Digital Political Cultures in the Middle East since the Arab Uprisings

Rezensionen / Stimmen

[Digital Political Cultures in the Middle East since the Arab Uprisings] takes on the complex topic of digital media and political space. The narrative examines Arab Spring voices from Egypt, Tunisia, and Lebanon. Mahlouly aptly notes, "Revolutions, by nature, introduce a more fluid political language to complete a transition of power, eventually substituting one institutional discourse for another" (p. 111). Hence, the Arab Spring's legacy provides readers and researchers another angle of exploration into the movement, meaning, and afterlife. * CHOICE * This book provides a compelling argument about the role of informal communicative practices in oppositional and contentious politics in the Middle East and North Africa. Drawing on empirical evidence from Egypt, Tunisia and Lebanon, it offers a nuanced and critical understanding of how cultures of informal politics expressed through peripheral communication channels are crucial to emerging politics and transformation, highlighting the urgent need to refocus attention on agency in the so-called post-truth age. The book is a timely critical contribution to the emerging scholarship on political communication theory and practice in the non-Western world. * Dina Matar, Professor Political Communication and Arab Media, SOAS * Dounia Mahlouly explains why citizen protests and civil society uprisings have been frustrated in the region in the past decade. Digital connectivity often reduces the chances of a revolution achieving sustainable goals. This book shows activists' political creativity has been consistently outmanoeuvred or undone by the state or by wider structural forces. But Mahlouly's rich interviews and ethnography provide evidence for why this creativity will not disappear -- and what can be learnt from a decade of endeavour -- Professor Ben O'Loughlin * Royal Holloway, University of London, UK * This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the interplay of digital media and Middle Eastern politics. Offering rich, insightful, comparative case studies of recent revolutionary movements in Tunisia, Egypt and, Lebanon, Dounia Mahlouly analyses the discursive cycles of revolution and counter revolution. She examines the dialectic between hegemonic and counter hegemonic forces as revolutions emerge, subside and/or become reappropriated by state and other actors. She presents a powerful defence of human and audience agency confronted as they are with populist politics, alongside a measured sociological account of the tensions between young pro-revolutionary and grassroots groups that provoke fundamental questions about class, representation and legitimacy. An absolutely compelling read -- Marie Gillespie, Professor of Sociology * The Open University, UK * Dounia Mahlouly's Digital Political Cultures in the Middle East since the Arab Uprisings Online Activism in Egypt, Tunisia and Lebanon advances the study of digital communication in the MENA region beyond simplistic narratives. Its analysis of discourse, agency and hegemony synthesizes and contributes to key debates in the field of media and communications more broadly. * Dr Omar Al-Ghazzi, London School of Economics *