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State Power 2.0 
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State Power 2.0
authoritarian entrenchment and  
Political engagement worldwide
Edited by
MuzaMMil M. HuSSain
University of Michigan, USA
PHiliP n. Howard
University of Washington, USA
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© Muzammil M. Hussain and Philip n. Howard 2013
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval 
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, 
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Muzammil M. Hussain and Philip n. Howard have asserted their right under the Copyright, 
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
Published by     
ashgate Publishing limited   ashgate Publishing Company
wey Court east    110 Cherry Street
union road    Suite 3-1
Farnham     Burlington, Vt 05401-3818
Surrey, Gu9 7Pt    uSa
england
www.ashgate.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Howard, Philip n.
  State Power 2.0 : authoritarian entrenchment and Political engagement worldwide / by 
Philip n. Howard and Muzammil M. Hussain.
       pages cm
  includes bibliographical references and index.
  ISBN 978-1-4094-5469-4 (hardback)  -- ISBN 978-1-4094-5470-0 (ebook) -- ISBN 978-
1-4724-0328-5 (epub)  1.  Internet--Political aspects. 2.  Internet--Government policy. 3.  
internet--Censorship. 4.  authoritarianism. 5.  Social control.  i. Hussain, Muzammil M. 
ii. title. 
  HM851.H69 2013
  303.3'3--dc23
2013020296
ISBN 9781409454694 (hbk)
ISBN 9781409454700 (ebk –PDF)
ISBN 9781472403285 (ebk – ePUB)
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Contents
List of Figures   vii
Notes on Contributors    ix
Acknowledgments    xiii
 introduction: State Power 2.0   1
 Muzammil M. Hussain, Philip N. Howard,  
and Sheetal D. Agarwal 
ParT I InformaTIon InfrasTruCTure  
anD soCIaL ConTroL 
1 origins of the tunisian internet   19
 Katherine Maher and Jillian C. York 
2 the State of digital exception:  
Censorship and dissent in Post-revolutionary iran   33
 Babak Rahimi 
3 information infrastructure and anti-regime  
Protests in iran and tunisia   45
 Matthew Carrieri, Ronald J. Deibert,  
and Saad Omar Khan 
4 digital occupation in Gaza’s High-tech enclosure    57
 Helga Tawil-Souri
5 leveraged affordances and the Specter of Structural Violence   69
 David Karpf and Steven Livingston 
ParT II DIgITaL meDIa anD PoLITICaL engagemenT 
6 Technology-Induced Innovation in the Making and  
Consolidation of arab democracy   83
 Imad Salamey 
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State Power 2.0vi
7 Al-Masry Al-Youm and egypt’s new Media ecology   91
 David M. Faris 
8 Communicating Politics in Kuwait   99
 Fahed Al-Sumait 
9 Social Media and Soft Political Change in Morocco    113
 Mohammed Ibahrine
10 leninist lapdogs to Bothersome Bloggers in Vietnam   125
 Catherine McKinley and Anya Schiffrin 
11 dynamics of innovation and the Balance of Power in russia   139
 Gregory Asmolov 
12 anonymous vs. authoritarianism   153
 Jessica L. Beyer 
Bibliography    163
Index 187
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list of Figures
Figure i.1 number of major incidents of state intervention  
  in digital networks, by regime type, 1995–2011   7
Table I.1 How do states disconnect their digital networks?  
  incidents by regime type 9
Table I.2 Why do states disconnect their digital networks?  
  reasons by regime type 12
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notes on Contributors
sheetal D. agarwal is a doctoral candidate in the department of Communication 
at the university of washington, Seattle. Her research interests include the 
intersection of media, technology, and politics from a network perspective. 
Currently, she is evaluating the role of values, resources, and power distribution in 
technology development within networked organizations.
fahed al-sumait is assistant Professor and department Chair of Communication 
at the Gulf university for Science and technology in Kuwait. He was recently a 
post-doctoral research fellow at the national university of Singapore’s Middle 
East Institute, and a Fulbright-Hays fellow from 2010–2011.
gregory asmolov is a doctoral student in the Media and Communications 
department, at the london School of economics and Political Science. He is a 
co-founder of HelpMap, a crowdsourcing platform which was used to coordinate 
assistance to victims of wildfires in Russia in 2010.
Jessica L. Beyer is a post-doctoral scholar in the Henry M. Jackson School for 
international Studies at the university of washington, Seattle.
matthew Carrieri is a researcher at the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global 
affairs, university of toronto. He holds a Ba in Middle east Studies from McGill 
University and an MA in Near Eastern Studies from New York University.
ronald J. Deibert is Professor of Political Science and director of the Canada 
Centre for Global Security Studies and the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of 
Global affairs, university of toronto.
David m. faris is assistant Professor of Political Science and director of 
international Studies at roosevelt university. He is author of Dissent and 
Revolution in a Digital Age: Social Media, Blogging and Activism in Egypt (i.B. 
Tauris).
Philip n. Howard is Professor of Communication, information and international 
Studies at the university of washington, Professor of Public Policy at the Central 
european university, and a fellow at the Center for information technology Policy 
at Princeton university.
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State Power 2.0x
muzammil m. Hussain is assistant Professor in international and Comparative 
Media Studies at the university of Michigan’s department of Communication 
Studies, Faculty associate at the institute for Social research’s Center for 
Political Studies, and directs the project on Comparative digital Politics and 
Democratization (www.comparative-DPD.org).
mohammed Ibahrine is Assistant Professor of Digital Advertising and Marketing 
Communication at the american university of Sharjah, uae. He is a contributing 
member of the open Society Global Project “Mapping digital Media” and the 
ITU Global Cybersecurity Agenda (GCA).
David Karpf is assistant Professor of Media and Public affairs at the George 
washington university. His primary research focus concerns online politics 
in the united States, and is the author of The MoveOn Effect: The Unexpected 
Transformation of American Political Advocacy (Oxford University Press).
saad omar Khan is a researcher at the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global 
affairs, university of toronto. He holds a master’s degree from the london 
School of economics, and completed his undergraduate studies at the university 
of toronto.
steven Livingston is Professor of Media and Public affairs, and international 
affairs at the George washington university.
Katherine maher is director of Strategy and engagement for the international 
digital rights organization “access,” and a fellow at the truman national Security 
Project.
Catherine mcKinley began her career as a reporter with the BBC world Service 
in london before moving to Shanghai and then Hanoi as dow Jones newswires’ 
Bureau Chief for Vietnam. She later transitioned to media development 
consultancy, focusing on media skills, ethics, policy and legal reform and 
coordination between the international donors supporting media development 
in Vietnam. She also conducts research on the role of the media in combating 
corruption.
Babak rahimi is associate Professor of Communication, Culture and religion 
at the Program for the Study of religion, department of literature, university of 
California, San diego.
Imad salamey is associate Professor of Political Science and international affairs 
at the lebanese american university in Beirut. He is President of the Center for 
Arab Research and Development (CARD), and Executive Board Member of the 
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Notes on Contributors xi
Institute for the Study of Conflict, Security and Development (CSDS) at Richmond 
american international university in london.
anya schiffrin directs the Media and Communications Program at Columbia 
university’s School of international and Public affairs. She was Bureau Chief 
for dow Jones newswires in amsterdam and Hanoi and wrote regularly for the 
Wall Street Journal. Her book Bad News: How America’s Business Press Missed 
the Story of the Century (New Press) explores how the press covered the recent 
financial crisis.
Helga Tawil-souri is associate Professor in the department of Media, Culture, 
and Communication at New York University. Her scholarship focuses on 
spatiality, technology, and politics in the Middle east with a particular focus on 
israel-Palestine.
Jillian C. York is director for international Freedom of expression at the 
electronic Frontier Foundation and sits on the board of directors of Global Voices 
online.
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Acknowledgments 
We have received many different kinds of support for this work. This material 
is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant 
no. 1144286, “raPid—Social Computing and Political transition in tunisia,” 
and Grant no. 0713074, “Human Centered Computing: information access, 
Field innovation, and Mobile Phone technologies in developing Countries.” any 
opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material 
are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National 
Science Foundation. Support for Hussain’s fieldwork was provided by the 
department of Communication at the university of washington, and the Horowitz 
Foundation for Social Policy. this research was conducted with the approval of 
the university’s Human Subjects division under applications #32381 and #41115.
For helpful comments and feedback through the writing of this project, 
Hussain thanks the hosts and organizers of talks and workshops by the Center 
for Comparative and International Studies (ETH Zürich), the Media Change and 
Innovation Division (University of Zürich), and the Media Management and 
Transformation Centre (Jönköping International Business School). For helpful 
comments and feedback, Howard thanks the organizers of talks and workshops by 
the Free university of Berlin, radcliffe institute, Stanford university, and the uS 
institutes of Peace. Hussain and Howard are grateful for collegial conversations 
with lance Bennett, larry diamond, Kirsten Foot, Steve livingston, Joel Migdal, 
Malcolm Parks, and Gregor Walter-Drop.
Muzammil M. Hussain, university of Michigan, uSa
Philip n. Howard, Princeton university, uSa
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introduction: State Power 2.0 
Muzammil M. Hussain, Philip n. Howard, and Sheetal d. agarwal
there have been many studies of the different ways regimes censor the use of social 
media by their citizens, but shutting off digital networks altogether is something 
that rarely happens. However, it happens at the most politically sensitive times and 
has widespread—if not global—consequences for political, economic and cultural 
life. For democratic activists and international observers alike, 2011 was marked 
with hope and optimism. Digitally-enabled youth had successfully sparked 
nonviolent protests across North Africa and the Middle East, the likes of which 
had not been seen in these countries for many decades. in what is now referred to 
as the “arab Spring” by hopeful observers, tunisia and egypt had successfully 
replaced decades-old dictatorships with the hopeful beginnings of writing new 
constitutions and building new democratic institutions. But fast forwarding to the 
end of 2013, the tasks of re-building new democracies from the ground up remain 
long-term processes still measured across years and decades, including ongoing 
moments of progress and setbacks.1
Since the removal of Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak in 2011, Egypt had faced 
not some but several periods of social unrest and political uncertainty, most 
recently the July 2013 military coup and deposition of the Muslim Brotherhood-
backed President Mohamed Morsi which has left the country in another sustained 
period of protest and turmoil. tunisia’s new government also moved snail-paced 
through much of 2012 in its new constitution writing and adoption process, but 
tunisian civil society ready themselves for the country’s second election after the 
“Jasmine revolution” of 2011, schedule december 2013. Furthermore, in contrast 
to the relative high diffusion rates and vibrant online civil societies present in 
Egypt and Tunisia, the lack of Internet access, and regimes’ heavy management 
of existing internet infrastructure, particularly in libya and Syria, have also 
vividly illuminated the ways in which unfriendly regimes use these same tools 
and infrastructures towards repressive ends. Syria’s explicit and targeted violence 
against its citizens has garnered the regime routine international condemnations. 
But near the end of 2012, observers also took note of the regime’s calculated 
methods of controlling its internet infrastructure. while not as robust as Saudi 
1 a longer version of this article was originally published as Howard, P.n., agarwal, 
S.D., and Hussain, M.M. 2011. “When Do States Disconnect Digital Networks? Regime 
responses to the Political uses of Social Media.” The Communication Review, 14(3): 
216–232.
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State Power 2.02
Arabia or China’s well-financed Internet censorship platforms, nor as crude as 
egypt’s and Myanmar’s national-level shutdowns in years before, Syria managed 
several times in 2011 and 2012 to do both. By acquiring sophisticated technologies 
from western countries to censor and monitor political content, and also turning-
off vast portions of its national internet and physically targeting internet activists, 
the regime is both learning and advancing its capacity to turn activists’ digital 
tools against them. what might these two years following the arab Spring tell 
us about how state powers and civil society actors find digital technologies to be 
politically consequential? How have Internet technologies been built and adopted 
by nondemocratic countries over the past two decades? Where do dictators acquire 
new technologies and skills to control digital infrastructure? And when do states 
disconnect their digital networks, and why?
democratization movements have existed long before technologies such 
as mobile phones and the internet came to nondemocratic countries. But with 
these technologies, people sharing an interest in democracy have built extensive 
networks, created social capital, and organized political action. With these tools, 
virtual networks have materialized in the streets. As a desperate measure, many 
states have tried to choke off information flows between activists, and between 
activists and the rest of the world. Mubarak tried to disconnect his citizens from 
the global information infrastructure in the last week of January 2011. It was a 
desperate maneuver with mixed impact. a small group of tech-savvy students 
and civil society leaders had organized satellite phones and dialup connections 
to Israel and Europe, so they were able to keep up strong links to the rest of the 
world. it appears that some of the telecommunications engineers acted slowly on 
the order to choke off Internet access. The first large Internet service provider 
was asked to shut down on Friday, January 28, but engineers didn’t get to it until 
Saturday. Other providers responded quickly, but returned to normal service on 
Monday. the amount of bandwidth going into egypt certainly dropped off for four 
days, but it was not the information blackout Mubarak had asked for. Taking down 
the nation’s information infrastructure also crippled government agencies. the 
people most affected were middle-class egyptians, who were cut off from internet 
service at home. Some people certainly stayed there, isolated and uncertain about 
the status of their friends and family. But in the absence of information about the 
crisis, others took to the streets, eager to find out what was going on.
But this was not the first wave of incidents in which governments disconnected 
their citizens from global information flows. On Friday, June 12, 2009, Iran voted. 
When voters realized the election had been rigged, many took to the streets to 
protest. Social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and SMS messaging was actively 
used to coordinate the movements of protesters and to get images and news out 
to the international community. Compared to protests that occurred the last time 
elections were stolen, the social movement lasted longer, it drew in millions more 
participants, and there were more witnesses to the brutal regime crackdown. 
Social media had a clear role in extending the life of civil disobedience. while 
the theocratic regime did not fall, there were some important outcomes: the ruling 
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Introduction 3
mullahs were split in opinion about the severity of the crackdown. As part of the 
response, the regime attempted to disable national mobile phone networks. It 
disconnected the national internet information infrastructure for several hours, and 
installed a deep packet inspection system that significantly slowed traffic.
For civil society actors around the world, digital media and online social 
networking applications have changed the way in which dissent is organized 
(Bimber 2005; Howard 2010; Still 2005). Social movement leaders from 
around the world use online applications and digital content systems to organize 
collective action, activate local protest networks, network with international social 
movements, and share their political perspective with global media systems (Byrne 
2007; De Kloet 2002; Shumate 2006). In the past, authoritarian regimes easily 
controlled broadcast media in times of political crisis; by destroying newsprint 
supplies, seizing radio and television stations, and blocking phone calls. It is 
certainly more difficult to control digital media on a regular basis, but there have 
been occasions in which states have disabled a range of marginal to significant 
portions of their national information infrastructure. what situational tendencies 
cause state-powers to exercise specific acts of blocking Internet access and 
disabling digital networks? When do regimes resort to the more extreme measures 
of shutting off Internet access? And when they do not have the capacity to control 
digital networks, how do states respond offline to dissent and criticism? What is 
the impact of doing so, and who is most affected?
It is difficult to investigate patterns of state censorship. Many reports of 
censorship are essentially self-reports by technology users who assume there is 
a political reason behind their inability to connect to a digital network, whether 
they are mobile phone networks, gaming networks, or the Internet. Sometimes 
the state admits to acts of censorship, which makes it easier to learn why the 
government interfered and to what effect. other times the state acts so clumsily or 
breaks the communication link between such large networks that many users can 
report being effected. while several researchers study the broad social impact of 
censorship, there are only a few who are able to provide evidence about both the 
shared perception that the state is surveilling its public, and specific incidents of 
censorship that involve disconnections in digital networks (Deibert and Rohozinski 
2008; Deibert et al. 2010). Drawing from multiple sources, however, it is possible 
to do a comparative analysis of the myriad incidents in which government officials 
decide to censor their online publics. By collecting as many known incidents of 
state intervention in information networks, we are able to map out the contours 
of crisis situations, political risks, and civic innovations to understand the new 
intersections between state power and civil society.
not all incidents involve authoritarian regimes, and not all acts of state 
censorship are easy to describe and classify. One of the first incidents occurred on 
december 29, 1995, when German prosecutors demanded that an internet Service 
Provider (ISP) block four million worldwide subscribers from accessing sexually 
explicit content on portions of the Internet. This was the first instance of such 
drastic measures of state censorship, legislation, and regulation of information 
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received online. Motivation for the shutdown came from a police investigation into 
child pornography in Bavaria, Germany. Though German officials were targeting 
220,000 German subscribers when they asked for the block, CompuServe had 
no mechanism in place to limit just German users at the time, thus, they shut 
down service to all subscribers. in all, CompuServe restricted subscriber access to 
200 newsgroups, specifically related to the site Usenet. Reaction to the censorship 
elicited varied responses from community and civic groups. the national Center 
for Missing and exploited Children, for example, hailed it as a form of “electronic 
citizenship.” Meanwhile, groups such as the electronic Freedom Foundation 
indicated concern and resistance to the notion of state control over individual 
rights online.
this early incident of state intervention with internet connectivity brought forth 
questions that we still struggle to answer today: Who controls Internet content? 
What are the legitimate reasons for state interference with digital networks? 
Over the last 15 years, states are increasingly willing to interfere with the links 
between nodes of digital infrastructure by shutting out particular users or shutting 
off particular servers, by breaking the links to sub-networks of digital media, and 
sometimes even by disconnecting national information infrastructure from global 
networks.
Recently, Research in Motion (RIM) was involved in a complex issue 
involving several states’ requests to provide better access to the server nodes in 
Blackberry service networks. In the spring of 2010, a prominent political figure in 
the United Arab Emirates (UAE) used his Blackberry’s mobile camera to record 
himself torturing a Bangladeshi migrant worker. The video was taken and posted 
online, causing outrage from human rights groups and embarrassing the country’s 
ruling elites. the uae’s response has been to demand that riM provide dedicated 
servers within their territory so that the regime could monitor traffic and disable 
services as needed. eventually both Saudi arabia and the united arab emirates 
threatened to ban the use of the popular Blackberry smart phone. The UAE 
threatened to block access to text messages, email, and web browsers if RIM did 
not allow government access for security investigations. the threat of censorship 
was still in place as of october 2010, potentially affecting over half a million users 
of the most popular smart phone in the uae. 
in 2010, india followed suit, also citing national security as the impetus for 
demanding riM stop encrypting data sent through their phones. this incident 
illustrates a growing tension between governments and mobile internet users’ 
privacy today. increasingly, over the past decade private companies and iSP 
providers like RIM are caught in between meeting the security and information 
needs of their citizen users, and obeying imposed government regulations by nation 
states. Most recently, Vodafone was under pressure from both Mubarak’s regime 
to shut off Internet access, and civil society activists to keep the communication 
channels open. Concession by the iSP providers is more valuable to these states 
than a block however, as it will severely limit businesses run by citizens in these 
countries as well as those of visitors and tourists. after Vodafone complied with 
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Introduction 5
Mubarak’s regime to turn off Internet access, it cost the national economy an 
estimated $90 million and the country’s reputation as a safe and stable place for 
technology firms to invest.
Since 1995—the year the national Science Foundation effectively privatized 
the internet—there have been well over 500+ occasions in which governments 
intervened in the connections of a digital network. Of these, about half were enacted 
by authoritarian regimes. the three countries with the highest number of incidents, 
China, Tunisia, and Turkey, represent both authoritarian and democratic regimes. 
in times of political uncertainty, rigged elections, or military incursions, ruling 
elites are sometimes willing to interfere with information infrastructure as a way of 
managing crises. In many of these cases, the targets (victims) are active domestic 
civic society movements with international linkages. When these movements 
organize, authoritarian governments can react harshly and invasively by blocking 
access to the global Internet. Yet at the same time, these authoritarian regimes find 
that they cannot block Internet access for extended periods, both because doing 
so has an impact on the national economy and because of international political 
pressure. Shutting off the Internet for a country’s network also has an impact on the 
capacity of the state to respond to the crisis—for example, egyptian authorities did 
not expect that turning off Internet and SMS networks would draw out protesters 
in larger numbers to the street. Therefore, the decision tree for choking off Internet 
access also involves some willingness to incapacitate portions of the government’s 
security apparatus. Increasingly, civil society groups find methods to circumvent 
the blocked social media. A significant corpus of literature has grown around the 
use of newer digital media by social movements against authoritarian regimes 
(Garrett 2006; Marmura 2008; McLaughlin 2003). While there is a healthy 
ongoing conversation by scholars on the issue of civil societies’ uses of digital 
media for social and political mobilization, our investigation illuminates the 
impetuses, tactics, and impacts of state responses to online engagement.
in this collection of cases fr m around the world, our goal is to encourage the 
comparative analysis of occasions in which regimes have disconnected significant 
portions of their national digital infrastructure, including mobile phones and 
Internet access. Our goal is to define the range of situations in which states have 
actually disrupted large sections of their own national information infrastructure, 
as well as to uncover their long-term strategizing in managing new information 
infrastructure. through grounded comparisons of incidents, we demonstrate 
the importance of understanding how information technologies have a role in 
political responses and counter-insurgency tactics of many kinds of regimes. 
Such comparative study will help explicate the meaning of contemporary state 
power in media systems of both advanced and developing countries. while some 
have argued that the state no longer has strong control of media production and 
consumption systems, there are a range of occasions in which state power over 
digital networks is noticeably strong.
drawing on a range of sources, we built a detailed event catalog for major 
disruptions in digital networks of nations between 1995 and 2010. We collected 
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information about incidents as reported in major news media, specialized news 
sources such as national security and information security blogs, and other online 
forums for discussing such topics. these sources include Google news, lexus 
Nexus, Attrition.org, GlobalVoices.org, among others. A case is defined as an 
occasion where a government intervened in a digital network by breaking or turning 
off connections between national sub-networks and global information networks. 
Sometimes this meant blocking ports or access to a particular sub-network of 
digital media, such as content at the domains Facebook.com or YouTube.com. In 
times of significant political or military crisis, such as war or contested elections, 
the governments might disconnect SMS messaging services or block the entire 
country’s access to global networks. Additionally, regimes may target individual 
actors in networks. But these incidents are more than general government threats 
of surveillance or intimidation (which are also forms of censorship). These are 
distinct incidents where government officials made the specific decision to disable 
the links or nodes in the portions of the information networks they can control.
Since the literature on digital censorship often makes a distinction between 
democracies, emerging democracies and authoritarian regimes, we rely on the 
Polity IV data about regime type (Marshall and Jaggers 2010). In addition, since 
several of the governments appearing in the event log are too fragile to sensibly 
be given one of these three categories, we rely on Polity iV data for a category 
of fragile regimes. as per Polity iV coding, if a state was recovering from civil 
war or foreign military invasion, experiencing a complex humanitarian disaster, 
or had effectively failed for other reasons, we code this state as fragile. a state’s 
regime type was set according to the Polity iV score for that state in the year of the 
reported incident. Several countries had several incidents, and it is possible that 
regime types changed over time.
all in all, there have been at least 566 unique incidents involving 101 countries: 
39 percent of the incidents occurred in democracies, 7 percent occurred in emerging 
democracies, 51 percent occurred in authoritarian regimes, and 2 percent occurred 
in fragile states. each incident was coded for the name of the country in which a 
state agency intervened in digital networks, the year of the incident, the type of 
regime, and a precise date if available. we made general notes on the narrative of 
each incident, and mapped on the Polity iV score for the country in the year of 
the incident. Then we developed three standardized typologies for the kinds of 
incidents being reported. First, we developed a category that iteratively helped 
define the case, and a typology of actions that states take against social media. 
Second, we developed a category for why they took that action, sometimes relying 
on third-party reports if the state simply denied any interference. Finally, we 
developed a category for the impact of the interference.
while we might expect authoritarian regimes to more aggressively interfere 
with their digital infrastructure than other types of regimes, Figure i.1 reveals 
that democracies also substantively disconnect their communication networks. In 
recent years, there have been at least 80 incidents a year. only a fraction of these 
involve emerging democracies. over time, it appears that all types of regimes have 
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Introduction 7
become more and more willing to interfere with information access, particularly 
since 2006—the same year Time Magazine awarded “You” as the person of the 
year, recognizing the worldwide diffusion of participatory social media tools. 
as social media have diffused, they have become a fundamental infrastructure 
for collective action. even though democracies appear just as aggressive as 
authoritarian regimes in disconnecting digital networks, are there differences in 
the ways in which such states intervene? What are the different reasons for such 
drastic interventions?
Decision Paths and opportunity structures
Civil society is often defined as the self-generating and self-supporting community 
of people who share a normative order and volunteer to organize political, economic 
or cultural activities that are independent from the state (Diamond 1994). Civil 
society groups are a crucial part of all elections because they represent diverse 
perspectives and promote those perspectives through communications media. 
Moreover, a key tenet of the shared normative order is that no one group can 
claim to represent the whole of society. democracy is best served by a multitude 
of groups that contribute in different ways to conceiving public policy options 
and national development goals. Some governments work hard to censor digital 
figure I.1 number of major incidents of state intervention in digital 
networks, by regime type, 1995–2011
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media, but even in such countries the Internet is difficult to control. Governments 
might own nodes in the network, but rarely can they completely choke off network 
connections. This means that tools like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and email are 
useful, and at sensitive times, critical, organizational tools. in some of the toughest 
authoritarian regimes, these tools are crucial because face-to-face conversations 
about political life are so problematic. For civil society groups—these tools are 
often content distribution systems largely independent of the state.
the internet has become an invaluable logistical tool for organization and 
communication for civil society groups. it is an information infrastructure mostly 
independent of the state, and since civil society groups are by definition social 
organizations independent of the state, the internet has become an important 
incubator for social movements (radical and secular) and civic action. The Internet 
has altered the dynamics of political communication systems in many countries, 
such that the internet itself is the site of political contestation between the state 
and civil society.
How do states Interfere with Digital networks?
States interfere with digital networks using many tactics, with various levels of 
severity: online, by shutting down political websites or portals; offline, by arresting 
journalists, bloggers, activists, and citizens; by proxy, through controlling internet 
service providers, forcing companies to shut down specific websites or denying 
access to disagreeable content; and, in the most extreme cases, shutting down 
access to entire online and mobile networks. Surprisingly, we find that while 
authoritarian regimes practice controlling full-networks, sub-networks, and nodes 
more than democracies, democracies are the most likely to target civil society 
actors by proxy by manipulating internet service providers. table i.1 presents 
cases where governments exercised control by targeting full-networks (shutting 
down the Internet), sub-networks (blocking websites), network-nodes (targeting 
individuals), and by pr xy (pressuring Internet service providers).
The most extreme form of network control is when states shut down access to 
the Internet. Authoritarian regimes did so significantly more than fragile states and 
emerging democracies, and also twice as more as democracies. a clear illustration 
of this was when China shut down internet services in the Xinjiang region after 
ethnic riots erupted in 2006. the riots resulted in 140 fatalities, and the state has 
since blocked access to Twitter and other social networking sites to control the 
conflict and dissent. More recently, Pakistan severely restricted the Internet after a 
Seattle-based cartoonist organized an “everybody draw Mohammed day.” after 
the event attracted 43,000 fans from around the world, the Pakistan government 
went into “banning mode” because the event invited members to draw and post 
pictures of the revered prophet. Similarly, emerging democracies, like Haiti and 
thailand, have engaged in shutting down main internet service providers, or entire 
online networks like YouTube, respectively. Thousands of Haitians lost Internet 
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Introduction 9
access in 1999 when the government attempted to allegedly silence dissent and 
consolidate power under the guise of punishing Alpha Network Communications 
for selling telephone cards and providing international telephone services. 
Bangladesh blocked YouTube and most other file sharing services after recordings 
of a meeting between the Prime Minister and army senior officers were leaked 
onto Youtube. thailand, also an emerging democracy with a record of political 
online censorship, maintains a block on entire Internet services like YouTube. 
Bangladesh, a democracy, also blocked entire networks when a political crisis 
over the murder of a prominent lawyer raged on the WordPress network. These 
examples suggest that although complete network shut-downs are least common, 
they tend to materialize when states face national controversies and moments of 
severe social and political unrest, often (but by not exclusively) in authoritarian 
regimes.
Unlike the most extreme measure of shutting down entire online networks, 
states are most likely to target individual websites (online) or their producers and 
users (offline). Democracies are much more likely to engage in online content 
censorship than other tactics, though they also frequently target civil society 
members offline. The earliest case of a democracy shutting down online sub-
networks was in 1995 when German authorities removed access to over 200 
internet newsgroups deemed indecent and offensive. in 1996, German authorities 
again removed access to banned material, such as a netherland’s online magazine. 
