Arab Women and the Media in Changing Landscapes

Elena Maestri · Annemarie Profanter Editors

Arab Women and the Media in Changing

LandscapesForeword by

Lubna Ahmed Al-Kazi

EditorsElena MaestriUniversità Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

(UCSC)Milan, Italy

Annemarie ProfanterFree University of Bozen-BolzanoBolzano, Italy

ISBN 978-3-319-62793-9 ISBN 978-3-319-62794-6 (eBook)DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-62794-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017947719

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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v

Foreword

This book takes on the ambitious task of discussing the media from tra-ditional to modern modes of communication. It discusses Arab media in public spaces, such as television, which has moved beyond national boundaries and has risen to transcultural broadcasting through satel-lites and the role of women in this changing landscape. Furthermore, social media like Twitter and blogs have gained momentum in recent years and attracted youth and activists from across the Arab World. This has opened new avenues of virtual space that has given them freedom of expression away from the shackles of the State in the public space. This book encompasses the MENA Region and sheds light on how use of the media and cultural change are evolving simultaneously in these societies.

The 1990s saw a proliferation of satellite channels across the Arab world. This development went beyond national borders to transcultural levels of broadcasting. The rise in women’s education and an increase in women’s awareness of their roles in society began to gain momentum across the region. At the Arab Women’s summit held in 2002, Queen Rania of Jordan created an advisory council called the Arab Women’s Media campaign to remind these satellite channel owners to work on removing earlier ‘misconceptions’ about Arab Women. Though the satel-lite stations were privately owned in these countries, the government still had an upper hand in monitoring programs (Sakr 2001). As McLaughlin (2002) warned, political ideological powers in Arab societies often con-strained or sabotaged dialogue among women. Furthermore, commercial

vi FOREWORD

considerations also led to trivializing women’s images by often featur-ing women news anchors in low cut attire. However, at the dawn of the new century, women in the media have objected to such exploitation and instead have advocated for being recognized for their professional skills. In a survey of eight Arab countries in August 2004, viewers named Khadija bin Qenna of Al-Jazeera and Muntaha AlRamhi of AlArabiya among the five most preferred television anchors (Taglar 2005). This book shows that media is no longer restricted to traditional television, radio, and printed press. In fact, media has undergone major changes in the last two decades due to digital technology. The new media is interac-tive, involves people and instantly crosses borders in virtual space. The catalyst that changed the mediascape was the Internet, first introduced in Tunisia in 1991 and later in Kuwait in 1992. Saudi Arabia was the last of the oil rich Arab Gulf States to connect to the internet, but it is the larg-est and fastest growing country with internet users (Abdulla 2007).

As some of the contributors in this book show, the internet is chang-ing the landscape of media and women are actively participating in this empowering evolution. Mellor states that this new technology is “reshaping the Pan Arab public sphere by linking Arabs throughout the World into one online community” (Mellor et al. 2011). Without any borders or boundaries blocking the flow of information, news spreads within seconds from Cairo to Saudi Arabia and people can engage in dis-cussion and debate issues that were previously taboo like human rights, women’s rights, state corruption, and sexual harassment.

In this book, Hosni describes how Egyptian women have used cyber-space to actively campaign for democracy and use blogs to involve oth-ers. Bernardi details how HarassMap was created to protect women and protest against their sexual harassment. According to Paul and Zlutnik (2012), Facebook has been used to schedule protests, Twitter to coor-dinate and, YouTube to tell the world. “When the political becomes per-sonal, the level of engagement goes up and the breadth and width of participation increases expeditiously” (Abdulla 2007).

This book addresses commonalities and differences among women in the Arab Region. While women in Saudi Arabia were seen as politically active on Twitter, the Emirati women were passive participants. Egypt and Syria, two Arab countries that have witnessed political turmoil, saw women actively involved in the revolution, and yet were marginalized by their states. It interestingly gives deep insight into the changing land-scapes of Arab societies and the role of women in the media.

