Harnessing Social Media to Promote Arab-centric Understanding of Middle East Affairs

Introduction

As Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1849) once said, ‘plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose’ (‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’). This epigram appropriately describes social media revolution of the last decades. While there is a multitude of social media tools to share text, images, video and music, this essay will argue that the transformative power of social media to promote a more representative view of Arab cultures in the dominant media is relatively limited. This view was noted by the Saudi Arabian Princess Ameerah Al Taweel at the Arab Media Forum in Dubai, May 2016. She said:

… there were 73 million searches on Twitter about Islam or Muslims between May 2015 and May 2016… However, the first five pages on Google show images of people blowing things up while shouting the simple phrase that we use every day [Allahu Akbar] ¹ and therefore it has become tainted. (McKechnie, 2016)

This may go a long way to illustrate the stereotypical depiction of Islam, Muslims and the Arab world in much of the ‘Western’ world. Evidence for anti-Islam sentiment abounds. For example, in America, Donald Trump in his primary campaign has advocated a ban of Muslims ‘entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on’(Diamond). In Europe, Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West (PEGIDA), the German anti-Islam movement has gained strength in the face of the refugee movement that continues apace (Reuters, 2016). The tentative conclusion one draws from the anti-Islam sentiments propagated through social media is that the almost infinite ability to communicate across cultures and religions does not necessarily result in greater tolerance and understanding. For example, the cover of The Economist (5 July 2014) shows an individual in a very ‘Orientalist’ posewalking across a sand dune towards a dead tree carrying an antiquated weapon. ² The headline is ‘The Tragedy of the Arabs: A Poisoned History’ (The Economist, 2014). On the cover of the 9 January 2016 edition, a man in a traditional Arab dress stands in a dark room near a large door slightly ajar, streaming in light with the flag of Saudi Arabia on the wall. The writing on the flag reads: ‘There is no god but Allah, and Mohamad (PBUH) is the prophet of Allah’. ³ The headline emblazoned above is ‘Saudi Arabia: The Regime’s Blueprint for Survival’ (The Economist, 2016).

While the magazine covers are more subtle symbolic suggestions of despair, ‘backwardness’ and darkness in the Arab world, in much of the American media there is no need for subtle art criticism. On Fox News Insider, for example, Bill Maher has been quoted as saying that ‘I’m sorry to say it, but the more you know (about Islam), the more you would be afraid’ (Fox News, June 2016). In Europe, the picture is similar. Contemporary media studies have demonstrated a general trend in the media towards the ‘[t]he “racialization” of Muslims revolv[ing] around rigid, dogmatic, and simplified ideas of what constitutes Muslim culture, and attribut[ing] the negative characteristics associated with this culture to every single Muslim person’ (Siapera, 2010, pp. 134–135).

The (mis)representation of the ‘Orient’, however, is not a new phenomenon. As this essay argues, it is a continuation of a historical discourse from a much darker colonial era. Edward Said’s book Orientalism (1979) examined the portrayal of the ‘Orient’ in the ‘West’ based on literary and artistic traditions. Said theorized on three interdependent forms of ‘Orientalism’—the academic discipline of studying the Orient; the ‘style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between the Orient and “the Occident”’ (or the ‘East’ and ‘West’); and as a ‘corporate institution for dealing with the Orient’ (Said, 1979, p. 3). In the media, one sees a distillation of these three forms of Orientalism. The experts called to expound upon the Middle East often come from the academic discipline immersed in the academic Orientalist pursuit. The media is itself a corporate ‘Orientalist’ institution in propagating its dominant discourse on the Orient.

The ‘Orient’ as a discourse theorized by Said draws on Michel Foucault’s construction of discourse with all of its disciplinary power. While Foucault’s work cannot be seen as a cohesive canon of philosophical thought (Sheridan, 1980, p. 223), his conceptualization of ‘regimes of truth’ and understanding that truth is not outside the structures of power but is constructed by it through discourse is central to Said’s Orientalism. ⁴ Foucault maintained that resistance to the dominant discourse was not just possible but inevitable through these microstructures of power (Foucault, 1980; Gordon, 1991).

