Rasha Abdulla

Protest leadership in the age of social media

ABSTRACT This article challenges the idea that social media protest mobilization and communication are primarily propelled by the self-motivated sharing of ideas, plans, images, and resources. It shows that leadership plays a vital role in steering popular contention on key social platforms. This argument is developed through a detailed case study on the interaction between the administrators and users of the Kullena Khaled Said Facebook page, the most popular online platform during the Egyptian revolution of early 2011. The analysis specifically focuses on the period from 1 January until 15 February 2011. It draws from 1629 admin posts and 1,465,696 user comments, extracted via a customized version of Netvizz. For each day during this period, the three most engaged with posts, as well as the 10 most engaged with comments, have been translated and coded, making it possible to systematically examine how the administrators tried to shape the communication on the page, and how users responded to these efforts. This analysis is pursued from a sociotechnical perspective. It traces how the exchanges on the page are simultaneously shaped by the admins’ marketing strategies and the technological architecture of the Facebook page. On the basis of this exploration, we argue that the page administrators should be understood as ‘connective leaders’. Rather than directing protest activity through formal organizations and collective identity frames, as social movement leaders have traditionally done, connective leaders invite and steer user participation by employing sophisticated marketing strategies to connect users in online communication streams and networks.

Islam, Jihad, and Terrorism in Post‐9/11 Arabic Discussion Boards

This study analyzed the contents of three of the most popular Arabic-language online message boards regarding the attacks of September 11, 2001 on the United States. Although terrorists claimed that the attacks were committed in the name of Islam, those who posted messages on all three forums rejected this claim. More than 43% of the messages condemned the attacks as a criminal act of terrorism that contradicts the core teachings of Islam. Some 30% saw some justification behind the attacks, even if they felt sorry for the victims and their families. However, those participants viewed the attacks as a political, rather than a religious, issue.

Taking the e-train The development of the internet in Egypt

Like many other countries in the Arab world, Egypt is trying to harness the internet as a powerful new medium to bridge the digital divide. This article starts by tracing the development of broadcast media technologies in Egypt, arguing that Egypt has historically made use of its position as a leader of media content in the Arab world to enhance development and culture as well as to advance the government’s political agenda. The article pays special attention to the development of the internet in Egypt, examining such issues as online connectivity, content and its Arabization. It argues that as a major provider of media content in the Arab world, and particularly with a new technocrat government, Egypt has the potential to lead the way towards greater democratization of communication and strengthening of civil society in the region.

Data critique and analytical opportunities for very large Facebook Pages: Lessons learned from exploring “We are all Khaled Said”

This paper discusses the empirical, Application Programming Interface (API)-based analysis of very large Facebook Pages. Looking in detail at the technical characteristics, conventions, and peculiarities of Facebook’s architecture and data interface, we argue that such technical fieldwork is essential to data-driven research, both as a crucial form of data critique and as a way to identify analytical opportunities. Using the “We are all Khaled Said” Facebook Page, which hosted the activities of nearly 1.9 million users during the Egyptian Revolution and beyond, as empirical example, we show how Facebook’s API raises important questions about data detail, completeness, consistency over time, and architectural complexity. We then outline an exploratory approach and a number of analytical techniques that take the API and its idiosyncrasies as a starting point for the concrete investigation of a large dataset. Our goal is to close the gap between Big Data research and research about Big Data by showing that the critical investigation of technicity is essential for empirical research and that attention to the particularities of empirical work can provide a deeper understanding of the various issues Big Data research is entangled with.

Toward a Pan-cultural Typology of Deception Motives

Abstract Based on truth-default theory, this research examined accounts of recalled deception to develop a list of deception motives that are general across cultures. Participants from Egypt (N = 29), Guatemala (N = 118), Pakistan (N = 51), Saudi Arabia (N = 169), and the United States (N = 81) were asked, open-ended, to describe an instance of deception or lying either from the perspective of the liar or the target. These descriptions were used to refine and cross-validate a set of deception motives that are applicable across a range of cultures. People lie for a reason, and those reasons include covering a transgression, seeking selfish advantage, avoiding others, seeking to protect others, social politeness, making positive impressions, being malicious, and being funny.

Facebook polls as proto-democratic instruments in the Egyptian revolution: The ‘We Are All Khaled Said’ Facebook page:

This article examines the dynamics of political participation on the ‘We Are All Khaled Said’ Facebook page, which hosted the call for Egypt’s 25 January 2011 revolution. It shows that the page served as a proto-democratic instrument by introducing both qualitative and quantitative polls and following up with actions based on majority opinion. This argument is developed through an analysis of discussion threads and polls from the page, selected from a data set of 14,072 posts, 6,810,357 comments and 32,030,731 likes made by 1,892,118 users, extracted via a customized version of Netvizz. The analysis demonstrates that the page provided a basic lesson in democratic participation to its users. ‘We Are All Khaled Said’ constituted an unprecedented public space for active discussions on fighting corruption, torture and police brutality. Moreover, it served as a practical example of shared governance and political participation, which became a model for its users to strive to apply to their country.

Media Diversity in Egypt: Monitoring Newspapers and Talk Shows During the First Post-Revolution Parliamentary Elections

Diversity is an attribute of major importance in any robust media system. Fair and balanced media thrive on the principles of inclusion, covering all sides of a story or an issue, and guaranteeing enough representation for religious, ethnic, geographical and socio-economic minorities. Many media systems in democratic countries value the importance of diversity and include provisions in their regulations to safeguard the concept.