bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Saudi Blogosphere: Implications of New Media Technology and the Emergence of Saudi‐Islamic Feminism
Authors: Tschirhart Philip 
Published: February 2021

Abstracthe Kingdom of Saudi Arabia serves as a protector of the social, cultural, and religious epicenters of the Islamic faith; Mecca and Medina. While other Islamic autocracies have fallen in the wake of the Arab Spring, Saudi Arabia and its religious and political elite remain. However, threats to their legitimacy are growing. Especially relevant are increasing calls for women___s rights. The Saudi Arabian public sphere of the pre-digital era had effectively banned women___s participation in public. More recently, the spread of Internet authored blogs has created a new public sphere for women___s deliberation.This study seeks to analyze how the Saudi blogosphere, as a public sphere of deliberation, provides insight into the emergence of Saudi-Islamic feminism through a critical discursive analysis. Three discursive themes emerge to identify how Saudi women negotiate identity and manage dialectical tensions stemming from their intersectional positions: displaying and defending iman (faith), repositioning the ___ulam__,___ and restoring Saudi history. Taken together these discursive themes detail a Saudi-Islamic Feminist perspective that is emerging in resistance to Western feminist frameworks and in defense of a distinctively Islamic claim to women___s rights, education, and equitable treatment within the public sphere.
“My Life is More Important Than Family Honor:” Offline Protests, Counter‐Cyberactivism, and Article 308
Authors: Tobin Sarah A. 
Published: February 2021

AbstractIn summer 2012, protests erupted in Jordan in light of several high-profile enactments of Article 308 of the Penal Code, or “Rape Law,” that allows rape charges to be dropped if the perpetrator agrees to marry the victim, which were organized offline and aimed to create a groundswell of public support for changing gender inequities in society rather than political and legal structures. Users of social media were quick to deride and disparage the protests and protesters in highly visible and aggressive ways. This case demonstrates that the Internet can simultaneously act as a vehicle for resisting social exclusion and gender segregation through cyberactivism, while also serving as a mechanism for reinforcing preexisting cultural norms through, what I call, “counter-cyberactivism.” Such displays amplify the argument that the Internet serves as a space for online cultural performance of offline life, which enables the capacity for both cultural change and durability simultaneously. I conclude with the implications of this case for the online, virtual umma.
Social Media As an Opportunity to Bahraini Women
Authors: Alwadi Nada 
Published: February 2021

AbstractSince the uprising in February 2011 the Bahraini female activists but also ordinary Bahraini women have emerged as new leaders in the society, and this due to the increasing role of social media. Their ideas, voices and activities have been receiving stronger support from within their — often conservative — communities. It is now more accepted by the public that the democratic transition cannot be achieved without the participation of women.
Violence and Visibility in Contemporary Syria: An Ethnography of the “Expanded Places”
Authors: Ratta Donatella Della 
Published: February 2021

AbstractThis article reflects on the relationship between visibility and violence as redefined by the combined action of warfare and networked communication technologies. Drawing on the author's own ethnography conducted in Syria in 2010, and on anonymous YouTube videos, it introduces the concept of “expanded places” to look at sites that have been physically annihilated; yet, at the same time, they have been re-animated through multiple mediated versions circulating and re-circulating on the networks. Building on Rancière's work on the distribution of the sensible, the article argues that, at the intersection of those simultaneous actions of annihilation and regeneration, a new geography of visibility and violence is being shaped which rearranges the existing into a completely new political form and aesthetic format. Thriving on the techno-human infrastructure of the networks, and relying on the endless proliferation of images resulting from the loss of control of image-makers over their own production, expanded places are aggregators of new communities that add novel layers of signification to the empirical world, and create their own multiple realities and histories.
The Shifting Nature of Cyberwarfare in Middle Eastern States
Authors: Fekete Emily 
Published: February 2021

AbstractWhile some theorists make the claim that “kinetic and traditional military power are losing importance to symbolic and media power,” in reality the present military situation is complicated by the variety of tactics used by both governments and civilians in multiple and overlapping war zones. The Middle East has recently been the center of enormous military and media attention regarding the use of many forms of “new” media military operations. However, rather than arguing that online warfare has trumped physical encounters, cyber campaigns must be seen as being deployed in conjunction with on-the-ground military maneuvers. The use of online strategies disperses power and allows for an increasing role by non-state actors in both online and offline spaces of conflict. Drawing from the geographic literature on war, especially Derek Gregory's concept of “everywhere war,” examples are offered from Syria, Iran, Gaza, and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
A Page and Its Politics: Situating Kullinā Khālid Sa‘īd in Egypt's Ideological Landscape at the Time of Revolution‘
Authors: Woltering Robbert , Abdulla Rasha , Poell Thomas , Rieder Bernhard , Zack Liesbeth 
Published: February 2021

