Abstract
Marc Owen Jones began his PhD at the University of Durham in 2011 after securing a studentship from the North East Doctoral Training Centre. He worked briefly as a graduate research assistant at Leicester University following the completion of an MSc in Arab World Studies from Durham University in 2010. This two-year MSc was funded by the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World and involved a year of intense Arabic tuition at both the Universities of Edinburgh and Damascus. He received his BA in Journalism, Film and Broadcasting from Cardiff University in 2006 before spending a year in Sudan teaching English. He tweets and blogs regularly on Bahrain and his research interests include critical security surveillance, cultural geography, public space, social justice, systemic control, policing and social media.<br />This is a study of how the Bahraini regime and its supporters utilized Facebook, Twitter and other social media as a tool of surveillance and social control during the Bahrain uprising. Using a virtual ethnography conducted between February 2011 and December 2011, it establishes a typology of methods that describe how hegemonic forces and institutions employed social media to suppress both online and offline dissent. These methods are trolling, naming and shaming, offline factors, intelligence gathering and passive observation. It also discusses how these methods of control limit the ability of activists to use online places as spaces of representation and anti-hegemonic identity formation. While there is considerable research on the positive role social media plays in activism, this article addresses the relative paucity of literature on how hegemonic forces use social media to resist political change.
Highlights
Stekelenburg S and Klandermans M (2009) Protest and Social Movement in the Developing World
While there is considerable research on the positive role social media plays in activism, this article addresses the relative paucity of literature on how hegemonic forces use social media to resist political change
It was these relationships that developed through the virtual ethnography that formed the basis of investigative collaborations that were important in identifying potential surveillance tactics used by hegemonic forces
Summary
Stekelenburg S and Klandermans M (eds) (2009) Protest and Social Movement in the Developing World. He received his BA in Journalism, Film and Broadcasting from Cardiff University in 2006 before spending a year in Sudan teaching English He tweets and blogs regularly on Bahrain and his research interests include critical security surveillance, cultural geography, public space, social justice, systemic control, policing and social media. Media coverage of the Arab spring tended to popularize the social media aspect of the struggle, with many news outlets focusing on the role of Twitter and Facebook in the revolutions Much of their discourse subscribed to the ‘technological utopian’ position, which views social media and the internet as a positive force that democratizes information, reinvigorates citizens’ political engagement, encourages freedom of expression and brings people together (Castells, 1996; Grossman, 1995; Rheingold, 1993; Saco, 2002)
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