PhD ThesisWith the rising popularity of social media in the last decade and a half, young women in
Saudi Arabia have been utilising these platforms to negotiate values and norms in relation
to issues such as veiling, work, their place within the private sphere, and their
relationships with the opposite-sex. The aim of this thesis is to understand how the rise of
social media engagement is impacting long-held traditions and values about Saudi
women, and how their social media use is impacting on their public national image. The
research addresses the interplay between Saudi conservative nationalists, who wish to
preserve a traditional image of femininity that is highly tied to notions of piety and
deference, and the Saudi women who, through social media, are actively challenging
these longstanding views on how women should behave in society. Drawing on Nancy
Fraser’s notion of counterpublics (Fraser 1991), this research argues that the democratic
potential of social media platforms, independent of cultural and state laws that serve to
direct, control and determine the attitudes and behaviour of young Saudi women, has
facilitated the emergence of a counterpublic in which alternate contemporary identities are
expressed and represented. By employing a triangulation approach for collecting data
within a constructivist research paradigm, this research draws on four sets of data. Firstly,
it uses netnography to observe the public accounts of seven female social media
influencers. Secondly, it observes the personal accounts of nine Saudi women. A third set
of data consists of six one-to-one interviews. Finally, a fourth set of data entails seven
focus groups involving an overall sample of 36 participants. Using thematic analysis, this
research argues that Saudi women, particularly younger women, using social media are
adopting a more critical view of traditional customs surrounding femininity and women’s
place in a society constructed through a collectivist ideology towards more individualistic
values, norms and social ties that emphasise agency and autonomy (Giddens, 1991). I also
argue that Saudi women active on social media are modernising the national public image
of Saudi women. By engaging with Dobson’s (2015) study of post-feminist digital
culture, I explore the contemporary ideals of Saudi femininity that are portrayed on social
media by the young Saudi women I observe in this research and I document the complex
and many ways these women can now be in the world. I find that women’s engagement
with social media is challenging traditional values and norms and performing a vanguard
role in reimagining the public national image of Saudi women today