Egypt Claims to Counter Disinformation, but Whose Disinformation is Sisi Fighting?

By Dounia Mahlouly|March 29, 2023|Arab uprisings, Digital cultures, Social media, The Middle East, Uncategorized|0 comments

Misinformation – whether deliberately harmful or unintentionally misleading – is nothing new. Political actors have always competed for attention and legitimacy by strategically framing their narrative, occasionally distorting the facts or counteracting alternative versions of the truth. The term ‘disinformation’ however became somewhat of a buzzword in recent years (Bennett and Livingston, 2018). In today’s media environment, the debate surrounding this issue specifically pertains to unverified or misappropriated claims as

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Campaign against the execution of three protesters in Iran in July 2020

By Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad|October 1, 2020|Digital cultures, Latest news, Research, Social media, Students, The Middle East|0 comments

On 10 July 2020, the Iranian Judiciary announced that three men, namely Amirhossein Moradi, Saeed Tamjidi and Mohamad Rajabi, who were arrested in anti-regime protests in November 2019, were to be imminently executed as they had been denied appeal. Within three days of the announcement, the Persian hashtag #اعدام_نکنید (“Don’t_Execute”) started appearing on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. By 14 July, the hashtag was trending globally on Twitter with many inside

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Nine Years After the Toppling of Hosny Mubarak

By Dounia Mahlouly|March 15, 2020|Arab uprisings, Digital cultures, Social media, The Middle East|0 comments

By Hossam Fazalla and Dounia Mahlouly Nine years after the toppling of Hosny Mubarak, the 91-year-old ousted Egyptian president passed away. The news was met with emotional confusion and mixed feelings by Egyptians. It is the death of the man whose face was in every Egyptian classroom, who was considered a war hero, and yet, it is also the death of the dictator who ruled for 30 years, and whose hands

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Politics of seeing

By Matti Pohjonen|February 12, 2020|AI, Digital cultures, India, Research, Social media|

“Knowledge is a practical assemblage, a ‘mechanism’ of statements and visibilities.”  — Deleuze People often ask why I bother learning the algorithms and technologies that drive today’s AI innovations – I am a digital anthropologist after all and not a hard-baked computer scientist.  Should I just not focus on the bread-and-butter of qualitative research – thick description, deep contextual knowledge of cultures, in-depth understanding of the nuances of language –

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Dr. Zahera Harb discusses fake news and the Lebanese protests

By Dina Matar|November 11, 2019|Arab uprisings, Latest news, Social media, The Middle East|0 comments

Lebanon Protests and ‘fake news’ By Zahera Harb On October 17 a wave of protests erupted in Lebanon against corruption. Almost half of the Lebanese population took to the streets demanding an end to corruption, transparent economic policies, social justice and protection of the environment. Slogans, such as ‘down with the sectarian confessional regime,’ mingled with calls for the resignation of all state officials whose practices were regarded as corrupt

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Should robots control what we read?

By Matti Pohjonen|July 4, 2019|AI, Digital cultures, Extreme speech, India, Research, Social media|0 comments

For somebody who has been following digital politics globally for more than a decade now, it is sometimes uncanny how hateful, violent and misleading communication – or at least the public and political controversies and moral panics around them – now dominates the global political landscape. Digital media, it seems, is imagined in mostly terms of the dangers it poses: violent extremist propaganda run amok; democratic processes corrupted by disinformation

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Social media and shifting perspectives on security challenges to migration and human trafficking

By Dounia Mahlouly|May 10, 2019|Digital cultures, Latest news, Research, Social media|0 comments

Is there a role social media can play in shifting perspectives on security challenges and approaches to migrant smuggling and human-trafficking in North Africa?  Such a question, I suggest, is becoming more relevant because security perspectives and policies, particularly in the context of migration, are taking shape in a climate of anti-immigration sentiment, racism and xenophobia, which feeds into the securitisation of the humanitarian crisis around North African migration. So

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