Microstructures of power transmuted into the material world may look a great deal like the social media universe. Millions of people adding to the discourse and creating cultural movements and political revolutions from their singular mobile phones do seem to represent the multiplicity of discourse that could coalesce into larger and possibly radically different ‘regimes of truth’. The larger more persistent question is whether this multiplicity of representation of marginalized discourse, in our case the Arab world, is operating to disrupt these colonial regimes of truth, or not.

The examination of ‘Oriental’ discourse was furthered by postcolonial theorists such as Homi Bhabha whose experience in Western academia, while coming from a country (India) peripheral from the European centre, motivated him to examine the interrelation of the Western canon with these peripheral spaces (Bhabha, 1994, p. xi). While the core of postcolonial critique emanates from much more antiquated forms of media (literature and art), these critical ideas are routinely cited in the field of media studies. Indeed recent books on media have incorporated postcolonial ideas into their analysis of modern media manifestations (Fuchs, 2014; Siapera, 2010).

This essay focuses on the critiques of ‘Orientalism’ by Said, Foucault and Bhabha to show how while many things have changed, many things have also stayed very much the same. This leads to this question: Has the social media participation proven to be a promoter of greater cultural understanding or have users become captive to the dominant colonial discursive structures effectively disseminated globally over past centuries? Has social media indeed contributed to not only the propagation of cultural stereotypes but their distillation into even more fixed and rigid discursive formations?

Social Media Tools in the Middle East

As Donald Trump’s campaign and supporters of the far right in Europe wage their media war on Islam, in the Arab world Web 2.0 is having its own revolution. Research published by The Arab World Online 2014 revealed that about 135 million individuals used the Internet across 22 Arab countries (The Arab World Online 2014, 2014). It also reports that Arab Internet users account for less than 0.5 per cent of the global Internet population even though the Internet penetration rate in the Arab region stands at 36 per cent compared to an average of 40 per cent connectivity globally. The relatively low global population numbers for Arab Internet users can be explained by several reasons. One is the limited availability of Arabic content. According to the study, a major challenge that nearly 41 per cent of respondents faced was the unavailability of Arabic language content. Only 0.9 per cent of Wikipedia articles are in Arabic which is negligible compared to 5 per cent that the Arab world constitutes in the world population.

To better understand these varying levels of digital penetration and Internet usage we have to view the Arab world as different subregions within a larger region. A study published by the Dubai Press Club and Deloitte (2012) explains that while the information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) markets are on par with world standards, the same does not hold true for some North African and Levant countries. Across the Arab world there is a ‘distinct preference for the Arabic interface of social networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter’ (Dubai Press Club and Deloitte, 2012) with the English version trailing. In some countries close to 90 per cent respondents preferred the Arabic version except in the UAE where 74 per cent preferred the English version. This could be explained by the UAE demographics where English-speaking expatriates outnumber native Arabic speakers.

Within the Arab world, the changing face of social media has been a topic of great interest. In March 2015, an Arab Social Media Influencers Summit in Dubai released a report Social Media in the Arab World (Arab Social Media Report, 2015) that stated that more than 50 per cent of the users used social media for chatting, followed by searching for ‘information, watching videos, listening to music and sharing photos’; 18 per cent read posts or blogs by others and 6 per cent are engaged in blogging, which can be publicly accessed compared to the contents posted on other social media platforms to be viewed only by family and friends. The degree to which Arab social media users are influencing a larger audience is, therefore, questionable with the figures pointing to a few Arabs creating content for public access. This, combined with the preference for Arabic language interface restricts general public consumption of Arab content even more.

