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Gender & Social Media During the 2011 Egyptian Revolution The American University in Cairo School of Humanities and Social Sciences Categorizing Women: Gender & Social Media During the 2011 Egyptian Revolution A Thesis Submitted to The Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, and Egyptology In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts In Sociology- Anthropology By S.W. Barnes Under the supervision of Dr. Mark Westmoreland September 2012 DEDICATION For my Opa & Oma ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research and the writing of this thesis would not have been possible without so many people to whom I will always be indebted. Thanks to the readers of my committee Dr. Hanan Sabea and Dr. John Schaefer for their commitment and invaluable insights during the undertaking of this study. A special and sincere thanks to my thesis advisor Dr. Mark Westmoreland whose patience, involvement, commitment and encouragement was absolutely indispensible for the completion of this research. Without his careful guidance and skillful teaching methods, I fear I would still be relating societal constructions to a sandwich. My gratitude extends further to Ms. Dalia Adel Edris and Mr. Lilian Butros for their empathy and geniality. Whether research related or otherwise, they never ceased to offer their support and assistance. Conducting research in a country where the language is not your own is never an easy feat, therefore, thank you to all the individuals who have helped me translate content written or spoken in Arabic: Nariman El Bakry, Noha Roushdy, Mohammed Saeed, and Karim Emad. Finally and always, I am grateful to my mother Patricia, my grandparents Charlötte and Milton Johnson, and the rest of my family for their unwavering enthusiasm and support during the course of this degree. iii ABSTRACT The American University in Cairo * Categorizing Women: Gender & Social Media during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution* S.W. Barnes From February 2011 to July 2012, formerly suppressed political parties struggled to fill the political void post-Hosni Mubarak. While debates about Egypt’s political future circulated, individuals as well as dissident factions employed various interpretations of women and their roles to symbolically represent their varying ideologies. Despite the significance and economic value women produce as citizens, many political actors regularly bracket their concerns as irrelevant to the affairs of the state. As a result, political actors have engaged with new strategic techniques to access the various politicized publics that marginalized subaltern groups. The most publicized approach during this time, involved individual’s employment of social media, where political actors could not only escape state media’s control over information, but also produce their own level of citizen authority. By ethnographically exploring social networking forums and engaging with Cairene political actors, this research argues that a dialectical relationship exists between social media and politicized publics where actors repurpose, and challenge concepts about women to alter the political atmosphere during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. Using participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and discourse analysis, this research explores how the analytical category of women was contested in social media and to what extent these classifications were manifested in publics found on- and offline. In order to understand the shifting political spheres during the Egyptian revolution, this ethnographic study engages with the symbolic deployment of women as a category, and the relationship between the production of women and publics. Participants of this research were selected amongst a systematic random sampling framework via Twitter; using prevalent hash tags that engaged with discourses about Egyptian women, the 2011 Egyptian revolution, future governance, and cyber activism. Key events served as a methodological frame to constitute case studies. The events were derived from interviews in which, participants defined what they believed to be moments of significance. This research contributes to the literature regarding the effect new communication technologies have on social structures by investigating the implication that genders has online. This is important because the ways women are marked, categorized, and circulated, consequently contribute to shaping future governance and sociopolitical apparatuses. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ILLUSTRATIONS ................................................................................................ vii I. INTRODUCTION................................................................................................ 2 LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................................... 10 Gender Production ........................................................................................... 12 Women as Symbols: Nationalism .................................................................... 16 Social Media .................................................................................................... 20 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: PUBLICS, BODIES, & CYBER-ACTIVISM ..................... 24 METHODOLOGY: ETHNOGRAPHIC APPROACHES .................................................... 29 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................ 32 Scholarly Contributions ................................................................................... 33 II. POLITICS & PUBLICS ................................................................................... 37 POLITICS .............................................................................................................. 37 Chronology of Major Events: Women & the Revolution .................................. 38 Introduction to Five Participants ...................................................................... 46 PUBLICS ............................................................................................................... 52 Habermas and Publics ...................................................................................... 53 Women and the Public Sphere ......................................................................... 55 Social Networks and the Public Sphere ............................................................ 60 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................ 63 III. TERMS OF POLITICAL PARTICIPATION ............................................... 66 WHY SOCIAL MEDIA? .......................................................................................... 67 v Narratives About Social Media’s Purpose & Effectiveness .............................. 68 ONLINE/OFFLINE DICHOTOMY ............................................................................... 70 Disembodiment & Anonymity ......................................................................... 71 Problems with the online/offline dichotomy ..................................................... 72 WHAT IS A TWITTER ACTIVIST? ............................................................................ 73 Discourses about ‘real’ activism ...................................................................... 73 Blurred Boundaries .......................................................................................... 79 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................ 81 IV. WOMEN’S BODIES & SOCIAL MEDIATED PUBLICS ........................... 84 (EN)GENDERING FEMALE BODIES IN OFFLINE SPACES ........................................... 88 Placing the Blame: The Girl in the Blue Bra .................................................... 88 Sexual Objectification: Samira Ibrahim & The Virginity Test .......................... 94 (EN)GENDERING FEMALE BODIES IN ONLINE SPACES ............................................ 97 Projecting the Body: #nudephotorevolutionary ................................................ 99 Bending Boundaries: Asmaa Mahfouz ........................................................... 102 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................... 104 V. CONCLUSION: PUBLIC CONTENTION ................................................... 106 Why Women? ................................................................................................ 111 Final Reflections ............................................................................................ 114 REFERENCES .................................................................................................... 115 vi ILLUSTRATIONS Figures 1.1 Islamic Mickey and Minnie Mouse……………………………………………….2 3.1 Facebook Poster …...…………………………………………………………….79 4.1 The Girl in the Blue Bra………………………………………………………….89 4.2 Nude Aliaa El Mahdy…………………………………………………………...101 Tables 2.1 Chronology of Major Events: Women & the Revolution in 2011……………….50 2.2 Chronology of Major Events: Women & the Revolution in 2012……………….51 vii I. INTRODUCTION “I apologize for those who don’t take this as a joke; I just thought it was a funny picture; no disrespect meant. I am sorry. Assef!” @NaguibSawiris Late June 2011, Coptic Christian and telecom businessman Naguib Sawiris posted a picture of Disney characters in Islamic garb on his Twitter account. In the photo (figure 1) Mickey Mouse’s eyes are threatening and framed by a rough cut-and-paste job of a thick black beard (an alteration
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