Revisiting Techno-Euphoria

“If you want to free a society, just give them Internet access!” Exclaimed 30-year-old Egyptian activist Wael Ghonim in a CNN interview on February 9, 2011, two days before Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak stepped down from power amidst a largely peaceful revolution characterized by the instrumental use of social media to organize mass protests.Footnote ⁵

Many of the earlier writings about the so-called Arab Spring uprisings focused on the significant contributions and revolutionary potential of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.Footnote ⁶ Many such reports hailed a new age of “cyberactivism,” defined as “the act of using the internet to advance a political cause that is difficult to advance offline…the goal of such activism is often to create intellectually and emotionally compelling digital artifacts that tell stories of injustice, interpret history, and advocate for particular political outcomes.”Footnote ⁷

While many intellectuals and media commentators clearly anticipated that this process of “cyberactivism” would facilitate the coordination of political action on a mass scale and lead to more democratic political change, realities on the ground in six post-Arab Spring countries—Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen—tell a different story. With the exception of Tunisia, the reform process in each of these countries was derailed, ending in a reversion to the mean or, more tragically, bloodshed. This included the civil war in Syria, sectarian strife in Libya, a devastating war in Yemen, heavy-handed suppression of popular dissent in Bahrain, and relapse to a more hardened military dictatorship in Egypt. Assumptions about the transformative role of new media were proven inaccurate or false by the facts.Footnote ⁸

This learning experience compels us to revisit the notion of “technological determinism,”Footnote ⁹ which heralds the world-changing potential of social media tools,Footnote ¹⁰ by accounting for myriad other factors that have been overlooked. Shedding light on some of the many limitations, and even dangers and threats, associated with social media use, whether by regimes or their opponents or both, is one of the many contributions made by the scholars in this volume.Footnote ¹¹ We must take a closer look at some of the missing variables, such as the absent role of civil society, the lack of effective coalition-building, and the inability to bridge differences. We should also account for not just the upsides but also the downsides of citizen journalism, such as feeding polarization and increasing fragmentation and division,Footnote ¹² as well as the exploitation of these new communication platforms by repressive regimes, which can turn them into tools of manipulation,Footnote ¹³ not liberation.Footnote ¹⁴

Before delving deeper into this discussion, it is important to recall a few facts pertaining to the specific history and dynamics of the Gulf region. To understand the interconnected public sphere of online dialogue in the Gulf, we must first investigate the developments in these nations with a different sensibility and analytic lens. The Gulf is a prosperous region with advanced infrastructure and high internet penetration ratesFootnote ¹⁵ and a preponderance of tech-savvy young people under the age of thirty,Footnote ¹⁶ and thus studying it demands an awareness of the growing centrality of online networks to the production of culture and social relationships.

Second, researchers must be careful not to elide the individual differences between the Gulf countries and put them all in the same basket. For example, a country like Kuwait has a completely different history and a different stance on issues like press freedom and women's rights compared to Saudi Arabia, for example. Therefore, although both countries are oil-rich Gulf states with high standards of living and rates of social media usage, the issues tackled by activists, citizen journalists, and opponents in both countries vary widely, reflecting their particular contexts. For example, regime critics in Kuwait often openly resort to social media platforms to vent, speak out, and demand better services, as Geoff Martin discusses in his essay, “The Consequences of Some Angry Re-Tweets: Another Medium is the Message.” The Saudi regime's opponents, however, mostly operate from the diaspora, often employing pseudonyms to avoid retaliation. Others resort to artistic means of expression, using popular culture, sarcasm, poetry, humor, or other forms of art, which they disseminate as Internet content via social media, as Sean Foley explains in his essay, “The Distant Early Warning System: The Online Public Sphere and the Contemporary Artistic Movement in Saudi Arabia.”

Third, taking the two previous points into account leads to different conclusions about the diverse roles that social media can play in processes of socio-political transformation. It is always instructive to consider the historical path of any country within its unique context, and likewise to view the role of online media in that country as also being dependent upon unique historical circumstances.Footnote ¹⁷ Hence, for the Gulf, these essays explore how social media can be used both as mirrors and molders of each country's specific social and political contexts.

Some of the limitations of social media use, discussed in the essays here, include the phenomenon commonly referred to as “clicktivism” or “slacktivism,”Footnote ¹⁸ which could be defined as substituting “clicking” (posting, sharing, tweeting, and re-tweeting) for “doing” (taking effective action on the ground). Indeed, Martin's contribution alerts us to some of the limitations and inherent weaknesses of a social media platform such as Twitter as a tool for organization and mobilization, and he proves that by referring to some of the angry comments shared by Kuwaiti citizens online, such as “Your tweets are not enough!! Do Something!!!!”