The Arab Social Media Report states, ‘[S]ocial media is a platform for many of the Arab youth to express their point of view, their creativity and their genius. Social media is a shield and an enabler of expression and creativity.’ While this may be the perception of Arab youth, studies of Internet usage show quite a different pattern. Algorithms and cookies used by Facebook and Google show posts and results that people were creating an ‘echo chamber of their own views’ (Manjoo, 2015). In a study published in the journal Science (7 May 2015) data scientists at Facebook, after studying 10.1 million American users, stated that only 29 per cent of user’s newsfeed appeared ‘to present views that conflict with the user’s own ideology’ (Bakshy, Messing & Adamic, 2015, p. 1). A New York Times article (24 October 2014) also discusses the fear that online users have retreated into ‘information cocoons’ (Nyhan, 2014). This confirms Keen’s observation in 2007 that Web 2.0 may just be ‘delivering […] superficial observations of the world around us rather than deep analysis, shrill opinion rather than considered judgment. The information business is being transformed by the Internet into the sheer noise of a hundred million bloggers all simultaneously talking about themselves’ (Keen, 2007, p. 16).

Media, Discourse and Power in the Middle East

Radio and television share with the print media some important characteristics. They all require funding, which usually means funding from a central corporate infrastructure with corporate goals, (Siapera, 2010) with the exception of public television and community radio. In the main, media conglomerates have been the vehicle for profit-oriented media proliferation. The implication of the corporatization of media is striking. As Siapera observed,

Issues pertaining to cultural diversity will only be covered insofar as they may lead to increased ratings or advertising income. At the same time, when such issues are given media time, they are likely to be transformed into something sensational, as this is the way in which ratings are generated: for instance, race riots or other forms of ethnic conflict are guaranteed air time. (Siapera, 2010, p. 83)

The logic of corporate media is geared to simplify, reduce and distil cultural diversity into 10-second sound bites that will transfix an audience. Even news talk shows are far more riveting when peopled by the reductive polemics of extreme views than individuals discussing in depth on complex issues.

The proliferation of social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat and other applications, which allow individuals to gain a global audience for user-generated content, is not restricted by such centralized corporate media control. The view, watch and share logic of social media can be seen as a true democratization of media content with anyone who has access to the digital world, influencing media in a traceable recordable way. Also, social media is not controlled by the corporate notwithstanding, the influence of advertising and other corporate participation on the Internet. One may be tempted to assume that the increased participation of social media users in the Middle East would alter the ‘regimes of truth’ through more Middle Eastern self-representation. Despite the diffused nature of the social media production, the consistent repetition of certain Arab, Muslim and Middle Eastern stereotypes seem to prevail. Even though 135 million Internet users across 22 Arab countries (The Arab World Online 2014, 2014) are contributing to user-generated social media content, there has not been a demonstrable shift in the dominant media’s portrayal of the Middle East, Arabs or Islam. Said, in 1978, wrote that ‘[T]hese contemporary Orientalist attitudes flood the press and fill the popular mind. Arabs, for example, are thought of as camel-riding, terroristic, hook-nosed, venal lechers whose undeserved wealth is an affront to real civilization’ (Said, 1979, p. 108). These perceptions arise from the simplification of the ‘Orient’ to base caricatures, which at the heart of it has justified Western superiority over and exploitation of cultures in the ‘Orient’. The rise of the Islamic State has provided a new visage of the Arab, head wrapped in a ghutra wielding AK-47’s or other assault weapons conducting beheadings. This presents an entirely new image of the ‘terroristic’ Arab that does not deserve a place in the modern world. Just as the image of the Middle East on the cover of The Economist is a throwback to a less civil and developed time, the Islamic extremist is yet another image of a corrupt and backward region.

To further interrogate this dogged continuation of a discourse grounded in the colonial past, the resiliency of ‘discursive formations’ is rather useful. While the characterization of the discourse and its functions are the subject of numerous books, articles and other academic output, a basic discussion of the Foucauldian notion of discourse and power in particular is a prescient reminder of the tenacity of certain ‘regimes of truth’, which can be generally described as the accepted ‘truths’ of a society supported by the general rules or criteria whereby we can test propositions against some rules to determine their validity (Foucault, 1980). There is no ‘truth’ outside these rules nor do these rules exist without power. Indeed, ‘truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint’ (ibid.). This conception of ‘truth’ and power allows for a different thinking about the project of the intellectual. The project of the intellectual is not in producing the truth ‘but of detaching the power of truth from the forms of hegemony, social, economic and cultural, within which it operates at the present time’ (ibid.). The project is, therefore, to identify the regimes of truth and the rules by which they are supported in order to understand how we create meaning in our world and promote it.

