The Islamist opposition online in Egypt and Jordan

Abstract

An October report from Reporters without Borders indicates that the level of media freedom in both Egypt and Jordan has deteriorated over the past year following the jailing of several journalists and political activists in both countries. This warrants a look at how opposition groups in these two states are using the internet to adapt to increasingly hostile print and television media environments. While Egypt and Jordan have relatively low internet penetration rates, 8.3% and 14.8% respectively, both countries are currently undertaking programs to promote and expand access, thus making online media activism increasingly relevant to political developments. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) has been raising its online profile at a time when the group is making limited gains in the official political process. In Jordan, regime policies have not been as hostile as in Egypt, but a series of recent measures limiting media freedom encouraged the Islamist opposition group, the Islamic Action Front (IAF), to launch an internet campaign supporting its candidates in the November 2007 elections. Although both groups share a Muslim Brotherhood ideological background, the use of the internet has varied between these two organizations, and is shaped by the organizational dynamics of these groups and the wider political context in which they function. Accordingly, while both the MB and the IAF have used websites to support short-term political objectives like election campaigns, the use of individualized online platforms such as blogs for media activism has been so far limited to the Egyptian MB. The IAF’s current internet strategy appears to be motivated by success at the polls rather than participating in broader liberal discourses enabled by new media. I suggest that while both countries have experienced setbacks in media freedom, the ways in which their respective Islamist opposition groups have utilized new media have played out differently according to factors internal and external to these groups as political actors. Furthermore, I argue that while new media technologies have provided some newfound benefits to opposition groups, they can bring potential challenges as well.