AbstractIn discussions concerning the importance of social media in the 25January revolution, a central role is given to the “Kullinā Khālid Sa‘īd” [We're all Khaled Said] Facebook page. Using an advanced data collection and extraction application called Netvizz, a research team consisting of Arabists and Media studies specialists has collected and analysed all of the posts and comments exchanged through the page. This data set allows for a systematic analysis of the page. This article offers an outline of the ideological nature of “Kullinā Khālid Sa‘īd,” with particular emphasis on the “revolutionary” period between 1 January – 11 February 2011. It argues that the page shows no evidence of political bias in the sense of explicit favoring of a political group. Rather, the page constituted a community of users who abstained from using politically factional language. Reflecting the mood and concerns of the revolution's grassroots masses, it clearly illustrates the disinclination to engage with formal politics.
Saudi Women and Socio‐Digital Technologies: Reconfiguring Identities
Authors: Bourdeloie Hélène , Gentiloni Silveri Caterina , Houmair Sara 
Published: February 2021

AbstractDrawing on research conducted in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, this paper explores the specific uses of digital technologies by Saudi women. It shows how these women – whose gender identity is strongly constrained by a host of social and religious norms characterizing Saudi society – make use of digital technologies, and particularly mobile telephones. The various applications available for mobile telephony open up to them a whole range of choices on how to communicate and use photography, thus enabling them to circumvent their assigned gender identity, at least at the margin.
Big Data in the MENA Region: The Next Path towards Socio‐economic and Cultural Development
Authors: Allagui Ilhem , Ayish Mohammad 
Published: February 2021

AbstractAs elsewhere, big data is perceived as central to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) nations’ socio-economic and cultural development. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, by virtue of its advanced information technology infrastructure, relevant knowledge economy policies and flexible free government and market orientations, stands at the forefront of MENA's big data integration. This article discusses selected sectors in the GCC region that leverage the power of big data including the media business industries and the oil and gas industry. The authors argue that in addition to bolstering big data applications in the aforementioned sectors, MENA countries also need to ensure that those applications embrace other sectors like education, government services and cultural development. Yet, to be able to achieve those goals, the region needs to address numerous challenges pertaining to knowledge infrastructure, human capital, technology mindset and regulation.
“The Best Damn Representation of Islam:” Muslims, Gender, Social Media, and Islamophobia in the United States
Authors: Eckert Stine , Wallace Sydney O'Shay , Metzger-Riftkin Jade , Kolhoff Sean 
Published: February 2021

AbstractIslamophobia reached new heights during the 2016 United States presidential election. We applied the theory of intersectionality to 15 in-depth focus group interviews conducted in gender-separated groups with 61 Muslim participants (41 women, 20 men) in South East Michigan between October 2016 and April 2017 to understand the role of gender in their responses regarding Islamophobia during the 2016 United States presidential election and Trump's first hundred days in office as president. Both, Muslim women and Muslim men, labored to educate others about Islam online, but Muslim women emphasized their efforts to act as exemplars online of what it means to be Muslim in America more frequently and more strongly than men. Muslim women and men often used ignoring and contextualization as coping mechanisms as the number of Islamophobic messages online was perceived as overwhelming. The high amount and ubiquity of Islamophobic messages online has lead to a sense of futility and high levels of stress among young Muslims in South East Michigan, particularly for Muslim women.
Cultural Adoption Through Online Practices Across Social Media Platforms: The Case of Saudi Women
Authors: Aljuwaiser Ghayda 
Published: February 2021

AbstractThis article reports ongoing qualitative research into Saudi women's online practices across several social media platforms (SMP). It is based on eight semi-structured interviews conducted between March and September 2015 with four Saudi women from different cities in Saudi Arabia. This work's findings address the knowledge gap between the accelerating consumption of SMP and the limited existing scholarly literature to understand empirically the relationship between Saudi women's online practices and the changes in Saudi culture in terms of values, norms and traditions, such as veiling and cross-gender communication.
Echoes of Populism and Terrorism in Libya's Online News Reporting
Authors: Lombezzi Letizia 
Published: February 2021

