internet diffusion and use in the Middle East enables meaningful micro-changes in citizens' lives, even in states where no Arab Spring revolution occurred. Using ethnographic evidence and taking a comparative perspective, it presents a grass roots look at how new media use fits into the practice of everyday life. It explores why citizens use social media to digitally route around state and other forms of power at work in their lives. This increase in citizen civic engagement, supported by new media use, offers the possibility of a new order of things, from redefining patriarchal power relations at home, to reconfigurations of citizens' relationships with the state, broadly defined. The author argues that new media channels offer pathways to empowerment widely and cheaply in the Middle East.

Spis treści

Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Chapter 1. A Brief History of Internet Diffusion and Impact in the Middle East; Chapter 2. IT 4 Regime Change: Networking around the State in Egypt; Chapter 3. No More Red Lines: Networking around the state in Jordan; Chapter 4. Hurry Up and Wait: Oppositional Compliance and Networking around the State in Kuwait; Chapter 5. The Micro-Demise of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Networking around the State in Comparative Perspective; Chapter 6. Fear the State: Repression and the Risks of Resistance in the Middle East; Conclusion; Appendix; Bibliography; Index.