More recently, advanced democracies like Australia, as of July 2010, was 
considering a mandatory Internet filter to censor a list of URLs associated with 
child sexual abuse, bestiality, sexual violence, crime, violence, drug use, and 
content advocating violence and extremism.
while socially questionable material and content promoting criminal activities 
are commonly cited reasons for blocking content in democratic states, some states 
have also used this as a tactic for foreign policy disputes. in august 2010, South 
Korea engaged in an online dispute with north Korea over social media when 
Table I.1 How do states disconnect their digital networks?  
Incidents by regime type
Democracy emerging democracy authoritarian fragile Total
Complete network shut down 
(Full networks)
13 3 30 3 49
Specific site-oriented shut 
downs (Sub-networks)
140 25 210 8 383
Individual users (Nodes) 82 16 125 3 226
By proxy through iSP 47 4 41 4 96
Note: total n = 754. incident types are not mutually exclusive, as some incidents involved combinations 
of state tactics against social media use.
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South Korean citizens were threatened with arrests for accessing north Korea’s 
twitter feed. However, despite attempting to reroute requests from north Korea’s 
twitter page to a warning page, over 9,000 followers had accumulated.
In instances like this, when unable to block online content effectively, states 
are forced to go directly towards censoring individuals. authoritarian states do 
this most often, and in many cases, with more severity. Bloggers, journalists, and 
social activists are the most common individual targets of offline censorship, often 
facing arrests and fines. For example, an Egyptian blogger was sentenced to four 
years in prison for insulting the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Following 
thailand’s coup d’état in 2006, two cyber dissidents were arrested for comments 
made about the monarchy in online discussion boards, and face a minimum 
sentence of 15 years in prison. another example of online activities leading to 
offline government reactions is Cuba’s arrests of two online journalists working 
for Cubanet in 2005 and 2007. these journalists were arrested for engaging in 
“subversive propaganda” and “precriminal social danger.” with authoritarian 
regimes, it is generally the case that criticisms of political elites are often dealt 
with the imposition of fines, searches, seizure of equipment, and imprisonment.
while democracies also engage in a heavy amount of censoring individual 
users, paralleling the conditions of authoritarian regimes, they also have a unique 
tendency to target individuals or agencies providing the infrastructure (a tactic that 
has increasingly been adopted by authoritarian regimes since the Arab Spring). In 
fact, democracies have a slightly higher rate of blocking content and controlling 
civil society actors through indirect measures, such as targeting internet service 
providers. Turkey and Italy, both democracies, have legally pursued charges 
against both internet service providers and their users. in March 2010, an italian 
court convicted three Google executives for not removing violent video content 
that appeared on their online services. in august 2009, Malawi approved legal 
measures to pressure Internet service providers in monitoring social networking 
sites like Twitter and Facebook. Hungary and Belgium have also shared experiences 
where internet service providers have received pressures to approve “notices of 
takedown” procedures from their governments. Surprisingly, while authoritarian 
regimes frequently fine and imprison civil society actors directly for criticizing 
the regime and its elites, democracies have more examples of regimes using legal 
frameworks and round-about institutionalized measures for targeting both Internet 
service providers and their users. as several of our contributors also document, 
successful authoritarian regimes today must not only punish civil society actors 
directly for using digital media in political ways, they must also create new legal, 
economic, and political relationships with infrastructure providers to ensure their 
control and survival.
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Introduction 11
Why do states Interfere with Digital networks?
Looking across the range of known incidents, we have identified 12 categories 
representing two broader themes—protecting political authority and preserving the 
public good. The first broad theme of protecting leadership and state institutions 
included several reasons for state interference in public access to social media. 
these include: protecting political leaders and state institutions; election crisis; 
eliminating propaganda; mitigating dissidence; and national security. National 
security was the most commonly cited reason under this theme, where officials 
cited “terrorism threats” and preventing the spread of “state secrets” as reasons to 
intervene with internet access. information that undermined protection of authority 
figures was another sub-category oft attributed for intervention. In 2007 Kazakh 
officials shut down opposition web sites for three days, because of published 
transcripts and recordings related to a public battle between authoritarian President 
nazarbayev and his estranged son-in-law. the eliminating propaganda sub-
category included incidents where intervention occurred because of the spread of 
information aimed at serving an agenda undermining the standing regime. China 
in 2003 sentenced an individual to four years in prison for email discussions and 
postings in online forums and chat rooms related to democracy. the mitigating 
dissidence sub-category captures those cases in which intervention was attributed 
to an attempt to reduce dissident civic action, such as the uS arresting two 
individuals who tweeted about police locations during G20 protests in Pittsburgh, 
Pennsylvania in 2009. incidents included under the election crisis sub-category 
include cases in which a regime acted in response to events surrounding elections. 
this sub-category included times when the regime intervened prior to, during, 
or after elections. For example, in the aftermath of the highly contested iranian 
elections in 2009, the regime first slowed and then shut down access to the Twitter 
network, which was heavily used by protestors to coordinate and share information 
about the contested elections.
the second over-arching theme for why states disabled social media was by 
claiming an urgent need to preserve the public good. Sub-categories of this theme 
include: preserving cultural and religious morals; preserving racial harmony; 
protecting children; cultural preservation; protecting individuals’ privacy; and 
dissuading criminal activity. Preserving cultural and religious morals was the 
most cited reason for intervention across all themes and categories. this sub-
category was used in incidents when officials attributed intervention to preventing 
the spread of blasphemous or offensive information that challenged the religious 
and cultural morality of the state. an overwhelming number of these cases 
involved targeting websites and individuals who accessed or distributed anti-
islamic or pornographic material (not including child pornography, which was 
captured in a separate category). An illustration of such an incident was from 
2009, when Pakistan blocked access to 450 sites including Facebook and YouTube 
after an international event to depiction the prophet Mohammed was organized on 
Facebook.
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Table I.2 Why do states disconnect their digital networks?  
reasons by regime type
Democracy emerging democracy authoritarian fragile Total
Protecting authority
Protecting political leaders and 
state institutions 30 7 23 1 61
election crisis 4 3 9 0 16
eliminating propaganda 5 1 24 0 30
Mitigating dissidence 8 5 11 3 27
national security 29 6 34 0 69
Preserving the public good
Preserving cultural and  
religious morals 27 4 37 6 74
Preserving racial harmony 9 0 1 0 10
Protecting children 30 0 2 0 32
Cultural preservation 2 0 19 0 21
Protecting individual’s privacy 3 0 2 0 5
dissuading criminal activity 29 3 18 1 51
alleged system failure,  
neither denied nor admitted 4 4 9 0 17
Censorship denied by state 3 1 11 0 15
Unknown, other 40 4 90 4 138
Total 223 38 290 15 566
Note: total n = 566. reasons for intervention are mutually exclusive.
Cultural preservation, included incidents in which interventions were 
attributed to the need to expel outside influence or threats to national interests 
were cited (but not related to terrorism or national security threats, which were 
captured by a separate category). In December 2006, Iran shut down access to 
websites such as Youtube and amazon in order to “purge the country of western 
influence.” Though we encountered only a few cases that cited preservation of 
racial harmony as the impetus for action, these incidents are useful to separate 
from other categories as they focus interventions justified for protecting the public 
specifically from ethnic or racially motivated violence. For example, in 2008 
Germany convicted a blogger for inciting hatred by denying the Holocaust.
dissuading the public from criminal activity is another reason often cited by 
officials. Incidents under this category include arresting individuals for copyright 
infringement, distributing illegal information, and participating in activities 
deemed illegal by the state, such as online gambling. Cases in this sub-category 
included the arrests or criminal prosecutions of individuals whom authorities 
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Introduction 13
claimed were breaking the law. An example of such a case was when Polish 
authorities arrested the creators of a peer-to-peer portal and shut down the site in 
2009, citing copyright infringement as the reasoning.
Protecting children as a sub-category included incidents where officials 
explicitly sited threats to children and minors as reasons for intervention. while 
many of these incidents related to pornographic material, only those cases that 
specifically included reference to child pornography were included under this sub-
category. States often adopted internet laws and policies to protect children; an 
illustration includes Brazil’s adoption of policies that require iSPs to provide lists 
of the websites they host to a child protection agency and put a button on their 
website that says “Pedophilia is a crime, denounce it.”
Lastly, only four, yet thematically distinct, cases represented the final sub-
category under this theme: protecting individuals’ privacy. this sub-category 
included incidences in which authorities determined that an individual’s privacy 
was jeopardized by content posted on the internet. Perhaps the most clear example 
of such a case was when a Tunisian official jailed and fined an individual for 
“causing harm by means of telecommunication networks” because he did not 
obtain an official permit or consent of the individuals he filmed for an online video.
There are certain types of cases that are difficult to categorize. These include 
reports of some incidents where there was not enough information to assert the 
reasons for the intervention. This includes cases in which officials simply did not 
cite a reason for intervention, or when our primary texts did not provide enough 
insight into why the intervention took place. These incidents categorized as 
unknown/other. Additionally, there were cases in which officials simply denied 
any responsibility for censorship or claimed it was a technical issue, thus we are 
unable to attribute reasons for the intervention. these cases are captured in the sub-
categories, censorship denied and alleged system failure. while it is not surprising 
that authoritarian regimes invoke intervention policies to protect state authorities 
and institutions, table i.2 reveals that democratic regimes exercise intervention 
efforts at nearly the same level for these same reasons, which severely limits civil 
society groups from participating in the foundational democratic practices of the 
regime.
the advantage of a comparative approach is that it allows us to avoid and move 
beyond organizational and technological determinism (Howard 2002). It does so 
by allowing us to build grounded typologies of real government responses to the 
development of new media, and particularly social media. the lasting impact of 
a temporary disconnection in internet service may actually be a strengthening of 
weak ties between global and local civil society networks. When civil society 
disappears from the grid, it is noticed. what lasts are the ties between a nation’s 
civic groups, and between international non-governmental organizations and like-
minded, in-country organizations. Certainly not all of these virtual communities 
are about elections, but their existence is a political phenomenon particularly 
in countries where state and social elites have worked hard to police offline 
communities. thus, even the bulletin boards and chat rooms dedicated to shopping 
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for brand name watches are sites that practice free speech and where the defense 
of free speech can become a topic of conversation. the internet allows oppositions 
movements that are based outside of a country to reach in and become part of 
the system of political communication within even the strictest authoritarian 
regimes. today, banning political parties could simply mean that formal political 
opposition is now organized online, from outside the country. it could also means 
that civil society leaders turn to other organizational forms afforded by network 
technologies. when states disconnect particular social media services, student and 
civil society leaders develop creative workarounds and relearn traditional (offline) 
mobilization tactics. this almost always means that target sites, such as Youtube, 
Facebook, and Twitter, are accessible through other means.
The Causes and Consequences of Digital Interventions
when a political, military, or other security crisis is over, what remains is the lasting 
impact of a temporary outage in digital network connectivity. The Internet has 
become a crucial component of political communications during elections—even 
rigged ones. it has also become a crucial component of political communication 
during other kinds of regime transition, such as executive turnover, foreign military 
intervention, natural disasters, and social protests that challenge a regime’s 
legitimacy. information infrastructure is not simply part of the general context of 
contemporary social mobilization. Indeed, social computing is a defining feature 
of elections these days. digital media such as mobile phones and the internet now 
help incubate civic conversations, especially in countries that heavily censor the 
national print and broadcast media.
internet access is often limited to wealthy social elites, but these elites have a 
key role in either accepting or rejecting the outcome of an election. The Internet 
has become a necessary infrastructure for the development of civil society and 
election season is often the time for civic groups to be most active. Most (though 
not all) of the regimes studied in this event catalogue are authoritarian, or were 
when the decision to disconnect from global information networks was taken. For 
authoritarian regimes, the single greatest threat to stability is often internal: elite 
defection. when the cohort of wealthy families, educated and urban elites, and 
government employees decide they no longer wish to back a regime, it is most 
likely to fail. In most of the countries studied here, only a small fraction of the 
population has internet access through computers and mobile phones. However, 
this small population is the one that authoritarian regimes work hard to broker 
information for.
it is not twitter, blogs, or Youtube that cause social unrest. But today, successful 
social movement organizing and civic engagement is difficult to imagine without 
them, even in countries like Iran and Egypt. Many people in these countries have 
no internet or mobile phone access. nevertheless, the people who do—urban 
dwellers, educated elites, and the young—are precisely the population with the 
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Introduction 15
capacity to enable regime change, or tacitly support electoral outcomes. these 
are the populations who support or defect from authoritarian rule, and for whom 
connections to family and friends have demonstrably changed with technology 
diffusion. Comparative analysis reveals the degree to which different regimes 
feel threatened by social media, whether such tools are actively used to organize 
dissent, or passively used for producing and consuming culture.
The political climax of uprising takes the form of state crackdowns or major 
concession to popular demands that can include executive turnover. Stalemates 
between protesters and ruling elites can result in protracted battles. But in each 
country, the political climax of uprising can also be marked by a clumsy attempt 
by the state to disconnect its own people from digital communications networks. 
Banning access to social media websites, powering down mobile phone towers, 
or disconnecting the internet exchange points in major cities are an authoritarian 
government’s desperate strategies for asserting control. and there are serious 
economic consequences to disconnecting a nation from global information 
infrastructures, even temporarily. interrupting digital services cost egypt’s 
economy at least $90 million, and their reputation among technology firms as a 
stable place for investment. In Tunisia it was activist hackers—“hacktivists” as 
many call themselves—who did the most economic damage by taking down the 
stock exchange. But for the most part, it is recalcitrant authoritarian governments 
who make the decision to interfere with their country’s digital networks.
when regimes disconnect from global information infrastructure, they employ 
a range of stop-gap measures that usually reinforces public expectations for global 
connectivity. But not all of these tactics are short-term innovations by the regime 
during moments of crisis. as the contributors of this collection detail, some 
regimes have an astoundingly long-range vision for understanding the political 
threats and opportunities that may arise from the diffusion of new communication 
technologies to civil society sectors. But state hegemony is by no means an absolute 
guarantee, and is more realistically determined by a regime’s ability to anticipate 
and calculate new ways of dominating democratic outcomes and civic innovations 
by creative and brave political activists. this is why the following collection, State 
Power 2.0: Authoritarian Entrenchment and Political Engagement Worldwide, is 
divided in two parts including 12 original chapters.
Part i focuses on the advancement of authoritarian power through information 
infrastructure. Chapters 1 and 2 offer historical analyses of tunisia and iran’s digital 
management and censorship strategies, while Chapter 3 offers a contemporary and 
comparative analysis of how these regimes’ differences garnered both successes 
and failures in moments of political uncertainty. Chapter 4 further advances this 
perspective by investigating the strategic leveraging of information infrastructure 
to extend political control over Gaza’s fragile regime. Finally, Chapter 5 examines 
the most destructive outcomes from a regime’s inability to rein in the political 
capacity of digital networks: decision pathways that lead to state-sponsored 
violence against peaceful activists, particularly true for cases like Syria and 
Bahrain.
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Part ii of this collection draws on cases from around the world, including north 
africa, the Middle east, eastern europe, Southeast asia, and from the emerging 
presence of digitally-enabled and transnational political hackers, like Anonymous 
and Telecomix. This set of chapters (Part II) counterbalances the advancement of 
state power (Part I) with overwhelming evidence documenting the ways in which 
democratic activists are using these very technologies to outmaneuver dictators in 
brave and creative ways. Chapter 6 begins this with regional observations from 
arab countries, while chapters 7, 8, and 9 investigate the cases of egypt, Kuwait, 
and Morocco, respectively. all offer evidence for the ways in which digital media 
have come to overlap with existing media systems and communication norms 
to support long-term democratization. Finally, the last three chapters (10, 11, 
and 12), focusing on Vietnam, Russia, and the transnational hactivist network 
“anonymous,” provide some of the best evidence of the creative civic and 
political innovations—innovations that have come as a consequence of activists 
repurposing existing technology infrastructure that their regimes have yet to fully 
comprehend and struggle to buffer against.
the political culture that we now see online during elections and political 
crises comes not just from political elites, but from citizens: using social media, 
documenting human rights abuses with their mobile phones, sharing spreadsheets 
to track state expenditures, and pooling information about official corruption. 
Perhaps the most lasting impact of digital media use during crises is that people 
get accustomed to being able to consume and produce political content. Most 
technology users in most countries do not have the sophistication to work around 
state firewalls or keep up anonymous and confidential communications online. 
But within each country (and increasingly transnationally) a handful of tech-savvy 
students and civil society leaders do have these skills, and used them well during 
the arab Spring. learning from other democracy activists in other countries, these 
information brokers used satellite phones, direct landline connections to ISPs 
in israel and europe, and a suite of anonymization tools to supply international 
journalists with pictures of events on the ground—even when desperate dictators 
attempted to shut down national ISPs. When digital networks are reactivated, 
personal networks that cross international boundaries also reactivate. Digital 
outages have become sensitive moments in which student leaders, journalists, and 
civil society groups experiment with digital technologies. even if their favorite 
candidates are not elected and repressive regimes succeed in holding on to power, 
the process of experimentation with digital media is important because it results 
in infusing more information habits and news diets independent of the state into 
their daily engagement with public life. this is also why information infrastructure 
is politics—and because of its international organization, it is increasingly an 
important domain of international politics.
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Part i  
information infrastructure  
and Social Control 
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Chapter 1  
origins of the tunisian internet
Katherine Maher and Jillian C. York 
in 1985, the government of tunisia under President Habib Bourgiba received a $3 
million (USD) Computer Technology Transfer Project Grant from the US Agency 
for International Development (USAID). This funding contributed towards the 
establishment of a national research body, the institut régional des Sciences 
Informatiques et des Télécommunications (IRSIT) in 1987, dedicated to the 
promotion of telecommunications and computer sciences in tunisia (Kavanaugh 
1998). IRSIT was the country’s most prestigious technological research 
institution, and attracted some of the Tunisia’s finest research and engineering 
talent, employing 45 full-time computer scientists on staff (Curtis 1996).
Many of irSit’s engineers had conducted their graduate studies abroad in 
the 1980s, at institutions in europe and the united States that were early adopters 
of packet-switching “internetworks” for academic information sharing, such as 
the Michigan State University (home to the Merit Network, one of the earliest 
“internetworks”) (Silver 2011). The experience these engineers brought to IRSIT 
was at the cutting edge of computer internetworking. The TCP/IP protocol they 
used to connect discrete local networks was still relatively new; although in use by 
research and academic networks in the United States over the previous decade, its 
adoption in europe was not widespread until the late 1980s.
IRSIT made Tunisia’s first connection to the global network in April 1991, via 
IP connection to an Amsterdam EUNet node, becoming the first African country 
to connect to the Internet (Curtis 1996). This initial trans-Mediterranean link was 
later complemented by connection via BITNET to European research networks, 
and services such as the FidoNet bulletin board systems (BBS) (ASC 1994, NSRC 
1995), putting Tunisia on par with comparable networks in the US and Europe. 
In 1992, on the basis of its advanced networking capacity, Tunisia was selected 
to participate in the UNESCO Regional Informatics Network for Africa (RINAF) 
initiative, intended to increase internet connectivity across the african continent 
through increasing the density of regional networking exchanges (UNESCO 
1993).
As Tunisia’s first implementer of internetworking technology, IRSIT became 
the country’s primary resource for expanding connectivity across the country. in 
1993, irSit was awarded a mandate by the Government of tunisia to connect 
the country’s universities and research institutions through the réseau national 
de Recherche de Tunisia, or RNRT (Kavanaugh 1998). In 1994, Tunisia initiated 
participation in the Sustainable Development Networking Program (SNDP), 
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a United Nations Development Program (UNDP) program to support local 
development objectives; the SndP awarded a contract to irSit to wire tunisian 
non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Through these efforts, connectivity 
expanded; by 1995, tunisia had roughly 1,000 internet users utilizing services 
such as email and FtP; however limited bandwidth precluded the use of the world 
Wide Web (Kavanaugh 1998).
Creation of the aTI
in these early years, the tunisian internet mirrored the global internet at large: 
a non-hierarchical, freewheeling network run by enthusiast engineers. Research 
institutions and telecommunications providers operated distributed, decentralized 
server clusters, with client servers running local email networks free of 
government oversight (Silver 2011). Access to the network was largely limited to 
those affiliated with universities or research institutions; and the network was used 
accordingly. However, in april 1996, this freewheeling national experiment came 
to an abrupt halt, with the government-ordered creation of the agence tunisienne 
d’Internet, popularly known as ATI.
the ati was an unusual body from its inception. established with a mandate 
to “catalyze tunisia’s ‘information Society’,” it functionally allowed for 
consolidated state control over the country’s burgeoning network. It quickly 
centralized oversight of the internet under the executive branch and distributed 
preferential contracts and services to allies of the ruling regime. So close was ati 
to the presidency that the agency was headed by a director close to the family of 
the dictator and located its offices in a whitewashed hillside villa belonging to Ben 
Ali, its director’s office in the President’s former sitting room.
although established by the government, ati is a limited liability private 
company, with its executive oversight managed by a board composed of its 
shareholders. However, a significant portion of its shares are held by firms with state 
interests, and those firms themselves are subject to further regulatory oversight by 
state agencies, enabling the Tunisian state to wield significant indirect power over 
ati functions. at the ati’s founding, the national incumbent operator tunisie 
Telecom held a 27 percent majority stake and IRSIT owned 10 percent. After the 
abolishment of irSit, tunisie telecom became the main shareholders with 37 
percent and the now-defunct agence tunisienne de la Communication extérieure 
(ATCE) held 13 percent, with the remaining 49 percent held by a mixture of semi-
public Tunisian banks and technology firms (Market Access Database 2002). And 
despite its status as a nominally independent private firm, the ATI and its Executive 
director were placed under the supervision of the Ministry of Communications.
ATI’s first function was to assume responsibility from IRSIT for the national 
network, taking over administration of network services for the military and 
universities, and the provision of commercial and consumer internet services 
(Kavanaugh 1998). Following the transfer, IRSIT was defunded and privatized, 
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Origins of the Tunisian Internet 21
its assets sold to Tunisian technology and engineering firms, including the state-
owned incumbent Tunisie Telecom, now majority-shareholder in ATI (Market 
Access Database 2002). IRSIT’s employees were subsequently absorbed into the 
new private firm, as well as into state institutions, including the national regulator, 
the Ministry of Communications technologies, as well as tunisie telecom.
two years after ati’s founding, the agency had established itself as the sole 
national operator of the Tunisian Internet backbone. One of its earliest actions had 
been to outsource consumer Internet services to the country’s first commercial ISP, 
Planet tunisie, owned by Cyrine Ben ali, daughter of the president; additional 
services were later added through ISP 3S Global Net (UNECA 2012). ATI also 
controlled registration for “.tn” top-level domains (ATI 1998), giving it effective 
censorial control over domain allocation. this consolidation of domain registration 
and authority over service provision in one organization gave ati unprecedented 
control over the allocation of national network resources.
Although busily engaged in centralizing network oversight, the Government 
of tunisia continued to actively encourage national adoption of the internet as 
an economic development strategy. it launched its Publinet initiative in 1998, 
aimed at increasing internet access options through community centers, while in 
1999 “internet Caravans” were launched to travel the country providing mobile 
workshops about the Internet. In 2000, the ATI introduced an encrypted e-payment 
system, called e-tijara, to support the development of the commercial web (rao 
2001). In 2004, seeking to encourage widespread computer use, the government 
lifted customs fees on computers, set a price ceiling for hardware, arranged low-
interest loans, and offered internet subscriptions with each computer purchase; 
however, costs remained stubbornly high, and the program was not particularly 
successful (Freedom House 2011).
the tunisian government’s efforts to expand usage of the internet while 
consolidating its management and use foreshadowed its later struggles to maintain 
control over a network with growing civil and political importance. The tensions 
between the networked authority and the decentralized users would continue over 
the course of the next decade; with government movements toward consolidation 
met by vigilant, resilient, and increasingly technically sophisticated opposition. 
initially organized as a counterforce against government encroachments on issues 
such as free speech and privacy, this opposition would ultimately appropriate the 
network itself for broader political resistance.
state regulation and ownership
tunisia recognized the potential of the internet as an economic and social 
development tool relatively early on; however it took some time before the ruling 
regime deliberately consolidated the network for its commercial and political ends. 
The first step in this process was the shifting of networking authority from IRSIT to 
ATI; the second part of the process was establishing legal frameworks that would 
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guarantee government sovereignty over networks and obfuscate direct lines of 
accountability. the result was the creation of an internet and telecommunications 
regulation framework that was often opaque, and at times intentionally byzantine.
at the time of ati’s creation in 1996, the cabinet-level Ministry of 
Communications was the primary authority for the planning, supervision, and 
regulation of the telecommunications industries in tunisia. through its General 
directorate for telecommunications, it managed the national regulatory and 
oversight functions for Internet, spectrum, broadcasting, digital certificates, 
and mobile communications; it was also responsible for attracting international 
investment and growing the domestic iCt sector. the Ministry also housed an 
office on open communications, headed by a Secretary for Internet, Computers, 
and Free Software, an office recognized and denounced by Internet activists as a 
government effort to co-opt the open source community.
in 1997, tunisia signed an agreement with the wto to reform its 
telecommunications sector (Kamoun 2010). Four years later, DL No. 2001-1 was 
passed, outlining the framework for a new telecommunications code. The Tunisian 
Telecommunications Code, or TTC, officially opened the sector to the private 
market, and authorized the creation of semi-independent national regulatory 
agencies, including the instance nationale des telecommunications, or int 
(Market Access Database 2002). However, the precise legal mandate of the INT 
was left undefined in the TTC, with the Ministry of Communications continuing 
to exercise significant budgetary and executive authority.
the clear allocation of responsibilities, as well as the organizational structure 
and relationships among national institutions, were often indistinct, even to 
government officials. Ministry staffers were often left in the dark about the 
precise rationale of policy decisions: senior officials were disinclined to provide 
justification, and civil servants were discouraged from inquiring. Competing and 
unclear mandates for oversight over the Internet (and mobile network operators) 
helped insure minimal accountability on the part of policymakers and the executive 
office, while enabling maximal governmental controls over resources, content, 
and use.
when the ati issued a contract to the Ben ali family-owned iSP Planet tunisie 
as one of five providers of commercial Internet services, it was one among many 
instances of state contracts and network licensing granted to firms and operators 
owned or associated with allies of the ruling family. according to uS State 
Department cables obtained by Wikileaks, the extent of corruption by the Tunisian 
ruling family was so pervasive that “whether it’s cash, services, land, property, 
or yes, even your yacht, President Ben ali’s family is rumored to covet it and 
reportedly gets what it wants” (White 2011).
Following the 2001 TTC reforms, the state owned incumbent mobile network 
operator (MNO), Tunisie Telecom, was joined by Orascom Telecom Tunisie (d.b.a. 
as Tunisiana) in 2002, and Orange Tunisia in 2010. However, the reforms did not 
guarantee a more competitive marketplace: under Ben Ali, MNO licensing was 
described by bidders as uncompetitive (CWS 2012). Concessions were awarded to 
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Origins of the Tunisian Internet 23
members of the extended ruling family; their stakes grew larger and their influence 
bolder over time.
Tunisiana, the country’s largest telecom and second entrant to the market, was 
owned 25 percent by a holding company of Sakher El Materi, the son-in-law of 
Ben ali. in 2002, tunisiana was founded. in 2009, the country’s third license was 
granted to Orange Tunisie; a joint venture between Orange France (49 percent) 
and Groupe Mabrouk (51 percent), the holding company of Marwan Mabrouk and 
Cyrine Ben ali, daughter of the former president. orange France has since been 
plagued by accusations that it paid bribes to acquire the operating license, paying 
less than full licensing fees to the state, and the remainder to Groupe Mabrouk. 
(Tesquet 2011) The Groupe Mabrouk majority stake has since been confiscated by 
the Tunisian government and is pending resale (Saigol 2011).
Tunisian state Controls on the emergence of Censorship
as the tunisian government promoted internet connectivity, citizens went online, 
using the networks to find information and communicate. This early gradual 
adoption—going from .03 percent internet penetration in 1996 at the time of ati’s 
creation to 5.25 percent by 2002 (ITU 2012)—coincided with the introduction of 
commercial online platforms for self-publishing. the launch of services such as 
Blogger and liveJournal in 1999 enabled anyone with a computer and internet 
access to share their thoughts with a global audience, and gave birth to the 
“blogopshere,” an interconnected web of personal opinion and expression.