Some of the more serious threats, even dangers, associated with social media use, as presented in this volume of RoMES, include the deliberate manipulation of social media by standing regimes in order to promote their own agenda. For example, Andrew Leber and Alexei Abrahams argue in their essay, “A Storm of Tweets: Social Media Manipulation during the Gulf Crisis,” that “regimes can now exploit Twitter as a vector of political propaganda and social polarization.” This same point is echoed by Jocelyn Sage Mitchell in her essay, “Hashtag Blockade: Social Media and the Gulf Diplomatic Crisis.” Both papers raise the alarm about the growing phenomenon of online-based regime propaganda, which can reach the level of spreading deliberately “fake” content, misinformation, and disinformation. As Mitchell explains, the dangers of this new wave become particularly troubling “when trolls and bots, often encouraged or hired by political authorities, can hijack the online public sphere and drown out alternative and anti-establishment voices through targeted and purposeful campaigns of disinformation.”

Another important point is the shift in the role of social media platforms from serving as unregulated, open-ended cyberspace to “safety valves,”Footnote ¹⁹ which can provide an outlet for the masses to vent their anger without taking effective action, or to “distant early warning systems,” as Foley discusses in his essay. In this role, social media can alert the regimes in power to an escalation in public grievances and discontent. Likewise, Leber and Abrahams also highlight how authoritarian regimes may jeopardize this social media warning system, denying themselves a potentially crucial intelligence-gathering tool, by clamping down on these alternative platforms for speech. As Foley argues, young Saudi artistsFootnote ²⁰ serve as the “antennae of the kingdom's society, whose work is not mere self-expression,” but also generates “new social movement,” which could be too difficult and risky to launch offline.

In analyzing the role of social media in the Gulf region in general, and in each of the countries tackled in these four essays in particular, we should adopt the middle ground of “cyber-realism,” which enables us to weigh both the pros and cons of the complex roles of social media in the ongoing socio-political transformations in the Gulf region. This lens enables us to avoid either undue optimism or pessimism about cyberspace, and thus to avoid either overestimating or underrating the potentials and limitations of social media.

Since the introduction of social media, there has been a debate “between the polar opposites of cyber-utopian and cyber-skeptic—where one side hailed social media and the Internet as liberators, and the other as tools used increasingly by authoritarian regimes to attack and intimidate dissident voices.”Footnote ²¹ However, the many limitations of social media's role compel us to shift the debate to a more nuanced discussion around the characteristics of social media as tools. If used by change agents, such as activists, protestors, and journalists, these tools can act as enablers, accelerators, or catalysts of change. But if manipulated by authoritarian regimes and dictators, these tools can act as obstacles and impediments hampering or diverting the path to reform.

Avoiding “cyber-utopianism,” which is based on the strong belief that Internet technologies have almost unlimited powers and that it can eventually liberate any people from state repression,Footnote ²² we can adopt a more effective, non-deterministic approach to studying technology, which contextualizes it as “a product of human society and culture—as socially constructed.”Footnote ²³ This social-constructivist theory highlights the continuous, ongoing interaction and coordination between technology and society,Footnote ²⁴ such as the role of human agency and the social construction of discourses on power, hegemony, resistance, and rebellion, and their contextualization within particular political, social, and economic structures. This, in turn, suggests that we should adopt a “technoambivalent approach,” as Martin states, which acknowledges “both the power of existing hegemonies and the agency of individual actors” to induce social change “without presuming it to be an automatic outcome of new technology.”

Revisiting Cyberwars

Another factor worth revisiting in light of the findings presented in the following essays is the phenomenon of “cyberwars,” or the mediated contestations between different parties and players in cyberspace, which this volume allows us to do in a number of important ways.

First, the ever-evolving phenomenon of cyberwars unfolds in a plethora of domains, platforms, tactics, and techniques, and serves multiple functions. For example, having someone like Saudi official Saud Al-Qahtani act as a de facto “minister of hacking,” as Leber and Abrahams refer to him in their essay, institutionalizes the phenomenon of “hacktivism,” signals a new phase in these complex “cyberwars.”

This brings to mind similar attempts by other regimes, such as Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's deployment of the “Syrian Electronic Army,” a group of technically skilled hacktivists working for the regime, whose job is to sabotage the online-based activities of the opposition.Footnote ²⁵ In this new era of “cyberwars,” trained hackers are hired by autocratic regimes and legitimized as true patriots.

Second, in light of the previous point, regime opponents (whether protesters, activists, dissidents, or citizen journalists) are learning that in trying to harness these social media tools to their ends, so too are the regimes. In the early 2010s, governments such as Egypt and Tunisia were taken by surprise by the mass street protests, and used some counterproductive tactics, such as shutting down InternetFootnote ²⁶ and mobile services, which only fueled the complaints of the protesters.Footnote ²⁷ In the latter half of the decade, the affluent governments of the Gulf have successfully polished their cyberwar techniques, sharpened their tools, and deployed their resources in much more effective and pointed ways. For example, Martin indicates in his essay that the Kuwaiti government has “expand[ed] the government's presence on social media, specifically Instagram, in order to respond to a rising crescendo of criticism and facilitate engagement with citizens’ concerns.”

