GAMERS, HUNTERS, PROVOCATEURS: DIGITAL MEDIATIONS OF VIOLENCE, GENDER, AND FAITH IN THE ARAB WORLD by Nicole Sunday Grove A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Baltimore, Maryland February, 2015 © 2014 Nicole Sunday Grove All Rights Reserved Abstract My dissertation examines how digital media and communications technologies shape responses to gendered violence, human security, and women’s rights in the Middle East. I combine discourse analysis with a material investigation of computational media to consider the gendered and racialized dynamics of digital knowledge production about these issues, how this knowledge informs particular forms of intervention on behalf of women in the region, and new global labor networks emerging from the use of everyday technological devices and practices. First, I show how the use of spatial information technologies and crowdmapping applications for addressing sexual harassment in Egypt depoliticizes sexual violence by subordinating Egypt’s urban landscape to a visual cartography of crowdsourced data attributing harassment to ‘culture,’ while simultaneously erasing the role of the state in perpetuating sexual violence. Second, I consider the use of nudity by Arab women as a form of protest on social media to reveal filtering processes that depoliticize images of protesting gendered bodies as they are forced to travel with millions of other flagged pornographic, violent and other disturbing pictures managed by the hidden network of low-wage, off-shore content moderators tasked with managing this new form of ‘toxic waste.’ Third, I examine how Saudi women gamers use gameplay to transgress gender-based constraints on movement and communication, while articulating alternative discourses of creativity, access, and piety through the practice of gaming as a way to create more relations of ii accountability to women in the form of education, employment, and increased access to public space. In sum, the project considers the general properties of digital media including software, algorithms, spambots, and other technical infrastructures alongside narratives, psychic investments, and the tendencies of global flows of capital to show how, together, they produce complex and often conflicted fields of action upon with contemporary geopolitical relations play out. Committee: Jane Bennett (Chair); Waleed Hazbun; P.J. Brendese; Clara Han; Bernadette Wegenstein. iii Preface and Acknowledgements There are many people without whom this project would not have been possible. The Johns Hopkins University Department of Political Science provided me with a supportive and inspiring interdisciplinary environment in which I was encouraged to pursue my academic and political interests as a meditation in creativity. The University of Hawai’i at Manoa Department of Political Science was a welcoming second home, and gave me the opportunity to write my thesis in one of the most beautiful places on earth among an incredible group of scholars. I would like to thank Jane Bennett for her guidance, support, and inspiration throughout each stage of this process. Waleed Hazbun has been an exceptional advisor, colleague and friend. I am grateful for their time and encouragement, and their comments on multiple drafts of the dissertation. Kathy Ferguson also provided valuable feedback on large portions of this project. William Connolly has helped shape my thinking about this project in classes, conversation, and in his work. I would also like to thank Siba Grovogui, whose ideas resonate throughout the project. At the University of Hawai’i, I am grateful to call the following people colleagues: Michael Shapiro, Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller, Sankaran Krishna, Nevi Soguk, and Debora Halbert. I would also like to thank my graduate cohort at Hopkins, and the graduate students at Manoa who have inspired my thinking about various parts of the dissertation, including: Hannah Son, Willy Blomme, Chad Shomura, Alexander Barder, Daniel Levine, Nathan Gies, Meghan Luhman, Sharain Naylor, Rex Troumbley and Katie Brennan. iv This dissertation would not have been written without the support of my partner in life and in thinking, Jairus Grove. I am constantly inspired by his generosity and his insight. This thesis is dedicated to him, and to our two girls Oona and Scout. v Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………....ii Preface and Acknowledgements………………………………………………..iv List of Figures………………………………………………………………………….vii Introduction……………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 1 Theorizing the Interface at the Intersections of Gender, Race and Technology…………………………………………………..18 Chapter 2 The Cartographic Ambiguities of Harassmap.com: Crowdmapping Security and Sexual Violence in Egypt………………32 Chapter 3 The Digital Transgressions of Aliaa ElMahdy and Amina Sboui: Facebook Universalism and Politics of Networked Nudity ………………………………………………………………71 Chapter 4 Kingdom of Games: The Digital Heterotopias of Saudi Women………………………………………………………………………...110 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….168 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………….174 Curriculum Vitae……………………………………………………………………194 vi List of Figures Fig. 1. Image from the Yahoo! Change Your World summit in Cairo. Source: itpnet.com Fig. 2. Screen shot of Alien Adventure. Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uysaN8jcHOs. Author screen shot taken November 23, 2013. Fig. 3 Harassmap. http://harassmap.org/en/what-we-do/the-map Screenshot taken by the author. May 2, 2014. Figure 4. Harassmap.org/en Source: Author screenshot. April 12, 2014. Figure 5. Four different zoom positions on a single reporting map. Source: Harassmap.org/en/submit-report. Author screenshots. April 12, 2014. Figure 6. Image of harassers accompanying a report dated March 21, 2014. Source: http://harassmap.org/en/what-we-do/the-map/. Author screen shot, May 7, 2014. Fig. 7 Aliaa Magda Elmahdy (right). Source: arebelsdiary.blogspot.com Fig. 8 Amina Sboui (left). Source: uriasposten.net Fig. 9. Protestors in Egypt hold up signs in support of Facebook. Source: gettyimages. Figs. 10. FEMEN members protest Sboui’s arrest in Tunisia, May 29, 2013. Source: European Press Agency Figs. 11. FEMEN members protest Sboui’s arrest in Tunisia, May 29, 2013. Source: European Press Agency Fig. 12. Egyptian security forces attack a female protestor during the 25 January Revolution in Egypt. The women, now known as the ‘Girl in the Blue Bra’ has become an iconic image of the Revolution. Source: NPR.org Fig. 13. Image from ElMahdy ‘s public Facebook profile album. Fig. 14. Image of commenter Julian Halbeisen, December 30, 2013. Source: Facebook. vii Fig. 15. Contractors working for TaskUs review content on their office computers in the Taguig district of Manila. Source: wired.com Fig. 16. Logo of the #women2drive campaign. Source: digitland.blogspot.com Fig. 17. An image posted to the GCOM website celebrating International Women’s Day, featuring Ellie from the video game Last of Us, and Daenerys Targaryen, ‘Mother of Dragons’ on Game of Thrones. Author screen shot, July 7, 2014. Fig 18. Image from the blog of an aspiring female game developer in Jeddah. Fig. 19. Posted Feb, 2014. Fig. 20. Vaas. Author screen shot, July 17, 2014. Fig. 21. Author screen shot June 17, 2014. Figs. 22. Images of the book Hawjan taken at the GCON 2013 conference and posted by attendees. Author screen shot. October 20, 2014. Figs. 23. Images of the book Hawjan taken at the GCON 2013 conference and posted by attendees. Author screen shot. October 20, 2014. Fig. 24. Bahjatt: “How Arab Sci-Fi Can Dream a Better Future.” Published June, 20, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdWPM_Vy-Zw Fig. 25 Author screen shot of introductory narrative for Alien Adventure. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uysaN8jcHOs Fig. 26 Author screen shot of Alien Adventure. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uysaN8jcHOs Fig 27. Author created collage of Saudi women gamer profile images. October 18, 2014. Figure 28. Public images posted online from GCON 2013. Author screenshot, October 25, 2014. Fig. 29. Woman cosplaying as Hidan from Naruto at GCON2013. Author screenshot, October 22, 2014. Fig. 30. Still from a video of cosplayer at GCON 2013 as ‘No Face’. Fig. 31. Image of woman cosplaying as No Face at GCON 2013. viii Fig. 32. Image of No Face from the film, Spirited Away. Author screen shot. October 3, 2014. ix Introduction On January 18, 2012, the Yahoo! Business and Human Rights Program along with Yahoo! Maktoob (Yahoo’s official entity in the Middle East) hosted the Change Your World! Cairo Summit, which spotlighted a number of Arab women using social media and other digital platforms to create positive change in the region. The summit was moderated by journalist Mona Eltahawy, who arrived with her arms still in bandages after being attacked by Egyptian security forces while protesting during the 25 January Revolution. Eltahaway stated to the crowd of over one hundred ‘Twitter superstars,’ ‘cyber-activists,’ ‘fearless bloggers,’ and ‘social media celebrities’ in attendance, as well as countless others tuning into the conference online, “The power of women is in their stories. They are not theories, they are real lives that, thanks to social networks, we are able to share and exchange” (Radsch, 2012). Other women were invited to share their experiences using social and digital media as a tool of activism over the last year, including Danya Bashir, who discussed 1 using Twitter to document real-time events