Online politics and grassroots activism in Lebanon: negotiating sectarian gloom and revolutionary hope

This article describes the confluence of online activism and street protests in Lebanon. While Arab protesters have systematically been portrayed as young, urban and wired since the 2011 uprisings, Lebanese activists are also often regarded as trapped between war and sectarianism. This article challenges both frameworks and looks closer at the ways pre-existing waves of discontent crystallised into the mobilisation of thousands of Lebanese onto the streets of Beirut in 2010 and 2011. To achieve this, the article critiques the over-emphasis on network politics that accompanies internet-related hypotheses. The fashioning of a new kind of politics outside the dominant political factions (‘8–14 March’ blocs) was crucial for activists in Lebanon. New independent initiatives that locate feminist and queer politics within an overall analysis of imperialism and capitalism, as well as experimentation with digital technologies, helped forge a unique and non-sectarian camaraderie. By conveying the circumstances that have shaped political involvement, this article avoids the projection of non-ideological/networked politics that dominate concepts of online activism. The internet played a dual role in Lebanese grassroots politics, as illustrated through the experiences of the feminist collective Nasawiya

L-Makhzan al-’Akbari: Resistance, Remembrance and Remediation in Morocco

Morocco was prompted by the sense of making and witnessing history that began as the backdrop to the mass uprisings across the region in 2011 and continued well into 2012. At several moments the country at large burst into a mosaic of rebellion. As expected, the state intervened with media propaganda, smear campaigns and intimidation to pre-empt the growing impact of the activists and as such to erase this revolutionary episode effectively from Morocco’s collective memory. This article examines the practices and implications of the remediation of past experiences of struggles and brings the memories of past resistance together with experiences of present struggles. This article takes particular interest in the intersection between 20Feb activists’ political projects and the growing array of digital politics and allows us to understand better the impact of digital media in times of revolution

Solidarity, Social Media, and the “Refugee Crisis”: Engagement Beyond Affect

The images of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old who drowned in the Aegean Sea in 2015, and Omran Daqneesh, a five-year-old covered in dust and blood waiting shell-shocked in the back of an ambulance in 2016, both symbolize the horror and suffering endured by civilians throughout the “refugee crisis” in Europe and the civil war in Syria. Yet, the circulation of these images mobilized different outcomes. Kurdi’s image engendered solidarity that was supported by action, whereas Daqneesh’s image did not result in the same effect. This article reflects on the potential for solidarity of images circulating on social media by placing them in relation to the context in which they are embedded. The results of our study show that although shocking images can awaken compassion toward the oppressed, they do not necessarily translate into movements of solidarity, but can rather degenerate into ineffective forms of pity

Egypt’s unfinished revolution: the role of the media revisited

This article analyzes the role of the media in the Egyptian revolution, distinguishing between the political synchronization of media forms, which was achieved during the 18 Days uprising, and broader processes of media convergence. We locate the key dynamics of media production and consumption by revolutionary activists not in the affordances of the Internet but in the shifting balance of forces between revolution and counterrevolution on the wider political stage. Using various examples, we argue that parts of the popular movement inEgypt have moved away from reliance on old and new capitalist media as simply carriers of their voices and hopes toward media practices seeking to develop media voices and infrastructures of their own

Intifada 3.0? Cyber colonialism and Palestinian resistance

Palestine “exists” on Google and increasingly in various other “virtual” ways. But are “Palestine” on Google or the acquisition of the google.ps domain name in 2009 examples of political resistance on the internet? For Palestinian politicians, virtual presence has historical significance. Consider, for example, the Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology’s (MTIT) suggestion that “ICTs information and communications technology] contribute directly to the national goal of establishing and building an independent state.”3 Within that context, Sabri Saydam, adviser to Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas and a former MTIT minister himself, posited Google’s 2013 move as “a step towards...liberation.” 4 For Israeli politicians, as quoted above, the emergence of (a virtual) “Palestine” poses ideological and practical dangers. Both camps ascribe power to the internet. Their only disagreement is over the ends to which the internet is a means: The internet is a threat to the existence of the state of Israel or a step toward a future state. At heart, however, both views are a form of technological determinism. They remove the internet from human, historical, and geopolitical contexts, and posit it as agent of political, social, or economic change. We contend that neither position is valid

