Alienation of the revolution: how connectivity affects the sustainability of counter-discourse in post-revolutionary Tunisia and Egypt

Early research investigating digital activism in relation to the 2011 Arab uprisings intended to determine whether digital media played a significant role in consolidating the revolutionary opposition. As a result, this literature essentially focuses on the exact moment of the January 2011 protests and often fails at considering the evolution of digital activism and social media consumption over time. Alternatively, this work goes beyond the context of the January 2011 events and investigates how participative media have been used over the course of the political crisis that led the 2011 Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions to the 2013 military coup d’état. By doing so, it elaborates the debate on digital activism and assesses how social media has affected public deliberation over the long run and as political leaders attempted to regain legitimacy in the aftermath of the uprisings. In doing so, this research contributes to the evaluation of what extent these emerging forms of political action, which Bennett and Segerberg conceptualise as connective action (2012) are sustainable and likely to materialise into institutional politics. In order to map the post-revolutionary debate across a range of digital media, this study draws on a large data set extracted from different social platforms, including blogs, search engines and e-consultation project. Data visualisation tools and traditional discourse analysis are jointly applied to analyse this data set and identify how various political actors, such as party leaders, bloggers or random social media users debated online over the course of the 2011-2013 political crisis. In addition, this work includes a set of face-to face interviews conducted on the field with Egyptian journalists and political activists actively engaged in the post-revolutionary debate. By analysing the long-term effects of digital activism in Tunisia and Egypt, this research proposes to challenge the assumption, according to which digital media, as a manifestation of technological development acts as a factor of democratisation

Trump’s Foreign Policy in the Middle East: Conspiratorialism in the Arab Media Sphere

This chapter explores how president Trump’s discourse on foreign policy and global security is reported in the MENA region. We identify how Trumps’ allegedly alternative approach to foreign policy impacted on the geopolitical concerns of US allies in the Middle East. Simultaneously, we examine how his relationship with well-established allies as well as his administration’s positions on global security have been reported in the Arab press by investigating a sample extracted from different Arab media outlets including Al Ahram, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. Through policy and discourse analysis of Trump’s official and tweeted pronouncements, we evaluate to what extent Trump’s policy is regarded as consistent with his presidential campaign, and how these are perceived in Middle Eastern media and in wider international media ecologies

The cultural value project cultural relations in ‘societies in transition’

The Cultural Value Project (CVP) is a joint research project commissioned by the British Council and the Goethe-Institut (January 2017-June 2018). It aims to build a better understanding of the value of cultural relations (CR) in societies facing difficult challenges–in particular, in Egypt and Ukraine. The project seeks to identify the difference cultural relations activities make to important international challenges, including supporting stability and prosperity in societies going through substantial change. It aims to contribute to current political, policy and academic debates about the role of culture in conflict, diplomacy and development. The British Council and Goethe-Institut wish to collaborate on this research in order to gain a better understanding of how different forms of cultural relations work in different contexts, and explore wider possibilities for partnerships in the field of cultural relations. This initiative occurs at a time when challenging transnational issues of conflict, security, migration, poverty and environmental degradation, beyond the control of any nation-state, make cooperation in international relations more difficult but more important than ever

The Google voter: search engines and electoral information flows in the new media ecology

This paper explores key Internet search trends for electoral information vis-à-vis the broader media ecology in the UK and the US. An innovative methodology is introduced that maps the informational trajectories of key election events by combining Google Trends data linked to significant news events during the campaigns. While the research found spikes of search that suggested a seemingly trivial event in the US could drive voters to search out deeper information on related policy issues, the study did not find the same phenomenon in the UK. This invites a reflection on the opportunities available to Internet users/voters in the changing informational landscape and how scholars can leverage Google Trends records to better understand how voters seek information in new and evolving media ecologies

Reconciling Impact and Ethics: An Ethnography of Research in Violent Online Political Extremism

Gathering empirical evidence from interviews and focus groups, this study highlights some of the ethical dilemmas face d by the academic community tasked with developing new methodological tools and conceptual frameworks for the study of violent online political extremism. At the same time, it examines how academics position themselves in relation to a broad range of non-academic stakeholders involved in the public debate about where violent extremism, terrorism and the Internet intersect. It argues that these external actors are introducing a multisectoral ‘market’ for research on online violent extremism, which creates both opportunities and limitations for the academic community. Finally, it analyses how academics from across a range of disciplines will be able to secure access to data and competitive research tools, while also engaging in a critical reflection about the ethical considerations at stake