New directions of internet activism in Egypt
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Randa Aboubakr
Abstract
Research on new media has always highlighted the assumption that in authoritarian contexts, communication technologies provide political activists with ampler space than available in the heavily policed physical world. However, social and political changes taking place throughout Egypt and the Arab region reflect a shift. In a country like Egypt, where only around 30 % of the population have internet access, the vibrant digital media scene is relocating itself once more in public spaces. Digital initiatives, such as Askar Kadhibun (Lying generals) and Musirrin (Steadfast), are transforming online media material into older (pre-modern) modes of traditional media, such as graffiti and traveling street performances. This constitutes a shift towards the ascendancy of popular cultural production, and a challenge to the reification and sacrilization of digital media in a context where poverty and illiteracy play a major role in both the dissemination of information and in political mobilization.
©2013 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Masthead
- Articles
- Introduction into the thematic issue
- New directions of internet activism in Egypt
- Our friend, the internet: Postcolonial mediatization in Morocco
- Pathways of intercultural communication research. How different research communities of communication scholars deal with the topic of intercultural communication
- Comment to Averbeck-Lietz: Mapping intercultural communications: National or doctrinal comparisons?
- The methodology trap – Why media and communication studies are not really international
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Masthead
- Articles
- Introduction into the thematic issue
- New directions of internet activism in Egypt
- Our friend, the internet: Postcolonial mediatization in Morocco
- Pathways of intercultural communication research. How different research communities of communication scholars deal with the topic of intercultural communication
- Comment to Averbeck-Lietz: Mapping intercultural communications: National or doctrinal comparisons?
- The methodology trap – Why media and communication studies are not really international