Much like the early Internet, these digital spaces had the allure of the 
unregulated: free of censorship and offering the appearance of anonymity. 
Tunisians took to blogging and other self-publishing forums to express dissidence 
on a broad range of sensitive cultural and political issues, countering official state 
narratives and offering a range f opinions rarely evident in the traditional press. 
as expression in these spaces grew increasingly critical of the Ben ali regime, the 
government responded: Tunisia, the first Arab country to connect to the Internet 
also became the first to utilize the Internet for repression.
in 2002, security forces arrested the creator of a popular online forum and 
magazine, tunezine. zouhair Yahyaoui, then 33, had crossed tunisia’s unstated 
red lines, and subsequently arrested by security officers at the cybercafé he used to 
work at. Later charged and convicted of “intentionally publishing false information 
and using stolen communication lines,” Yahyaoui served a reduced sentence of 24 
months in prison, during which he was subjected to torture and kept in squalid 
conditions. He was released in 2003, but died two years later from complications 
related to his maltreatment while in detention (Watson-Boles 2004).
In its brief existence TUNeZINE became known for its bold treatment of 
Tunisian human rights issues, prompting the government to block access to the 
site within Tunisia. In censoring TUNeZINE, the government likely believed it 
would be able to deter future digital activism; however, tunezine was soon 
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joined by other dissident voices. in 2000, journalists naziha rejiba and Sihem 
Bensedrine launched the independent news site Kalima (kalima-tunisie.info). Like 
TUNeZINE, Kalima was quickly censored by the authorities; Rejiba found herself 
the target of sustained harassment, detention, and surveillance. in response, rejiba 
and Bensedrine founded the observatoire de la liberté de la presse de l’edition 
et de la création (OLPEC), a press freedom group, in 2001. OLPEC itself was 
quickly banned in Tunisia (CPJ 2009).
In 2004, another dissident blog launched, backed by technologists prepared to 
outfox and resist the official state censors. Nawaat was co-founded by tunisian 
exiles, several of whom were to remain anonymous until after the ouster of Ben ali. 
at the time of Nawaat’s launch, pseudonymous contributor “astrubal” released a 
video that remixed the popular “1984” apple Computer advertisement, replacing 
the advertisement’s droning dictator with then-president Ben Ali (Zuckerman 
2007). This innovative approach would set the stage for later interventions by 
tunisian bloggers and activists, though Nawaat was soon blocked by government 
censors.
By 2005, online censorship of dissident opinion had become an established 
practice in Tunisia. That year, the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) 
scheduled its meeting in tunis, providing an opportunity to draw attention to the 
issue. at the time, the country had fewer than one million internet users, but 2004 
research by the independent OpenNet Initiative (ONI) found 72 “global” sites 
blocked out of 770 tested (ONI 2005). Censorship was concentrated in four main 
areas: “political opposition, criticism of the government’s human rights record, 
methods of circumventing filtering, and pornography.” ONI noted the blocking of 
39 out of 110 “high-impact sites” containing topics known to be sensitive to the 
Tunisian government (2005); these sites included human rights information and 
political opposition.
Dissidence to activism
digital freedom advocates responded to the announcement that wSiS would be 
held in tunisia with dismay. However, tunisian activists—led by a group called 
the Association Tunisienne pour la Promotion et la Défense du Cyberespace—
saw an opportunity to draw broader global attention to Ben ali’s stronghold on 
online information. they launched the Yezzi Fock, Ben Ali (Enough is enough, 
Ben Ali) and Freedom of Expression in Mourning campaigns, calling for virtual 
demonstrations and expressions of solidarity (ATPDC 2005). Though the 
campaigns were successful in raising awareness amongst wSiS participants, 
WSIS attendee and researcher Ethan Zuckerman (2005) later recounted meetings 
being interrupted by security forces, as well as local human rights activists being 
beaten by government thugs after meeting with summit attendees.
The success of the WSIS campaigns encouraged others to take similarly 
innovative approaches to digital activism. in 2006 and 2007, activist Sami Ben 
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Origins of the Tunisian Internet 25
Gharbia reported (2008) that Tunisian bloggers had organized “Blank Post Day,” 
encouraging bloggers to publish an empty post in protest of censorship, and on 
July 1, 2008, bloggers around the country were encouraged to dedicate their blog 
posts to the topic of freedom of expression. a different 2007 campaign, created by 
Nawaat (Foreign Policy 2007) tracked the use of the Tunisian presidential plane 
for unofficial and unreported trips to European and Arab Gulf cities, presumably 
by the First lady and her entourage.
By 2008, the Ben ali government had established itself as willing to utilize 
all means to silence its online critics. in a report for Global Voices Advocacy, 
Sami Ben Gharbia (2008) wrote, “Blocking [websites] is the most obvious way 
of cracking down of the online free speech in Tunisia. It should be emphasized, 
however, that this is only one tool in the regime’s hand. tunisia has adapted to the 
web 2.0 revolution by developing a broader strategy [including the punishing and 
persecution of] outspoken online writers, bloggers and dissidents.” According to 
Ben Gharbia’s report (2008), more than 12 people were arrested and/or sentenced 
for a variety of crimes, from “visiting banned websites” to “violation of morality 
standards.”
as internet penetration grew, and use of circumvention tools spread among 
users, the Ben ali government also sought to increase the sophistication of 
technological means of censorship. as Sami Ben Gharbia reported in 2010, this 
included the adoption of a four-pronged strategy that utilized dnS poisoning 
(redirecting a server request to a different destination); IP filtering (blocking 
access to sites based on the numerical address of the server or device, known as an 
IP address); keyword filtering (blocking access based on the presence of selected 
words in the requested content); anything not caught by these three methods was 
subject to selective blocking by URL. In addition, researcher Ben Wagner (2009) 
believed that it was likely “some forms of DPI technology for surveillance and 
filtering are currently in place,” enabling the government access to most traffic 
transferred via standard web encryption protocols.
Between the time of the ONI’s first report (2005) and its third (2009), Tunisian 
internet usage increased dramatically, from 9.66 percent of the population in 2005 
to a staggering 34.1 percent in 2009 (ITU 2012). So too did online censorship: 
it encompassed social networking and video-sharing websites; the sites of 
human rights organizations including amnesty international, Freedom House, 
and reporters without Borders; a wealth of political opposition websites; and 
anonymizer and proxy tools used to bypass censorship (ONI 2009).
Users attempting to visit blocked websites were never informed explicitly that 
the site they were seeking had been censored; instead, queries returned a fake 
result for an HttP 404 error. the misleading result, indicating a problem with 
the website rather than blocked content, was likely intended to provide plausible 
deniability about the extent of the government’s expanding censorship apparatus. 
This clumsy effort earned the censorship apparatus its own identity—personified 
by the nickname “Ammar404.”
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State Power 2.026
despite protest by activists against ammar404, once a site was added to the 
“block list,” it rarely was unlisted. However, in August 2008, government censors 
appeared to cross a line too far, blocking the immensely popular Facebook. 
Facebook had become increasingly popular with activists, who were using 
the platform’s “Groups” feature to organize anti-government events. But the 
government had overreached, underestimating the popularity of the platform with 
ordinary users. Infuriated Tunisians took to the streets, and the censors relented, 
restoring access to the site.
In 2010, the government dramatically increased its efforts to stifle online 
discourse, blocking individual activist Twitter accounts and instituting a 
widespread ban on most social networking sites. By April of 2010 (Gharbia 2010), 
nearly every major video-sharing service was blocked, and the response time of 
censors to new websites had fallen to fewer than 24 hours. in July 2010 the ati 
blocked the operating ports for the secure transmission protocol HTTPS, pushing 
tunisian communications onto unencrypted plaintext channels. in certain cases, 
users attempting to login to Gmail, Yahoo, or Facebook were redirected to spoofed 
login pages, used to capture individual username and password details (amamou 
2010).
the increasingly heavy-handed and indiscriminate application of these 
techniques reached tunisians far beyond a dedicated cadre of activists, stirring 
an ordinarily disinterested public. in response, a group of tunisian activists 
launched a new campaign under the slogan Sayeb Sala7. on blogs and social 
networks, Tunisians protested “Sayeb Sala7, ya Ammar,” local slang imploring 
the “ammar404” censors to “let it go,” or ease up on censorship. the message 
spread quickly, reaching beyond a traditional activist audience. On May 22, 2010, 
tunisians organized “#manif22mai” protests against censorship in tunis, Paris, 
and other centers of the Tunisian diaspora (Ben Gharbia 2010b).
though the May 22 protests were large enough to force coverage by the local 
media, the government tried to prevent them from ever happening. according to 
blogger Nasser Weddady (2010), several of the organizing activists were arrested 
by internal security on May 21, a day before the protests. they were forced to 
record a video calling off the May 22 protest, and sign a document testifying 
their understanding that “calling for a demonstration is wrong.” to mitigate the 
effects of the video (Gharbia 2010b), friends of the detained activists signed a 
communiqué calling for a “Plan B”: a march down the main boulevard of tunis, 
dressed in white, followed by a temporary occupation of the avenue’s many cafés: 
a symbolic act protesting censorship.
The Internet in revolution
By late 2010, efforts by the state to stifle communications had given rise to an 
established and experienced online activist community. when Mohamed Bouazizi 
self-immolation in the town of Sidi Bouzid sparked protests across Tunisia in 
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Origins of the Tunisian Internet 27
December of 2010, the online activist community had the networks, skills, and 
agility to respond. As ordinary Tunisians shared videos and images of quickly 
spreading protests, the online community was critical to sharing and confirming 
information. International media outlets like Al Jazeera, long-banned from tunisia, 
used these networks to source first-hand reports of unrest and state response 
(Morozov 2011). With an estimated 36.6 percent of the Tunisian population online 
(World Bank 2010) social media became the primary tool for circumventing 
official state narratives.
The rapid spread of these stories and images was facilitated by market forces: 
only one year previously the country’s largest mobile network operator, Tunisiana, 
with roughly 70 percent market share and quarter-owned by the extended ruling 
family, had introduced data packages that enabled Tunisians to access Facebook 
for very low rates. This data package drove adoption of smart phones and the 
social network itself, offering channels for simple one-to-many sharing of updates, 
video, and images. Facebook’s ability to share rich-media was of particular 
importance, given Tunisia’s blocking of video- and image-sharing platforms.
As inflammatory images of protests and state violence spread the government 
responded aggressively. Utilizing techniques such as phishing, spoofing, and 
brute-force hacking, it worked to obtain user login credentials to social networks, 
infiltrate activist communications networks, and freeze user social media accounts. 
According to a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (O’Brien 2011), 
Tunisian authorities “[modified] web pages on the fly to steal usernames and 
passwords for sites such as Facebook, Google and Yahoo.” Tunisians logging into 
those sites would find their login credentials stolen and used by unknown parties 
which, in some cases, deleted the stolen Facebook accounts and affiliated groups 
and pages.
Furthermore, nominally “independent” iSPs were reported to throttle consumer 
bandwidth and instituted caps on large file transfers (Reinhard 2010). Users across 
the country reported unconfirmed outages of mobile network and data service in 
areas near protests, though it is possible that outages may have been the result of 
network load failures rather than deliberate service shutdowns.
As demonstrations multiplied and conflict between citizens and the regime 
escalated, bloggers inside and outside of tunisia were harassed and detained. two 
weeks into the protests, prominent blogger and government critic Slim Amamou 
was detained at the Ministry of the Interior. Others, including the well-known 
citizen journalists Lina Ben Mhenni and Sofiane Chourabi, found their email and 
Facebook accounts hacked, while exile activist and regime abuse cataloguer Sami 
Ben Gharbia documented and published intrusions into his personal webmail 
account (Maher 2011).
As the battle escalated online, Tunisians found themselves beneficiaries of 
foreign attention from sympathetic “hacktivists,” including the distributed global 
movement known as “Anonymous” (Ragan 2011). The majority of efforts were of 
limited technical sophistication; including distributed denial of service (DDOS) 
attacks aimed at Tunisian government websites from “Low Orbit Ion Cannon” 
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(LOIC), an Anonymous botnet. However, the collective also ran a campaign 
encouraging internet users to set up relays and bridges of the tor anonymization 
network for use by Tunisians, and offered Tunisians struggling with malicious 
script injections on their email and social network accounts help with instructions 
on overriding forced-login phishing attacks (Maher 2011).
despite the use of aggressive tactics by the tunisian government, attempts 
to disrupt information networks were largely ineffectual, and diminished in 
relevance as protest momentum grew offline. Efforts to target individual users 
proved insufficient as discontent spread beyond traditional activist communities, 
and targeted interventions were unable to sufficiently scale to all Tunisian 
Internet users. Unlike the Egyptian and Libyan governments in their subsequent 
popular uprisings, the tunisian government never resorted to whole-scale 
network shutdown, perhaps fearing the potential damages to the economy or 
underestimating the severity of the unrest it faced.
Protests continued to multiply in force and intensity across tunisia. on January 
13, 2011, following unprecedented crowds on the main boulevard of downtown 
tunis, President Ben ali appeared on television for a third time, in what would 
become his final speech to the nation. In the seven-minute speech, the dictator 
promised “full freedom for all means of information, no more blocking of the 
internet, and rejection of all forms of censorship while respecting our ethics and 
the principles of the journalistic profession.” within hours of Ben ali’s appearance, 
Tunisians reported most known blockages to have been lifted. The following day 
Ben Ali and his family fled the country for Saudi Arabia, ending the president’s 
23-year rule.
Dismantling the Digital Deep state
Following Ben Ali’s abrupt flight from the country, Tunisians waited for the 
country’s censors to similarly abandon post. within hours, an easing of censorship 
was reported (Wagner 2012); one week later, on January 22, the Secretariat of State 
for information technologies released a statement asserting the restoration of full, 
unfiltered access, with the exception of sites “with indecent content, comprising 
violent elements or inciting hatred.” Although the statement gave little definition 
of the exceptions, it marked the beginning of the end of censorship in Tunisia.
When Ben Ali fled Tunisia for Saudi Arabia, Kamel Saadaoui was in his third 
year as director of the ati. Saadaoui was among the original irSit engineers 
who had remained with the government following the establishment of ati and 
was familiar with the operations of the regime. He soon granted interviews with 
the western press, such as Wired magazine, providing insight into the details of 
the country’s censorship and surveillance apparatus (Elkin 2011). Shortly after the 
revolution, Saadaoui was made head of the int, and was replaced at the ati by dr 
Moez Chakchouk, a former ministerial advisor in the Ministry of Communications 
technologies.
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Origins of the Tunisian Internet 29
While Saadaoui oversaw the suspension of Tunisia’s filtering regime, it was 
under Chakchouk’s leadership that the ATI began the process of dismantling the 
structures of censorship and surveillance. As Chakchouk reported (Abrougui 
2011b), one of the first actions of the ATI post-revolution was to cancel contracts 
with western surveillance technology suppliers. the systems of control were 
revealed to be so extensive that Chakchouk quipped to Wall Street Journal reporter 
Paul Sonne (2011) that a group of visiting security researchers had suggested to 
him that “[the] Chinese could come here and learn from you.”
The details of these contracts, including the identities of specific providers 
of software, hardware, and support services, remain unknown due to contractual 
confidentiality stipulations. Research by the OpenNet Initiative (2011) identified 
SmartFilter, from uS-based Macafee as in use in tunisia since 2002, an assertion 
Chakchouk later confirmed (Ryan 2011). Bloomberg News (Silver 2011) identified 
tunisia’s mobile phone interception and logging systems to have been provided 
by ETI A/S, a Danish firm now wholly owned by UK-based BAE Systems, and 
Trovicor GmbH, a German firm recently divested from Nokia Siemens Networks. 
Utimaco Safeware AG, a subsidiary of UK-based cybersecurity firm Sophos, 
provided further support systems. All of these firms have deferred questions or 
denied direct sales arrangements with the tunisian government.
Former ATI head Saadaoui further acknowledged that the Tunisian government 
was known to procure vendor services from corporations represented at the ISS 
World conference, more commonly known as the “Wiretappers Ball,” an infamous 
trade show for surveillance frequented by intelligence and national security 
agencies from around the globe (Silver 2011). In October 2011, Chakchouk 
revealed that companies offered Tunisian authorities significantly discounted 
prices in exchange for software testing and bug-tracking, asserting that “the 
internet agency has extracted itself from these partnerships and thus can no longer 
afford to censor, even if they wished to” (Messieh 2011).
According to Saadaoui, Internet traffic under the Ben Ali regime was routed 
through surveillance equipment maintained and operated by ati, monitored 
by the int, and evaluated for content by the Ministry of the interior. under 
ati’s oversight, the surveillance equipment and software was (and allegedly 
remains) physically hosted in three separate Tunis-area facilities of the state 
telecommunications carrier, tunisie telecom. Monitoring reportedly occurred 
separately in a closed facility, operated by the int, in which staffers would review 
traffic and forward “suspect” communications to the Ministry of the Interior for 
further investigation (Silver 2011).
Saadaoui also confirmed the capacity of the three Tunisian mobile network 
operators for monitoring mobile traffic, including voice and data. Traffic was 
reportedly monitored by specialized teams at undisclosed sites within the Ministry 
of the interior, with additional capacity at the presidential palace complex (Silver 
2011). While “lawful interception” systems for mobile traffic are a common feature 
of mobile networks worldwide, there is no evidence that the use of interception 
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technology under the Ben ali regime was subject to due process, placing such 
surveillance in the realm of “mass interception.”
Since the revolution, Chakchouk has claimed that ATI was only the technical 
executor for censorship and surveillance, and that the agency did not play a 
role in deciding what content to filter or which citizens to monitor (Ryan 2011). 
Chakchouk stated that orders would have likely come from the ministries or the 
presidential palace and that, following the revolution, ati did not have records of 
these instructions. While acknowledging its role in implementing censoring and 
filtration, the ATI has further denied its involvement in surveillance of Tunisian 
citizens, and stated that it has no access to any surveillance files. Bloggers have 
given some credence to this narrative, placing blame with unknown “cyberpolice”; 
however no records of this function have been made public (Ryan 2011).
In the period since the fall of the Ben Ali regime, there is little confirmed 
information about the continued use of surveillance. it is widely assumed by 
Tunisian activists and Internet observers alike that the Tunisian government 
maintains surveillance capacity and continues to use it at will (Silver 2011). The 
new government has not made public statements about the role of surveillance, 
nor is there publicly available information about the use of surveillance on mobile 
networks, whether by government or compliant mobile network operators. ATI has 
stated that although it continues to host Tunisia’s known surveillance equipment, it 
no longer plays an active role in mass surveillance (Ryan 2011).
Testing the Limits of openness
although the tunisian internet is more open and free than at any point since its 
introduction in 1999, these gains remain fragile. operating conditions in late 2012 
are the result of a patchwork of elective and unofficial policies instituted and 
maintained by key leadership in select institutions, many drawn from the former 
ranks of IRSIT. Among Tunisian citizens, no coherent norms have emerged; while 
there are many vocal pr ponents of the open internet, many others continue to call 
for the blocking of “offensive,” “harmful,” or “insulting” content.
The first test of the Tunisian Internet’s openness occurred in May 2011, four 
months after the revolution, when the Ministry of national defense received an 
order from the Magistrate of the Permanent Military tribunal ordering the ati to 
block five Facebook pages accused of insulting the military and promoting violence 
(Abrougui 2011). On its official website, the Ministry of National Defense stated, 
“some citizens have deliberately created personal pages on the world wide web 
in an attempt to damage the reputation of the military institution and its leaders by 
the publishing of video clips, the circulation of comments, and articles that aim 
to destabilize the trust of citizens in the national army and spread disorder in the 
country.”
ATI resumed filtering, and those attempting to access the pages over an 
unencrypted Facebook session received the following message: “Cette page web 
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Origins of the Tunisian Internet 31
a été filtrée en application d’une réquisition émanant du Juge d’instruction auprès 
du Tribunal Militaire Permanent de Tunis.” (“This webpage is filtered under 
requisition from the Judge for the Permanent Military Tribunal of Tunis.”) In 
parallel ATI launched filtrage.ati.tn, listing all blocked sites with the official or 
legal justification for their censorship. Despite this attempt at transparency on the 
part of ATI, Internet activists condemned the resumption of filtering, noting with 
concern the application of censorship without due judicial process. a short time 
later, the ATI quietly discontinued filtering these five sites, claiming insufficient 
capacity (Abrougui 2011b).
On May 19, 2011, three lawyers lodged a complaint against the ATI, seeking 
the institution of a ban on pornographic websites. Citing negative ‘psychological, 
physiological, social, and educational effects’ on children and Muslim society, 
they secured a court order directing ATI to resume filtration of pornographic sites 
(Al Arabiya 2011). On 26 May 2011, in Case No. 2011/99325, the presiding judge 
of the Court of appeals of tunis issued an execution order for ati to resume 
filtration on the basis of the plaintiffs’ arguments. ATI submitted a petition to the 
Court of appeal of tunis, citing technical incapability due to diminished capacity.
on June 13, 2011, the presiding judge denied the ati’s request for a stay of 
the order, and on June 14, the agency resumed filtration of “offensive content,” 
but limited filtering to national ISPs for government agencies, military, and 
universities. on august 15, following a series of hearings, the appellate court 
judge found in favor of the 26 May decision against ATI. As a final effort, ATI 
announced its intent to appeal the case at the Court of Cassation, tunisia’s highest 
court. Following a series of deferred decisions, the Court of Cassation found in 
favor of ati, returning the case to the tunis appellate court for reconsideration. at 
time of publication, the case had not been decided.
Since the fall of the Ben ali regime, the interim government of tunisia has 
passed a series of laws intended to reform the country’s restrictive press and media 
laws. Notably, none of the relevant new legislation (DL Nos 2011-10/41/115/116) 
explicitly address digital communications, whether internet or mobile. areas 
that remain unclear include what protections are afforded to bloggers and 
citizen journalists, the creation of a framework for digital publishing liability 
(intermediary or otherwise), mobile and Internet subscriber data privacy, minimum 
legal standards for government requests to service providers for subscriber data, 
and provisions for lawful interception.
on november 2, 2011, the Constituent assembly passed dl nos 2011-115/116 
regarding media and the press. this legislation represented long-overdue reforms 
of the 1975 Press Code (updated in 2006), which contained key articles prohibiting 
the press from publishing government legal documents, publishing “false news,” 
or publishing content deemed to be in breach of “public order.” these articles, 
along with a 1997 presidential decree granting the Ministry of Communications 
the authority to monitor for “compliance” and establishing harsh punishments for 
visiting “dangerous” websites, were often used to justify crackdowns on bloggers. 
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However, the legislation did not explicitly define its scope in relation to the 
internet, raising concerns among digital activists.
on September 6, 2012, at the annual meeting of the Freedom online 
Coalition—a conference of governments committed to internet freedom as a 
matter of policy—Dr Moez Chakchouk announced that Tunisia would join as 
the first Middle Eastern country in the coalition. This announcement marked 
the first official shift in Tunisian government policy; in the year and a half since 
the revolution, tunisia had not seen any introduction of new legislation, revised 
regulatory statute, or judicial precedent that would institutionalize internet freedom 
as a matter of national law and practice. However, despite these changes, many 
Internet activists in Tunisia remain skeptical, believing past monitoring practices 
remain in practice (Samti 2011).
the protests that began in december 2010 and culminated with the January 
14, 2011 ouster of President zine el abidine Ben ali revealed the prevalence 
and sophistication of state systems of control over tunisia’s communications 
infrastructure. the oversight of the internet by the Ministry of Communications 
Technologies was literal, and the ATI, keeper of the country’s Internet backbone, 
was among the most loathed, feared, and corrupt government institutions. with 
technical support from the West, Tunisia blocked great swaths of the Internet and 
spied on its citizens. the tunisian internet, born at the hands of the country’s 
elite engineers and promoted throughout the country as a tool for economic 
empowerment, became a battleground between activists seeking greater freedoms 
and their government oppressors.
if the actions of the state to control and dictate the content of the tunisian 
Internet were an effort to assert network-making power—the ability to program 
the network for its assigned goals—then the emergence of a coordinated and 
resilient cadre of tunisian online activists was the ultimate assertion of active 
reprogramming of that goal, or counterpower. as activists responded to the 
Tunisian government’s imposition of filtration and coercive social controls on the 
Internet by eroding and circumventing those controls, they subverted the network 
for an altogether different purpose. the efforts of the tunisian state to forcefully 
narrow the purpose of the network to a tool for economic growth and personal 
enrichment was met by a response that sought to reinforce the network as a tool 
for countering regime hegemony.
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Chapter 2  
the State of digital exception: Censorship 
and dissent in Post-revolutionary iran
Babak Rahimi
integral to authoritarian regimes is the multifaceted employments of various 
measures to manage, control and reshape the public sphere, as spaces of 
association identified with contentious activities. Inclusive of these measures are 
the regulative mode of performances to limit contention, including expressions and 
interactions of civic associations in the public deemed subversive by the state, and 
also proactive modes of performance that set frames of action for limited dissent 
to be freely expressed only within the defined frames parameters of discourse 
or practices sanctioned by the state. the second type of measures characterize 
deliberative practices that direct discussions or debates and construct new public 
forums that set defined frames for public discourse that ultimately stabilize 
authoritarian rule. Known as “authoritarian deliberation,” such measures, at times 
subtle and indirect, are popular among states such as China where there is a strong 
claim for populism of revolutionary brand as a way to legitimize state power (He 
2006; Perry 2007). Yet behind the façade of popular sovereignty associated with 
democracy is an authoritarian structure that governs through a complex regulative 
and surveillance regime.
there are also exceptional cases in the delicate balance between regulative 
and proactive measures that requires other, extraordinary measures for control. 
How can order and legitimacy be preserved at sensitive moments when the state 
maintains the least control over its population or its territories? Carl Schmitt, the 
German political theorist and the ideologue of the nazi state, described the use 
of alternative measures in the legal terms of “state of exception,” as the moment 
when the sovereign authority can decide when to transcend the legal boundaries 
to reconstitute order in the name of common good. Violence in its extra-juridical, 
unregulated form can enable a sovereign to suspend all laws in order to ultimately 
restore them (Schmitt 1985, 13).1 But more important than the power to decide is 
1 the suspension of law does not mean a state of lawlessness, but a special claim to 
legal authority by the state. Schmitt explains “what characterizes an exception is principally 
unlimited authority, which means the suspension of the entire existing order. in such a 
situation it is clear that the state remains, whereas law recedes. Because the exception is 
different from anarchy and chaos, order in the juristic sense still prevails even if it is not of 
the ordinary kind” (Schmitt 1985, 13).
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the moment of suspension when the state with the claim over organized violence 
can exert authority with extraordinary force. Networks of communication serve 
as powerful sources of organization and mobilization for both state and non-
state actors, and historically during critical times various media outlets have 
been entirely shutoff as a way to restore power back to the state.2 now there is 
a tantalizing puzzle here and that is when and why states, in particular modern 
authoritarian types that increasingly depend on information communication 
technologies, disconnect digital communication. and do such operations in what 
can be called states of digital exception strengthen state power?
this chapter investigates the iranian state’s patterns of media censorship, in 
particular the exercise of specific measures of blocking Internet access and disabling 
digital networks. As a case study, it examines the 2009 post-election unrest in Iran 
and studies specific incidents when and why the government interfered to disable 
digital network, particularly the Internet, satellite and phone networks. It also 
examines the shared perceptions of activists who used digital media and online 
social networking for mobilizing street protests in the weeks following the June 
12, 2009 elections. the main argument here is that the iranian state preemptively 
and selectively disabled a range of significant interactive means of communication 
(e.g. online social media) and land-base and mobile technologies on the day and, 
sporadically on the day of protests, weeks after the elections. This was done as a 
means to prevent the activists of dissident actors, particularly the bridge-makers or 
digitally savvy activists (mainly students and civil society activists), who heavily 
relied on digital network connectivity for offline mobilization during and after the 
elections. amid the shutting off operations, there were also a number of selective 
surveillance digital operations that enabled the intelligence services to identify 
protesters and monitor information online.
the 2009 election protests represent one of the most wired of all political 
events in the history of the islamic republic. with the iranian security apparatus 
fully aware of state-led communication infrastructural developments, together 
with demographic and urban transformations, since early 2000s, the preemptive 
move to shut off the flow of information on the day of elections, and the days that 
followed, involved the direct involvement of the intelligence units of the iranian 
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and other security agencies to interrupt a 
range of social media communication, excluding national information such as 
radio broadcast and tV. But the temporal and selective patterns of intervention 
were only based on a short-term tactical move, as the street protests were unfolding 
amid crackdowns on street protesters. As the social media lines, including mobile 
2 Such practice are not exclusive to authoritarian states, as democracies too employ 
shutdown measures, as in the cases of British government contemplating shutting off 
mobile services during the summer 2011 riots. the case of the Patriot act under the Bush 
administration also carried the potential for disabling the flow of information in case of an 
act of terrorism. For the case of democracies shutdown of digital networks, see Howard and 
Hussain 2013. 
