Abstract
It was around December 2010 when the unprecedented waves of protests and upheavals appeared to engulf the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, from Tunisia and Egypt to the fierce turmoil in Libya and Syria. Mediated Identities and New Journalism in the Arab World: Mapping the “Arab Spring,” edited by Aziz Douai and Mohamed Ben Moussa, sheds light on the role played by mediated communication, especially new and social media, in shaping and constructing identity, power, and religion among the multiple discourses of resistance, collective action, and modes of expression in the context of the Arab Spring and its aftermath. It also seeks to present various types of articulations between new information and communication technologies (ICTs), and probes into a better understanding of the relationships between “identity politics, collective action repertoire, political culture and Arab journalism.” Douai is associate professor of Communication and Digital Media Studies at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada, and Ben Moussa is Acting Dean of the School of Communication and Media Studies at the Canadian University Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Under the background of that period, which still draws attention from scholars in diverse disciplines to get to the root of its origin as well as to account for its outcome, the role of ICTs, particularly the Internet, raises controversial debates. In Chapter 1, the authors mention that some scholars advocate for the deterministic and decisive role that Internet and social media have played in ushering in the uprisings and upheavals in the Arab world, while others argue that the technology has a limited influence on the revolution and the related political movements. This volume is quite unique and of vital significance in that the contributors overcome the pitfall of “making deterministic generalizations about the effects of new communication technologies,” as well as “reducing the events into purely political phenomena pertaining to and originating from the Middle East and Oriental Arab World.”
It also brings together multifarious and original perspectives, diverse and rich research content, and critical scholarly lenses that contribute to the study of the employment and functions of new information and communication tools in several aspects in the context of the Arab Spring, encompassing social and political transformation, struggle against authoritarianism, cultural dissemination, identity building, and new journalism. The volume does not limit itself to the study of the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions, but extends to a wider geographical coverage of Syria, United Arab Emirates, and the Sultanate of Oman, which both broadens the research scope and enriches the research content. Second, it provides a variety of research forms, including theoretical studies, comparative studies, empirical and case studies, and also employs a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis to elaborate on the relations between new ICTs and the Arab Spring. Third, multiple media outlets, either mainstream or alternative, global or local, are covered, such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, websites (Ikhwanweb.com), television networks (25 TV).
Among the chapters, Chapter 2, “Social Media, Global Communications, and the Arab Spring: Cross-Level and Cross-Media Story Flows,” is quite impressive and innovative in that Joo-Young Jung discusses the micro, meso, and macro levels in a conceptual model of the cross-level and cross-media role of social media in a global context, which once was applied to “analyze communication behaviors and information flow immediately after the Great East Japan Earthquake.” In Chapter 3, “New Media and Public Will Mobilization in the Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions of 2011,” Sahar Khamis and Katherine Vaughn present useful background information for the whole volume by introducing an overview of the transformative communication landscape in the Arab world. In Chapter 10, “Network Journalism and the Egyptian Revolution,” Ahmed El Gody employs a mixed approach of qualitative participant observation, semistructured interviews and netnography to “examine the development of networked journalism in three Egyptian newsrooms.”
Despite its strengths, the volume still has some limitations. Given that each chapter focuses on its own specific perspective and elaboration, similar background information on the Arab Spring is repeated; it would be simpler and clearer if a general introduction of the relative background information could be given as a whole in the volume. Besides, it would be more informative and systematic if more detailed introduction of the ICTs in other Arab countries could be offered, as the unprecedented protests have caused a profound impact on the whole MENA region.
Nevertheless, by “mapping” the Arab Spring from the multifocal perspectives, each chapter, to a greater or lesser extent, contributes to the meaningfulness and distinctiveness of this unique volume. Scholars, researchers, students, media workers, and policy makers, who are interested in new ICTs and new journalism, particularly in the Arab world, will find insights in this volume.