FOREWORD vii

In Chap. 2 of this book, “Arab Television Channels: The Image of Women between Local and Global Trends”, Barbara De Poli focuses on women’s clothing, style, and looks in Arab television. She states that the female body and its clothing are regulated by political and commer-cial agency. The wearer is either portrayed as belonging to a political group or displayed for commercial gains. De Poli presents her mate-rial, which was gained through the qualitative observation of women’s images on two platforms: Nilesat (Arab Satellite that has nearly 200 dif-ferent channels) and Hotbird (European satellite that also hosts 50 free-air Arab channels). The analysis studied different levels of broadcasting from newscasts, talk shows, fiction, religious programs, and music vid-eos to sexual commerce. She found that the ownership of the station, the change in political leadership, and public demand have a big influ-ence on women’s image. While government censorship of national televi-sion can control women’s dress codes, on private channels, their bodies become tools of entertainment and are trivialized. Her astute observa-tions describe changes in the Arab mediascape by giving examples of women journalists who have asserted their professionalism and refused to be superficial media tools.

In Chap. 3, Rafiah Al Talei narrates her own experience as a journalist in Oman and that of other Omani women within the economic, educa-tional, and social context of a country that is modernizing on one level but is still immersed in traditional and cultural beliefs when it comes to the matter of women in the workplace. In “Women and Media in Oman” the author interviewed women journalists to gain a better under-standing of the obstacles they faced, how the public viewed them, and how these pressures made some of them exit from careers in the media. She found that women journalists were perceived negatively, and there-fore family members rarely encouraged their daughters to pursue careers on television. Women in working in the public eye are still not consid-ered acceptable in the Omani tradition.

Al Talei also asked women if they felt their issues were being dis-cussed in the media. The majority responded that Omani media did not reflect the current needs of women and tended to limit their coverage to parenting, beauty, etc. instead of laws and current developments on women’s status. Women tended to use social media tools like blogs and Twitter to have their voices heard and to discuss topics that were taboo in the public media, but they encountered hurdles, where their accounts could be hacked and closed down.

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The United Arab Emirates has undergone rapid change, but the cul-tural transformation is not uniform in all the Emirates. The author of Chap. 4, Xenia Gleissner, studied Abu Dhabi and Dubai and interviewed reporters and presenters to see the differences in their roles and experi-ences. Government control of the media posed challenges for these pro-fessionals. She conducted her study between 2009 and 2010 and had used focus groups from scriptwriters and production managers to activ-ists and presenters. “Women as Representations of Class and Modernity: Gendered Public visibility on Abu Dhabi TV” explores how visibility and absence reinstate the social class of women in Abu Dhabi. While women of the Royal family are mentioned in the press but do not appear on the screen in Abu Dhabi, the case is different in Dubai. Public visibility is perceived as a class distinction where invisibility is favored.

Furthermore, although public visibility of women on television is seen as part of their nation-building project, national women are usu-ally dressed in the traditional attire or the abaya and hijab to reinforce their Bedouin identity. As the author states, juxtaposition of traditional roles for women and the invisibility of the ruling elite emphasizes the notion of “otherness” between the royalty and the public. Thus “visible and absent women become symbolic embodiments of ethnic hierarchies in society”. A crossroad of traditional Bedouin and modern progressive society is pictured in the Emirates, posing further challenges for women’s public image.

In Chap. 5, Alessandra González discusses “Women in the News: A US-Arab Gulf comparisons”. The paper is a comparative study of women in the media. She found that although the United States has had a longer history of women in the media than the Arabian Gulf States, similarities between the two exist. She highlights that a “male enabler” is needed to help women enter the media. This socially powerful man, who facilitates a woman’s entry into the media profession, could be a friend or colleague in the US, while in the Arab Gulf countries the support would extend from the family network. Thus, women who have inherited or have been promoted within family companies were more likely to become public figures in the Gulf. The patriarchal constraints in Arab societies posed challenges for women wishing to create pathways to be included in soci-ety. However, the same challenges existed in American society in the early twentieth century for women who ventured into media.

She outlines that the entry of women into the media in the United States was shaped by historical events and despite their long history

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they still face obstacles in upward mobility and unequal pay. In the Gulf States, wage inequalities do not exist, but tradition still curbs women’s roles. Thus, Gulf women have turned to online social media outlets. “The proliferations of women’s voices on the internet have challenged the idea that women need to be visible in order to shape news stories” as stated by the author, Alessandra González. Though women in the Gulf entered recently into media, their presence is growing at a rapid pace. The author points to other aspects in the Gulf, such as the media being government sponsored or monitored makes reporting biased, unlike American news stations that can criticize the State policy, as the media outlets in the US are seen as the Fourth Estate.