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The State of Digital Exception 35
texting, came back to operation in the weeks after the June elections, the long-term 
strategic was aimed as a way to gather, share and circulate information about the 
protesters and offline centers of dissident activities. The combined use of measures 
from hard (i.e. shutting down information technologies) to soft (i.e. surveillance 
practices) highlights the capacity of the Iranian state that is increasingly dependent 
on information technologies to consolidate control over the social media sphere. 
even with the implementation of various regulative and proactive measures, 
including the capacity to disable Internet access and digital networks, the Islamic 
Republic faces major challenges with the expansion of social media networks as a 
socio-cultural phenomenon of irreversible trajectory.
evolution of Iran’s Digital Censorship regime
The 1979 revolution that brought to power the first theocracy in modern times 
marked a utopian project with immense social and political consequences. The 
islamist imaginary of the Shia brand saw the islamic republic, based on the 
ideology of Velayat-e Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist), as a radical expression 
of an iranian political modernity that would fuse religion and a modern polity with 
nativist ideals of autonomy and freedom from western dependency, in particular 
scientific knowledge and technological advancement. Iran’s military conflict with 
Iraq during the 1980s prevented the coherent institutionalization of such (Shia) 
islamist utopian project. the emerging factional politics of the early revolutionary 
period, largely a result of the “hybrid” democratic and authoritarian institutions 
of the state, also marked a period of political instability. Nevertheless, the 
developmentalist policies of the Pahlavi regime continued to expand along with 
the growth of the cities and industrialization and spread of educational institutions 
in the provinces, entailing a significant social transformation in the postwar period 
(Ehsani 2009).
with the reconstruction (baz-sazi) and construction policy (jihad sazandegi) 
phase under the presidency of Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989–1997), new state-
building patterns and institution buildings emerged with an emphasis on 
empowering the middle class in developments of education, consumerism and 
strengthening of the urban policy. Certain social restrictions were relaxed, in 
comparison to the war period, as the government and the growing private sector 
heavily invested in the higher education, giving rise to islamic open universities 
which opened up new opportunities to a growing young generation as a result of 
changing demography. The training of a new technocratic and scientific community 
emerged during this period, as new technological advancements in industrial, 
medical and especially computer sciences began to change the way government 
would manage the post-revolutionary iranian society. the manufacturing and 
research with computer technology, as the most important symbol of scientific 
modernity, had already been in use at highly specialized institutions such as the 
College of Computer Programming and application and institute for research in 
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Communications in the early half of the 1980s (Mohammadifar 1992). However, 
the marketization of computer technology was initiated under the auspices of the 
Rafsanjani administration, as the first Persian-text software was developed in 1991 
(Mohammadifar 1992). Along with Israel and Turkey, Iran was one of the earliest 
countries to incorporate computer technology into its developing economy.
the combined privatization of universities, together with the demand for 
advanced technologies and scientific studies, in particular computer-mediated 
research, matched the structural transformation of the iranian economy. 
rafsanjani’s economic policies had wide-ranging consequences that included 
domestic growth of the private sector and significant urban developments, along 
with the devolution of administrative centers to the provinces (Ehsani 1999). The 
liberalization policy in particular generated greater demands for the global market 
and the strengthening of consumerist culture, which defined the decade prior to 
the 1979 revolution. in correlation with the rise of consumerist society, by the 
1990s an emerging market for digital technology ushered a new age of information 
communication in iran, as it did in the united States and europe.
The Internet first appeared within the higher educational sphere in the postwar 
period. Between 1992 and 1993, Iran’s first Internet connection was initiated by 
the institute for Studies in theoretical Physics and Mathematics and later in the 
expanded in the educational and business centers (Farivar 2012; Rahimi 2008). By 
the early 1990s other ICTs like facsimile and mobile technologies also made their 
way into the Iranian domestic market, albeit some were deemed as potentially 
dangerous by the state. Satellite tV in particular was the most problematic in this 
expanding digital environment. Like the underground market of VCR cassettes 
in the 1980s, satellite presented a new challenge to the regime, as a stream of 
oppositional channels aired from outside of the country (Khosravi 2008). Satellite 
was first banned in 1995 just four years after satellite dishes began to appear on the 
rooftops of northern tehran. But the ban did not inhibit the popularity of emerging 
communication technologies like mobile phones, which served as both a useful 
means of everyday communication, especially text messaging, and a symbol of 
social status for a youth culture that increasingly demanded participation in the 
consumerist global market. By the late 1990s the rise in the number of mobile 
users, similar to internet, had dramatically increased to millions (Sreberny and 
Khiabany 2010).
the economic and social transformations of the rafsanjani period however 
entailed a political side as well. with the government relaxing social spaces, new 
critical political discourses emerged from the growing iranian middle-class with 
daring demands for reforms. The presidential election of 1997 that marked the 
victory of the reformist cleric, Mohammad Khatami, was a result of cross-section 
of civic associations, activists, students and workers who sought to overturn the 
overwhelming influence of the conservative leadership. With the reformist victory, 
post-revolutionary Iran saw the production of alternative newspapers, books 
and video recordings of dissident intellectuals and reformists who bolstered an 
unofficial public sphere, one that was not sanctioned by the state nevertheless 
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The State of Digital Exception 37
operative as a dissident digital public. with new communication technologies 
rapidly entrenched in everyday life of younger iranians, the new activists also 
began to use internet and other digital technologies to express views that would be 
normally prohibited in the face-to-face public life.
in reaction to suppression of the print media by the conservative faction based in 
the judiciary and security forces, political reform entered a new stage of opposition 
in that it increasingly took refuge in new media outlets as a way to circumvent 
censorship. internet became the most popular forum of communication, as a way to 
express critical views or make accountable state activities in its previous treatments 
of opposition and management of economic and social change. online news sites 
provided the first instances of a post-print media culture that circumvented print 
media restrictions imposed by the judiciary.
the state reaction to regulate the new technology was gradual and not 
necessarily effective—and also marked with key learning moments. Four stages 
may be underlined in the case of Internet. The first stage, from 1999 to 2004–5, 
focused on regulative practices such as blocking, filtering and Internet service 
governance that targeted internet Service Providers as a way to outsource control 
over content and interaction online (Gheytanchi and rahimi 2008; rahimi 2008; 
Sreberny and Khiabany 2010). In what Guobin Yang calls the “mediaziation of 
the internet” many regulative practices that were implemented over the internet 
revolved around previous laws applied to mass media (Yang 2009).3 this could 
be perhaps explained in light of the state’s initial inability to define the Internet, 
as it first began to be used in the educational sphere, and hence perceived as 
“scientific,” rather than the media domain with potential political implications. 
Since the early reformist period under Khatami’s presidency, iranian internet users 
have experienced several mediaziation initiatives. the most important one was 
the comprehensive set of decrees ratified by the Supreme Council of the Cultural 
Revolution (SCRC) in 2001 that imposed a more centralized system of regulative 
frameworks through the employment of filter systems by the ISPs (Deibert, Palfrey, 
Rohozinski and Zittrain 2010). The implementation of other regulative measures 
also involved the 2006 reduction of Internet speed to 128 kilobits per second as 
a reaction to the emerging social media sites that enabled users to download and 
forward photos and videos online.
The second stage, from 2004/5 to 2008, identified the digitization of governance 
and rise of e-commerce in the Iranian economy. Electronic governance identifies 
the first instances of proactive measures to promote and legitimize the state 
through effective governance and shape the online landscape with its presence. By 
mid-2005 iranian e-governance became widespread involving the creation of new 
public-administrative provisions that ranges from embassy, library to passport and 
tourist services (Beygijanian and Richardson 2008). E-commerce too, in particular 
3 the Press law of 1986 served as the principle legal source for the early regulation 
of the internet, followed by the 2000 amendment to the Press law, a reaction to the growing 
dissident activism in the print media. 
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in the banking sector, has served as a way to both provide financial efficiency and 
also legitimacy for the state, seeking to keep pace with the burgeoning public 
sector and the consumerist society in the late Khatami period.
the third and fourth stages, from 2008/9 to present, coincide with the growing 
clout of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) over the political sphere 
and the security apparatus of the state, which began with the conservative 
consolidation over the legislative and executive office between 2004 and 2005. 
The 51 percent takeover of the Telecommunication Company of Iran by Mobin, 
an irGC-dominated private company, and the establishment of “Cyber-crimes” 
units in 2009, set the stage for a new regulative framework. Toward the end of 
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s first term in 2008 and with the 2009 elections and the 
social upheaval that erupted in reaction to the allegedly rigged elections, the islamic 
republic underwent in what Farideh Farhi has called a “securitization” phase, an 
elevated security-conscious system of governance with the aim of establishing a 
complex network of surveillance and intelligence-gathering for control over the 
public sphere (Farhi 2010). IRGC, responsible for national security and the ideals 
of the revolution, has been the leading state organ, using various surveillance 
technologies for identifying dissidents on the internet and mobile phone. as i have 
argued elsewhere, securitization however should be viewed as an aspect of a new 
kind of militarization dynamic within the regime apparatus, which heavily relies 
on a network of intelligence and informational sharing with an emphasis on “soft 
power” to tackle various threats, especially domestic ones (Rahimi 2012).
the rhetoric of “soft war” emerged just months after the June 2009 elections 
and its focus was to create new cultural and public institutions that would 
implement diverse disruptive, coordinated and co-optive efforts through, in words 
of Price, “information-related measures” to undermine the foreign-directed media 
initiatives and seek to disintegrate the “value” system of the country, the moral 
order, from within. (Adelkhah 2010; Price, 2012; Akhavan, 2014). The strategy 
of soft war aimed to reframe the regulative media policies into an aggressive 
“psychological operation” and, in terms of new cultural practices, promote 
perception of soft rev lution from the outside and the need to safeguard the 
native culture through creative media practices. Reflecting the multifaceted media 
environment in the post-election era, iran’s digital-control regime showed how 
it can change with the political situation. in light of new securitized measures, 
the discourse of soft war emerged as the most intriguing deliberative strategy to 
stifle dissent in the emerging communication media such as mobile and Internet, 
where the state continues to have difficulty maintaining full control, in contrast to 
broadcast media such as radio or the national tV.
Finally, the launch of the “Fifth Five development Plan of the islamic 
Republic of Iran (2010–2015)” marks the fourth stage in the regulative process 
over cyberspace. The creation of a “national information network” with the 
official aim of promoting e-governance and increase in productivity in economic 
and cultural programs primarily serves as a security strategy to form a closed 
network and isolate Iran’s Internet users from the global Internet sphere (Anderson 
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The State of Digital Exception 39
2012). Such closed national computer network should be viewed in light of the 
increasing securitization of the islamic republic to protect online governance 
from hackactivism and establish a more effective online surveillance regime. Yet 
the creation of a closed national Net could also reflects the need to maintain a 
stable internet service for government and business sector when the state decides 
to shutdown the regular internet that is connected to the world, as a way to 
implement greater control over cyberspace, especially in the way it could shape 
street protests.
The shutdown under a Crisis state
the June 2009 elections changed the islamic republic into what Howard has called 
a “crisis state”—a destabilizing political experience of transition or turmoil caused 
by internal or external conflict (Ansari 2010; Howard 2010: 74). Though certainly 
not iraq or Somalia, the election chaos caused by a popular perception of malpractice 
over the voting results that favored the incumbent president, ahmadinejad, pushed 
the theocratic regime closer to the edge of a major crisis of political legitimacy 
with the breakdown of governance over civic life and state management over the 
public sphere. the iranian Green movement, a socio-political opposition current 
described as a “civil rights” movement by Hamid dabashi compromises a new 
generation of activists who integrated new communication technologies in their 
contentious activities (Dabashi 2010). While the Internet, in particular popular 
sites like Facebook, Balatarin, a popular Persian-language social site, and Twitter, 
together with mobile phone, were already in use during the election campaign 
season, the new media served as a distinguishing aspect of the post-election street 
protesters, as the activists recorded, circulated, spread and aesthetically exposed 
state corruption, deception, brutality and by and large the authoritarian character 
of the regime in digital space (Gheytanchi 2010; Rahimi 2011). For nearly two 
months after the elections, the streets of tehran and other major iranian cities 
were in a state of strife, bringing the state to apply a combined set of hard and 
soft measures to stifle growing dissent with the blessing of the Supreme Leader, 
ayatollah Khamenei, who had publically supported ahmadinejad during the 
elections and later ordered the arrest of Mir-Hussain Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, 
the two opposing candidates.
despite warnings of a “Velvet revolution” of eastern european style by the 
IRGC weeks prior to the elections (Peterson 2010), the regime’s security apparatus 
were taken off-guard by the sheer size of the crowd and, more importantly, the 
new tactics used by the activists. Footages of the street demonstrations and scenes 
of security forces brutality against the unarmed demonstrators first appeared on 
social media sites, and eventually (and rather quickly) found their way to satellite 
TV news channels like Al-Jazeera and CNN International. They served as a major 
threat to the official image that the state wanted to portray about the elections, as 
a popular and the most uncontested aspect of iranian political life. BBC Persia, 
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State Power 2.040
launched on January 2009, played a critical role in bringing “i-reports,” produced 
by the activists on the ground, from the streets back to Iranian homes, as millions 
watched the protests unfold after the elections through non-state televised media. 
When Neda Agha Soltan was killed on June 20, the video footage was first posted 
on Facebook, then immediately posted on YouTube and in hours picked up by 
Al-Jazeera and CNN International (Rahimi 2011b).
in light of major transformations over censoring and the policing regime, 
designed over the years since 2001, various security agencies within different 
branches of government led by irGC engaged in a combination of measures to 
push back dissident activities in the digital domain. The most obvious to the pro-
Mousavi supporters was the outage of mobile services, in particular text messaging 
services, and the internet hours before the day of elections, June 12, which 
continued to the morning (Enayat, Smith, Wojcieszk 2012; Mackinnon 2012).4 on 
the day of elections internet access was so slow that it made it almost impossible 
to check or send email. In the weeks following the elections, during the days when 
Mousavi would call out his supporters to storm the streets to demonstrate, Yahoo 
messenger and other chat-room like services would be shutdown, while regular 
online news sites, permitted by the state, would be available.5 Facebook, though 
unblocked in February of that year, was blocked from the day of elections onwards. 
landlines were operational, but mobile services were severely limited during day 
times and late into the night, when the assumption was that next day organizations 
by activists would take place. At night, especially during the crucial hours when 
protesters chant anti-government slogans on rooftops, most internet services 
would be either shutdown or considerably slowed down. during the critical days 
of protests, major satellite channels, in particular BBC, Cnn international and 
Voa Persian, would experience electronic signal jamming. during the critical 
days of protests, major satellite channels, in particular BBC, Cnn international 
and Voa Persian, would experience electronic signal jamming. this was the case 
when there would be a report on the iranian turmoil. in many ways, the jamming 
practice was selective and hardly comprehensive in scope, as number of state-
funded channels like Press TV and Al-Alam are also aired on satellite TV.
Along with physical attacks on Mousavi campaign offices, other measures were 
also used (Yahyanejad and Gheytanchi 2012). Based on field observations, and as 
Howard has noted, later in the afternoon on the day of elections, as reports of 
protests in central tehran began to emerge, internet access was completely disabled 
for nearly an hour by the data Communication to begin the process of “deep 
packet” inspection system, which pushed off Iran from the global communication 
channels for nearly a day (Howard 2010: 6). The surveillance regime was mostly 
4 the shut off was not however comprehensive as universities and many businesses 
continued to have access to service. also, mobile services were down mostly around 
specific geographical areas where Karoubi and Mousavi’s campaign centers had a major 
concentration.
5 Field work observation, Tehran, Iran June, 2009.
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The State of Digital Exception 41
effective over mobile communication, as reports of arrest bespeak of prisoners 
describing transcribe copies of their conversations over the cell. the surveillance 
of Facebook activism is also noteworthy, as the social networking site saw a rise 
of iranian users in the pre-election period. the most creative measure was the 
propaganda mechanism of overtly guiding the direction of debate by spreading 
rumors and conspiratorial theories in favor of the government helped slow 
down the momentum of the movement (Rahimi 2011a). In what can be called 
the camouflaging tactic, members of IRGC, which also include the Basij, while 
pretending to be Mousavi supporters, would engage with social media sites to 
change the directions of street protests, relying on the decentralized organizational 
aspect of the new media to inject rumors or new discourses, sometimes of highly 
violent nature in order to confuse the discussions or norms of actions over how 
best to tackle brutality by the security forces.
this last feature also brought to full view a new measure already in use by 
the Chinese state. the 2008 call by the irGC to recruit Basiji militias to populate 
the blogosphere resembles the Chinese “internet commentators,” as an online 
community on the government’s pay role and first used in 2004 (Sreberny and 
Khiabany 2010; Rahimi 2011a; Yang 2009). The idea behind the pre-election 
project was to offer alternative, “islamic” social media sites to blogs and popular 
networking sites such as Facebook and Balatarin. The launch of the Velayatmadaran 
social site provides the best example of such initiative, which was perceived as 
part of the state’s attempt to manage the virtual domain of interaction. The hacking 
and defacing of opposition websites also appeared in correlation with the state’s 
growing use of the discourse of “soft war” in late summer of 2009. to the irGC, 
in charge of protecting the islamic republic, the state now faces a new threat and 
that is the new media as the west’s most covert attempt to initiate a color coup. in 
response, the iranian government reframed the crisis in terms of a foreign-led coup 
and emphasized the idea of soft power as the best way to challenge the west’s 
psychological warfare.
as the censorship regime managed to limit, at least on a short-term basis, the 
momentum of the Green Movement, and in some respects hinder its street influence 
by imprisoning key activists in the movement, the opposition also found ways to 
evade restrictions. one central problem was the diverse ways dissidents would 
use alternative ways to have access to digital media, and subsequently challenge 
the state’s propaganda machinery. For instance, in the case of internet, some users 
with access to business accounts with higher speed of connection would post short 
video clips on YouTube, or hand over USB flash drive with recorded footages 
or photos to friends or family members travelling to united arab emirates and 
Turkey, where large Iranian Diaspora communities reside. Many students activists, 
realizing university online services would be took risky, would particularly use the 
business outlet to have better access to the internet. Proxy servers and rSS services 
also played a role, as activists would hack or engage in distributed denial of service 
attacks (DDoS) to disrupt government’s websites including Ahmadinejad official 
website (Rahimi 2011a). There was also the problem of effectively creating 
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State Power 2.042
alternative social media sites to tackle Facebook and YouTube. Velayatmadaran 
was shut down months after it was launched primarily because the pro-government 
users were too busy using Facebook for social interaction. Also, total shutdowns 
of online services would cause major problems for governance, as the economy 
by 2009 had become considerably dependent on digital transactions, especially in 
the banking sector. Though several attempts were made during critical political 
events, there were no total shutoff moments, only selective ones that mostly 
revolved around consumer rather than business services. this played a critical role 
for the dissidents to break through the rare states of exception and make digital 
communication possible on both local and global scales.
Conclusion
this chapter has examined the current censorship trends in the iranian digital 
media environment, with a focus on the internet for the management of the public 
sphere and contentious politics. while iCts necessarily undermine authoritarian 
power, as the case of Green Movement in post-election shows, they also do not 
necessarily empower them either. the advantage of iCts is in the capacity to 
provide a forum for the circulation of information, new discourses and social 
imaginaries that would ultimately legitimize and bolster state power and in a 
socio-political context out of which various forms of governance are maintained. 
The disadvantage, however, is primarily about the inability of a networked state, 
increasingly governing through digital communication, to entirely undermine the 
digital networks that operate, interact and communicate in the public domains 
of social media environments. the appropriation of technology for power is 
especially ineffective when the state’s faction-ridden political process, as in the 
case of iran, is enhanced, mostly as a result of changing elite realignments, or as 
its power center(s) develop toward an unanticipated direction in shifting spheres 
of intra-state contestation. iran represents another example of digital state that 
has failed to entirely set the parameters of governance over digital media and the 
information infrastructure.
Technologies can fail and so do authoritarian spheres of influence to exert 
power, especially during states of exception when a polity undergoes a crisis 
of legitimacy. as the case of Hallal internet shows, the formation of a national 
network as a form of governance over the Internet may carry numerous challenges, 
including mundane technical ones. equally important is the role of infrastructural 
conditions and, more importantly, shifting contexts of global and local networks 
through which social movements become possible. the degree of transnational 
ties and technological diffusion in a country, such as iran, always carries the 
element of surprise in dissident mobilization. in this sense, the level of digital and 
network organization and how entrenched ICTs are in everyday life determines the 
failure or success of authoritarian power and resistance to it. in this regard, it is in 
the unforeseen opportunities in the broader landscape of political contention that 
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The State of Digital Exception 43
enable authoritarianism to either succeed in its efforts to control or succumb to the 
opposition’s demands for reform or total change.
with the presence of a vibrant dissident political culture since 2009 elections, 
especially pervasive in the new media sphere, the evolving iranian state, with 
its distinct securitization trajectories since the 2005 election of ahmadinejad, has 
largely succeeded to curtail oppositional activism on the street level, but failed to 
prevent the growth of dissent within digital networks. In this sense, the Iranian 
state recognizes the significance of network technologies and overall information 
infrastructure that enable activists to organize and mobilize contentious 
performances at opportune moments. during the 2013 presidential election, the 
state was more prepared in the implementation of several shutoff strategies ahead 
of the election day. While weeks before elections the state slowed down the speed 
of internet, the afternoon before and on the election day most websites, especially 
email servers like Yahoo and Gmail, were either considerably slowed down or 
shutoff.6 on June 16, just minutes after the iranian football team won a critical 
game in order to qualify for the world Cup, the internet was again shut down, as 
Iranians took to the streets and celebrated the victory of the national team.7 while 
there were no anti-government street protests in 2013 elections, the strategic 
move to disable the internet ahead of elections and the football match shows how 
the government security apparatus views digital media as a potential threat and 
treats it as an integral part of iran’s oppositional politics. digital connectivity and 
diffusion of networks of communication remains a threat to authoritarian states. 
Increasing interconnectivity between social media, (smart) mobile communication 
and satellite tV programs enable civic activists or ordinary citizens to organize, 
mobilize and creatively express discontent or claim transparency in a complex 
media environment to defy easy control over the content and form of communication 
in everyday life. Perhaps what is most problematic for the authoritarian states is 
not why or when iCts can be used for dissident activities, but the complex socio-
cultural processes through which they can construct new mental environments, 
daily/nightly practices and civic engagements that on a long-term can undermine 
the social context of authoritarian power. at the heart of iran’s communication 
revolution is a social revolution of everyday subversive force of which no state of 
exception can manage to restrain it.
6 Fieldwork observation, Tehran, Iran, June, 8–14, 2013.
7 The Internet came back on to normal speed at midnight. Fieldwork observation, 
tehran, iran, June 16, 2013.
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Chapter 3  
information infrastructure and anti-regime 
Protests in iran and tunisia 
Matthew Carrieri, ronald J. deibert, and Saad omar Khan
the 2009 iranian election protests and the tunisian uprising of 2011 are 
contemporary and salient examples of anti-authoritarian movements in the Middle 
East and North Africa (MENA). International news media have reported at length 
on the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in facilitating 
organized protests against authoritarian regimes across the region, referring to these 
and similar displays of dissent as “twitter revolutions” (Washington Times 2009). 
“Web 2.0” applications like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube allowed dissidents 
and activists to bypass state media controls and broadcast steady streams of news 
updates, photos, and video clips to local and international audiences. Social media 
platforms also served as forums through which activists could rally disparate 
individuals to collectively mobilize in the streets.
Iran and Tunisia also stifled dissent online with highly developed 
telecommunications infrastructures of remarkably similar architecture. From the 
mid 1990s onwards, the two countries channeled internet bandwidth through a 
single point of connection, creating a bottleneck through which online content 
could be extensively filtered and opponents easily monitored. Legal frameworks 
and regulatory bodies supplemented technical tools by providing governments with 
the pretexts and institutions necessary to physically suppress dissidents. the open 
Net Initiative (ONI) has provided extensive coverage of Iran and Tunisia’s heavy 
censorship regimes up to 2009, including pervasive filtering and legal controls on 
content (ONI Iran 2009; ONI Tunisia 2009). The two governments’ ICT policies 
attracted considerable attention from human rights activists, who awarded them a 
number of dubious honors. reporters without Borders, for example, named iran 
and Tunisia “Enemies of the Internet” in 2005 (RSF 2005), and the Committee to 
Protect Journalists listed them among the most dangerous places from which to 
blog in 2009 (CPJ 2009).
iran and tunisia used their information infrastructures to quell unrest in 
response to the 2009 “Green Movement” and the 2011 “Jasmine revolution.” 
Yet Mahmoud ahmadinejad survived to preside over another term, while zine 
el-Abidine Ben Ali fled the country. Do these divergent outcomes invalidate the 
importance that many have accorded to ICTs in precipitating unrest? Assuming 
iran anticipated its post-election turmoil, is the successful exercise of state power 
over information infrastructure simply a matter of preemptive preparation? While 
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we make no argument that the dissemination and use of ICTs is a necessary causal 
variable for democratization in modern authoritarian societies, this chapter adopts 
the position that communications technologies and social media can play a role in 
precipitating regime overthrow. it treats iCts as tools that provide opportunities 
for organization and popular mobilization that may not otherwise exist in contexts 
of regime repression. as such, state-level responses to digital expressions of 
dissent help us understand the conditions that contribute to the relative success or 
failure of social movements.
despite their similarities, iran and tunisia responded to their respective 
episodes of unrest in different ways. in contrast to tunisia, iran was considerably 
more proactive in implementing filtering and consistently maintained its extensive 
grip on information infrastructure in the face of popular demands. these factors 
proved vital in containing telecommunications-aided mass mobilization and 
preventing regime overthrow.
Internet as Threat or opportunity in Iran and Tunisia
tunisia’s approach to information technology prior to the 2011 revolution was 
rooted in the imperative of economic development. almost immediately after 
the introduction of the internet, the government invested some 1.5 billion uSd 
to promote access among businesses and individuals (Abdulla 2007). Ben Ali 
himself publicly made the association between information technology and 
a robust, competitive economy, bragging that his government had “[laid] the 
foundations of the information society and the knowledge-based economy” for 
Tunisia (Jelassi 2010: 162). As a key facet of its tenth and eleventh development 
plans (2002–2006 and 2007–2011 respectively), Tunisia nearly tripled the number 
of domestic internet users between 2006 and 2009 from 1.3 million to 3.4 million 
users (Jelassi 2010). The ICT sector’s share of the economy rose dramatically 
in the years prior to the revolution, from 2.6 percent in 1997 to 10 percent in 
2008 (Jelassi 2010). The regime’s Internet strategy under Ben Ali revolved around 
information technology as a driver of economic growth and an opportunity that 
should be exploited and encouraged, if also carefully controlled.
Like Tunisia, Iran at first welcomed the Internet as a tool for economic growth 
and academic progress (Rahimi 2003). The government promoted its development 
and expansion among commercial and educational sectors and, consequently, 
internet use among the general public expanded dramatically from its inception 
in 1993. But as Sreberny and Khiabany (2010) note, Iran’s ICT development was 
“constrained by confusion in government policies, varied institutional interests 
and above all the dialectical tension between the imperative of the market and 
‘revolutionary’ claims of the state” (11). Long-standing US sanctions on Iran 
have also made the acquisition of information technology hardware and software 
difficult, if not impossible (Sreberny and Khiabany 2010).
