Recent years have seen very public expressions of anti-American sentiment in many parts of the Middle East. But are these sentiments driven by American actions in the region, or by the country itself? In new research, Amaney A. Jamal, Robert O. Keohane, David Romney, and Dustin Tingley use data from Arabic Twitter from 2012 and 2013 to investigate anti-American attitudes. By looking at reactions to the potential for U.S. intervention in situations such as the Syrian Civil War, they find that in the Arabic Twitter world, negative attitudes are driven by the perceptions of potential American social and political impingement. They also find that these negative attitudes can be directed at other impinging powers, such as Iran

Jamal, Amaney A.

Keohane, Robert O.

Romney, David

Tingley, Dustin

LSE Research Online

blogs.lse.ac.ukhttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2015/03/19/anti-americanism-in-arabic-twitter-discourses-is-driven-by-perceptions-of-u-s-impingement-in-the-region/Anti-Americanism in Arabic Twitter discourses is driven byperceptions of U.S. impingement in the region.Recent years have seen very public expressions of anti-American sentiment in manyparts of the Middle East. But are these sentiments driven by American actions in theregion, or by the country itself? In new research, Amaney A. Jamal , Robert O.Keohane, David Romney, and Dustin Tingley use data from Arabic Twitter from2012 and 2013 to investigate anti-American attitudes. By looking at reactions to thepotential for U.S. intervention in situations such as the Syrian Civil War, they find thatin the Arabic Twitter world, negative attitudes are driven by the perceptions ofpotential American social and political impingement. They also find that thesenegative attitudes can be directed at other impinging powers, such as Iran.In spite of continued US involvement in the Middle East, simple questions aboutMiddle Eastern attitudes towards the US have remained difficult to answer. Is it whatthe US does or what it is that spurs anti-Americanism? Is it US politics or USsociety? Substantial barriers contribute to a lack of answers. Middle Easterngovernments obstruct studies on sensitive topics like anti-Americanism; in addition, events on the ground moveswiftly, while traditional surveys do not.To address these questions and difficulties, in recent research, we conducted a systematic analysis of attitudestowards the US expressed on Arabic Twitter during 2012–2013. Using a text analysis model developed byHarvard researchers, and with access to the Twitter Firehose through Crimson Hexagon, we investigated bothgeneral attitudes towards the US and responses to US-related events. There are limitations with using these data;they may over-represent the views of Arabs in Gulf countries, and they capture only the views of those “engaged”in these topics. However, we find that Arabic Twitter’s general attitudes towards the US are broadly consistentwith public opinion surveys: Negative views outnumber positive three to one, and political topics are three timesmore salient than social (Figures 1 and 2).Figure 1 – Total Arabic tweets by political and social category using all tweets in the world, plotted acrosstimeSource: Perspectives on Politics. Figure 2- Estimated number of Tweets per category for general attitudesSource: Perspectives on Politics.Inspecting these Tweets more closely, common themes emerged. Posts in the negative categories revolvedaround US political impingement and perceived hegemonic ambitions (political) or complaints about the influenceof the West on culture and religion (social). In contrast, positive posts revolved around an admiration of USpolitical institutions and leadership (political) and some Western norms and human rights (social). Both social andpolitical topics seemed to spur anti-Americanism, but it was the level of perceived impingement, that differentiatednegative from positive traffic.To investigate further, we looked at US-related traffic in two situations of potential US impingement: Egypt’smilitary coup in 2013 and the Syrian Civil War during 2012 and 2013 (see Figures 3 and 4). Would our findings inthese situations reflect the anti-impingement sentiment observed in general attitudes? Would either of the partiesinvolved in these domestic disputes exhibit positive attitudes towards the US? Our analysis found sentiment muchmore negative than when looking at general attitudes: Negative posts were approximately ten to fifteen timesmore common than positive. Although there was variation in this sentiment across the domestic parties involved,negative sentiment predominated in all. And events that might indicate more US involvement—such as thechemical weapons attack in August 2013—seemed to spur higher levels of anti-Americanism.Figure 3 – Total estimated number of tweets in each category for Egypt, omitting 515,257 posts withNews/Neutral contentSource: Perspectives on Politics.Figure 4 – Total estimated number of tweets in each category for Syria, split by date just prior to chemicalweapons attacksNote: News/Neutral posts are omitted. Source: Perspectives on Politics.We moved on to investigate: How would the Arabic Twitter universe respond to “attacks” against Muslims versusthe US? Would we find evidence for social anti-Americanism? We first looked at reactions to the anti-Islamic“Innocence of Muslims” film, which, though produced by a Coptic Egyptian, was largely perceived as a US attackon Islam. Our analysis (Figure 5) found strong evidence that Arabs wanted the film ignored (44 percent) andsupported its censorship (36 percent). But there was little evidence of condemnation of American society