AbstractThis article focuses on news reporting in Libya, assessing both official and citizen journalism. Special attention is paid to online resources, primarily spontaneous posts written in Arabic. Social media shows the emergence of citizen journalism together with so-called User-generated Content. Both have proved capable of creating legitimacy. Political inclinations, including Islamic ideology and its religious claims, are presented, supported, or criticized by ordinary citizens who post their comments and opinions on the web. Official press and news agencies have their social media profiles as well, sharing the same online space with nonprofessionals. Monitoring and analysis of reporting show that there is no relevant difference in journalistic models; nor do concerns between professionals and nonprofessionals vary. Libya appears today to be a mosaic of different interests: one that is interconnected and in conflict at the same time. These interests are vying to establish new supremacies in the country. Journalism in its various typologies faces pressure from the abovementioned interests, so it is negatively affected by rhetoric in both reporting and commentary. These preliminary arguments lead us to the core topics of populism – for which a definition is suggested – and reporting about terrorism in Libya. Against this background, we analyze news flows, sources, and other issues. I conclude with a brief review of the main issues, the characteristics of the Arabic narrative discourse, and the emerging Arabic lexicon.
American‐Muslims’ E‐Jihad: Trumping Islamophobia in the Trump Era
Authors: Khamis Sahar 
Published: February 2021

AbstractIslamophobia, or the irrational, exaggerated fear of Islam and Muslims, has been on the rise lately in the United States, especially after President Trump came to office. Some of the worst Islamophobes launched their campaigns online, using the Internet as a platform to spout hatred and fuel anger and discrimination against immigrants and minorities, in general, and Muslims, in particular. In an effort to counter this dangerous new tide of Islamophobia and to overcome its destructive consequences, American-Muslims launched a number of well-orchestrated online campaigns. This essay examines the double role of the Internet, as a platform through which Islamophobia could be both fostered and resisted, simultaneously. It sheds light on some of the Islamophobic posts online, as well as some of the most popular social media campaigns which American-Muslims launched to combat and resist this complex and multifaceted phenomenon of Islamophobia. It discusses how American-Muslims understand, negotiate, challenge, and respond to Islamophobia, and its varied cultural, social, and political manifestations and implications, through a variety of mediated discourses and ongoing social media campaigns. In doing so, it emphasizes the plurality of American-Muslims’ voices, identities, realities, and strategies, as exemplified in their responses to Islamophobia.
Deterritorializing Cyber Security and Warfare in Palestine: Hackers, Sovereignty, and the National Cyberspace as Normative
Authors: Cristiano Fabio 
Published: February 2021

AbstractCyber security strategies operate on the normative assumption that national cyberspace mirrors a country's territorial sovereignty. Its protection commonly entails practices of bordering through infrastructural control and service delivery, as well as the policing of data circulation and user mobility. In a context characterized by profound territorial fragmentation, such as the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT),1 equating national cyberspace with national territory proves to be reductive. This article explores how different cyber security strategies – implemented by the Israeli government, the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas – intersect and produce a cyberspace characterized by territorial annexation, occupation, and blockade. Drawing on this analysis, it then employs the conceptual prism of (de-)–(re-) territorialization to reflect on how these strategies, as well as those of Palestinian hackers, articulate territoriality beyond the normativity of national cyberspace.
Commentary: The Future of Socially Engaged Anthropology: A Student Perspective
Authors: Brown Robin Lewis 
Published: February 2021

AbstractMany anthropologists have begun to shy away from disengaged textual analysis and extreme relativism, which were common in the discipline's earlier years. Instead, many have turned increasingly to issues of social justice and activism. These anthropologists must walk a fine line, respecting the agency of their interlocutors while remaining an assisting force in their struggles. In this article, I examine what socially engaged anthropology looks like to an undergraduate anthropology student. I comparatively examine the subfields of applied and public anthropology and consider the implications of such socially engaged scholarship for the broader discipline of anthropology. I also consider the relevance of these subfields to the newest generation of engaged anthropologists. In particular, I discuss public anthropology's power to allow anthropologists to advocate for, while not drowning out the voices of, their interlocutors. In my own work, I have struggled to reconcile not just my own privileged position with the position of my interlocutors, but also my hesitance to impose my own viewpoints on them with my desire to perform effective social activism. I ultimately find that the most effective way to perform useful solidarity work as a student anthropologist is to negotiate solutions by directly confronting any differences of privilege that may exist between researcher and interlocutor.
“I'd Rather Pay”: Bribery and Informal Practices in Ukrainian Bureaucracy
Authors: Fedirko Taras 
Published: February 2021

AbstractIn the last two decades, bribery has been a salient issue in social science research in general and anthropology in particular. The subject poses considerable challenges to ethnographic research, and therefore many aspects remain understudied. My article addresses one of them, namely, the relationship between bribery, networking, ‘petty’ informality, and everyday social relations within the bureaucratic domain. I argue that bribery becomes possible because of informal practices that allow both officials and citizens to manipulate formal rules and processes. I also argue that mundane formal procedures that form the basis of bureaucracy become channels for informal practices. In order to research these aspects of bribery, which usually remain undisclosed and inaccessible through traditional methods of participant observation and interviews, I use legal case documents of bribery in the real estate domain in the Kiliya district of the Odesa region. I rely on an official anti‐corruption court record and explore methodological challenges pertinent to the analysis of court records as an alternative to ethnography in research on corruption. My article contributes to the study of bribery as an embedded and situated practice, linking it to ways people engage with, manipulate, and apply bureaucratic norms by enforcing informal modes of sociality in formal contexts.
Ethnographic Strategies for Engaging Deaf Youth Participants: Photovoice and Participatory Analysis
Authors: Anne E. Pfister 
Published: February 2021