This new phase of heightened and more refined “cyberwars” is, in turn, deserving of further investigation. As Leber and Abrahams contend: “While much work has examined the potential (and potential limitations) of these new technologies in challenging durable authoritarianism, fewer studies have considered the advantages that may accrue to authoritarian regimes by keeping tabs on these shifting perceptions, or even actively molding online narratives.” To help us unpack the nature of these mediated contestations in cyberspace, Leber and Abrahams remind us that “rather than viewing social media as a boon to the powerful or the powerless alone,” we should alternatively regard them as an “arena of competition between rulers and potential opposition—otherwise, either no ruler would permit them and no user would ever offer a critical comment.” It is indeed between these push-and-pull mechanisms involving different players in the socio-political arena that new realities, power dynamics, and shifting identities are born in an ever-evolving, ongoing, and cyclical process. The essays in this special focus section on social media in the Gulf represent a serious attempt to fill this void and to contribute to a growing body of knowledge.

Third, the collected essays expand our understanding and definition of the concept of “cyberwars” to include not just the constant low-level information warfare between regimes and their opponents, but also geopolitical contestations between different regimes. For example, referring to the “manipulation and politicization of the online public sphere in the Gulf,” Mitchell details how and why states have weaponized various social media platforms, especially Twitter, during the ongoing Gulf crisis since 2017. She contends that “the use of digital and social media as a tool of diplomacy and disruption” teaches us about both the positive potentials of these tools as systems for novel forms of assembly and speech, and their negative potentials when exploited in the realm of inter-state conflict and propaganda.

Both Mitchell's and Leber and Abrahams’ essays detail a variety of cyberwarfare tactics and strategies used in the Gulf crisis, including shaming, insulting, flooding, trolling, and hacking. Both essays emphasize the speed and reach of these cyberattacks.

Revisiting the Public Sphere

Finally, the four essays in this volume prompt us to reconsider traditional notions of the “public sphere” in light of modern realities. Contrary to the theoretical conceptualization of a relatively homogeneous, elitist, and western-centric Habermasian public sphere,Footnote ²⁸ the new conceptualizations of the public sphere, or more accurately “public spheres,” as tackled in the collected essays, signal a plethora of intersecting and contested domains of authority, on the one hand, and resistance, on the other. These public spheres exemplify varying degrees of power, intensity, and impact, while deploying multiple tools and utilizing diverse forms of expression.

The fluidity and dynamism of these new conceptualizations of mediated online public spheres extend beyond the political realm and into the social realm. One good example is the self-ascribed roles of Saudi artists and comedians, as Foley covers in his contribution. For many of these young artists and comedians, they see themselves as “a mirror meant to provoke a reaction and social change,” not only in the context of “the state-versus-society dynamic,” but rather aimed at “both the state and their diverse and conservative society,” Foley writes.

Thus, the online public sphere in the Gulf encompasses far more than just political tensions, but also artistic, creative, and social movements.Foley paints a much richer picture of life online in the Gulf, highlighting the Saudi artists whose “work and activities online give rise to an image of what might be called the deep consciousness of Saudi Arabia,” and, it can be argued, that of the Gulf region more broadly.

Next Steps and Future Directions

Each of the four essays in this volume offers a thought-provoking overview of a new, online arena of contestation in the Gulf. On multiple levels, the new online public spheres of the Gulf cross boundaries of the social and the political, of disruption and diplomacy, of hegemony and resistance, of online and offline life, of the private and the public, of state institutions and popular culture, melding all of these previously rigid oppositions into a world of dazzling, immersive technics, of electrical circuits, chips, algorithms, and virtual images of reality so convincing it becomes difficult to distinguish whether what occurs offline drives what happens online, or vice versa. Even asking such a question suggests the profundity of the shift that these essays analyze. It is along and between these intersecting boundaries that new realities are born in the online public spheres, in the Gulf region and beyond.

This volume, however, marks only a starting point for grappling with how the Internet is changing the terms of engagement between regime and dissident, artist and audience, and society and state in the Gulf. Some of the many questions which should be asked moving forward include: How can the limitations or possible dangers of social media offer new insights into the concept of “cyberactivism” as it pertains to the Arab world? How will the potentialities and limitations of social media manifest themselves in the future, and why? How do the specific architecture and management of platforms such as Instagram or Snapchat bear on the user and on broader questions of the political or social significance of the social media tools themselves? How will the notion of “cyberwars” evolve in the future, and which strategies will be deployed in service of such conflicts? How do the active use and development of powerful cyber tools by both regimes and opponents change our understanding of these mediated contestations, and potentially outpace the ability of academic researchers to grasp what is happening? What are the implications of these cyberwars on the socio-political transitions in the Arab region? And how can our understanding of the multi-layered, mediated, online public spheres be influenced by the myriad of interlocking factors and developments that manifest themselves in this part of the world?