ingeneral. Second, we looked at reactions to the Boston Marathon Bombings, with a US target and Muslimperpetrator (Figure 6). In this case, although a significant number of Tweeters expressed sympathy for the victimsof the attack (9 percent), most thought that events in the Middle East and the backlash against US Muslims afterthe attack were more important (73 percent). Some even supported conspiracy theories implicating CIA or FBIinvolvement (15 percent). However, when we examined a third situation where the perpetrator was not Muslim—reactions to Hurricane Sandy—our findings were much more positive (Figure 7). There were still Tweetersexpressing joy at the destruction (14 percent), as well as Tweeters who viewed this event as unimportant (32percent). But many expressed concern for or defended Americans against those taking joy in the attacks (13percent), and significant numbers praised Obama’s handling of the event, which they often compared with MiddleEastern leaders’ detachment (25 percent).Figure 5 – Total estimated number of Tweets in each category for “Innocence of Muslims”Note: News/Neutral content posts (433,590) were omitted. Source: Perspectives on Politics.Figure 6 – Estimated number of Tweets per category for Boston Marathon bombingNote: News/Neutral content posts (262,761) were omitted. Source: Perspectives on Politics.Figure 7 – Estimated number of Tweets per category for Hurricane SandyNote: News/Neutral content posts (451,728) were omitted. Source: Perspectives on Politics.But how would these findings extend to foreign, non-Western entities that impinge on the Arab Middle East? Wechose to look at Iran, a power who fits this description well (see Figure 8). Our findings with relation to Iran are insome ways similar to what we found with the US—negative sentiment (72 percent) clearly outweighs all othertraffic. However, in contrast to the US, there was so little positive sentiment that it was impossible to estimate apercentage for it. Whereas views towards the US display a degree of ambivalence, views towards Iran clearly donot.Figure 8- Total estimated number of tweets in each category for IranSource: Perspectives on Politics.The evidence from our analysis is clear: In the Arabic Twitter universe, perceived social and political impingementdrives negative attitudes towards foreign powers. These negative attitudes are directed not just at the US but alsoother impinging powers—in particular Iran. Our findings illustrate that anti-Interventionist reactions are animportant phenomenon—one that will be difficult for states like the US to control through its traditional military andorganizational strength, and which therefore creates new foreign policy challenges. This article is based on the paper ‘Anti-Americanism and Anti-Interventionism in Arabic Twitter Discourses’ , inPerspectives on Politics, and is now available ungated.Featured image credit: Lorenz Khazaleh (Flickr, CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0)Please read our comments policy before commenting.             Note:  This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USApp– American Politics and Policy, norof the London School of Economics.Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/1Lx0B6s _________________________________About the authorsAmaney A. Jamal – Princeton UniversityAmaney A. Jamal is the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Politics at Princeton University anddirector of the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice. Jamal also directs theWorkshop on Arab Political Development. She currently is President of the Association of MiddleEast Women’s Studies (AMEWS). The focus of her current research is democratization and thepolitics of civic engagement in the Arab world. Her interests also include the study of Muslim andArab Americans and the pathways that structure their patterns of civic engagement in the U.S.Jamal’s books include Barriers to Democracy, which explores the role of civic associations inpromoting democratic effects in the Arab world (winner 2008 APSA Best Book Award in comparativedemocratization); and, as coauthor, Race and Arab Americans Before and After 9/11: From Invisible Citizens toVisible Subjects (2007) and Citizenship and Crisis: Arab Detroit after 9/11 (2009). Her most recent book OfEmpires and Citizens was published by Princeton University Press, Fall 2012.Robert O. Keohane – Princeton UniversityRobert O. Keohane is Professor of International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School atPrinceton University.  _David Romney – Harvard UniversityDavid Romney is a Ph.D. student at Harvard University. His primary research interests are thepsychology of intergroup relations, ethnic and religious conflict, and the Middle East. His interestsalso include experimental political science, social media and text analysis, and Southeast Asia. _Dustin Tingley – Harvard UniversityDustin Tingley is the Paul Sack Associate Professor of Political Economy in the GovernmentDepartment at Harvard University. His research interests include international relations,international political economy, experimental approaches to political science, and statisticalmethodology. Dustin is currently working on new experimental projects on bargaining, attitudestowards global climate change, new methods for the statistical analysis of causal mechanismsand textual data, and a book about the domestic politics of US foreign policy.CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 2014 LSE USAPP

Anti-Americanism in Arabic Twitter discourses is driven by perceptions of U.S. impingement in the region.

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