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Information Infrastructure and Anti-Regime Protests in Iran and Tunisia 47
More importantly, the islamic state has aimed to root out and destroy western 
cultural imperialism in order to replace its vestiges with an indigenous “Muslim” 
culture as defined by the religio-political establishment (Sreberny and Khiabany 
2010). In the 2000s, the state began to view the private sector’s control of ICT 
infrastructure and the market’s role in dictating accessible content as an arena 
of contestation and a threat to its cultural and political hegemony. while the 
third five-year plan (2000–2005) outlined privatization and liberalization of the 
telecommunications industry as a main objective in the effort to build a “knowledge-
based economy,” these initiatives were only haphazardly implemented. the state 
proved reluctant to release its grip over iCts and deepened its control over the 
sector to such an extent that it became the leading provider of internet access and 
services (Sreberny and Khiabany 2010).
Since 2005, iran has also allegedly been developing its own “national 
Information Network”: a domestic intranet that limits users’ access to content 
hosted on the world wide web and facilitates surveillance of those who continue 
to use the Internet (Nouri 2010). The “National Information Network,” which 
was initially slated to launch in 2009 but has since been delayed, represents the 
culmination of the iranian regime’s plans to promote its ideological vision of an 
indigenous islamic society via the internet. By creating a system in which iranian 
users’ traffic need no longer be routed through external (often US-based) servers, 
the government can more easily create a climate in which all content complies 
with its overarching cultural vision and minimize ideological threats to its political 
legitimacy. The Iranian state’s philosophy of the Internet thus differs significantly 
from tunisia’s. while Ben ali enthusiastically sought to develop tunisia’s 
iCt industry, concerns over political hegemony and cultural integrity trumped 
economic and social development in iran.
ICT Infrastructures and filtering
tunisia’s emphasis in creating a “wired” country coincided with the state’s 
development of its information infrastructure in a way that created a centralized 
system of control. wagner has described tunisia’s cyberspace landscape as one in 
which “control of telecommunications infrastructure and internet infrastructure 
are closely linked” (2012: 485). When the Internet was introduced in 1991 and 
public access was still limited, state controls were nonexistent. the internet’s 
opening to the public in 1996 coincided with the creation of the agence tunisienne 
d’Internet (ATI), which was tasked with regulating Tunisia’s Internet backbone 
and domain name system (DNS), and providing connectivity to government 
agencies (ONI 2007; Wagner 2012). The ATI also possessed a monopoly on the 
country’s bandwidth, which it leased to all Internet service providers (ISPs), 
many of which were government-owned. its central position in regulating and 
maintaining tunisia’s internet infrastructure greatly facilitated the installation of 
government control mechanisms. Because all bandwidth needed to pass through 
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the ati’s gateway servers on its way to iSPs, the government could conveniently 
filter content at a single bottleneck. The state also had significant control over 
domestic internet service providers. the country’s main iSP and single provider 
of international connectivity, Tunisie Telecom, was believed to have close links 
to government figures even after its supposed “privatization” in 2006 (Wagner 
2012). Even if the government did not officially own Tunisie Telecom, it was 
understood that all iSPs in tunisia were state controlled. in a personal interview 
with Moez Chakchouk, current CEO of the ATI, Chakchouk explained that ISPs 
during the Ben Ali era were all “somehow linked to the regime” (April 25, 2012).
From the ati’s inception, the government installed several layers of content 
controls (Wagner 2012). Until 2003, the ATI used Secure Computing’s SmartFilter 
to consistently block content across all ISPs and NetApp’s NetCache proxy 
solution to display a generic “Error 404” blockpage. According to Chakchouk, 
the government listed four website categories of concern to censors, including 
pornography, sites related to the political opposition, sites relating to Ben ali’s 
family, and sites seen as encouraging violence and “terrorism” (interview april 25, 
2012). By 2003, dissidents had begun distributing censored content via email, and 
the government consequently supplemented its website censorship with manual 
email filtering. The ATI collected suspect emails and handed them over to the 
Ministry of Interior, where employees read, deleted, and modified their contents. 
Deep packet inspection technology was added in 2007, as the introduction of 
broadband overwhelmed monitoring efforts via earlier mechanisms of control.
despite the ati’s centralized control over censorship, decisions about what 
sites should be censored came from outside of the agency. Statements by Kamel 
Saadaoui, former ATI director (Elkin 2011) and Chakchouk indicate that the regime 
itself had sole discretion over what sites were blocked. As Chakchouk explained, 
“ATI does not decide which site to be filtered or not. The ATI is just responsible 
to maintain equipment and to set up new equipment in the centers … the demand 
to do censorship came from Ben Ali himself” (interview April 25, 2012). The list 
of blocked sites was unknown to the ATI, which often received knowledge of 
filtering only when citizens inquired why a particular site was inaccessible (Elkin 
2011). While the ATI as an Internet exchange point provided the functionality 
and the technical expertise to filter, it lacked the authority to make decisions 
about which sites should or should not have been banned. in this sense, tunisia’s 
infrastructure of control prior to the revolution was considerably “top-down,” with 
little deliberation outside the confines of a select coterie of officials.
On the surface, Iran’s telecommunications infrastructure and filtering practices 
were remarkably similar to those of Tunisia. During the 1990s, freedom of 
speech on the internet was relatively unregulated. the iranian regime viewed 
the internet as a potential opportunity to export its “cultural revolution” through 
state-affiliated media outfits and to legitimize its rule by appearing “modernized” 
(Rahimi 2003). However, hardline factions began to crack down on expressions of 
liberalism in the mainstream media following the election of Mohamed Khatami 
to the presidency, pushing political writers to the internet as a vehicle of free 
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Information Infrastructure and Anti-Regime Protests in Iran and Tunisia 49
expression (Amnesty International 2010; Yahyanejad and Gheytanchi 2012). Even 
as the internet became a platform for iranians to publish opinions critical of the 
regime or to expose controversial topics, authorities sought to monopolize the 
telecommunications industry and control online content.
Like Tunisia, Iran has “centralized [its] Internet infrastructure so that all 
traffic must pass through a limited number of gateways or service providers” 
(Karlekar and Cook 2009: 7). The Ministry of Information and Communications 
technology oversees two subsidiaries: the telecommunications infrastructure 
Company (TIC) and the Telecommunications Company of Iran. The TIC provides 
internet bandwidth to iSPs, acts as the sole purchaser of international gateways, 
and maintains data traffic for the public and private sectors (TCI website). Like 
Tunisia’s ATI, all Internet traffic from commercial ISPs must connect via the TCI; 
it is therefore easy for the government to implement filtering technology at a single 
point of connection (ONI Iran 2009). The TCI was established as a government 
organization in 1971, but was supposed to be privatized beginning in 2007. 
upon its initial public offering, however, the iranian revolutionary Guard Corps 
(IRGC) purchased over 50 percent of the TCI’s shares through one of its affiliated 
companies—the Mobin Trust Consortium (BBC Persian 2010). Similarly, the 
second largest mobile-phone operator in the country, iran Cell, is owned by a 
number of commercial entities said to be “proxy companies” controlled by the 
IRGC (Freedom House 2011a: 190). For a long time the Iranian government 
employed SmartFilter—the same software used in tunisia—to limit access to 
foreign content, while manually shutting down undesirable local sites (ONI 2007). 
The regime gradually developed its own domestic tools to search for and filter 
objectionable content (oni Iran 2009). Finally, the TCI uses proxy servers and 
deep packet inspection tools provided by Nokia-Siemens Networks to facilitate 
government surveillance by logging all unencrypted traffic that passes through the 
data bottleneck (Rahimi 2011). Effective January 2012, however, Nokia-Siemens 
pledged to reduce ties with Iran (Stecklow 2011).
However, noticeable differences exist between the two countries’ approaches 
to Internet and telecommunications management. While no filtering regime is 
completely transparent, iran’s infrastructure of control appears to be relatively more 
direct from a user’s perspective. Tunisia’s “blockpage” appeared as a nondescript 
404 “File not Found” error message, obfuscating the fact that the government was 
actively blocking the site (ONI Tunisia 2009). Iran makes the filtration process 
transparent, explicitly telling users that a site is forbidden and providing users with 
suggestions for more acceptable websites (oni Iran 2009). More stakeholders 
are involved in the process of creating and maintaining Iran’s digital firewall, and 
the surrounding bureaucracy of the telecommunication sector is larger and more 
horizontally structured than tunisia’s. an interagency committee, the Committee 
in Charge of Determining Unauthorized Sites (CCDUS), was established in 2002 
to set criteria for censoring websites based on guidelines provided by the Supreme 
Council of the Cultural revolution (oni Iran 2009). No equivalent organization 
existed under Ben Ali as part of Tunisia’s filtration regime.
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recently, the process of governmental control over the internet in iran has 
become even more organized with the creation of the Supreme Council of 
Cyberspace. in contrast to the relatively more opaque style of tunisia’s internet 
filtering decision makers, the Supreme Council’s existence as a policy-making 
committee comprised of high-ranking officials from several government bodies 
is openly publicized (Press TV 2012). A number of organizations have also been 
established and charged with policing iran’s internet infrastructure since 2009, 
including: the IRGC (through its Cyber Defense Command); the Passive Defense 
organization; the information Communication technology Section of iran’s 
Police Forces (FAVA/ICT Police) (Yeganeh 2010); and the “Cyber Police” (FETA) 
established in April 2011 (Moqaddem and Naja 2011). Iran’s multiple stakeholders 
provide it with a more comprehensive grip on internet governance than that of 
tunisia at the height of its censorship policies.
Legal and regulatory Controls
Beyond technical filtering, both Tunisia and Iran have used legal means to stifle 
dissent as part of their infrastructures of control. Prior to the revolution, tunisia’s 
Press Code made “defamation” punishable through fines or imprisonment (Freedom 
House 2012). These measures were only selectively implemented: criticizing the 
presidency or government was illegal, but pro-government reporters were given 
free rein to attack and discredit independent reporters (Campagna 2008).
Commercial telecommunications entities under Ben ali were similarly subject 
to specific legal mechanisms and regulations. In 1997, two laws were enacted 
to hold iSPs directly responsible for online content: the “telecommunications 
decree” and the “internet decree.” the former mandated that the press code 
applied to online content. all iSPs directors were made responsible for ensuring 
that information trafficked across the provider’s network complied with the press 
code and for submitting their subscribers’ names to the ati on a monthly basis 
(Freedom House 2011b). The Internet Decree obliged ISPs to remove content 
deemed contrary to “public order or good morals” and to collect hard copies of 
offensive material for court proceedings. although there is no evidence that any of 
these laws have actually been applied in tunisia since their adoption (article 19 
2012: 29), ISPs were legally complicit in implementing cyberspace controls that 
the tunisian regime had created.
despite tunisia’s regulatory complexity, iran’s legal regime is far more 
extensive due to a number of Internet-specific laws that have no equivalent in 
Tunisia. As in Tunisia, Iran has used existing press laws to stifle dissent online and 
offline. Article 6 of Iran’s 1986 press law restricts content considered un-Islamic, 
“atheistic,” or that instigates “individuals and groups to act against the security, 
dignity and interests of the islamic republic of iran.” it also forbids content that 
can be considered libelous against state officials, institutions, and organizations 
(Pars Times). In keeping with conservative factions’ increasing concern over 
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the internet during Khatami’s presidency, the law was amended to include all 
electronic publications in 2000 (al-Aamri 2012).
Iran has, however, developed legal doctrines specific to cyberspace. The 
2009 iranian Cyber Crimes act gives detailed punitive measures against those 
committing crimes such as: illegally accessing data and information systems 
protected by “security measures” (article 1); concealing data in a way that would 
provide “authorized individuals” from accessing to data, such as through basic 
encryption (article 10); sending obscene material through computers and other 
devices (article 14); using computers and other telecommunications technology 
to “disseminate lies” (article 18); and neglecting to filter out objectionable sites 
as an ISP, thus making service providers complicit in censorship (article 21: 
Article 19 2012: 23–43). This cyberspace-specific law indicates the increasing 
concern of iranian authorities about curtailing dissident voices and molding 
iranian cyberspace according to the state’s ideological vision. rather than simply 
attack journalists, bloggers, and dissidents using an ambiguous press law, Iran has 
tailored legislation to protect the islamic republic against perceived domestic and 
geopolitical threats.
iran’s regulatory regime bears certain similarities to tunisia’s legal mechanisms 
for controlling cyberspace. Both used press laws to punish journalists and activists 
and developed telecommunications laws specifically for ISPs. Arguably, however, 
iran’s legal regime more directly addresses internet-related transgressions. the 
ideological differences between the secular Ben ali regime and the religiously 
oriented Iranian government are reflected in their legal contexts. Iran’s press law 
explicitly mentions the unacceptability of “un-islamic” and “atheistic” content. 
tunisian penal codes forbid acts that upset “public morals,” but say nothing about 
content considered offensive to religious morals.
Information Controls in During Political unrest
iran in 2009 and tunisia in 2011 both responded to widespread unrest by engaging 
in physical repression—often legally sanctioned under the laws described—and 
tightening iCt controls. Given that social media websites and cellular telephones 
played a key role in organizing protests and broadcasting human rights abuses, 
cyberspace formed a highly contested sphere in the conflicts between state and 
civil society (Howard and Hussain 2012; Zuckerman 2011). Arguably, the two 
regimes’ well-developed technical and legal infrastructures were tailor-made to 
shut down popular mobilization and to pinpoint and prosecute those responsible. 
iran largely succeeded in this endeavor, but events in tunisia resulted in the end of 
Ben ali’s 23-year rule and precipitated calls for representation across north africa 
and the Middle east. a number of factors contributed to these different outcomes.
tunisian information controls during the Jasmine revolution were multifaceted. 
reports indicate that the ati was responsible for harvesting protesters’ Gmail, 
Yahoo, and Facebook login credentials (Ragan 2011). As the revolution ran its 
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course, websites were blocked, particularly Facebook pages about the unrest and 
foreign online articles (including France24, Al-Jazeera, BBC, Deutsche Welle) 
covering the events (RSF 2012). In an interview, ATI CEO Moez Chakchouk 
claimed that part of the reason for not blocking Facebook itself was its use by the 
Ben Ali regime for pro-regime propaganda (interview April 25, 2012). Despite all 
of these efforts to control the revolution online, the protests continued. Howard 
and colleagues (2011) explain how the lack of centralized leadership in the 
revolutionary movement actually made efforts to stamp out the protest movement 
more difficult. By contrast, the Green Movement coalesced around the figure of 
Mir-Hossein Mousavi and, to a lesser extent, Mehdi Karroubi, both of whom were 
reformist politicians by profession and recently defeated electoral candidates. 
Centralized infrastructures of control like those in Iran and Tunisia may be 
better suited to targeting websites and individuals specifically aligned to political 
movements (as in Iran) than to dealing with decentralized opposition movements 
(as in Tunisia).
Others have argued that the Tunisian regime was either ill-prepared to crack 
down effectively on new media, which provided vital information during the 
blackout of traditional media (Bounenni 2011), or simply underestimated its 
efficacy (Al-Saqaf 2012). The former head of the ATI, Kamel Saadaoui, said that 
the regime had “signed a deal to add monitoring of social networks,” but “hadn’t 
yet delivered the solution when the Facebook revolution” crested in January (Silver 
2011). As a result, the Tunisian regime’s approach to social media filtration and 
monitoring was reactive rather than proactive (Wagner 2012). The widespread use 
of social media and mobile phones to transmit messages and images of the protests 
continued without significant government intervention or effective prevention. 
Facebook, which remained unblocked and saw a huge spike in use beginning in 
December 2010, became the primary source of breaking news for many in an 
otherwise bleak media landscape.
the tunisian regime’s reactive policies ultimately proved ineffective, and, in 
a token show of reform, Ben Ali removed all Internet restrictions on January 14, 
2011. the new freedoms accorded to tunisian internet users came within hours; 
Ben Ali fled the country shortly thereafter. The speed at which he was able to lift 
online controls has been attributed to the centralized role of the ati in enforcing 
filtering in Tunisia. Once a decision was made to lift restrictions, all the ruling 
authorities had to do was push a metaphorical button at the ATI (Wagner 2012) to 
stop filtering. The speed at which filtering ended thus illustrates how centralized 
and narrow the tunisian information infrastructure had become under Ben ali.
iran’s information controls during the 2009 election protests were 
comparatively more far reaching. The Iranian regime ramped up its filtration, 
surveillance, and cyber-attack activities as early as January 25 (Yahyanejad 
and Gheytanchi 2012). Facebook and Twitter, both of which were previously 
censored, were unblocked in January 2009 either in a token display of tolerance or 
in an effort to monitor dissidents. However, the government banned them shortly 
ahead of the June elections as an anticipatory move, possibly in an effort to block 
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Information Infrastructure and Anti-Regime Protests in Iran and Tunisia 53
users from disseminating information in support of Mousavi (Sheikholeslami 
2009). Compared to Ben Ali’s weak concessions, Facebook and similar social 
media sites remained unequivocally banned throughout the protests. on the day 
of the election, the iranian government disabled the country’s short message 
service (SMS) system when protests against Ahmedinejad’s re-election started 
(RSF 2009). While officials claimed that the disruption aimed to prevent illegal 
campaigning on election day, Mousavi supporters argued that it prevented them 
from monitoring the election results. on days that protests were anticipated, 
the Iranian government effectively blocked 60 to 70 percent of Internet traffic 
and closed off ports commonly used by circumvention tools; on quieter days, it 
engaged in deep packet inspection (Dutton et al. 2010).
Months prior to the election protests, the irGC announced its support for 
the pro-government paramilitary Basij in a project to launch 10,000 blogs as a 
way of promoting Iran’s “revolutionary ideas” (Tehrani 2009). Even prior to the 
protests, then, the military vanguard of the iranian state felt the need to compete 
with the voices of the opposition in cyberspace. the so-called iranian Cyber army 
also emerged as a cyberspace actor directly in the wake of the protests. Cyber 
army attacks are numerous, some of the more notable ones being those against 
Twitter (Finkle and Bartz 2009). Twitter’s role in the Iranian protests made it an 
obvious target for pro-regime forces after the election protests. in tunisia, despite 
the widespread acknowledgement of Twitter’s role in supporting the protest 
movement, there is no evidence that the site was wholly blocked; protesters used 
the platform to inform, organize, and galvanize tunisians against the regime. the 
links between the cyber army and the Iranian regime are tenuous, although there 
have been some reports that they receive direct support from the irGC (Payvand 
2012).
Tunisians’ and Iranians’ discontent in 2011 and 2009 respectively took two very 
different trajectories. despite the hopes of many dissident iranians, the “Green 
Movement” did not lead to the same end as tunisia’s “Jasmine revolution.” Both 
movements uses information and communication technologies for organizational 
purposes, and as a tool to promote the revolution at home and abroad. Conversely, 
the 2009 and 2011 protests also showed how iCts could facilitate the process of 
state repression. as much as tunisia tried to control online content, their controls 
seemed relatively lax in contrast to iran’s hyper-vigilant approach to cyber security 
and censorship during the election protests.
Conclusion
though the technologies were similar—both governments, for example, used 
SmartFilter—the political and bureaucratic contexts in iran and tunisia differed. 
From the beginning, tunisia invested heavily in its iCt infrastructure as a vehicle 
of economic growth. in iran, the state’s political ideology and a religiously inspired 
animosity toward the internet hampered the development of a telecommunications 
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sector, while international sanctions prevented the importation of hardware and 
software that helps facilitate digital communication. Both countries retained 
a degree of control over Internet content by ensuring that ISPs funneled traffic 
through state-affiliated enterprises that essentially served as bottleneck points 
for filtration. But where Tunisia’s decision-making structure was vertical, with 
power ultimately held in the person of Ben ali and a small group of his supporters, 
Iran’s infrastructure of control consisted of multiple stakeholders with overlapping 
responsibilities. Moreover, Iran was relatively more open about its filtration 
policies and justifications for them than was Tunisia, as exemplified by their 
respective blockpages. This relative transparency is apparent at the legal level as 
well. iran and pre-revolution tunisia had extensive press laws to suppress dissent. 
Only Iran, however, developed legislation to specifically punish crimes committed 
using digital technology and established government institutions to determine the 
limits of permissible online activity. Iran’s legal environment also specifically 
targets un-islamic content, a regulatory concern without equal in secular pre-
revolution tunisia and a convenient pretext for censorship. Philosophically, the 
iranian regime’s willingness to separate itself from the world wide web both as 
a policy and as a de facto consequence of its cyberspace controls also contrasts 
with the Ben ali government’s relative openness and desire to instrumentalize the 
internet as a tool for economic growth.
Iran in 2009 proved more effective at blocking content it found threatening 
than did Tunisia throughout its revolution. The lack of an overarching social media 
blackout at the time of the Tunisian protests stands in contrast to Iran’s blocking of 
Facebook, Twitter, and foreign media in 2009. As was evident in Ben Ali’s speech 
and his subsequent removal of all online censorship, the tunisian government 
clearly had the capability to extensively and expeditiously censor content, but 
perhaps lacked the bureaucratic structure to deliberate effectively. The importance 
of preemptive preparation must also be noted. the “Green Movement” emerged 
in response to a foreseeable event, the planning for which began well in advance 
of its occurrence. Iran’s multi-stakeholder control regime anticipated a negative 
response to the 2009 election results; it thus took preliminary steps to limit free 
speech online and responded forcefully to displays of disaffection. By contrast, 
Ben ali’s regime could not have predicted Mohamed Bouazizi’s actions and their 
strong resonance among the tunisian people. the government was forced to 
improvise by implementing piecemeal measures but was neither well organized 
nor quick enough to combat opposition online. In the struggle between regimes 
and dissidents over control of communication technologies, a government’s 
opportunity to prepare its infrastructure of control for a coming shock is a clear, 
though by no means decisive, advantage.
Following their respective periods of civil conflict, Iran and Tunisia’s 
telecommunications infrastructures and policies developed in divergent ways. 
in tunisia, the state’s role in censorship and surveillance disappeared, as the 
ati sought to reinvent itself as a neutral, semi-governmental internet exchange 
point (Chakchouk interview, April 25, 2012). In Iran, however, state control of 
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the country’s iCt infrastructure deepened after June 2009. the establishment 
of the Supreme Council on Cyberspace in March 2012 and the expanding roster 
of regulatory bodies responsible for policing the Internet reflect the Iranian 
authorities’ increasing concern with cyberspace as a sphere of domestic and 
geopolitical conflict. The government’s plan to launch the “National Information 
Network”—essentially an intranet closed off to international traffic—threatens 
to establish an environment in which all content serves to propagate an official 
message and legitimize state power. these developments were predictable: 
tunisian civil society made use of its newly representative political system to 
demand a free flow of information, while the victorious but shaken Iranian regime 
doubled down on defending its interests.
the iranian and tunisian case studies show that authoritarian power need not 
necessarily be undermined by ICTs as long as the flow of information can be 
extensively and consistently controlled by the regime, especially in times of crisis. 
As Deibert and Rohozinski (2010) argue, communications technologies are tools 
that in different contexts may be used for either “liberation” or “control” (44). While 
iCts were certainly not the cause of the uprisings or the sole manifestation of civil 
conflict, they undoubtedly provide civil society with a space to grow in otherwise 
repressive political environments. However, our analysis suggests that regimes 
that fully leverage the control and surveillance capabilities of their information 
infrastructures can successfully curtail movements that seek to upend the political 
order. Keeping in mind specific contexts, other states in similar situations of 
political instability might learn a lesson or two from this comparison. regimes 
that adequately prepare, adopt an offensive stance, and “stick to their guns”—as 
in the iranian case—can deal a devastating blow to social movements by using 
iCts to their own advantage. as of this writing, such “regime learning” could be 
evident in Syria, where the ruling party has displayed a consistent willingness to 
combat opposition at all levels, including by using iCts to aggressively monitor 
dissidents and promote an “official narrative” counter to its opponents’ criticisms. 
Assuming that ruling powers do look to Iran as an example of regime resistance, 
social movements seeking to use information infrastructures for their own ends 
will face governments that are more prepared, more technologically empowered, 
and more willing to leverage the same tools as their opponents.
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Chapter 4  
digital occupation in Gaza’s  
High-tech enclosure
Helga tawil-Souri1
Since the israeli regime’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip in Summer 2005, 
Gaza has become an “airborne-occupied enclave” (Hanafi 2009: 118), an open-air 
prison, and a testing-ground for the latest military technologies. israel’s approach 
towards Gaza has been a balancing act “of maximum control and minimum 
responsibility” (Li 2006: 39) which has resulted in a form of occupation—and 
state power—that has become increasingly technologized. unmanned aerial 
reconnaissance and attack drones, remote-controlled machine guns, closed-circuit 
television, sonic imagery, gamma-radiation detectors, remote-controlled bulldozers 
and boats, electrified fences, among many other examples, are increasingly used 
for control and surveillance (e.g. “israeli arsenal deployed against Gaza” 2009 
and “Agreed Documents on Movement and Access” 2005). Disengagement, in 
other words, did not mark the end of colonial occupation and control, but a move 
from a traditional military occupation towards a high-tech one. rooted in israel’s 
increasingly globalized security-military-high-tech industry, the technological 
sealing of Gaza is part of the transformation of the mechanics of israeli occupation 
that began with the first intifada (1987) and the ensuing “peace process” (1993) 
(e.g. Gordon 2008).
the israeli regime—by which i mean the apparatus of ministries, military 
powers, corporations, individuals, and practices as they act with and towards the 
Palestinians—is not a classically authoritarian one. (My concern here is not so 
much israeli policies within what one may call “israel proper,” but rather in the 
Palestinian Territories.) Nor is the Palestinian Authority (PA), which became the 
official political representative of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in 1993, 
an authoritarian regime, even if it exhibits authoritarian-like behaviors. The PA 
remains at best a pseudo-government, attempting to balance a largely impossible 
situation of being responsible to ‘govern’ the Palestinian territories, yet having 
very little autonomy to do so because of israel’s strangle-hold. the relationship 
between them is fundamentally one of settler-colonialism. there are however 
variegated manifestations, most notably the difference in approach towards 
1 a longer version of this article was originally published as tawil-Souri, Helga. 
2012. “digital occupation: Gaza’s High-tech enclosure.” Journal of Palestine Studies 
41(2): 27–43.
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State Power 2.058
Gaza and the West Bank: Israel’s attempt to completely segregate and control 
the first; and Israel’s infiltration, envelopment, and discombobulation of the latter. 
Sometimes Israeli policies exhibit apartheid-like similarities, other times, they bear 
morose similarity to authoritarian practices. in the uneven power matrix between 
Israel and Gaza (and Palestinians more generally), information technologies play 
a significant role in strengthening and expanding the power of the Israeli regime, 
as will be described below. it is important to recognize that high-tech is one of the 
means through which israeli occupation continues, but also that the occupation 
has been a critical component in israeli high-tech. Somewhat ironically, for the Pa 
as well, power over its “citizens” is consolidated through the realm of information 
technologies, most obviously in the economic realm.
My focus in what follows is to unveil the ways in which high-tech infrastructure 
in the Gaza Strip—that which is used by Palestinians as opposed to the israeli 
regime—is also a space of control. technology infrastructures form part of the 
apparatus of israeli control over Gazans. a telephone call made on a landline, 
even between Gaza City and Khan Younis, is physically routed through israel. 
Internet traffic is routed through switches located outside the Gaza Strip. Even 
on the ubiquitous cellular phones, calls must touch the Israeli backbone at some 
point. Like much else about the Gaza Strip, telecommunication infrastructures 
are limited by israeli policies. Geographic mobility, economic growth, political 
mobilization, and territory are contained, but so are digital flows: Gazans live 
under a regime of digital occupation.
the phrase “digital occupation” highlights a dynamic process. First, it 
suggests that israeli territorial control over Gaza continues, but increasingly 
also includes the high-tech realm. Second, digital occupation articulates the 
ways in which Palestinian and multinational corporations, the Pa, international 
NGOs, and international capital networks combine to lead the development of 
telecommunications to follow a neo-liberal economic agenda. a core contradiction 
arises against which to understand technology infrastructures: the confinement 
of Gazans in a narrowing and disconnected space occurs at the same time that 
high-tech globalization is posited as the route to openness and to overcoming 
confinement. Third, Gazans themselves “occupy” digital spaces, even if with 
constraints and sometimes illegally: they reach out to friends and family, report 
abuses, and escape physical confinement in virtual ways. It is an on-going 
dialectic. thus, the issue to consider is not whether there is a net gain or a net 
loss to authoritarian rule, for there exists a constant tension between information 
technologies’ intended inventions, applied controls, actual uses, and outcomes.
in what follows, i focus on the telecommunications infrastructure—telephone 
landlines, cellular telephony, and internet access—as a space of control. i analyze 
how high-tech spaces are subject to control—a control necessary to israel’s 
strategy to contain Gaza and accompanied by the capital controls of neo-liberal 
globalization that the Pa has embraced. My interest here is not the ways Gazans 
negotiate living under such a regime (what Gazans do on the internet and the uses 
to which they put their mobile phones, while important, are beyond the scope 
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Digital Occupation in Gaza’s High-Tech Enclosure 59
of this chapter but the structure of digital occupation. “digital occupation” here 
highlights the relationship between territorial and technological enclosure.