Said’s intellectual project also takes this concern with detaching the underlying colonial representations of the Orient with the actual Orient. The corporate, political and artistic interest in the Middle East is unmasked as a strategy for sublimation of the Oriental ‘other’. Following Orientalism, which articulates the nineteenth century production of the Orient, Said published Culture & Imperialism in 1993. This monograph follows the contemporary manifestations of colonial discourse and the possibility of the resistance to these ‘regimes of truth’. His final chapter ‘Freedom from Domination in the Future’ traced the modern uses of colonial discourse in the age of American imperialism. Said explained how Arabs continued to be portrayed as caricatures—‘[A]ll roads lead to the bazaar; Arabs only understand force; brutality and violence are part of Arab civilization; Islam is an intolerant, segregationist, ‘medieval’, fanatic, cruel, anti-woman religion’ (Said, 1993, p. 358). The ‘regimes of truth’ around the Arab in this picture have not changed very much from the pinnacle of historical colonial power.

Said and Bhabha, however, are not entirely despairing about the possibility of unsettling these discourses of power and neocolonialism. Indeed, Said recognized that there were counter-insurgencies—to use a word in common parlance today. There are sites of resistance where the simplification and vilification of the Arabs and others are being resisted. Said cited the increasing globalization, migration and even exile of people in our ever more intertwined world as a site for resistance to the simplification of ‘us’ and ‘other’. As Said stated, we are more ‘mixed in with another’ (Said, 1993, p. 401) than ever before. It is this mixing, that counter-hegemonic discourse is possible.

Bhabha has also mapped the disruptive force of hybridity upon what he calls the ‘rules of recognition’ in dominating discourses. He argues that the reduction of the other into farcical and fixed representations in postcolonial thought is a manifestation of the deep uncertainty and ambiguity embedded in the dominant ‘colonial’ culture. Every society has in its ‘rules of recognition’ the implicit knowledge of its own profound correctness. The process of facing an entirely different set of these deep-seated unexamined truths ultimately leads to the questioning of this stable platform upon which people live their lives. The colonizer and its dominant discourse hence face the disruption of its deep-seated values and understandings.

In the Web 2.0 universe this is occurring even in the most homogeneous communities through the Internet. Facing this difference either causes deeper examination of the complexities of human existence and social order or simplification and vilification of such difference. If the Internet is merely acting as an ‘echo chamber of [one’s] own views’ (Manjoo, 2015) it is not surprising that the reaction to such difference is not a deeper and more complex understanding, but a perpetuation of stereotype of the degenerate and clearly flawed ‘other’. The result of this ambiguity, as the daily barrage of hateful, racist, bigoted and intolerant social media output demonstrates, may not be the creation of a cosmopolitan, tolerant and globalized culture but instead a further reduction of pre-existing colonial stereotypes into even more damaging parodies of the complexity of the Arab society. If, as Acar concludes, social media is mainly influenced by ‘the core concept of culture, [and] the self-versus-other orientation’ (Acar, 2014, p. 158), then more individuals without the real experience of Arab culture are just more exposed to it. With no real ability for engagement with this other in the isolated mainly homogenous communities in the ‘West’ it is not a surprise that the caricatures prevail.

It is quite impossible to explore in this short essay the deeply textured work of Foucault, Said and Bhabha who had invariably delved into the central conflicts that we have inherited in our time. They were witness to the protracted decline of colonial forms with the concomitant rise of new discourses of imperialism imbued in global development and capitalist agenda. Through reminding ourselves that discourse lives within and exerts power, it is possible to view what can be seen as a general ‘radicalization’ in global society within Web 2.0—a radicalization based on simplification. The refining of complex cultures developed over thousands of years are being reduced to 128-character debates over the ‘hijab’ or even worse the extremist misrepresentation of ‘jihad’. What a reflection of Foucault, Said and Bhabha calls us to do in the face of these disempowering possibilities is simply to remember that when dealing with the beautiful chaotic diversity of human society we must resist simplifications. As Said wrote in the close of Orientalism ‘[I]f the knowledge of Orientalism has any meaning, it is in being a reminder of the seductive degradation of knowledge, of any knowledge, anywhere, at any time. Now, perhaps more than before’ (Said, 1979, p. 328). In the face of Web 2.0 these words are even more prescient.

