This book investigates the interplay between media, politics, religion, and culture in shaping Arabs' quest for more stable and democratic governance models in the aftermath of the "Arab Spring" uprisings. It focuses on online mediated public debates, specifically user comments on online Arab news sites, and their potential to re-engage citizens in politics. Contributors systematically explore and critique these online communities and spaces in the context of the Arab uprisings, with case studies, largely centered on Egypt, covering micro-bloggers, Islamic discourse online, Libyan nationalism on Facebook, and a computational assessment of online engagement, among other topics.
"On the 10th anniversary of the Arab uprisings, Eid Mohamed and Aziz Douai have curated a unique and perceptive collection of essays about these movements, their compositions, discourses, representations, and efficacies. Using compelling, nuanced, and insightful examinations of specific new media contexts and platforms, the Egyptian revolution and other mobilizations in the region are understood on their own political and cultural terms. This is a volume that, in its totality, resists the temptation of forcing the uprisings into narrow equivalency. Instead, it comfortably accepts the messy contradictions and pervasive incongruences of the Arab Spring, leaving the reader with the kind of open-ended uncertainties that are characteristic of revolutions a decade since their eruption."