AbstractResearchers across disciplines have looked to deaf individuals and communities to learn about many aspects of human experience, earning deaf people's unique biological and social status a subjugated position in scientific inquiry. All too often deaf people appear in the literature as research “subjects” rather than active, autonomous participants, or partner‐researchers. My research investigated deaf youth identity in Mexico City, Mexico, with a focus on the emic perspectives of my adolescent participants and their families. My focus deaf epistemologies led me to photovoice for data collection and analysis. This article outlines the engagement of deaf youth participants through the participatory visual data collection method photovoice, which allowed me to achieve the goals of a community‐based research design. This article explores the unique needs of deaf youth research participants and epistemological considerations for community‐based work among deaf youth in Mexico City. I discuss innovative ethnographic results revealing deaf youth's emic perspectives through participatory analysis.
Intensive Predictive Mapping of Surface Topography at Archaeological Sites in Peru
Authors: Matthew Piscitelli , Jonathan Haas , Winifred Creamer 
Published: February 2021

AbstractLimited resources often hamper archaeologists’ ability to accurately identify promising areas to excavate at large‐scale sites. High‐resolution maps can serve as predictive tools for locating subsurface architecture based on patterns in surface topography. This paper presents recent intensive mapping conducted at three Late Archaic (3,000‐1,800 B. C. E.) archaeological sites in the Fortaleza Valley of Peru. Total station data were used to generate 3D surface maps in ArcGIS to delineate elevation changes in fine‐grained detail. Distinctive features on the surface and microtopography reveal small‐scale patterns that can inform our choices for targeted excavations. This procedure will provide a methodological tool for finding subsurface architecture at large‐scale sites elsewhere.
Drumming for the Orisa: (Re)inventing Yoruba Identity in Oyotunji Village
Authors: Townsend Colin 
Published: February 2021

AbstractI explore the ways identity is constructed among a group of drummers at Oyotunji Village, South Carolina. Oyotunji Village was founded by Oba Oseijeman I, born Walter King of Detroit, in 1970 with the purpose of providing African‐Americans in the United States with a geographical, political, and cultural space to experience African culture. Modeled after Yoruba culture of southwest Nigeria, members of the community practice a religion known as orisa‐voodoo. Throughout the year, festivals are held dedicated to various orisa, “deities,” in which the drummers play a crucial role in the religious experience of the orisa‐voodoo adherents. An essential part of Yoruba culture, drumming acts as a musical bridge between humans and orisa, enabling orisa‐voodoo practitioners to petition the orisa for guidance and intervention in their daily lives. Drumming traditions at Oyotunji Village provide drummers with a repository of cultural knowledge and practices from which to draw, while at the same time offering them a creative outlet capable of reshaping and redefining those very same traditions. I examine various processes of identity formation among the drummers as part of their musical apprenticeship, during which they learn not only how to play the instrument but also about Yoruba culture in general. I employ an analytical framework proposed by Timothy Rice (2003) involving a “subject‐centered musical ethnography” within a threedimensional space of musical experience including time, location, and metaphor.
Rastafari in Germany: Jamaican Roots and Global–Local Influences
Authors: Wakengut Anastasia 
Published: February 2021

AbstractThe Rastafari movement arose in Jamaica in the 1930s and spread from that small island to a variety of areas around the world. Having emerged as a response to colonial legacies, racialization, and racial oppression, the movement of marginalized black Jamaicans transcended its local Caribbean borders and became a way of life for people of very diverse cultural origins. Rastafari, born within a tradition of resistance in Jamaica, helped its adherents reconstruct their “black consciousness” and African heritage. The worldview of the Afro‐Caribbean diaspora challenged established colonial views in the struggle for social justice. Also for many people in the West, this worldview became a source of spirituality as well as a philosophy criticizing Eurocentric assumptions of superiority. The Rastafari philosophy spread in Europe, producing a multicultural phenomenon. I focus on Rastafari in Germany, its peculiarities and similarities to, as well as its differences from, the Jamaican movement. This study poses questions about identity in the Rastafari movement in Germany and explores crucial issues in Rastafari, such as identity transformation, identity work, selfidentification, representation, cultural resistance, and globalization. My argument is that “Africanness” and “black consciousness” can be adjusted and interpreted in a European context as a cluster of ideas and symbols that offer German Rastafarians identification and embody social justice.