Many scholars and politicians suggest that while Gazans may be territorially 
locked up, if they have mobile phones and the Internet they are not just plugged 
into the world but can—at least virtually—overcome their territorial confinement 
(e.g. Lunat 2009; World Bank 2008). The liberatory aspects ascribed to information 
technologies acquired increased salience with the arab uprisings: if tunisians and 
Egyptians managed to shake off their overlords in part thanks to Facebook, Twitter, 
and mobile phones, it is argued, perhaps Palestinians can too. these are tensions 
that I challenge: it is impossible to speak of a Gaza that is territorially sealed 
and digitally boundless; there are “material” limitations to high-tech spaces—in 
terms of physicality and in the Marxist sense of economic. Particularly in the 
Palestinian case, one must consider israel’s continued demand that any future 
Palestinian state—to say nothing of the current configurations of enclaves such as 
Gaza—not only be demilitarized and without control over borders, but also, in the 
words of israeli Prime Minister Binyamin netanyahu, “without control over its … 
electro-magnetic field” (Wikileaks 2009). This is significant, not only in assessing 
whether a “new media revolution” is possible for/in Gaza, but in understanding 
the relationship between technology, political freedoms, power, and occupation.
enclosure
Digital networks have their own forms of controls, their own “checkpoints” and 
nodes that serve to limit and contain flows (e.g. Deibert 2009; Galloway 2004). 
Gaza is enclosed both by concrete and high-tech “walls” through a complex set of 
inclusions and exclusions operating through a variety of practices that render Gaza 
both a physical and a digital enclave. A useful way to look at Gaza and to assess 
the implications of digital occupation is through the concept of “enclosure,” drawn 
from the disciplines of economics, history, geography, and digital media studies.
“Enclosure” is a historically, geographically, and economically specific 
process that evolved as part of the industrial revolution in eighteenth-century 
Great Britain, which actively transformed a territorial space’s social economy, 
demography, and culture. Hegemonic groups asserted control over territory both 
through law and architecture. The legal element redefined property rights and, 
by reorganizing systems of ownership, use, and circulation, imposed different 
structures of sovereignty and access. the architectural element, meanwhile, recast 
the land’s contours through the building of hedges, walls, fences, and gates. this 
combination of legal and architectural articulations resulted in new “enclosed” 
spaces that enforced a different system of circulation, flow, and trespass. Parts 
of social and economic life that were formerly common, non-commodified, and 
largely outside the realm of control and surveillance were turned into private and 
surveillable possessions under a new property regime limiting free (meaning both 
sovereign and not paid for) mobility. This pattern can be seen in Gaza, where the 
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State Power 2.060
oslo accords would be the legal element, and the spatial mechanisms that enclose 
it (walls, checkpoints, control towers, permits and identification cards, aerial 
drones, etc.)—poignant examples of land enclosure—would be the architectural 
element.
the enclosure of Gaza is also to be understood as the production of a particular 
kind of economic space. Marxist analyses by scholars such as Henri Lefebvre 
and David Harvey and cultural theorists ranging from members of the Frankfurt 
School to raymond williams have shown how the spread of neo-liberal capitalism 
and dispossession has been a dynamic that exists throughout the circuits of capital, 
resulting in uneven spatial and economic development. Gaza’s economic landscape 
is not simply unevenly developed, but entirely de-developed: drowning in poverty, 
besieged by israel, and almost entirely dependent on external aid (except for the 
tunnel economy). Sara Roy’s (1987) argument of the de-development of Gaza is 
as relevant today as it was more than 20 years ago. Gaza is certainly not enjoying 
the “economic peace” that (parts of) the West Bank enjoys today. As for Hamas, 
since its take-over of the Strip in 2007, it has neither tried nor been given room to 
counter the neo-liberal approach initially subscribed to by the Pa (see Khalidi and 
Samour 2011 for a critique of Pa neoliberal policies with a particular focus on the 
West Bank).
the process of enclosure is omnivorous in its drive for total assimilation: 
all kinds of spaces become inscribed and appropriated within its logic. Various 
scholars have expanded enclosure to geopolitical and economic analyses beyond 
industrial-age Great Britain, including to analyses of information networks. For 
example, Dan Schiller (1999) argues that what began as telecommunications 
networks capable of becoming “common” and public instead became leading edges 
in trans-national capitalism. that telephone and internet access in most parts of the 
world are now privately held and have become largely commercial “spaces” is due 
to the legal, political, economic, and social decisions that rendered them such. this 
process of “digital enclosure” traces the relationship between a material, spatial 
process—the construction of networked, interactive environments—and the 
private expropriation of previously non-proprietary information (see Boyle 2002, 
2003). It results in the construction of an increasingly restrictive legal regime that 
extends and enforces property rights over a growing range of information and 
practices. Thus, digital enclosure is two-fold: the network and/or access to the 
network is privatized, and the data produced on high-tech networks becomes the 
property of the networks’ owner-operators.
i propose the term “digital occupation” to describe the multi-faceted process 
that combines the territorial and economic dynamics of land and digital enclosures 
(alongside other limitations). In Gaza, we witness the privatization of networks and 
information flows: a large corporation (Paltel) manages the telecommunications 
infrastructure and structures, with the terms of access driven by legal and economic 
modalities instituted by the Pa and continued by Hamas. (Since 2007 Hamas has 
established its own Ministry for information and telecommunications in Gaza. But 
Hamas inherited the telecommunications infrastructure as was originally allowed 
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Digital Occupation in Gaza’s High-Tech Enclosure 61
to be developed by the Pa and has not changed ownership, economic, or legal 
policies.) But the allocation of bandwidth; the placement, number, and strength 
of internet routers or telephone exchanges; the range of cellular signals and the 
equipment used are all limited by israeli restrictions. israel actively structures 
both the spaces of (high-tech) flows and the spaces of control in order to enclose, 
border, and surveil Gazans.
segregated but Dependent
“digital occupation” manifests itself on multiple levels, notably the Pa’s economic 
and legal decisions, and second, israel’s “legal” and “architectural” decisions. in 
the “legal” realm, I mean policies imposing limitations on kinds of equipment 
permitted and limiting the kind of infrastructure, often according to the Oslo 
accords. By “architectural,” i mean within the physical equipment itself, in that 
all networks have software and hardware architectures, and territorial decisions 
such as where equipment is permitted.
The Israeli–Palestinian technological relationship, like their political and 
economic relationship, has been one of israeli control and restrictions and 
Palestinian dependence. From the outset of occupation in 1967, israel controlled 
and maintained telecommunications systems in the occupied territories and 
imposed legal and military restrictions on them. what little was done with regard to 
telecommunications in Palestinian areas rendered the network subservient to Israeli 
infrastructure. For example, all telephone switching nodes were built outside areas 
that might eventually have to be handed over to Palestinian control. the israeli 
government (and after industry liberalization in 1985, the state telecommunications 
provider Bezeq) was in charge of telecommunications throughout Palestine-Israel. 
despite the fact that Palestinians paid income, value-added, and other taxes to the 
Israeli government, Bezeq was neither quick nor efficient in servicing Palestinian 
users. telephonically, Palestinians were enclavized and largely disconnected from 
the network, living under a regime that restricted both their mobility and their 
access to the outside world.
oslo ii, signed in September 1995, reversed many of these restrictions. 
Palestinians were promised direct domestic and international telephone and 
internet access. oslo ii stated: “israel recognizes that the Palestinian side has the 
right to build and operate a separate and independent communication systems and 
infrastructures including telecommunication networks” (Oslo 2, Annex III, Article 
36). It then went on to stipulate the conditions within which an “independent” 
Palestinian telecommunications system would be constrained, as follows:
the Palestinian side shall be permitted to import and use any and all kinds of 
telephones, fax machines, answering machines, modems and data terminals … 
israel recognizes and understands that for the purpose of building a separate 
network, the Palestinian side has the right to adopt its own standards and to 
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State Power 2.062
import equipment which meets these standards … the equipment will be used 
only when the independent Palestinian network is operational. (Ibid., d.2, 
emphasis added)
The point that the network would become independent only when the system 
became operational is crucial, because the Palestinian network to this day is 
not independently operational and continues to rely on israel’s. as with other 
infrastructures (broadcasting, sewage, population registries, water, transportation, 
etc.), Palestinians were subjected to Israeli constraints that countered their “right” 
to build separate and independent systems.
the Pa proceeded as if the limitations set forth in oslo would eventually be 
lifted, and after israel handed over responsibility for the infrastructure in 1995, 
the Pa established a simulacrum of an “independent” telecommunications system. 
Reflective of the neo-liberal agenda of the PA and its foreign donors, the only 
options posited for a successful “state” were private-sector growth, liberalization, 
and privatization, and the Pa passed responsibility for telecommunications to 
the private sector. Paltel (the Palestine Telecommunications Company) was 
awarded a license to build, operate, and own landlines, a GSM cellular network 
(global system mobile communications), data communications, paging services, 
and public phones. Paltel’s largest investors were the economic powerhouses 
of Palestine. As in much of the rest of the world, investment in and profit from 
large-scale infrastructure projects benefited those who already wielded substantial 
economic power. By 2010, Paltel’s market capitalization represented more than 
half the value traded on the Palestinian stock exchange, contributed over a third of 
the Pa’s tax income, and its revenues accounted for approximately 10 percent of 
the Palestinian GdP.
The PA’s privatization of telecommunications bespeaks the supremacy 
of market logic; in fact, from the day that it was handed over, Palestinian 
telecommunications privatization was a fait accompli. Between September 
1995 and January 1997, the PA contracted with the Canadian firm Nortel to 
build and maintain the telecommunications network. Thereafter, the Palestinian 
telecommunications infrastructure continued to be “enclosed” in that the network 
was privately owned and users had to accept whatever forms of access and fees 
Paltel instituted. The PA, in keeping with its approach to state-building more 
generally, treated telecommunications infrastructure neither as a public good nor 
considered the benefits of universal access. Paltel was celebrated as one of the first 
functional national institutions, but in fact it was only symbolically “national,” 
its services available only to those who could afford them. thus the process of 
enclosure was not sanctioned simply by israel, but doubly state-sanctioned insofar 
as the proto-state Pa apparatus instituted neo-liberal infrastructure-development 
policies.
these policies did not challenge israel’s ultimate control over telecommunications. 
reliance on Bezeq for most domestic connections and all international connections, 
for example, continued under Paltel. As Bezeq spokesman Roni Mandelbaum 
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Digital Occupation in Gaza’s High-Tech Enclosure 63
remarked in 1996, Palestinians “are not entitled to any signs of sovereignty 
… they have to rely on the infrastructure we supply them” (quoted in Prusher 
1996). This has yet fundamentally to change. The only “sovereignty” gained since 
oslo resulted from the liberalization of the Israeli market, which allowed Paltel 
to choose between different israeli providers. in late 2009, after much political 
difficulty, a second cellular provider, Wataniya, began operating, but to date it has 
not been given israeli permission to provide service in the Gaza Strip.
In summer 1999, the first call on Paltel’s cellular subsidiary, Jawwal, was made 
in Gaza (in the West Bank, Jawwal service began in October of the same year). 
as in the rest of the developing world, cellular telephony is more widespread 
than landline service, since it is cheaper and relatively easier to install. thus 
tensions over the development and control of cellular telephony have been even 
more controversial and important. the four israeli cellular providers at the time 
continued to sell services to Palestinians (illegally according to the oslo accords 
and PA regulations), without any economic, social, or political accountability to 
the PA. Since 1999, Jawwal has garnered a larger market share, but an estimated 
20 to 40 percent of Palestinian cellular users today still use israeli cellular service, 
which is cheaper. it is also generally available throughout the occupied territories 
because israeli providers build and install infrastructure not only throughout 
Israel but also in the West Bank, usually on and along bypass roads, on hilltops, 
in settlements, outposts, and military installations. while there is no israeli-
owned infrastructure inside post-2005 disengagement Gaza, cellular signals 
from israeli towers along the perimeter reach well within the narrow sliver of 
the Strip. Moreover, since cellular spectrum all over Palestine-israel is under the 
management of the israeli Communications Ministry, the four israeli cellular 
providers collectively boast signals more than 2,000 times stronger than Jawwal’s. 
And, as with landline telephones, much cellular traffic on Jawwal (and Wataniya 
in the West Bank) depends on the Israeli backbone.
Both landline and cellular telephony are mostly creations of the oslo era; what 
little landline infrastructure existed before 1995 was handed over to the Pa, all 
Palestinian cellular infrastructure had to be built from scratch. the politics of the 
two technologies ought not to be understood as different, even though landlines 
are integrated into the israeli system and cellular telephones are not. Both are 
forced to be segregated from yet dependent on Israeli networks. While landline 
and cellular technologies require different mechanisms to operate, the entire 
underlying structure of Palestinian telecommunications is occupied.
the infrastructure needed to connect to the internet is much the same as that 
for telephony, and as such the possibility and limitations of “independent” internet 
connection parallel those of landlines. until 2005, internet service in the occupied 
Palestinian territories was “competitive” in that there existed about a dozen 
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the West Bank and a handful in the Gaza 
Strip. all were resellers of israeli bandwidth because no international gateway 
switches were allowed within the Palestinian territories. in January 2005, Paltel 
began purchasing all existing Palestinian iSPs through its internet subsidiary, 
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State Power 2.064
Hadara, and by that summer had a monopoly on the market, further demonstrating 
the privatization of access and the enclosure of high technology.
although the oslo accords stated that israel would release more bandwidth 
“as soon as any need arises,” the entirety of Palestinian telecommunications 
functions of sub-par infrastructure. Jawwal continues operating on the same 
narrow frequency allocation it was first awarded and is largely retarded in its 
upgrading to new platforms. In the West Bank, Wataniya also operates with less 
bandwidth than needed to adequately serve its subscribers. the maximum transfer 
rate Hadara provides any one subscriber is 2Mbps, and that bandwidth often has to 
be shared among numerous subscribers, effectively slowing down Internet traffic. 
But it is not the Palestinian providers that are to blame for limited bandwidth. 
as with cellular telephony, it is israel’s Communication Ministry that determines 
how much bandwidth Hadara is permitted in the first place. Above and beyond 
the privatization of high-tech space by Palestinian actors (Paltel/Hadara and Pa 
decisions), there remain controls determined by Israeli legal and architectural 
limitations.
Boundaries on Telecommunications
Hadara is mandated by israeli authorities to provide limited bandwidth for 
Palestinian Internet use, making it invariably slower to surf the Internet in the 
territories than in israel. israeli providers sell bandwidth to Hadara at substantially 
higher rates than to providers in Israel, making Internet access relatively more 
expensive for Palestinian users. Moreover, the israeli government has enforced 
strict limitations on the kinds of equipment permitted. In the case of the Gaza Strip, 
all switching routers for Internet traffic are located in Israel. The combination 
of higher costs, slower speeds, and limited technologies results in a bondage 
of bandwidth, meaning that Gazan Internet flows are limited, thus also limiting 
Gazans’ integration into the network.
internet users in the Gaza Strip can surf the internet—assuming the electricity 
works—but are forced to do so at a high price and slow rate, effectively limiting 
their virtual connections and flows. Furthermore, as is the case across the 
telecommunications sector, limitations imposed by the israeli state force internet 
traffic through Israel. The Internet is enclosed due to the privatization of the 
network, high costs, and the limitations of bandwidth, and territorially confined 
as well.
Boundaries have been erected on several layers of the telecommunications 
infrastructure. For example, article 36 of oslo ii stipulated that “israel recognizes 
the right of the Palestinian side to establish telecommunications links (microwave 
and physical) to connect the West Bank and the Gaza Strip through Israel” (Oslo 
2, Annex III, Article 36, D.3d). A microwave link was installed in 1995 to connect 
the West Bank and Gaza Strip but was quickly saturated (because of the Israeli 
Communication Ministry’s refusal to provide more bandwidth) so that the majority 
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Digital Occupation in Gaza’s High-Tech Enclosure 65
of traffic had to be re-routed back through Bezeq’s network. Paltel was forbidden 
to import equipment—telephone exchanges, broadcasting towers, etc.—that could 
have allowed it to build an actually independent network that could connect across 
all Palestinian territories.
These kinds of “territorial” limitations are combined with “legal” and military 
measures that further contain Gazan telecommunications infrastructure. these 
include confiscating and forbidding the import of equipment, illegal competition 
by israeli providers, limited bandwidth, limitations on what equipment can be 
installed where, delay of approvals, and purposeful destruction of machinery 
and infrastructure. there are ample examples: Jawwal’s limited spectrum means 
that its more than two million subscribers are paying for poor service because 
the network was built to support only its initial 120,000 subscribers. Hadara is 
still waiting for permission for an Internet trunk-switch to allow Internet traffic 
to circumvent Israel. Gaza’s telecommunications networks are continually shut 
down for various reasons, including Paltel’s failure or delay in paying its israeli 
providers (often because cash flow is itself controlled by Israel) and for Israeli-
defined “security” issues. Telephone and broadcast signals are jammed and hacked 
into by the IDF. During the 2008–9 war, for example, the Israeli military sent text 
messages and voice mails to cellular and landline users in the Gaza Strip. eyal 
Weizman (2009) argues that these are “technologies of warning” that provide the 
idF the ability to warn Gazans of impending bombings and thus “legally” render 
their recipients into “legitimate targets.” From the perspective of the Palestinian 
user, however, these technologies of warning are also technologies of enclosure 
and occupation. Moreover, the mechanisms of digital occupation are exercised 
through the disruption of everyday life, not simply during exceptional moments 
of violence. on any “normal” day, a Gazan’s phone call is routed through israel, 
his signals are jammed whenever a drone passes overhead (sometimes as often as 
every 15 minutes), his phone service may be shut down or tapped, and his Internet 
connection surveilled. and for these interruptions and intrusions the Gazan user 
must pay nearly twice as much as his israeli counterpart.
it is not just the end-user but also the telecommunications infrastructures 
themselves that are subject to the occupation’s logic. although former israeli 
Prime Minister ariel Sharon’s Gaza disengagement plan stated that israel would 
hand over the landline infrastructure in Palestinian areas intact, the idF severed 
the main north-south connection in the Strip and buried the line’s remnants under 
the rubble of the Kfar darom settlement. in some cases, the destruction has been 
widespread and debilitating, most obviously during the 2008–9 assault on Gaza, 
when damage to Paltel’s network in Gaza was estimated at more than US$10 million 
(“Interview with Saa’d” 2009). Both the purposeful destruction of equipment and 
the prevention of its importation and installation limit the development of high-
tech infrastructure. as is with all infrastructural limits imposed on Gaza—from 
electricity to sewage—impeding a “normal” infrastructure occurs on a daily basis, 
not only during military operations. in august 2011, for example, international 
landline, mobile phone, and internet connections within Gaza were shut down 
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State Power 2.066
when an israeli military bulldozer severed connection lines near the nahal oz 
crossing, and Paltel had to request israeli permission to repair the line. on the rare 
occasion that Paltel is permitted to upgrade its infrastructure, such as in october 
2012, it must coordinate such efforts with the Israeli military; as one Israeli officer 
explained, the “operation [for high speed Internet cables along parts of the ‘wall’ 
surrounding the Gaza Strip] was treated and run like a military operation” (quoted 
in Sheinman 2012).
Paltel and its subsidiaries say they are pushing for complete “separation” 
from israel, including ending their reliance on israeli providers and equipment. 
nevertheless, israel has made it easier for Paltel, Jawwal, and Hadara to acquire 
equipment from Israeli suppliers than from foreign ones. “They [the Israeli 
authorities] make us prefer suppliers from Israel. There have always been 
limitations on our technology,” explained a Paltel executive in 2005 (personal 
interview, July 5, 2005). Another Paltel executive raises an additional concern, 
widespread among Palestinians: “How do we know that the equipment that comes 
from Israel is not tampered with? … maybe they make it weaker, maybe they put 
surveillance mechanisms in there” (personal interview, July 7, 2005). Such claims 
could seem outrageous, but there have been enough occasions when Palestinians 
have been killed while using high-tech products. Most famously, bomb-maker 
Yahya Ayyash was killed in Gaza when a cellular phone given him by a Shin 
Bet informer exploded in his ear, while an Israeli airstrike killed Hamas political 
leader abdel aziz rantissi, believed to have been pinpointed through the GPS-
locator inside a cell phone (Katz 2002). There have also been widespread rumors 
of Paltel public phones blowing up in the Gaza Strip.
the measures of control outlined above reinforce territorial barriers on high-
tech flows, inhibit the development of Palestinian infrastructure, and perpetuate 
Gazans’ economic dependence and de-development (and hence the uneven 
economic relationship). Paltel and its subsidiaries have no choice but to purchase 
telecommunications capacity from the Israeli market. That Gazan infrastructure 
is made to rely on the Israeli backbone and suppliers means that Israeli firms 
financially benefit from Palestinian telecommunications uses. Israeli operators 
surcharge calls between Jawwal phones and israeli land and cellular numbers. 
Since all international calls, all calls to the West Bank, and many intra-Gaza calls 
are routed through israel, israeli operators also collect “termination charges.” 
as one Paltel executive lamented in 2006, “Paltel is one of Bezeq’s biggest 
customers.”
telecommunications highlights the Pa’s and Paltel’s roles as dependent agents 
of Israeli control that have nonetheless been able to profit from the situation 
economically. when one adds to the mix israel’s “securitization” of all forms of 
borders, the high-tech realm becomes a microcosm of Palestinian/israeli power 
imbalances. there is room to maneuver, to modernize, and of course room for 
hegemonic interests to accumulate capital, but only if israeli-imposed limitations 
allow for such room. inevitably, this not only prevents the full and independent 
development of telecommunications infrastructure, but also serves as a high-
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Digital Occupation in Gaza’s High-Tech Enclosure 67
tech bordering mechanism to prevent or hinder territorial, communicative, and 
symbolic connections.
The Power of Digital occupation
Limitations imposed on high-tech flows have important repercussions because of 
growing importance of these flows in our globalized world. It is no exaggeration 
to posit, as do Varnelis and Friedberg (2008), that in globalization’s new space 
of flows “areas and populations outside of this logic are subject to the tunnel 
effect: they virtually don’t exist as far as the networks, and hence, the dominant 
world economy is concerned.” Certainly, Gazans’ economic relations—among 
themselves and to the outside world—are largely determined by israel, but the 
“tunnel effect” also indicates how Gaza is both subsumed into the global network 
and excluded from it—or at best marginalized within it. either way, it is an 
ominous example of capital’s uneven development.
As being plugged into the global network becomes more pervasive and 
necessary, it is access to the network and the flows this network affords that are 
important. what matters are the points of contact, the junctures, the on-ramps and 
off-ramps, the lines and cables underground and the towers and spectrum above 
ground, and, most of all, the control and ownership of all these. Here, it is the 
israeli regime and its apparatus (the government, the police force, the military, the 
intelligence services, the high-tech industry, all with incestuous ties to each other) 
that is the site of power; the Pa, Paltel, Paltel’s subsidiaries, and other Palestinian 
high-tech firms are secondary. It is the Israeli state apparatus that decides whether, 
when, and where Palestinians may install, manage, and maintain infrastructure, 
just as it is the israeli apparatus that limits and destroys that infrastructure.
Israel’s occupation of Gaza has not so much ended as been modified to include 
the digital spectrum. Bordering Gazans is achieved through “hard” conventional 
borders even as it is simultaneously diffused and concentrated in the ethereal and 
“soft” realm of digital infrastructure. Similar to the process of land enclosure, an 
active landscaping process produces new forms of property rights and different 
systems of circulation, trespass, and exclusion. Gaza for all intents and purposes is 
a “real” territorial penitentiary, but also a high-tech one.
the israeli “space of power” has become one of indistinction: there is a wall, 
there are unmanned drones flying around, there is a limited telecommunications 
infrastructure, and Internet traffic must pass through the Israeli backbone. These 
are all interconnected so as to create a space of control. israeli production of and 
control over Gaza’s borders are conventional and new, real and abstract, physical 
and cyber. Control over both land and high technology defines Israel’s spatial 
containment of Gaza.
Digital occupation characterizes the pernicious confluence between neo-
liberal capitalism and colonialism in actively transforming Gaza’s social economy, 
demography, and culture towards increasing privatization, surveillance, and control. 
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State Power 2.068
On the one hand, both the PA and the Israeli regime benefit from information 
infrastructure: capital accumulation and profit, the semblance of being part of the 
“global network age,” and, certainly from the perspective of the Israeli regime a 
possibility to surveil and control Gaza with as little man-power as possible. on the 
other hand, digital occupation also demonstrates the ways in which information 
technologies are used to strengthen and extend forms of repressive power. 
ultimately, the relationship between state power and information infrastructure 
remains a historically specific, political, economic, and territorial process that 
cannot be separated from realities on the ground. as this case demonstrates, digital 
networks are designed processes integral in the production of space.
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Chapter 5  
leveraged affordances and  
the Specter of Structural Violence
david Karpf and Steven livingston
as autocratic regimes across north africa and the Middle east fell in the spring 
of 2011, an intense debate erupted concerning the role of digital technology. what 
explained the dramatic and largely unexpected political upheaval that had erupted 
in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere? Several observers pointed to the catalytic 
effect of digital technologies. wael Ghonim, the former Google engineer who 
helped launch an important digital platform of protest in egypt said, “this is the 
revolution of the youth of the internet, which became the revolution of the youth 
of Egypt, then the revolution of Egypt itself” (BBC News 2011). Not everyone 
agreed. if digital media led to the overthrow of autocrats in tunisia, egypt, and 
libya, why did several similar periods of unrest in Bahrain, Saudi arabia, Yemen, 
and—as of this writing—Syria fail? What explained the variation in outcomes?
This chapter seeks to formulate an intellectually elegant and balanced 
framework for understanding when and how digital technology plays a role in 
revolutionary political change—and when it does not. our goal is to replace 
either/or debates about the role of technology in revolutionary change with an 
analytical framework that offers conditional statements about technology’s role in 
revolutionary change. we are interested in boundary conditions—specifying the 
conditions that lead to successful revolutionary change in some cases, and failure 
in others. In this endeavor we will limit our focus on only the most extreme kinds 
of political activism—revolutionary change. to do so, we rely on a leveraged 
affordance model of political change (Earl and Kimport 2011). Following a 
discussion of leveraged affordances we will illustrate our points with a review of 
some of the arab Spring revolts. in such a limited space, we cannot hope to do 
justice to the complexity of any one of them, much less several. the model we 
develop is not meant to help situate the role of digital tools within discussions of 
revolutionary protests.
In sum, our framework contends that the leveraged affordances of new ICTs 
augment revolutionary mobilization, contingent on three overarching factors: 
(1) the degree to which central actors use ICTs to “supersize” traditional protest 
activities; (2) the degree to which national or international media institutions 
make use of the digital traces left by “theory 2.0”-style protest efforts; and (3) 
the willingness of authoritarian security forces to adopt violent counter-strategies.
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State Power 2.070
Leveraged affordances
an affordance is a quality of an object or environment that allows individuals to 
perform an action (Gibson 1977). A well-designed doorknob, for example, has the 
quality of an object that allows one to open a door. a jet aircraft contributes to a 
quality of an environment that is conducive to high-speed travel over long distances. 
these qualities do not cause actions—you could alternatively use a doorknob as 
a convenient place to hang a jacket—but they make some actions more likely 
than others. An affordance is a key enabler, allowing the possibility of actions 
that would, in the absence of the affordance, be improbable, if not impossible. 
Originating in design studies, the term has been adapted to the field of computer-
mediated communication. it has recently been used as a conceptual device for 
understanding the effects of digital technology (an affordance) on political actions. 
Jennifer earl and Katrina Kimport, for example, rely on the concept in their efforts 
to build a new model of protest actions.
