Unveiling the Revolutionaries: Cyberactivism and the Role of Women in the Arab Uprisings

I spent the past several months researching and writing a report analyzing the contribution of a particular subset of women to the Arab uprisings, specifically cyberactivists. The report is the first scholarly analysis of how young women used social media and cyberactivism to help shape the “Arab Spring” and its aftermath. It argues that women's engagement with social media has coincided with a shift in the political landscape of the Middle East, and it is unlikely that they will ever retreat from the new arenas they have carved out for themselves because they have reconfigured the public sphere in their countries, as well as the expectations of the public about the role women can and should play in the political lives of their countries. It underscores the dialectic nature of online and offline activism in the physical and virtual spaces created by and through the use of internet, social media and digital technologies. You can download the PDF here.

According to the review in Jezebel it is "well-researched" but not "dry", a very nice compliment for a 44-page report!

The report was commissioned by the Kelly Day Endowment and the Baker Institute at Rice University, but would not have been possible without all the women who I would like to thank the many women (and men) who contributed to this research, who told me their stories, and shared their perspectives on the momentous events of the past year and a half. Many of the discussions with the women mentioned in this piece occurred through conversations over dinners, at conferences, on Twitter, and as part of our being involved in cyberactivism itself. Special thanks to Aalaa Abuzakouk, Afrah Nasser, Amna Elsallak, Asma Darwish, Dalia Ziada, Danya Bashir, Esraa Abdel Fattah, Ibtihad, Lamees Dhaif, Lina Attalah, Lina Ben Mhenni, Nada Alwadi, Nancy Okail, Manal al-Sharif, Maria al-Masani, Maryam and Zeinab al-Khawaja, Mona Eltahawy, Nada Ali, Omezzine Khelifa, Rania al-Malky, Rebecca Ciao, Rihad el-Haj, Sarah el- Farjin, Shatha al-Harazi, Zahara Langhi, Samia al-Aghbari, Arwa al-Taweel, and the countless other women who preferred anonymity, as well as those whose blogs, Twitter feeds, Facebook profiles and YouTube videos have helped me understand cyberactivism in the region and who helped bring change or still are trying to in their countries.

Disecting Cyberactivism on the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA)

This infographic sums up how opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act, better know as SOPA and the first-half of the SOPA/PIPA debate, grew through online organizing and mobilization using petitions, joint-sign on letters and good-old-fashioned telephone calls (facilitated by a website!) led to the defeat of a piece of legislation that definitely fell on the more technical side of the debate. Of course having internet companies like Google on your side helps, especially given its market dominance in search as well as growing use of it social networking platform.

Having Your Say: Internet in Authoritarian Countries

The Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown hosted a very interesting conference on the internet in authoritarian countries that included panels about identity and inequalities with many great pieces of original research presented (Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, China). I spoke about gender and identity in the "Arab Spring"" and cyberactivism.Created a storify story below based on event hashtag #havingyoursay

Revolution Graffiti from Libya

Revolutionary artwork at the women's conference in Benghazi

(sorry but this is too hard to translate)

A series of colorful street art pieces in Tripoli, Libya

First Impressions of Libya: Tripoli

We arrived in Tripoli as sundown painted the sky a dusty pink and the air began to cool off. The airport parking lot was filled with cars coated with desk, apparently left there when people fled the country during the 8 months of fighting between Ghaddafi loyalists and opposition forces backed by NATO. It reminded me of Dubai at the end of 2008 when more than 5,000 cars were reportedly abandoned at the airport as Westerners and others fled the economic crash. Only the cars at Tripoli airport weren’t quite as nice. The airport is apparently exactly the same as it was prior to Ghaddafi coming to power with the exception of a new black marble floor put in just months before the revolution. The road are much nicer and more modern than I suppose I expected, although the driving seems to be on par with Lebanese driving, meaning the lines on the road are purely decorative and traffic lights are more suggestive than regulative.

Libya looks much more like what I thought a “revolutionary” country would look like, probably because the NATO bombing campaign left visible reminders of the eight-month battle in the bombed out infrastructure. We passed Ghaddafi’s former stronghold, surrounded by three massive walls, the outer one of which lay in ruins as testament to the NATO bombing campaign that helped drive out the “fearless leader.” Lamp poles and metal rods stuck out awkwardly from the rubble, but my colleague’s friend who was driving us, reminded us that there are 18 miles of tunnels beneath the palace stretching al the way to the airport. And they’re not just little tunnels either, they were big enough for two cars on either side to drive comfortably. “This is NATO precision bombing,” he said, pointing out the window at another collection of buildings that were now little more than debris.