In “Gulf-based media and Women: A shift to a Transcultural Dimension?” Elena Maestri discusses the growth of Pan Arab Gulf Based TV stations and the extraordinary internet expansion over the region and their influence on the emergence of the “Global Gulf”. Gulf Arab women are still a minority as actors in these developments. While Gulf media has regional dimensions through its TV serials that express the Gulf identity and tackle social problems, there are clear distinctions between the GCC states. There are the visible rules vis-à-vis laws and regulations and the invisible, vis-à-vis customs and codes of conduct. In Bahrain and the UAE, the major newspapers are government owned and their content is controlled, but in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, the newspa-pers are privately owned and managed, allowing more freedom. In the last decade, the major newspapers have addressed gender issues, showing the acknowledgment of women readers.

Maestri states that the evolving “media scape” is bound to influence the role and the image of the Arab women as the Pan Arab Satellite network involves more women. This movement from transnational to a transcultural media system will create a wider platform for promoting dialogue and this will further to intercultural communication that could reinforce positive contributions by women, breaking down negative barriers.

Chapter 7 focuses on the relationships between self-esteem and social media usage by women in Saudi Arabia. Alyedreessy, Helsdingen and Al-Sobaihi conducted a sample study of young Saudi women who used Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. Many researchers have described young Saudis, especially women, as refusing to accept traditional social roles because they are now able to venture to the virtual space of social media and find a voice and an identity. This study wanted to see the connection

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between online interaction and their self-esteem. The new technology helped Saudis enter a cyberspace where they could mingle and discuss, creating a digital civil society. Accessing Saudi newspapers online, readers could give their opinion and indulge in critical discussion of important civic issues like Human rights, Women’s right to drive, etc. Tweeting has also gained popularity and allowed users to discuss once taboo topics with remarkable candor. As the users are from different walks of life, it is a veritable virtual platform to shape public opinion. The authors found that the tweeting online interaction led to feelings of social inclusion and thus to higher self-esteem. They also concluded that online activity of women had a “double” benefit as it empowered women and led to their greater involvement in the offline community or in public life.

“Filmic Adventure: Women in Polygynous Marriages in Oman” is an extensive quantitative & qualitative survey conducted over a 6-year period from 2006 to 2011 in Oman. The families interviewed in this film were from the southernmost region of the Sultanate of Oman. Through the medium of visual ethnography, Profanter, Ryan Cate, and Nederveen filmed the topic of polygyny seeing it through the eyes of the women themselves. This filmic adventure gave the women an opportunity to talk about their personal and their family lives. "Through moving pictures and sound, a narration arose that surmounted written text and stimu-lated perceptions in the viewers’ minds." The chapter details the stages of production, the channels used to gain access to the sample and the formal process of getting approval to tackle such a sensitive topic.

While Chap. 7 earlier showed that Saudi women were using social media to discuss issues and that this online activity was positively related to feelings of social inclusion, Chap. 9 further elaborates to highlight Saudi women’s political awareness. Altuwayjiri purports that social media has led to the political empowerment of Saudi Women. She says that there has been a major shift in the usage of social media, from merely entertainment and social networking to the exchange and commu-nication of ideas. The virtual space gave these women the opportunity to exchange ideas with both sexes freely, which is impermissible in the public space. Women are well educated and have opinions that could now be tweeted. These social networks have raised the levels of political and social awareness among Saudi women, who keep abreast of current events by logging in several times a day to keep up with breaking news. News is not just confined to their country, but discussions on Twitter talk about the Arab region in general.

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Altuwayjiri calls this the “feminized public sphere” allowing women to communicate with each other, lobby and fight for their rights. Social media also provides them with an alternative space to discuss issues in a safe environment. They can give their opinions without fearing their reputation. Furthermore, interaction leads to the formation of virtual communities according to Rheingold (1993). Altuwayjiri says that the virtual community is important in Saudi Arabia as personal connections can be made, further empowering marginalized groups like women, who can be vocal and yet be anonymous. Twitter is the more popular mode of communication and women follow men and vice versa. Twitter has made women more visible in virtual space and more eloquent about their issues. It has raised the consciousness of their rights. Altuwayjiri con-cludes “To Saudis, Twitter is not merely a social network, but rather a gateway to a democratic community”.