One of the principal benefits of their approach is its move away from a key 
assumption about protest organizations. traditional models of contentious politics 
assume that protest movements face uniformly high and fixed collaboration 
costs. Collaboration costs are the costs associated with collective actions, such as 
organizing, communicating, and sustaining social movement organizations. the 
larger and more complex the action, the greater the costs, as Mancur olson (1971: 
48) made clear in his landmark work, The Logic of Collective Action:
as group size increases, so, too, do the costs of communication and collaboration. 
(T)he larger the number of members in the group the greater the organization 
costs … For these reasons, the larger the group the farther it will fall short 
of providing an optimal supply of a collective good, and very large groups 
normally will not, in the absence of coercion or separate, outside incentives, 
provide themselves with even minimal amounts of a collective good.
Fixed high costs can be overcome only by one of several means, each 
emphasized by different research traditions. one possible solution is found in the 
expected ideological zeal of oppressed classes, either according to the realizations 
of class-consciousness or at the direction of a vanguard class of revolutionary 
leaders. Literacy, urbanization, working conditions, and the presence of 
charismatic leaders are a few of the conditions that are thought to be important in 
determining the effectiveness of a mobilization (Burks 1961; Street and Leggett 
1961). Effective communication is also a key determinant. “If communication is 
more or less effective, the group is more likely to take some concerted action to 
rectify the grievances” (McCarthy and Zald 1973: 17). Yet communication is often 
costly. in describing the classic model, John d. McCarthy and Mayer n. zald 
noted, “financial resources are needed to support the propaganda apparatus of the 
movement, to support organizers and leaders, and to procure equipment—from 
mimeograph machines to arms.”
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Leveraged Affordances and the Specter of Structural Violence 71
McCarthy and zald offer an alternative to the classical model, one that focuses 
on factors that are internal to an organization, such as the professionalization 
of social movements that occurred in the mid twentieth century. Tarrow (1998) 
offers yet another school of thought, one that focuses on exogenous resources and 
opportunities. His political opportunity theory contends that increased political 
pluralism, a decline in repression, and a lack of elite consensus all constitute 
opportunities for political change. He describes these political opportunities as 
“consistent—but not necessarily formal or permanent—dimensions of the political 
struggle that encourage people to engage in contentious politics.”
The success or failure of actions undertaken by activists depends on these 
external factors, and not just the resources a professional organization can muster 
(Meyer 2004). It also calls for the adroit use of “repertoire of contention” (Tilly 
1978) by movement leaders. Such repertoires consist of various protest-related 
tools and actions available to a movement in a given time frame. other social 
actors often mimic repertoires. Standard modern repertoires of contention include 
rallies and demonstrations, sit-ins, petition drives, media campaigns, boycotts, 
strikes, and innovative combinations.
all of these approaches share an assumption that collaboration costs are high 
and invariable. those costs must be met by either ideological fervor, organizational 
prowess in resource mobilization, or political acumen in taking advantage of 
political opportunities. it is in exactly this area that we suspect the affordances 
of the internet to play an important role. in olson’s time, communication and 
collaboration costs were indeed high and invariable. iCt’s have radically reduced 
these costs, but only under certain conditions. Following earl and Kimport, 
among others (Bimber 2003; Bimber, Flanagin and Stohl 2005; lev-on and 
Hardin 2008; Lupia and Sin 2003), we postulate that contemporary collaboration 
costs are variable from high to vanishingly low, depending on circumstantial and 
strategic contexts. in particular, we consider the role of violence and intimidation 
as a countervailing factor to technological affordances. what digital technology 
affords, violence and the credible threat of violence and intimidation can negate. 
to understand our point it is important to begin with a clear understanding of the 
leveraged affordance model
Some kinds of protest can be fully contained online, what Earl and Kimport 
call a theory 2.0 protest, while other protest actions take only limited advantage of 
technology, what they call supersizing. theory 2.0 protest actions include online 
petitions or digital sit-ins. they are based upon the novel affordances and reduced 
transaction costs of the online environment, and as such do not face the classical 
olsonian limitations on large-group collective action. Such protest actions have 
the benefit of leaving digital traces—tweets, social media postings, YouTube 
videos, and emails—that can be picked up by the hybrid media system. These 
protest actions can be limited in their scope, however. if one’s strategic objective 
involves exercising influence in the physical world, offline actions will remain a 
necessary component of the repertoire of contention. Supersizing takes advantage 
of common features of ICT to more efficiently organize traditional protest actions, 
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State Power 2.072
such as street demonstrations and marches. the challenges inherent in organizing 
a large march in 2012 are very similar to the challenges faced by Civil rights 
activists in the 1963 March on Washington. Yet new ICTs simplify the work of 
large-group coordination. “Supersized” protest events involve a difference in 
degree, while “Theory 2.0” protest events involve a difference in kind.
Both types of internet-enabled protest can yield results. in the united States, 
the online petition site Change.org has demonstrated a remarkable capacity for 
converting user-generated online petitions into massive pressure campaigns with 
real-world results. Change.org has opened multiple international offices and, like 
the united Kingdom’s downing Street petition site, allows for a type of effectively 
organization-less organizing that can rapidly grow to encompass millions of online 
voices.
Yet the limits of theory 2.0-style, organization-less collective action become 
apparent when the goals and targets of the campaign rest within well-formed 
institutional boundaries. in the united States, Change.org has avoided targeting 
members of Congress, because those members have well-formed practices 
responsive to electoral incentives. Likewise, Twitter-based activity cannot alone 
topple a dictatorship. rather, theory 2.0-style activism in contentious politics 
often yields a second-order impact. activity through social media channels affects 
international media coverage, providing images and content to international news 
organizations. Much as amnesty international’s letter-writing campaigns have 
succeeded by convincing autocratic regimes that “the whole world is watching,” the 
digital traces of online activity pressure affect the decisions of media and political 
institutions, in turn creating pressure on target governments. Simultaneously, 
revolutionary objectives call for supersized protest efforts, in which new iCts 
enable strong ties and weak ties alike.
what matters most then is not the technology, but rather how people leverage 
technological affordances. the social impacts of technologies “depend on the 
extent to which people notice and then skillfully (or less skillfully) try to leverage 
key affordances” (Earl and Kimport 2011: 33). This position is tied to theories of 
contentious politics championed by Charles tilly, douglas Mcadam, and Sidney 
Tarrow (2001). As noted above, this position focuses on exogenous factors in 
shaping political opportunity structures while relying on the skills and political 
acumen of movement leaders in their use of repertoires of contention. earl and 
Kimport claim that the increasing availability of outlets for online participation, 
lead to a new “digital repertoire of contention” (Earl and Kimport 2011: 16).
extending across Theoretical and geographic Borders
the literature on the internet and collective action has focused almost entirely on 
the domestic context in the US (Bimber, Flanagin and Stohl 2012; Karpf 2012). 
the united States represents something of an easy case, however. it has a robust 
civil society sector, an independent media, and a stable government. we contend 
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Leveraged Affordances and the Specter of Structural Violence 73
that in addition to variation in activist skills, one must also consider the effects of 
government counterstrategy, particularly when that counterstrategy may include 
intimidation and violence. Variability in collaboration costs are not only affected 
by technologically enabled affordances and the varying skills of protest organizers; 
they are also affected by the ability and willingness of a state or other elites to use 
intimidation and violence to coerce protesters into submission.
Joyce (2011) has noted the US-centric limitation of Earl and Kimport’s 
formulation, which draws upon an implicit qualitative hierarchy of tactical 
skill, placing theory 2.0 actions above supersized actions. Skillful use of digital 
technology is equated with leveraged affordances while unskillful capacities are 
equated with a failure to leverage. This overlooks the possibility that movement 
leaders might choose to not fully leverage digital affordances. leaders of this sort 
“have noticed the affordance and understand it, but skillfully realize that a digital 
tactic will not be effective in their particular context. That is, they make a skillful 
decision not to maximally leverage digital affordances.” this would seem to be 
the case when revolutionary change is the ultimate objective of the protest action. 
Online action alone is not likely to bring down an autocratic state. But leveraged 
affordances nonetheless prove useful in coordinating resistance movements (Meier 
2012). Similarly, Howard (2011) has found that new ICTs are a necessary, but 
not a sufficient condition for democratization in the Middle East. The affordances 
of new ICTs influence the range of activities chosen by activists, but the causal 
relationship is quite complicated.
another criticism of existing leveraged affordance theory targets underlying 
assumptions about the nature of the protest actions and the political environment 
in which they take place. In some important instances, collaboration costs remain 
prohibitively high, even when technologically enabled affordances are present, 
such as when technologically coordinated street protests face the threat of 
extreme physical or psychological hardships. Put another way, earl and Kimport 
assume an open political space (a political opportunity structure) where protest 
actions are relatively free to select from a menu of repertoires of contention. this 
may be true in some democratic states, but not in most autocratic states. Being 
arrested in most western democracies is a much different experience than being 
arrested in a non-democratic regime. Protesting in the face of teargas and rubber 
bullets can be harmful, even occasionally deadly. Yet protesting in the face of 
live ammunition and even artillery and tank rounds is altogether different. In 
other words, variability in collaboration costs involves more than the presence 
of technological affordances. it also involves the presence or threatened presence 
of willingly used repressive violence. even where iCt-enabled collaboration is 
possible, regimes may be able to marshal forces that are willing to use extreme 
and sustained violence against domestic populations, such as when external forces 
are invited in to a country to quell an uprising. even when the digital traces of 
online action attract international coverage, regimes may remain undeterred when 
selecting a violent response. the result of this is, centrally, the re-imposition of (a 
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different set of) high collaboration costs. The affordance created by ICT cannot be 
leveraged for fear of the consequences of doing do.
whether this is the case does not turn on technology, but rather on the will 
of people to put themselves in the path of a regime bent on staying in power—
leveraged affordances enhance the tactics and strategies of social movements. 
But the end goal of social movement participants involves changes to the power 
structure. that power structure learns and responds as well—a process tarrow 
(1998) terms “innovation and counter innovation.” Leveraged affordances are 
conditioned by the willingness of a regime to use force and intimidation at a level 
sufficient to collapse the opportunities created by new technologies. This opens up 
new and important questions. they do not involve the overly simplistic question 
of whether digital media “caused” the arab Spring. rather, the questions involve 
contingent conditions: when and under what circumstances can technologies be 
used to leverage revolutionary change and when can they not?
For example, what factors influence the willingness or ability of a regime to 
use extreme violence against its own civilian population? Why do some armies 
(e.g. Bahrain) shoot while others (e.g. Egypt) refuse? Barry R. Weingast (1997) 
argues that whether the state transgresses or respects citizens’ wellbeing and rights 
depends on the depth and degree of citizen cohesion. Perceived ethnic, racial, or 
religious schisms can be leveraged by the state to its advantage. Protestors can 
be made a vilified out-group, facilitating brutality and repression. In the cases 
presented below, this dynamic is quite evident. in other cases one might well 
imagine (and see) the effects of other exogenous factors, such as powerful allies, 
technical assistance and inspiration to protest movements from other groups or 
countries, and even the outsourcing of repressive forces.
there is also a regime learning dynamic. Having watched and learned from 
neighboring states, regimes may develop a counter-strategy. they may choose 
to become brutal at the first signs of unrest. They may engage in deep-packet 
inspection or create fake social media accounts to identify dissident activities in 
their nascent stages. if regime opponents learn and adapt based upon peer efforts 
in neighboring states, we ought to expect that oppressive regimes learn and adapt 
as well. where social, religious, or ethnic schemes do not exist, or when the regime 
is reluctant to leverage them to its advantage, outside forces can be brought in to 
do the job. as such, successful leveraging of technological affordances in one time 
and place may make the leveraging of those same affordances in another time 
and place more perilous. revolutionary events in tahrir Square inspired global 
activists while also serving as a warning to neighboring regimes and their allies.
Within these competing dynamics, we see a framework for an expansion of the 
leveraged affordance model. the success of digitally enabled social movement 
activism in one country does not directly imply its success in others. all protests 
throughout history have featured the use of the dominant iCts of the day. what 
makes contemporary ICTs particularly valuable is their capacity for lowering 
traditionally high costs of collective action.
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Leveraged Affordances and the Specter of Structural Violence 75
in the following illustrations, we argue that three boundary conditions 
determine success. First is the degree to which protest movements can utilize 
iCt to expand the strength and size of their actions. this varies based both upon 
technical infrastructure and population dynamics. In keeping with longstanding 
findings of the social movement literature, some revolutionary movements have 
access to greater resources or stronger political opportunities than others. Second 
is the degree to which media institutions make use of the digital traces left by 
online protest activity. twitter cannot bring down a political regime, but it can 
play the intermediary role of attracting mass international attention. third is the 
willingness of the ruling regime to adopt violent counter-strategies. new iCts 
lower some of the high costs of collective action, but regime reactions can raise 
other collaboration costs. what’s more, this third variable evolves over time, as 
oppressive regimes in one nation adapt to the digitally mediated experiences of 
other regimes. the following vignettes further demonstrate the importance of 
these variables.
Illustrating Cases
on January 28, as hundreds-of-thousands of demonstrators demanded the 
immediate resignation of President Hosni Mubarak, Egyptian authorities ordered 
communications and internet services shut down. even the country’s mobile-
phone carriers (Vodafone, Mobinil, and Etisalat) terminated operations, plunging 
Egypt back into an earlier technological era, a rapid reversal of an impressive 
growth in capacity.
By 2011, fast internet-based iCts had become relatively accessible in 
egypt. according to the egyptian Ministry of Communications and information 
Technology (MCIT), at the beginning of 2010 the country had over 17 million 
internet users, a 3,691 percent increase from 450,000 users at the beginning of 
2001. Four million of these users had a Facebook account. One hundred and sixty 
thousand were bloggers. These figures constitute the basis for underscoring the 
importance of the leveraged affordance model for understanding the egyptian 
revolution in 2011.
Shutting off access to digital services was met with the disapproval of business 
elites and common egyptians who needed the internet and cell phones as much 
as the protesters (El Gazar 2011). The inability and effectiveness of this blocking 
effort is one key factor in understanding the role of ICT in the Egyptian revolt 
against the Mubarak regime. Another important factor is found in what didn’t 
happen. Government security forces refused to use the full weight of force against 
the anti-Mubarak demonstrators. As a result, the leveraged affordance created by 
iCt remained intact while the imposition of higher collaboration costs through 
violence and intimidation never fully developed.
there is no question that police and security forces in egypt were often brutal 
and repressive in the weeks leading up to President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation 
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on February 11, 2011. indeed, security forces in egypt had the reputation for 
brutality well before the demonstrations. it was, after all, the police beating death 
of 28-year-old Khalid Said that sparked the revolt in the first place (BBC 2010). 
though the exact tally is impossible to determine, the egyptian Ministry of Health 
said 846 persons died during the protests in January and February (Human rights 
Watch 2012).
Many of the deaths occurred on January 28, the “Friday of rage” when 
protesters confronted security forces in cities across the country. late in the day, as 
police withdrew from the streets, the military was ordered to assist in controlling 
the growing revolt. despite the growing presence of the military on the streets 
and a curfew, protests continued throughout the night. Yet, crucially, the military 
refused to obey orders to use live ammunition and tanks to crush the rebellion 
(BBC 2011). Correspondent Robert Fisk described the moment.
Last night, a military officer guarding the tens of thousands celebrating in Cairo 
threw down his rifle and joined the demonstrators, yet another sign of the ordinary 
egyptian soldier’s growing sympathy for the democracy demonstrators. we had 
witnessed many similar sentiments from the army over the past two weeks. But the 
critical moment came on the evening of January 30 when, it is now clear, Mubarak 
ordered the egyptian third army to crush the demonstrators in tahrir Square with 
their tanks after flying F-16 fighter bombers at low level over the protesters. Many 
of the senior tank commanders could be seen tearing off their headsets—over 
which they had received the fatal orders—to use their mobile phones. they were, 
it now transpires, calling their own military families for advice. Fathers who had 
spent their lives serving the egyptian army told their sons to disobey, that they 
must never kill their own people (Fisk 2011).
On February 11, Mubarak’s resigned. In the limited space available, we cannot 
fully address the deeper underlying question at the heart of these events: why 
did the Egyptian military refuse to attack anti-Mubarak demonstrators? For the 
point of our analysis, the central fact is that they didn’t. Part of the answer has 
to do with the culture and structure of the egyptian military. there is no inner 
circle of specially chosen forces, unlike Bashar Hafez al-Assad’s Syria or Saddam 
Hussein’s Iraq. The officer corps is professional and largely independent, having 
attended the egyptian Military academy, as well as college or professional schools 
in europe or the united States. and while the beating and murder of Khalid Said 
happened under the cloak of anonymity, Tahrir square had drawn the eyes of the 
international media.
Furthermore, calling Weingast’s analysis to mind, there were no significant 
sectarian splits that could be used to encourage violence against protests. the vast 
majority of Muslims in Egypt are Sunni. Of the total population, 10–20 percent is 
Coptic Christian. Again, the point here is that when the Egyptian military looked 
at the protesters, they had greater reason to see their brothers and sisters and co-
religionists.
a similar dynamic had already played out in tunisia. By 2011, tunisia had one 
of the most developed and broadly affordable iCt infrastructures in north africa. 
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in March 2010, for example, there were 3,600,000 internet users, or about 34 
percent of the population (Internet World Stats). There were also about 2,603,000 
Facebook users in June 2011. Like Egyptians, Tunisians had a foundation in place 
to take advantage of digital affordances. The much discussed and central role that 
was played by social media sites like Facebook and Twitter underscore this point.
on January 13, 2011, as mass demonstrations escalated, tunisian dictator zine 
el-abidine Ben ali attempted to save his rule by ordering the internal security 
services—the police and the national Guard—to respond with force. as the 
demonstrations continued, despite the police crackdown, Ben Ali promised a 
number of concessions while, at the same time, ordering the military to buttress 
the internal security forces. on January 14 he also declared a state of emergency 
that prohibited gatherings of more than three people while authorizing deadly 
force against those who did not comply (Hanlon 2012).
the army refused to enforce Ben ali’s orders. the head of tunisia’s armed 
forces, Gen. rachid ammar, told more than 1,000 demonstrators in a square near 
his office, “Our revolution is your revolution. The army will protect the revolution.” 
It was General Ammar’s refusal to follow orders to fire on civilians that led to 
Ben ali’s fall from power. in the days following Ben ali’s departure, the military 
stepped in to control both civilian looters and repeatedly intervened to protect 
civilian protesters from violence at the hands of the police (Kirkpatrick 2011). As 
a special report of the united States institute of Peace noted, the tunisian army’s 
inaction makes them stand out in comparison with their counterparts in other 
MENA (Middle East North Africa) nations. They are unique in the region for other 
reasons as well. The Tunisian military, unlike the armed forces of other MENA 
countries, is subordinated to the government and controlled by it. Consequently, 
the tunisian armed forces never played a political role, nor did they legitimize the 
former regime (Hanlon 2012).
a fairly cohesive national identity and a decision by military commanders to not 
use force against protesters preserved the revolution. Beginning in 1994, tunisia 
has been one of the top 20 recipients of uS international Military education and 
Training (IMET) Funding. Indeed, since 2003 Tunisia has been ranked tenth in 
overall funding and is the top iMet recipient in africa. over 4,600 tunisian 
military personnel have trained in uS institutions since its independence. tunisia 
is also one of the few countries in the world that has cadets in all united States 
military academies, plus the Coast Guard academy (US Embassy Fact Sheet). 
Tunisia, like Egypt, has a professional and historically apolitical military that was 
not directly under the control of President Ben ali’s regime.
we turn next to an alternative case where leveraged affordance was effectively 
mitigated by the imposition of higher collaboration costs by use of force and 
intimidation. the number of Bahraini internet users rose from 40,000 (out of 
a population of about 700,000) in 2000 to about 650,000 (out of a population 
of 738,000) by 2010. Put another way, in a decade Internet users rose from 5.7 
percent of the population to 88 percent of the population. By 2010, there were 
over 250,000 Facebook users (Internet World Stats-Bahrian). Overall, the number 
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of users jumped by 30 percent, compared with 18 percent growth during the same 
period in 2010. Usage in Bahrain grew 15 percent in the first three months of 2011, 
compared with 6 percent over the same period in 2010 year (Huang 2011).
Yet, despite these impressive numbers, even before the start of the arab Spring, 
Bahrain had one of the most severe internet surveillance and censorship systems 
in the world (Reporters Without Borders 2008). After a January 2009 government 
decree ordering ISPs to implement an official filtering system, an analysis by 
Harvard University’s Open Net Initiative found that the filtering of political and 
social content had become what it called pervasive (on a spectrum of X, Y, z, 
and Pervasive) (Open Net Initiative 2009). The capacity of the state’s censorship 
system to contain civil society organizations was decisive during the protest 
period. at the start of demonstrations in Bahrain in mid February 2011, internet 
traffic dropped by 20 percent due to aggressive government filtering (Glanz 2011).
But the repression goes well beyond software filter systems. Ali Abdulemam, 
the founder of Bahrainonline.org, a popular alternative news and information 
website, was arrested by Bahrain’s national Security agency in august 2010. He 
disappeared after his release from prison in late February 2011. He and 20 other 
opposition leaders were then tried in absentia in a military court and sentenced 
to 15 years in prison for what the Bahraini authorities described as plotting to 
overthrow the government (Desmukh 2012). Besides Abduleman’s arrest, 
authorities imposed a gag order on the media in Bahrain and arrested over 200 
other activists (Toumi 2010). It also suspended Bahrain’s main human rights 
organizations (Human Rights Watch 2010).
the political tensions between the Shia majority and the Sunni minority center 
mostly on the policies of the ruling al-Khalifa family. the ruling Sunni monarchy 
has marginalized the Shia majority, justifying the discrimination by claiming Shia 
loyalties rest with iran. Still, Shia animosity toward the al-Khalifa royal family 
has more to do with domestic politics and economics. ironically, some part of the 
explanation rests with the fact that the Shia, who make up 80 percent of the labor 
force, are usually prevented from employment with the security forces, the largest 
source of employment in Bahrain. Prior to 1979 and the iranian revolution, the 
Shia had staffed the majority of the non-officer positions in the security services. 
the monarchy has also exacerbated tensions by extending citizenship to as many 
as 100,000 Sunnis from Yemen, Syria, Jordan and Pakistan and offering them 
employment in the security services. the regime has also welcomed puritanical 
Salafis into government offices. “These Salafis are Muslims who abhor the Shia 
and often advocate violence against them—as has been the case in iraq and 
Pakistan” (Sotloff 2010). It seems evident that Bahraini society is rife with serious 
sectarian divides. located on the western side of the Persian Gulf, its strategic 
significance cannot be overstated. Not only is it home to the United States Navy’s 
Fifth Fleet, its conservative Sunni ruling family in a majority Shia population is a 
bulwark for Saudi Arabia against Iran.
as Shia demonstrations in Bahrain escalated in March 2011, advertisements 
started appearing in Pakistani newspapers. “Urgent requirement—manpower for 
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Bahrain national Guard.” another advertisement said, “For service in Bahrain 
national Guard, the following categories of people with previous army and police 
experience are urgently needed.” “Previous experience” and “urgent need” were 
emphasized. The overwhelming majority of Muslims in Pakistan are Sunni. At least 
2,500 former servicemen were recruited by Bahrainis and brought to Manama, the 
capital of Bahrain. this move increased the size of the national Guard and riot 
police by as much as 50 percent. “our own Shia cannot join the security forces, 
but the government recruits from abroad,” said nabeel rajab, president of the 
Bahrain Center for Human Rights (Mashal 2011).
the protests in Bahrain were largely peaceful until a pre-dawn raid by police 
on February 17 to remove protestors from a major protest site in Manama. the 
police crackdown also included night raids in Shia neighborhoods, beatings at 
checkpoints, and denial of medical care. Approximately 3,000 people were 
arrested in the initial confrontation. At least five people died due to torture while 
in police custody.
then, on March 14th, Saudi-led forces entered the country (Bronner and 
Slackman 2011). As The New York Times put it, “Saudi arabia’s military intrusion 
last year into the micro-sheikdom of Bahrain has effectively made the tiny island 
the 14th Saudi province” (Jacobs and Khanna 2012). The House of Saud, the 
anchor of Sunni arabia, could not afford to allow a Shia revolt on its doorstep. 
Bahrain’s protest movement was crushed. the affordance created by Bahrain’s 
flourishing was negated by the brutality of the police and security forces. Bahraini 
blogger Zakariya Rashid Hassan al-Ashiri ran a website covering news in his 
village of al-dair. He was arrested on april 2 and charged with “disseminating 
false news and inciting hatred.” He died on april 9 while still in police custody. 
Photos of a brutally beaten body thought to be al-ashir indicate he was beaten to 
death (Committee for the Protection of Journalists, 2011).
a similar story can be told of other revolts across north africa and the Middle 
east that failed to leverage the affordance created by iCt. the presence of 
security forces willing to use extreme violence undermines iCt-based leveraged 
affordance. ICTs make it easier to “supersize” offline protest events, and can help 
draw the attention of international media. But these strategic benefits crumble 
against violent counter-strategy. whether soldiers and police were willing to pull 
the trigger was itself often the product of other factors: professionalization of the 
officer corps, ethnic alignments, and external actors all play a part in determining 
the use of force against civilian protesters.
Conclusion
we have argued that the debate between cyber-pessimists and cyber optimists 
misses the point. iCt does indeed create the sort of leveraged affordance described 
by Earl and Kimport. Offline protest actions can indeed be “supersized” on the 
back of technological affordances. Social media activity can affect international 
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intermediaries. But because people in supersized protest actions must still endure 
hardships, the nature of the hardships encountered in protest actions remains 
relevant. in their analysis of leveraged affordances, earl and Kimport assume a 
rather unvaried level of physical hardship, as one might expect when considering a 
protest action in the united States or europe. one might be arrested and endure the 
hardships involved with the experience. of course, during certain periods of uS 
history, the hardships of the Civil rights Movement or the labor Movement were 
sometimes much more serious than a night in jail. on the other hand, the hardships 
experienced by those participating in the arab Spring have been sometimes quite 
extreme. Yet there is variability. in egypt and tunisia, the military refused to 
unleash the full weight of force against fellow egyptians and tunisians. in Bahrain, 
the ruling regime turned to co-religious in other countries to do the dirty work of 
repression for them. in Syria, we see the same general dynamic of repression. 
President Assad’s inner circle of security forces is drawn from the ranks of fellow 
alawites, whereas much of the opposition movement comes from the majority 
Sunni population.
during its decades of rule … the assad family developed a strong political 
safety net by firmly integrating the military into the regime. In 1970, Hafez al-
Assad, Bashar’s father, seized power after rising through the ranks of the Syrian 
armed forces, during which time he established a network of loyal Alawites by 
installing them in key posts. In fact, the military, ruling elite, and ruthless secret 
police are so intertwined that it is now impossible to separate the assad regime 
from the security establishment … So … the regime and its loyal forces have 
been able to deter all but the most resolute and fearless oppositional activists. in 
this respect, the situation in Syria is to a certain degree comparable to Saddam 
Hussein’s strong Sunni minority rule in Iraq (Bröning 2011).
the leveraged affordance model is useful for the study of revolutionary protest 
movements, but only once refined to account for these features of strategy and 
counterstrategy. digital tools are useful to protestors. they help movements to 
grow in size and attract international attention. Presumably, regimes are less willing 
to turn violent against larger crowds while risking international condemnation. Yet 
the internal calculus of governing regimes is a complicated phenomenon. and the 
more eager the regime is to respond violently, the less useful new iCts prove to 
be. We believe there is compelling evidence in support of the framework, though 
obviously the interplay of strategy and counter-strategy is a subject for much 
further and deeper analysis.
