Mehr zum Titel: | Introduction 1 A Brief History of Internet Diffusion and Impact in the Middle East 2 IT 4 Regime Change: Networking around the State in Egypt 3 No More Red Lines: Networking around the State in Jordan 4 Hurry Up and Wait: Oppositional Compliance and Networking around the State in Kuwait 5 The Micro-demise of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Working around the State in Comparative Perspective 6 Fear the State: Repression and the Risks of Resistance in the Middle East Conclusion |
Inhalt: | This book argues that Internet diffusion and use in the Middle East enables meaningful micro-changes in citizens lives, even in states where no Arab Spring revolution occurred. Using ethnographic evidence, and conversations with Internet users in the Middle East, collected between 1996 and 2014 in Kuwait, Jordan, and Egypt, and a handful of short term research trips to other Arab states, including Tunisia (2000), Morocco (1997), UAE (1997; 2010-13), Oman (2004), Qatar (2011-2013), and Saudi Arabia (2012-13), this manuscript presents a grass roots look at how new media use fits into the practice of everyday life. It explores why citizens leverage social media to digitally route around state and other forms of power at work in their lives. As state capacity for buying public loyalty wanes throughout the Middle East, any increase in citizen civic engagement, supported by new media use, offers the possibility of a new order of things, from redefining patriarchal power relations at home, to reconfigurations of citizens relationships with the state, broadly defined. For reasons explored throughout this manuscript, new media channels offer pathways to empowerment widely and cheaply in the Middle East. (Publisher's description) |