He took us on a quick tour of the old town, near the Ministry of Finance and the castle where the old souk would likely be bustling during the day. A dozen or so youth were dancing to rap on the side of the square, grinning as we circled and took pictures of the flags and banners at one end. Graffiti is ubiquitous, but unlike the highly visual graffiti of Egypt or the decorative writing style popular among so many US graffiti artists (whom others would call vandals), Libyan graffiti consists of works and phrases written out in simple Arabic, almost as if people just want to get it out and express their opinion as quickly as possible after 40 some years of oppression and censorship. “Libya is free” is written over an over, as if tagging surfaces with this reminder reclaims them from the destruction of NATO or the neglect of 4 decades of minimal investment in the country’s infrastructure.

Ghaddafi put little of his oil wealth back into his country, it seems, as Libyans tell us that everything has been the same for 40 years with the exception of a few new hotels and a business tower downtown. One of these in the Rixos, a Leeds-certified luxury hotel built so Ghaddafi could host summits of world leaders but better known as the homebase of the Western journalists who parachuted in to cover the revolution. It was the hotel where Eman Obeidi gained international fame when she ran into the dining room and attempted to tell her story about being gang-raped by Libyan troops and was forcibly removed by regime loyalists who attacked the journalists who attempted to intervene on her behalf. I ate breakfast by the floor-length window looking onto an expanse of laws and tennis courts. There was a huge bullet hole in the window that made me wonder whether it had come from the Obeidi incident. A few seconds later we heard gun shots. Alaa and I looked at each other. Apparently this is the soundtrack of a normal day in Libya.

Voices from Bahrain on the Anniversary of the Uprising

We had a great event "Voices from Bahrain: Anniversary of the Uprising" on the first anniversary of the Bahrain uprising that featured three Bahraini activists and Freedom House VP Bobby Herman moderating. It got interesting during comments because a government-sponsored delegation of Bahrain youth activists also showed up (thanks to Qorvis Communications, the K Street lobbying firm, who is one of at least 10 PR firms the Bahraini government has hired in a desperate attempt to burnish its image in DC, and which unfortunately has not followed the lead of those lobbying firms that dropped their contracts with Egypt in the wake of the SCAF's crackdown on NGOs).

The activists on the panel included:

• Maryam al-Khawaja of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (a highly respected group that has been invaluable in monitoring, documenting and publicizing what has been happening in Bahrain since the crackdown and the attempts by the government to prevent foreign observers and journalists from entering the country)
• Hussain Abdalla of the Bahrain Youth Society, an American-Bahraini who lives in Alabama but has spent too many weeks to count in DC trying to raise awareness of the situation in his home country and prevent the US from selling weapons to a regime so violently repressing its own citizens
• Jalil al-Radhi, a Bahraini citizen turned activist after his brother and brother-in-law were tortured and killed by the regime in the March protests.

I live tweeted Voices from Bahrain for Freedom House (@freedomhousedc) and on my Twitter feed (@courtneyr). Here is the storify board someone created for the event.

Press Freedom in the Middle East a Year into the 'Arab Spring'

More than a year ago, uprisings in several Mideast countries triggered what has come to be called the Arab Spring. But when it comes to freedom of the press and on the Internet, it has been a chilling period in many parts of that region. Reporters and citizens have been spied on, beaten, imprisoned and even killed merely for telling the truth about what is happening in their countries.

Date and time:  Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - 9:30am

Location: National Press Club 529 14th St NW, 13th floor 
  Washington, DC 20045

Frank Smyth, @SmythFrank, executive director of Global Journalist Security and senior advisor for journalist security at the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Panelists include:

- Nada Alwadi, @Bentalwadi, a Bahraini journalist;
- Abderrahim Foukara, Al Jazeera’s Washington bureau chief;
- Jeffrey Ghannam, @JeffGhannam, a lawyer, writer and former reporter who has contributed widely to the debate on social media and media development in the Arab region.
- Clare Morgana Gillis, a US-based freelancer with Mideast experience who was jailed in Libya last year.
and me, representing Freedom House.

CQ's John Donnelly @johnmdonnelly the head of the NPC's Press Freedom Committee is the driving force behind the Club's advocacy and involvement in press freedom issues. Nearly a year ago Clothilde Le Coz, then heading Reporter's Without Borders' DC office, and I came up with the idea of doing a panel to examine how journalists were faring in the Arab Spring. But the challenge of lining up journalists with experience in the region and availability proved challenging! Nonetheless, a year to the date of the outbreak of the Bahrain uprising, we finally managed to organize it! Follow the discussion on Twitter using hashtag #pressfreedom.

The other press freedom organizations that contributed to this National Press Club event were: Freedom House, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the National Endowment for Democracy’s Center for International Media Assistance.