Social media and contentious politics a decade on from the Arab uprisings

An online lecture by Dr. Yazan Badran, Postdoctoral researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. The lecture is no. 6/9 in the fall 2021 online lecture series.

This talk aims to re-examine the complex relationship between social media and contentious politics following the 2011 uprisings in Egypt and Syria and to explore the contingent, differentiated, and contradictory roles social media played in each of these cases. It makes the argument that the alternative hierarchies of power and visibility engendered by digital activism and facilitated by social media play different – and contradictory – roles in the mobilization and post-mobilization phases of the uprisings. The talk is based on research co-authored with Dr Enrico De Angelis.

About

Dr Yazan Badran is a Visiting Professor at the Department of Communication Studies and a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Echo and imec-SMIT research centres at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. He was a PhD fellow of the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) and obtained a PhD in Media and Communication Studies (2021, VUB). His research interests lie at the intersection of new journalism and political activism in the post-2011 Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) and the political economy and journalistic practices of emerging media organisations, particularly in Syria and Tunisia.

Participate in the online event

Lecture Series

The research project Mediatized Diaspora – Contentious Politics among Arab Media Users in Europe at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, invites you to the fall 2021 online lecture series on Middle Eastern media, diaspora and politics Post-Arab Spring.

All lectures will take place on Thursdays at 17:15 (CET).

For any inquiries, please contact project leader: Dr Ehab Galal