title: A critical discourse study of gender representations and gendered discourses in the debate on women's driving in Saudi Arabia on Twitter During the ban on women driving
Creators: name: Alsaby, Arwa
Publisher: name: University of Reading
Year: 2023

description: Before the historic lifting of the ban on women driving (WD) intense debates among men and 
women in Saudi Arabia took place on Twitter. These discussions were rich that various 
hashtags about women driving repeatedly reached the Twitter trending list in the Kingdom. 
The gendered nature of this richness can be explored by taking a critical approach to the study 
of these tweets. This qualitative research, informed by critical discourse studies, and 
particularly van Leeuwen’s (2008) and Sunderland’s approach (2004) critically analysed one 
of the trending Twitter hashtags about women driving that was trending during the ban on 
women driving. Van Leeuwen's (2008) approach is employed to critically analyse the way 
female and male opponents and supporters of women driving in Saudi Arabia are portrayed in 
the hashtag, specifically in tweets by those who were anti-women driving (Anti-WD) and pro-women driving (Pro-WD). This was combined with Sunderland's approach in order to identify 
and name the various gendered discourses that were drawn upon in the representations of 
female and male opponents and supporters of women driving. Thematic analysis was also 
used to deepen the study’s understanding of how the different gender representations are 
constructed in the tweets, and to categorize repeated themes associated with gender in the 
analysed data. Combining all of these frameworks, the research objective is to illustrate how 
language and gender and gender roles, relations, and gendered discourses are connected 
discursively. The findings showed similar gender related themes in the Anti-WD and Pro-WD 
tweets and in regard to representations there were also similarities and differences in the 
representations of female and male supporters and opponents. The study identified several 
gendered discourses in the representations of the social actors in the tweets made by Anti-WD 
and Pro-WD Twitter users. All of the identified discourses fall within traditional gendered 
discourses. The study results show that, despite where the authors of the tweets overtly 
positioned themselves in regard to women driving, whether advocate or against, they both 
reinforced and drew on similar gendered discourses, indicating the same gendered ideologies 
are shared by opposing groups. This study contributes to the field of CDS by providing a non-western perspective rather a Saudi perspective about an issue that exist in Saudi Arabia unlike 
the Western perspectives generally found in CDS studies that examined Western newspapers 
and media discussing the issue of women driving in Saudi. The study also contributes to the 
field of CDS by examining the issue, not from the narrow viewpoint of symbolic elites, such 
as female activists and male religious clerics, as other studies have done, but from the unique 
perspective of tweets by Saudi people; people who actively tweeted on trending hashtags 
regardless of the numbers of followers they had. The study adopts a unique perspective on the 
examination of women driving because it recognises that both men and women could be 
either opponents or supporters of the move, transcending the simplistic and narrow men 
versus women interpretation. It further contributes to the field of CDS and gender studies by 
addressing gaps in knowledge, particularly with regard to the Arabic language but also in 
relation to gender and social media in the Saudi context. It presents concrete and substantial 
linguistic evidence, in Arabic, of the ways in which female and male supporters and 
opponents have been represented on the Twitter social media platform. Finally, the research is 
noteworthy and original because it identifies and names previously uncharted gendered 
discourses, constituting a major contribution to the field.