Chapter 10, “Social Networks and News: The Case of Emirati Women in Dubai” is a contrast to the earlier chapter on Saudi Arabia. Chehab examines the extent to which Emirati women use social networks like Twitter & Facebook, to learn and share local and international news. She wanted to see if they merely observe the news, passively reading or actively discuss and comment. Chehab studied 200 University students between ages of 18 to 25. The results showed that the Emirati women are apolitical and only 10.5% followed news. Twitter was a means of con-necting with friends and family, unlike Saudi women who created virtual communities around issues. Also, 66% of respondents said they rarely take part in campaigns to raise awareness. This passivity among Emirati women shows that the use of social network does not necessarily lead to activism if the society itself is passive and complacent.

The last three chapters lead to a discussion of cyber feminism from Egypt to Syria. They discuss feminism in times of political turmoil and social unrest. Dina Hosni asks a question: “Is Egyptian Cyber feminisms within the Arab Spring: A gateway to Transnational Democracy?” She says that women have been present in the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria yet in spite of their active roles, they have been mar-ginalized in the public sphere. While some women like Egyptian Iman Bebars documented women’s roles in the revolution, Hosni says there was a backlash from other women in Egypt and Tunisia against them.

Furthermore, when the public space led to the harassment of women as occurred in Tahrir Square, Cairo, during the revolution, women turned to Cyberspace. Hosni presents case studies of Cyber Feminism in

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Egypt. She shows that these women’s cyber activism is laying the way for transnational democracy, they have started blogs, and others like Shimi had called on people to join the “Million Women March” in March 2011. Cyber Feminism was present even before the Arab spring. Esraa Abdel Fattah called for civil disobedience in 2008 on her Facebook to urge people to protest against the declining conditions of the Egyptian citizens. Hosni describes various case studies of Cyber feminism in Egypt, again reiterating that the virtual space can give women more access than public spaces.

Chiara Livia Bernardi discusses in depth another area of Cyber Feminism in Chap. 12: “Women” and “# Egypt”: The Silent Revolution for Women’s Rights. HarassMap is an independent organization created in 2010 to denounce and tackle cases of sexual harassment in Egypt. The problem is an old and constant battle, but in 2010, many organizations linked themselves to HarassMap. After the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, groups of men also joined the campaign to protect women against sexual harassment.

Bernardi discusses how this digital map works. It was founded by Rebecca Chiao to create a grassroots movement to report cases of sexual harassment in the country. NGOs, communities, voluntary groups, and lawyers all tackle this problem on a daily basis. It not only documents incidents of harassment, but also warns women of the areas to avoid. Here, stories, images, and videos are uploaded for people to view and learn. Although they never meet except in cyberspace, the issue of sexual harassment is being recognized by the officials. Again cyber activism by women is tackling a problem forgotten or ignored before.

Chapter 13 crosses to Syria, a conflict-ridden country and again women are active in the revolution. Billie Jeanne Brownlee describes the role of Syrian women in “Revolutionary Damascene Roses: Women & Media in the Syrian Conflict”. This chapter attempts to shed light on “women’s vital role in the Syrian Uprising”. It draws specific attention to the use of the new media and information technology that has helped women articulate and demand change. Social media empowered women who had been active even before the war. Brownlee elaborates how femi-nist associations had formed since 2000, when Bashar Al-Assad came to power. The chapter outlines the different initiatives begun by women in the pre-revolutionary period and which the regime thwarted in the pub-lic sphere. However, websites were created by and for women to join and lobby within. Campaigns took place online bringing women and men

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together to discuss the problems in society, raising awareness and signing petitions.

After the civil war began, female activism continued in spite of arrests and death threats. The new media played a fundamental role in showing that women were an essential part of the process of change. Brownlee clearly states that the use of the new media has been essential for the Syrian Women for the Syrian Intifada (SANAD), which began to help families of martyrs and detainees and then broadened to other activism. Social media has become a survival device that helps them vocalize their fears and speak out against the atrocities going on around them. Syrian Women’s contribution online and offline cannot be denied and is an essential part of the uprising.