The extractive infrastructures of contact tracing apps

The COVID-19 pandemic will go down in history as a major crisis, with calls for debt moratoriums that are expected to have gruesome effects in the Global South. Another tale of this crisis that would come to dominate COVID-19 news across the world was a new technological application: the contact tracing apps. In this article, we argue that both accounts ‐ economic implications for the Global South and the ideology of techno-solutionism ‐ are closely related. We map the phenomenon of the tracing app onto past and present wealth accumulations. To understand these exploitative realities, we focus on the implications of contact tracing apps and their relation with extractive technologies as we build on the notion racial capitalism. By presenting themselves in isolation of capitalism and extractivism, contact tracing apps hide raw realities, concealing the supply chains that allow the production of these technologies and the exploitative conditions of labour that make their computational magic manifest itself. As a result of this artificial separation, the technological solutionism of contract tracing apps is ultimately presented as a moral choice between life and death. We regard our work as requiring continuous undoing ‐ a necessary but unfinished formal dismantling of colonial structures through decolonial resistance

Cyber Intifada and Palestinian Identity

The imposition of often extreme restrictions and the daily use of violence have severely affected Palestinian society. Numerous curfews and roadblocks prevent people from visiting relatives and friends, and from travelling for work or education. As a result of the 'real' disruption of their lives, an increasing number of Palestinians compensate their loss of freedom by 'virtual' mobility on the Internet. In doing so, they reconstruct the notion of a transnational Palestinian community and identity

Hasbara 2.0: Israel’s Public Diplomacy in the Digital Age

The Internet has been a counter-public space for Palestinian liberation politics for over a decade, and digital technologies have become an increasingly important tool for solidarity groups across the world. However, the Israeli state and Zionist supporters worldwide are harnessing the same technologies and platforms to mobilize technology primarily to increase pro-Israel sentiments. The aims of this article are to examine hasbara [Israeli public diplomacy] through an exploration of similar diplomacy programmes; to illustrate how social media have affected the basic algorithms of hasbara; and to probe the assertions of hasbara in the light of pro-Palestinian solidarity. Through a study of public diplomacy, this article critically analyzes hasbara as a site of contestation and a method that is hampered by contradictions. On the one hand, there has been a massive growth in hasbara in recent years—indicated by the increase in funding for it and by its professionalized and centralized character; and on the other hand, hasbara has attracted sharp critiques in Israel for its reputed failures. To understand this contradiction, hasbara must be placed within the context of Israel’s settler-colonialism, which sets the state apart from other ‘post-conflict’ states. This article reviews the methods utilized in hasbara, as well as their readjustment in the context of recent wars. Events in 2014 illustrate that hasbara actually destabilizes Israel’s diplomacy. Online journalism and the suppression of solidarity for Palestine together stimulate more criticism and, in turn, help to shift public opinion. Paradoxically, therefore, adjustments (‘hasbara 2.0’) have underlined the image of Israel as a colonial power engaged in violent occupation

Infrastructures of empire: towards a critical geopolitics of media and information studies

The Arab Uprisings of 2011 can be seen as a turning point for media and information studies scholars, many of whom newly discovered the region as a site for theories of digital media and social transformation. This work has argued that digital media technologies fuel or transform political change through new networked publics, new forms of connective action cultivating liberal democratic values. These works have, surprisingly, little to say about the United States and other Western colonial powers’ legacy of occupation, ongoing violence and strategic interests in the region. It is as if the Arab Spring was a vindication for the universal appeal of Western liberal democracy delivered through the gift of the Internet, social media as manifestation of the ‘technologies of freedom’ long promised by Cold War. We propose an alternate trajectory in terms of reorienting discussions of media and information infrastructures as embedded within the resurgence of idealized liberal democratic norms in the wake of the end of the Cold War. We look at the demise of the media and empire debates and ‘the rise of the BRICS’ (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) as modes of intra-imperial competition that complicate earlier Eurocentric narratives media and empire. We then outline the individual contributions for the special collection of essays