A cyberconflict analysis of the 2011 Arab spring

Abstract

This chapter employs the cyberconflict perspective (Karatzogianni 2004, 2006, 2009, 2012a, 2012b) to offer a critical analysis of the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, situating their digital elements within a historical, geosociopolitical and communications context. The cyberconflict framework was originally formulated to examine conflicts transferring online during the pre-social media era of digital development – information and communication technologies (ICTs) used as resources or weapons in online and offline mobilization and propaganda wars, such as the anti-globalization and anti-Iraq war movements or the ethnoreligious con- flicts in Israel-Palestine, India-Pakistan and others. But it has proved subsequently useful to examine conflicts and resistances in rapidly accelerating hybrid media environments. For example, cyberconflict analysis in combination with world systems and network perspectives was used in developing theory on resistance networks against state and capital and the differentiation between active and reactive network formations (Karatzogianni and Robinson 2010). Also, it was applied to theory on the impact of transformations of technosocial agency on orders of dissent in protest movements during 2011 (Karatzogianni and Schandorf 2012) and intercultural conflict and dialogue in transnational migrant networks and digital diasporas (MIG@NET 2012)