Lubna Ahmed Al-Kazi

Lubna Ahmed Al-Kazi has been an Associate Professor of Sociology at Kuwait University since 1984. She was a consultant with the Population Division at the United Nations for one year (1986–1987), when she prepared the Country Case Study: Kuwait on the popula-tion policies of Kuwait. She also prepared the gender section in the Master Plan for Tourism in Kuwait in 2004–2005. She was a con-sultant in 2009 for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) when she prepared the section on Gender and Development for the Kuwait National five-year plan 2010–2014. She is the founder and director of the Women’s Research and Studies Center, established in September 2010 in coordination with the Ministry of Planning and UNDP, where she has organized leadership training at the regional level and numerous workshops to empower women in partnership with UNDP. She is on the editorial board of the Journal of Arabian Studies. She is a member of the Women’s Cultural and Social Society and the Sociologists Association in Kuwait. She is a member of the Advisory Board of Vital Voices, a women’s organization begun by Hillary Clinton when she was the first lady in the United States. Her areas of interest and research are gender, population change and family.

Kuwait University Kuwait City, Kuwait

xiv FOREWORD

BiBliography

Abdulla, R. 2007. The Internet in the Arab World: Egypt and Beyond. New York: Peter Lang, International Academic Publishers.

McLaughlin, L. 2002. Something old, something new: Lingering moments in the unhappy marriage of Marxism and feminism In Sex and money: Feminism and political economy in the media, ed. E. Meehan and E. Riordan, 42–43. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, cited in Sakr, Naomi. 2007. Arab television today. New York: I.B. Tauris, p. 87.

Mellor, Noha et al. 2011. Arab media: Globalization and emerging media indus-tries. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Paul, Ian A. and David Zlutnick. Networking rebellion: Digital policing and revolt in the arab uprising. The Abolitionist (2012). http://abolitionistpaper.wordpress.com/201229/08//networking-rebellion-digital-policing-and-revolt-in-the-arab-uprisings (accessed 24.07.2015).

Rheingold, H. 1993. The virtual community: Homesteading on the electronic fron-tier. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Sakr, Naomi. 2002. Satellite realms: Transnational television, globalization and the middle east. New York: I.B. Tauris.

Talgar, Aylin. Ignoring MENA women is no longer an option The Channel 8/1 (September, 2005), p. 28. Cited in Sakr, N. Arab Television Today (2007). New York: I.B. Tauris.

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acknowledgements

Our sincere thanks go to all those who have made this book possible and always encouraged our research and studies.

We are particularly grateful to all of the contributors to this volume, and to all of those who had a role in leading us to both start and con-tinue this project, despite all the difficulties that we encountered along the way.

We are indebted to our respective universities, the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan and the University of Bolzano-Bozen, for the support they have always given to the organization of our research work within their scientific programs. We thank all the institutions, authori-ties, families and people that allowed and helped us to travel regularly to Arab countries and to be treated both as serious academic profession-als and trusted friends there, especially in Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirate, where we had the opportunity to gain otherwise impossible precious insights.

We are also grateful to Ryan Cate Gibson, who attentively revised our volume, and to Maddalena Prinoth, a research assistant at the University of Bolzano-Bozen, who helped tirelessly in the copy-editing process. At Palgrave Macmillan, Martina O’Sullivan has been a precious source of encouragement and support and Heloise Harding has been helpful and patient in seeing this book through to publication.

Finally, with gratitude and love, we would like to dedicate this book to our dear ones, who have always encouraged us in our efforts.

