SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This book offers a ten-year perspective on ongoing and evolving digital activism practices across the Middle East and North Africa, drawing on interviews and ethnographic evidence collected between 2012 and 2020. It addresses the shifting narratives around digital activism and cultures in the region in the wake of the 2011 uprisings and the subsequent so-called second wave by considering the media environments in which local activists operate. Including in-depth analysis of three different political contexts - the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian context and the 2019 political context in Lebanon – and focussing on case studies of the Tunisian blogosphere, online campaigning in the Egyptian presidential elections and interviews with social media activists, the book offers a critique of the increasing prevalence of a security perspective through which online activism has been viewed and its deleterious effect on digital political engagement in the region.