Amplifying the Transformative Power of Social Media in the Middle East

Research has indicated that social media may not only affirm people’s pre-existing prejudices but reinforce them. This is not to say that there is not an ‘insurgence’ of Arab self-representation emerging in social media. As we noted, however, its effects so far are limited. The question is how can Arabs amplify their voice to impact on the dominant Western (global) media?

The statistics provided earlier show a user preference for Arabic language social media in the Arab world. While unsurprising, this limits the effect of Arab-produced social media in textual form. When Arabs share their more personal thoughts, feelings and moments, non-Arab speakers are excluded. This is not to say that all Arabic speakers should communicate and engage in social media in the English language. It is to say that this phenomenon may contribute to less understanding of Arab culture by outsiders. Indeed, even in dominant Arab media there are many cultural productions that could lead to a greater understanding of the Arab world if translated into English. For example, one of the most viewed posts on Facebook from the UAE is an English subtitled video of an Emirati youth driving his SUV with someone tailgating. In the tradition of Arab hospitality, he makes tea for the driver tailgating him as the driver is so close that the Emirati youth must treat him as a guest (Dubai Memes, n.d.). This video, set to Arab music, portrays tailgating as a common occurrence in driving in the Arab world while also highlighting the culture of hospitality. A video such as this, with English subtitles, provides a different referent point for Arabs, rather than the ‘terroristic’ fanatics so popular in Western media.

The second statistic that merits some investigation is the low percentage of the Arabs who are not just using social media for personal networks but for public access. Indeed, if we have learned anything from social media, in the absence of knowledge people will often fill in the blank spaces with fantastic speculations and extraordinary lies. It was George Orwell who said, ‘[T]he most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.’ Dominant media, in its sensational coverage, is a subtle way of re-presenting in the global mind a culture of a long and complex history with caricatures of ‘hook-nosed traders’ and terrorists. The only way to resist such an oversimplification is to engage. If relatively few Arabs are contributing content, and engaging in the media discourse, then the cultural stereotypes will prevail. This extends to Western media production.

An interesting project would be to catalogue the ‘experts’ in the Middle East in Western media. What are their credentials? What really is their knowledge, but for the ‘Orientalist’ perspective? Truly, the people in the Arab world must write their own history, tell their own story or else have these ellipses filled by fantastic speculations and extraordinary lies.

It may seem like an unfair charge to lay the burden of shifting dominant global media discourse to the social media users in the Arab world who are more inclined to check the football scores or message their friends. There is also the question about whether social media is truly compatible with Arab cultural, religious and political values. If any sea change in the cultural discourse were to occur, it will need to be initiated by social media users from the Arab world. One such voice is the Dubai ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE. He is among the top three most followed leaders on Facebook from the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) ‘with over 11.4 million followers across a number of social networks including Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Google+’ (Staff Report, January 2016). An article in the Khaleej Times quoted him as saying at the Arab Social Media Influencers Summit 2015: ‘The Islamic civilisation was able to achieve prosperity when it opened up to, and interacted positively with other civilisations and built on their contributions to benefit humanity by generously disseminating knowledge and publicising inventions’ (Khaleej Times, March 2015).

It is difficult, at this juncture in history to not feel the insistence of change in the wind. With greater globalization and the memory of such predictions as the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ (Huntington, 1993) it is difficult to not feel that the world may be on a knife’s edge where one way leads to intolerance and even worse excesses than those suffered by our ancestors, and the other a better future for all. It is easy to fall into the simplifications of us/other. It is our belief that all contributors to the global superculture and its medium of Web 2.0 have a responsibility to make sure the wind blows in the way of greater tolerance and understanding of the great chaotic heterogeneity of human society, rather than the way of the limited intolerant and destructive force of stereotypes, simplifications and caricatures.