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contents

  1 Introduction 1Elena Maestri and Annemarie Profanter

  2 Arab Television Channels: The Image of Women Between Local and Global Trends 13Barbara De Poli

  3 Women and the Media in Oman 35Rafiah Al Talei

  4 Women as Representations of Class and Modernity: Gendered Public Visibility on Abu Dhabi TV 57Xenia Gleissner

  5 Women in the News: A US–Arab Gulf Comparison 75Alessandra L. González

  6 Gulf-Based Media and Women: A Shift to a Transcultural Dimension? 91Elena Maestri

xviii CONTENTS

  7 Social Media, Social Inclusion and Women’s Self-Esteem 111Leena Maria Alyedreessy, Anne S. Helsdingen and Bayan Al-Sobaihi

  8 A Filmic Adventure: Women in Polygynous Marriages in Oman 123Annemarie Profanter

  9 Political Tweeting: The Impact of Social Media on the Political Awareness of Saudi Women 149Norah Altuwayjiri

10 Social Networks and News: The Case of Emirati Women in Dubai 167Sara J. Chehab

11 Egyptian Cyber Feminisms Within the Arab Spring: A Gateway to Transnational Democracy? 193Dina Hosni

12 HarassMap: The Silent Revolution for Women’s Rights in Egypt 215Chiara Livia Bernardi

13 Revolutionary Damascene Roses: Women and the Media in the Syrian Conflict 229Billie Jeanne Brownlee

14 Female Activists in Tunisian Socio-Political Movements. The Case of Amira Yahyaoui 245Habiba Boumlik

Index 273

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editors and contriButors

About the Editors

Elena Maestri qualified as an Associate Professor of History and Institutions of Asia in 2012 and she is Adjunct Professor of History and Institutions of the Muslim World at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (UCSC), Milan. She has carried out extensive research on Gulf Arab States’ history, politics and societies, on gender issues and Islam, development and cooperation in the Gulf Cooperation Council, the old and the new media in the Arab Muslim world. She has participated in a great number of international confer-ences and workshops. As coordinator of an international research project on Gulf Arab history, she collaborated actively with the National Center for Documentation and Research (NCDR), Abu Dhabi, and she was often invited to lecture on topics related to her research fields by various centers and universities in Arabia. She has authored and co-authored many spe-cialized studies, research papers, articles and book chapters in Italian and in English. Her volume La regione del Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Sviluppo e sicurezza umana in Arabia was published in Italy in 2009.

Annemarie Profanter is an Associate Professor of Intercultural Pedagogy at the Faculty of Education of the Free University of Bolzano, Italy. Since 2004 she has resided periodically in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the Arabian Peninsula doing fieldwork and holding visit-ing fellowships for international institutions such as the City University

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of Science and Information Technology in Peshawar, Pakistan and the American University-affiliated Dhofar University in Salalah, Sultanate of Oman, as well as Prince Mohammed University in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. She is working on projects addressing Arab women’s experiences in the Gulf and has recently published a documentary on polygyny in collaboration with the Ministry of Information in Oman. Her current research includes Islamic integration and migration issues in Europe.

Contributors

Rafiah Al Talei is an Omani journalist and researcher specializing in civil rights, women’s issues and political developments in the Gulf region. She has held various positions in the Omani press, includ-ing Editor-In-Chief of a bilingual women’s magazine (Al Marah, The Woman). She is recognized as an expert on Gulf journalism with in-depth global media contacts and resources, and she has gained working experience for over 20 years at local and international media companies. She currently works for Al Jazeera Network as senior pro-ducer at the Public Liberties and Human Rights Department. She pre-viously worked for Sky News Arabia in Abu Dhabi and for Al Hurrah TV channel in Washington as News Writer and Reporter. She has also worked on research on women issues with Freedom House and with the International Council for Research and Exchange on the media sustain-ability index in Washington, D.C. She was offered two fellowships in the United States, the Fecsal Regan Fellowship at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, D.C. in 2006, and a fellowship at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University in New York in 2007.

Bayan Al-Sobaihi graduated from Effat University and now holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology. Her interests are developmental psy-chology and special needs children. She has worked as an intern with young children with autism at the Hope Center in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. For her bachelor’s thesis she collected data on social media use of Saudi women.

Norah Altuwayjiri is a Lecturer in the Media Department at Kind Saud University where she has been working since 2012. She conducted her Ph.D. research on social media’s effect on the visibility of Saudi women. She is also teaching in the Arts and Cultures School of Newcastle

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University. In her spare time she is pursuing her passion for languages by learning Greek.

Leena Maria Alyedreessy is a content writer at Wetpaint. She graduated at King’s College London in Digital Culture and Society. She completed her undergraduate degree in Psychology at Effat University in Jeddah, and wrote her dissertation on the psychological effects of social media usage on women in Saudi Arabia. Following on the path of her under-graduate studies, her fascination with social media’s impact on Saudi society led her to choose the research question of ‘how the fundamentals of traditional marriage in Saudi Arabia are challenged by the emergence of social networking sites’ as her postgraduate dissertation. She aims to fill the gap where there is a lack of academic research conducted on con-temporary marital issues in the Kingdom.

Chiara Livia Bernardi is a Lecturer in Digital Media at the University of Stirling. She was previously a research student at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies in the University of Warwick. She also works as a strategy consultant for a wide range of international compa-nies in the UK, Asia-Pacific, Europe and the Middle East. Her thesis investigates the role of technology in the making of women’s issues in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. She is interested in understanding the connec-tions established between algorithms, coding norms and societal prac-tices in the construction of a computed culture. Her work draws upon software studies, Actor Network Theory and feminist theories as well as on digital humanities.

Habiba Boumlik is an Assistant Professor at City University of New York. Her academic background and teaching experience include Arabic and French literatures, cultural anthropology, Women cross-culturally, Middle Eastern history and Arab cinema. Her present research investi-gates the contours of transnational Islamic feminism.

Billie Jeanne Brownlee obtained her Ph.D. in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter. Her research tracks the roots of the Syrian uprising by looking at the development of new media literacy and civil society, two factors that have thus far been underestimated by scholars of the region. Educated in Italy at the University of Venice Ca’ Foscari, she speaks Arabic, Spanish, French, Italian and English. She has been a research fellow at the American University in Beirut, member of the American Political Science Association and a Graduate Teaching Assistant

xxii EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS

in History of the Middle East and EU democracy promotion in the MENA region at the University of Exeter. She has just published the article “The revolution ‘from below’ and its misinterpretations ‘from above’: The case of Syria’s neglected civil society,” Syria Studies Journal (January 2015).

Sara J. Chehab is an Assistant Professor at Emirates Diplomatic Academy, Abu Dhabi, UAE. She was previously an Assistant Professor of International Relations at Zayed University in Dubai. She special-izes in the political economy of the Gulf region and the United Arab Emirates. Her research interests include American foreign policy in the Middle East and UAE society. Her teaching experience and interests include courses on International Relations in the Gulf, globalization in the MENA region, politics of the developing world and US foreign pol-icy in the Middle East.

Barbara De Poli teaches History of Contemporary Islamic Countries at Ca’ Foscari University Venice. She has been engaged in field research in Arab countries, especially Morocco, for several years. Among her publi-cations are I musulmani nel terzo millennio. Laicità e secolarizzazione nel mondo islamico (2007) and Dal Sultanato alla Monarchia. La formazione culturale dell'élite politica nel Marocco coloniale (2015).

Xenia Gleissner obtained her Ph.D. in Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, UK. Her dissertation analyzed representations of identity in UAE television and film industries. Her research interests include ethnic and religious minorities, gender and cultural politics in the Gulf.

Alessandra L. González is Lecturer in the Public Policy Studies Program at the University of Chicago and Non-Resident Research Fellow at the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Her latest book manuscript is Islamic Feminism in Kuwait: The Politics and Paradoxes.

Anne S. Helsdingen is a course developer at the Center for Digital Education at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. She was previously the Director of the Research and Consultancy Institute at Effat University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. She taught under-graduate psychology students, and supervised undergraduate research projects. She holds a doctorate degree in Educational Psychology from

EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS xxiii

the Open University in Heerlen, the Netherlands. Her research focuses on meta-cognitive skills, learning and complex decision-making.

Dina Hosni obtained her Ph.D. at the Institut für Soziologie, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main. She earned M.A. degrees in Comparative Politics, TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) and TAFL (teaching Arabic as a foreign language) from the American University in Cairo. Her research interests include political Islam and the politics of gender and youth.

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list oF Figures and taBle

Fig. 8.1 All-women crew (from left to right): Annemarie Profanter, producer and project leader; Arda Nederveen, camerawoman; Stephanie Ryan Cate, research partner 138

Fig. 12.1 HarassMap (all categories) 218

Table 7.1 Self-esteem, narcissism and social inclusion scores of the Twitter (N = 20), Instagram (N = 44) and Facebook (N = 50) users 117