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Part ii  
digital Media and  
Political engagement
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Chapter 6  
technology-induced innovation in  
the Making and Consolidation of  
arab democracy
imad Salamey
Persistent post-colonial Middle east and north african authoritarianism has long 
appeared to be the exception of the ‘third democratic wave’ that ended many 
autocratic regimes in east europe and South american countries in the 1980s 
(Huntington 1991). In notable contrast, monarchic, theocratic and autocratic 
Middle eastern regimes, buoyed by sustaining oil revenues and foreign military 
and economic assistance, have consolidated their respective grips on power while 
their mass constituencies signaled little or no interest in joining the global trend. 
in the relative rare events that uprisings occurred, as in Syria during 1982 and iran 
in 2009, regimes were generally swift to crush them at least for extended periods.
explanations for the Middle eastern and north african authoritarian regimes’ 
robustness to the democratic wave have been offered by various oriental 
perspectives. Cultural views attribute islamic authoritarian norms and practice 
as the primary reason behind ‘submissive’ publics under repressive regimes 
(Huntington 1993). Economic views focus on the notions of “rentierism” in oil 
rich countries where government revenues have been able to buy public support 
(Luciani 2009). Other economic views have associated the widespread informal 
economies of non-oil producing countries with a weakened middle class and 
reigning autocracy. International economic perspectives link faulty international 
economic policies to the undermining of reform movements. Strategic and 
international security perspectives highlight western interests in Middle eastern 
and north african stability at the cost of potentially unstable democracies (Bellin 
2005). Western support to oil-rich monarchies and autocracies underline such 
views (Salamey 2009). The consequence of these various interpretations is 
an assumption of strong Middle eastern and north african authoritarian states 
ready to use unrestrained coercive force against a weak civil society incapable of 
achieving collective action or democratic transition (Ulfelder 2005). And there is 
reason to heed some of these arguments—the dominance of authoritarian ruling 
elites was manifested in the military and secret services’ control over all aspects 
of civil life and institutions in many cases (Posusney and angrist 2005; richards 
and Waterbury 2008).
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In light of the 2011–12 uprisings and the subsequent collapse of various 
Middle eastern and north african authoritarian regimes, such fearful institutions 
have been seriously challenged by public protest and armed rebellions. Mass 
movements have broken the silence, successfully galvanizing dramatic changes 
through collective action to bring down the long-entrenched regimes in egypt, 
Libya, and Tunisia; significantly modifying the regime in Yemen, shaking 
the foundations in Bahrain before Saudi intervention helped stem the tide, and 
significantly destabilizing Syria. This begs the question of whether Middle Eastern 
exceptionalism has been finally deconstructed in favor of a “Fourth Democratic 
wave” sweeping the arab world. what other interpretations are necessary to 
explain the shortcomings of exceptionalist assumptions and provide grounds 
for an alternative explanatory discourse to political transition in the Middle east 
and North Africa (MENA) region? We should be careful not to jump to popular 
conclusions, or easy to reject existing frameworks—but to more fully understand 
the changes effecting political liberalization in the arab Middle east we must be 
willing to consider new sources and spaces of power and contention.
Causes of the arab spring
at least three major political discourses have offered newer interpretations. 
Political economy views have attributed various causal interpretations to explain 
weakening Middle Eastern authoritarianism. Most associate political grievances 
and popular uprisings with autocratic mismanagement and widespread economic 
corruption (Corm 2012). Evidence is drawn from the corrupt rule and consequent 
economic disasters brought about by the regime of President Ben ali in tunisia, 
Mubarak in Egypt, Assad in Syria, Ali Saleh in Yemen, and Qaddafi in Libya 
(Anderson 2011; Wilson 2011). Liberal perspectives, on the other hand, have 
advocated global democratic values as an overriding cultural system driving the 
mobilization of youth in demanding the end to dictatorship. Calls for freedom, 
rule of law, accountability, free and fair election, human rights were among the 
popular outcry of protesters (Bormann, Manuel Vogt, and Cederman 2012; Gause 
III 2011; Paust 2012). Liberal values have overwhelmed traditional Islamist 
views in favor of democratic cultures prioritizing freedom, plurality, and human 
rights. in addition to political economy and democratic cultural proposals, realism 
has provided a third international relations perspective. realism’s views have 
proclaimed an underlying regional power struggle among rival states. Turkey 
and Gulf states, on one side, confronting, on the other side, an expanded iranian 
influence in Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria (Salamey 2009). The 
EU and NATO have found in Turkey and the Gulf States a common purpose to 
drive russia and China out of libya and north africa and deter growing iranian 
military and nuclear capacities. along this line of argument is an overemphasis 
of the role of the military and security apparatuses and an external intervention 
option in forcing regime change.
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Technology-Induced Innovation 85
Yet, protesters attributed different motives for their revolts that varied 
according to countries. evidence of these differences has been revealed by a 
phone survey conducted by the Lebanese American University (LAU) on January 
and February 2012. The survey asked 40 key Arab activists from various political 
backgrounds in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Yemen a series of questions regarding 
their views about the causes, demands, and mobilization factors that have helped 
the protesters confront their governments. responses were analyzed and tabulated 
as to reveal common denominators as well as differences. the results identify 
a strong and common liberal orientation of the various movements as reflected 
in their common demands for freedom and fight against corruption. Media and 
ICTs appear to have played a significant and common role in the mobilization and 
organization of protests. Still, however, different country contexts have shaped 
the protest movements differently. Yemeni respondents for example stressed 
economic causes and demands and relied less on iCt in their mobilizations than 
other activists see Table I.1).
the modes of revolutionary transformations have also varied between mild 
confrontations in countries where the military has taken a passive role, such as in 
tunisia and egypt, to extreme confrontation, such as the case in libya and Syria. 
international interventions and active involvements have also varied between one 
country and another. the claimed causes did not contribute to similar outcomes 
in Jordan, algeria, Morocco or most Gulf States. Still and critically important 
to this analysis is the question of timing. why did the events in tunisia, stir-up 
such a widespread public discontent and snowballing revolutions? For decades the 
same public stood passive under poverty and repression. events in some countries 
remained nationally isolated without implicating another region or country. So 
why did the impact of repression and grievances become suddenly and widely 
intolerable? Addressing this question may shed light on the new forces driving 
postmodern protest movements, in consolidation with the reasons that have always 
stirred political change in the past.
when the 27-year-old tunisian street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself 
on fire to protest having his push-cart confiscated by local authorities in January 
2011, this news spread rapidly via public media and internet communication 
throughout tunisia and the arab region. the Bouazizi incident was fast to ignite 
massive protests throughout tunisia, and soon after, in most arab states against 
standing regimes. This sparking event stands as a close reminder of the 1991 
rodney King incident in the united States, which instigated massive protest and 
rioting in several African American populated cities. King, a black resident of Los 
Angeles, was brutally beaten by four white police officers after being arrested 
for a traffic violation. The incident would have passed unnoticed if not for the 
presence of a resident in the area who witnessed and videotaped the beating. a few 
hours later, footage of the arrest was simultaneously transmitted on almost every 
american tV and media outlet. the instant and massive transmission of brutal 
images of the beating was sufficient to exacerbate deep feelings of racial injustice 
that had long incubated with poor and marginalized african american residents of 
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los angeles. the city was swiftly engulfed in massive and violent protests that 
lasted several days without the ability of local authorities to control the situation. 
Both the Bouazizi and rodney King incidents provide similar lessons. at a critical 
historic juncture, where resentment against the existing order has been deepened 
and ripened, the capitulation of the public with a shocking reminder can serve 
as a rallying call for collective action. in both events, the sensational and wide 
coverage of news were instrumental in the awakening of deeply held public 
bitterness. in the case of the arab revolutions, however, the public’s ability to 
utilize new information technologies in communication to organize public action 
was an added and important new factor.
to more fully appreciate why, we must understand the modern information 
infrastructure, including various technologies such as satellite media, internet, and 
mobile technologies that have entrenched widely into arab societies. after all, 
the role of innovations has long captured the imagination of political theorists in 
the explanation of historic transitions that went beyond traditional interpretations 
(Khun 1962). Developments in weaponry (cannons and dynamites) in the Middle 
ages, for example, undermined the castle-based feudal system. Similar innovations 
in the print machine, textile industry, and steam-powered engine, among others 
were fundamental aspects in the nineteenth century industrial revolution and 
the political transformation toward a capitalist economy. thus, in light of the 
arab revolutions, it is worth investigating what roles modern innovations in 
communication technology have played in the transformation of society away 
from an outdated state control system.
ICTs and the Changing state-society relations in the arab World
Past revolutions and political transformations occurred without relying on 
advanced information infrastructures. even during this arab Spring, the revolution 
in Yemen against autocratic President ali abdallah Saleh erupted without the 
presence of a sophisticated information infrastructure similar to that that in other 
Arab spring countries. The point here is to reject reductionism in the making of 
political transformations (Howard 2011). Advancements in ICTs are not sufficient 
causes for revolution (Al-Yahyawi 2012; Howard 2010). Many scholars have 
identified structural drivers and prerequisites for democratic revolutions other than 
those related to communication technologies (Huntington 1991; Lipset 1959).
traditional means of communication such as local tVs, radios, newspapers, and 
religious centers have historically served the interests of authoritarian regimes 
and were only inclusive in the analysis of regime consolidation of power. State-
controlled media provided authoritarianism with the ability to monopolize and 
manipulate access to information, thus preventing the public from having a free 
voice in communicating its collective grievances. Syrian state-run media outlets 
under Syria’s President Bashar al-assad continued to deny existing problems 
in the country a year after public unrests have claimed over 10,000 lives. two 
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decades earlier, the same mouthpieces of the Syrian regime made no mention 
of the crackdown against the rebellious cities of Hamma and Homs, which are 
estimated to have claimed more than 20,000 lives.
innovations in modern communication technology, however, have 
fundamentally altered the relationships between state and society. this can 
be attributed to the development of globally interconnected communication 
infrastructures that has provided publics with affordable, accessible, mobile, and 
interactive connections. in 2010, nearly two billion people worldwide used the 
Internet (Dutton, Dopatka, Hills, Law, and Nash 2011). The rapid transmission 
of information, its diversity, and comprehensiveness have helped destabilize 
traditional structures of control. The interconnectivity of the Internet network with 
other aspects of information transmission related to diverse economic activities 
such as banking and commerce synthesized the decentralization of both economic 
and political activism (Howard, Agarwal, and Hussain 2011). Arab states, such as 
Egypt, failed to shut down the Internet networks during public protests due to the 
dependency of global businesses on its operation. Satellite technology similarly 
undermined state’s monopolies and provided the public with multiple and instant 
sources of coverage. The regional and powerful role of the Qatari Al-Jazeera 
network in live broadcasting of Arab protests was crucial in public mobilization 
and reactions. in almost every arab Spring country, states resorted to shutting 
down Al-Jazeera offices and blocking its transmission (Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, 
Morocco, Syria, Yemen, etc.). The station, however, quickly retaliated by having 
coverage transmitted by activists through their mobile phones and cameras. in 
vain, arab autocracies in egypt, Yemen, libya, and Syria tried to win the media 
war but lost in most encounters.
Even more significant to this strain of communication innovations is the 
introduction of social media and participatory technologies. the ability for the 
public to instantly interact on a massive level through mobile phones and away 
from the watchful eyes or control of the state using twitter, Facebook, Skype, Viber, 
YouTube, text messaging, etc., hammered the last nail in the coffin of a centralized 
information regime. not only did the social media announce the liberalization of 
information from state centralization, it has also empowered a new generation 
of “users” who became the young active reporters and organizers of collective 
action. Mobilized through social networks, they required neither elaborate skills 
nor extensive resources to carry out their live broadcasts. users were easily 
transformed to public informants when they transmitted the news and became 
public leaders when they called for protests (Chatfield, Akbari, Mirzayi and Scholl 
2011). The net result is a paradigm shift in the traditional state-society relationship, 
where revolution in information infrastructure has significantly undermined state 
control over society and paved the way for the radical transformation of politics.
the establishment of social media had also facilitated the rise of new and free 
cyber-based deliberation forums (Kaplan and Haenlein 2011). They soon became 
occupied by a young, critical and cosmopolitan internet generation. it is estimated 
that the number of Facebook users in the MENA region doubled from 11.9 million 
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to 21.3 million in 2010 and to 45 million in 2012 (Arab Social Media Report 2012). 
The prevalence of bloggers, Twitter feeds and Facebook pages among Middle 
eastern and north african youth helped open the discussion about traditionally 
sensitive topics such as sex, gender rights, political freedom, human rights and 
religion, among others. this moved intellectual and political discussions away 
from the watchful eye of the state and religious authorities, effectively dismantling 
the state’s traditional monopoly on information. ahlam Mosteghanami, an 
Algerian feminist and critical intellectual, gathered 193,059 likes on her Facebook 
and her daily statuses invited the critical discussions of thousands, with even 
more visiting her official website frequently. YouTube videos were also easily 
and quickly produced, downloaded and distributed to hundreds of thousands 
around the globe. as a result, youth empowerment reached unprecedented levels 
of intellectual maturity in defiance of the authoritarian parapet. Unconsciously, 
the divinity of the ruling elites began to break down in the Arab world’s largest 
and most central state, with public consciousness growing firm in the direction of 
realizing a modern and transparent elected civil state (Salamey and Pearson 2012).
innovations in information infrastructure have, therefore, provided crucial 
affordances in expediting the deconstruction of arab authoritarianism. the 
emergences of new information regimes that favor diverse, affordable, 
accessible and interactive systems of communication have made political 
transformation possible in previously unimaginable ways. However, the ability 
of authoritarianism to cope with the antithetical information regime system is 
yet to be unraveled. Many arab monarchies have already begun to reconstruct 
their national information infrastructure. their efforts aim to introduce alternative 
and sophisticated centralization mechanisms to control and filter information 
and search engines. a virtual defense wall prevents ‘unfriendly’ exchanges in 
many countries with sophisticated filtering and blocking software. The Iranian 
theocracy has established Internet control units to analyze and track users’ 
activities (Stepanova 2011). Other regimes’ efforts have been made to orchestrate 
state-sponsored counter-Internet propaganda campaigns and wage cyber-attacks 
against dissidents’ blogs and websites. in July 2012 russia passed a law to create 
a blacklist of websites deemed as “extremists.” The British government has 
attempted to draft a communications bill that would produce a system of blanket 
collection and retention of all online data (Kampfner 2012). China has succeeded 
in imposing many restrictions on Google and forced the company to comply with 
the government constrains. Most recently, islamists have been mobilizing support 
to censor and ban Google and Youtube after an immature movie depicted Prophet 
Mohammad in offensive roles was shared globally on the internet.
Yet, despite continued efforts to reformulate conservatives’ and states’ control 
of the information infrastructure, and consequently over society, their ability to do 
so has been significantly eroded. New innovations are destined to emerge and new 
generations of users will continue to overcome obstacles and restrictions. Howard 
(2011) observes that “in this global, digital media environment, it is going to be 
increasingly difficult for the strong men of North Africa and the Middle East to rig 
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elections. It will also be increasingly difficult to suspend democratic constitutions 
and pass power to family members.” this is not only because new innovations have 
strengthened public oversight, but also due to new information infrastructure that 
has decentralized political leadership and ruled out requirements for charismatic 
populist politicians (Chatfield, Akbari, Mirzayi and Scholl 2011; Salamey and 
Tabar 2012). Thus it is contingent for newly emerging democracies to protect 
the right to freedom of information as well as to consolidate a newly established 
decentralized information regime. they need to examine new iCt policies 
backed by constitutional amendments that can guarantee users’ digital rights to 
free electronic networking, protect the rights to surf and exchange information, 
preserve web privacy, and provide for data protection. important developments in 
this domain are visible in cases like Tunisia and Lebanon, but are also fraught with 
counter-movements even within these regimes.
ICT Policies in arab Democracies
Dutton et al. have identified several policy dimensions essential for countries 
seeking to comply with digital rights. They include: access, freedom of connection, 
freedom of expression, equality, freedom of information (FOI), privacy, and data 
protection (Dutton, Dopatka, Hills, Law and Nash 2011). Several states have been 
quick to adopt new laws and regulations pertaining to freedom of expression on 
the internet and the foundation of a new liberal information regime. in 2000, 
estonia was among the pioneering countries that stipulated legal state obligations 
to provide access to electronic information and services. in 2008 it passed personal 
data protection legislation, and in June 2009, the French Constitutional Council 
followed by ruling that the freedom to access ‘public online communication 
services’ was a basic human right. in July 2010, Finland similarly pronounced 
broadband internet as a fundamental human right (Finnish Ministry of transport and 
Communications 2010). Most recently, Latin American countries show movement 
in similar ways: in September 2010 Costa rica’s constitutional court announced 
that the internet was also a fundamental right and mandated the government to 
provide universal access for all (Argüero 2010), while the Argentinean province 
of San luis passed a law guaranteeing all citizens the right to free internet access.
There are also encouraging policy steps being taken to advance freedom 
and access to information in the Mena region. there have been partial reforms 
introduced in tunisia and Morocco that provide citizens with greater access to 
information (Almadhoun 2012). Yet, Arab governments have remained slow to 
introduce relevant legislations particularly those pertaining to iCt infrastructure. 
Policy reforms in this area have remained exclusively confined to Northern and 
western democratic states. a particular challenge in arab states is a traditional 
legal framework that views laws as a means for the preservation of rule and order 
rather than that of serving the interests of the people. this historical and structural 
deficiency continues to antagonize the public and economic interests with that of 
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the ruling autocracy. While the former seek laws that liberalize and decentralize 
the information infrastructure, the latter strives for the opposite.
admittedly, the complexity of Mena states and societies, and the powerful 
coercive apparatus of authoritarian regimes were significant factors in delaying 
democratic transformations for many years (Posusney and Angrist 2005). Yet 
the arab Spring has called for a dramatic political transformation in arab states 
and societies. understanding the causes and dynamic of contemporary protest 
movements is critical in the deconstruction of the Middle eastern exceptionalism 
hypotheses. among the lessons learned from the arab spring is that revolutionary 
outbreaks cannot be understood in terms of incidental or sudden eruptions, but as 
an accumulation of structural causes and instrumental developments (Salamey and 
Pearson 2012). Revolutionary expressions can only fully blossom when both the 
structure and means for change are simultaneously established. the arab Spring 
demonstrates how structural economic and political crises along instrumental 
innovations in media and the ICT have converged to spark protests and accelerate 
the downfall of outdated authoritarian regimes.
Beyond their role in accelerating the revolutionary outbreaks, innovations 
in global communication technology have turned economic, political, and 
cultural liberalization of state-society relations into an imperative outcome. 
Economic development, for example, has come to be linked to the formulation 
of a decentralized communication and information regime. one of the historic 
revelations of the arab Spring, perhaps, is that regimes defying such a trend are 
destined to fall. Military strength and international balance of power emerged as 
insufficient requisites for state survival. A state’s capacity to cope with the globally 
liberalized and decentralized iCt trends became an important determinant 
of political power. it seems no longer the case that states’ military, economic, 
social, or international policy agendas can be formulated irrespective from that 
of its communication and information infrastructure. a new epoch in political 
discourse appears to have been unleashed where communication and information 
infrastructure innovations have extended the various existential requirements of 
the state.
emerging democracies and transitional states have many challenges to 
confront, including the task to replace the dysfunctional political and legal 
frameworks with alternative transparent and representative political institutions. 
the decentralization of power and control is emerging as an essence for world 
politics where globally interactive and informed citizens along an integrated 
economy determine to a large extent the fate of the state. For the arab world, 
the establishment of a new iCt infrastructure that preserves access, freedom of 
connection, freedom of expression, equality, freedom of information, privacy 
and data protection will be among the main policy challenges. a partnership of 
stakeholders consisting of civil societies, economic interests, and those of the state 
may represent a suitable forum to advance a liberal and decentralized iCt policy 
platform.
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Chapter 7  
Al-Masry Al-Youm and  
egypt’s new Media ecology 
david M. Faris
this chapter presents a case study of the egyptian media system to explore 
the nature of the digital ecosystem and its implications for authoritarian media 
systems more generally. Despite the success of authoritarian regimes like Iran and 
China in tightly controlling digital space and closing down spaces for repression, 
digital media often contribute to long-term movements toward democratization in 
seemingly unpredictable ways. in the Middle east and the broader Muslim world, 
research supports the idea that the diffusion of digital media has strengthened 
democratic movements and practice, notably through improvements in civil 
society and citizen journalism (Howard 2011). The idea that technology diffusion 
strengthens democratic movements was supported by the events of the arab 
Spring, in which Internet-based organizing tools played significant roles in the 
uprisings. Tufecki and Wilson (2012), find that those who attended the first day of 
the Tahrir Square protests in Egypt on January 25th were overwhelmingly likely to 
have Internet access at home, and that a significant share of protestors heard about 
the events through social media first, primarily Facebook and Twitter (Tufecki and 
Wilson 2012).
others have argued that citizen journalism played a decisive role in 
transforming media environments (Khamis and Vaughn 2011) or that in both 
the egyptian and tunisian uprisings, a decade of digital activism laid the 
groundwork for successful campaigns (Hussain and Howard 2011; Faris 2012). 
Studies asserting a limited role for digital media in these uprisings are in an 
observable minority (e.g., Aday et al. 2012). Some of the campaigns during 
the arab Spring were successful in changing regimes, while others were 
not; the exact trajectories do not concern us here because they concern other 
architectures of political control and civil-military relations. the aim of this 
chapter is not to determine the circumstances such movements might succeed, 
but rather to ask how digital media change repressive media environments even 
when the regimes take significant steps to interfere, control, or co-opt digital 
spaces. i use the case of egypt to examine how social media can broaden and 
deepen democratic discourses even in cases where journalists themselves are 
threatened. This study was inspired and informed by ethnographic fieldwork 
with the egyptian independent daily newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm, 18 months 
prior to the arab uprisings.
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Prior to the January 2011 uprising, journalists at Al-Masry Al-Youm and other 
independent journalists operated in environments that international observers 
considered at most “partly free” (on a scale of free, partly free, to not free). Other 
observers maintained an even more conservative view of the egyptian digital 
environment. Mohamed abdel dayem, coordinator of the Committee to Protect 
Journalists Middle east and north africa Program, wrote in 2010 that, “Judging by 
what’s transpired in recent weeks, press freedom in Egypt is in a deplorable state” 
(Dayem 2010). The Committee to Protect Journalists, and numerous other NGOs, 
condemned the 2010 sentencing of wael abbas, a popular and international-
renowned blogger, critical for his work in breaking stories of torture and police 
abuse in egypt, to six months in prison in March 2010. other abuses of press 
freedom in egypt include the ongoing imprisonment of blogger abdul Kareem 
nabeel Suleiman amer, and the repeated and persistent arrests of bloggers as well 
as digital activists organizing through Facebook.
the egyptian context was not as dangerous to journalists as more repressive 
contexts, perhaps because state power can sometimes be checked by a willing 
judiciary (Waisbord 2002). But pre-2011 Egypt was widely regarded as a repressive 
environment to practice political journalism. Reporters Without Borders ranked 
egypt 143rd out of 175 countries in its annual report for 2009 (“Press Freedom 
Index 2009”). Comparatively, Egypt was a more dangerous place to be a journalist 
than Morocco, for instance, but much safer than tunisia or Syria. However, the 
repression of high-profile journalists and activists does not tell us much about 
the actual discursive environment in which these actors are challenging state 
power. rather, the way that egyptian journalists moved seamlessly from personal 
blogs and media platforms to those of corporate-funded ventures, all the while 
effectively operating independently, suggested important and un-coopted digital 
spaces for the expression of political opinions.
The rise of multi-dimensional media systems
as of 2009, of 195 media systems in the world, 125 were either “not free” or 
“partially free.” despite the increasing attention paid to non-democratic media 
systems, particularly in the Middle east and asia, scholars have yet to adequately 
and conceptually define such a system’s basic parameters and characteristics. In 
democratic media systems, Becker has argued “it is the responsibility of a mass 
political media system to provide information to citizens to participate in processes 
of governance” (Becker 2004: 145). In such systems neither the state nor a small 
number of private market players should dominate the information marketplace, 
lest they limit the diversity of viewpoints and exclude voices from the public 
sphere. Scholars also note the importance of strong government institutions for 
the proper functioning of a democratic media system. as waisbord argues, “the 
state remains a central institution for ensuring basic conditions for the functioning 
of the press” (2002: 106). In authoritarian media systems, then, the media exists 
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al-Masry al-Youm and Egypt’s New Media Ecology 93
primarily to advance the goals of the state and to serve the authoritarian regime’s 
goals of stemming the flow of information and preventing ordinary citizens from 
having access to unfiltered information. For such regimes, “control of information 
is critical to maintaining power” (Price 2002: 17). Typologies of authoritarian 
media systems date to the 1950s and Seibert et al.’s famous (and problematic) 
framework of the four types of media systems: the libertarian, authoritarian, 
social responsibility, and Soviet communist models. Contemporary world politics 
have rendered this popular typology largely outdated, but no contemporary 
definitions of authoritarian media systems have yet reached scholarly consensus, 
particularly given the fragmentation of the media ecology since the adoption of 
digitally-mediated spaces.
traditional media systems before the digital age were two-dimensional. one 
was the print media—largely corporate-controlled or state-controlled, heavily 
financed and steered by a relatively small elite of editors and writers. The 
other was radio and broadcast television, also quite amenable to state control. 
thus, the height of the broadcast, mass-media era—the 1950s, to the 1970s—
also represented the zenith of authoritarian control over media content. while 
challenges have been made to closed systems by enterprising pamphleteers or 
cassette-makers (Hirschkind 2006), the state could and did effectively control 
information. this is true for several reasons: the production of mass media during 
this period required heavy fixed investments—printing presses, offices, and large 
staffs of reporters and editors. this heavy cost of entry into the media environment 
led to media owners and authoritarian regimes quickly and successfully asserting 
their control in the period following the end of european colonialism.
egypt was a relatively free-wheeling press environment during the interwar 
period and after the Second world war, when the country was still ruled by an 
increasingly unaccountable monarchy. In 1952, the Free Officers revolution 
brought a military junta to power. while initially promising greater freedoms and 
democracy, the regime instead consolidated its control over all sectors of political, 
cultural and economic life. there is little evidence to suggest that international 
radio broadcasts seriously disrupted domestic politics during this period. Both 
radio and television continued to require enormous fixed costs to operation and 
because of those costs the state was able to control them (Rugh 2004: 181). The 
situation remained more or less unchanged for decades, with each segment of the 
broadcast system serving different but synchronized functions. as Castells argues:
until recently, and even nowadays to a large extent, the media constitute 
an articulated system, in which, usually, the print press produces original 
information, tV diffuses to a mass audience, and radio customizes the 
interaction. (Castells 2008)
this began to change, however, with the introduction of satellite broadcast 
television in the late 1980s and the 1990s. Satellite television ushered an era in 
which authoritarian media systems were subject to unwanted involvement by 
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external media actors—in the Middle east by the widely-documented advent of 
the television station Al-Jazeera, which broadcasted frank reports and discussions 
of arab political events directly into the homes of citizens across the region—
citizens who normally did not have this kind of access to news and dissent about 
their own societies. The effects of that penetration have never quite been quantified, 
however, and are not without their critics. Kern and Hainmueller, for instance, 
argue that east Germans exposed to west German media before the fall of the 
Berlin Wall were more supportive of communism (Kern and Hainmueller 2009). 
in egypt, the political environment was not quite as authoritarian as that in east 
Germany, but the state did try to prevent citizens from free access to information.
However, as the different dimensions of authoritarian mass media previously 
represented differences in degree, the introduction of the internet represented a 
difference in kind: a fourth dimension to authoritarian media systems. In short, 
the internet brought with it the age of media multidimensionality. the internet 
has augmented the dimensionality of authoritarian media systems in several ways. 
First, it increases the reach of newspapers, and allows globally-produced newspaper 
information to penetrate state borders (Lynch 2006). It allows diasporas, exiles, 
and other members of the community to participate in politics in ways previously 
unimaginable (Brinkerhoff 2009). In the context of Burma, for instance, the 
democratic Voice of Burma functioned “as an archive of public memory in a 
context where all political expression, including songs and popular political satire 
carry heavy penalties of imprisonment” (Pidduck 2012: 550). Digital media also 
allowed for access to the public sphere by political, religious, or ethnic minorities, 
who have otherwise been excluded from public deliberation (Faris 2010). Perhaps 
most importantly, it has wired citizens, even in authoritarian states, with the ability 
to form their own media outlet. Castells refers to this as a process and “rise of 
self-communication” (Castells 2008). Rather than serving as passive recipients 
of information in newspapers, or at best, as letter-writers or the lucky chosen few 
of the call-in satellite talk shows, the Internet allows citizens to co-produce and 
mediate information in direct and personal ways. while the state may still arrest 
individual writers or block web sites, the Internet and mobile technologies make 
it more difficult to shut down the pathways of dissent. For example, Mubarak’s 
regime arrested bloggers and disrupted social media web site selectively, but there 
were always others writing and distributing information critical of the state and its 
affairs. digital media tools, in the hands of ordinary citizens, made it possible for 
citizens to document and challenge abuses by the state by capturing images and 
videos of transgressions, and making them public information.
the egyptian press environment prior to the uprising of January 2011 was much 
more open than one would gather from most media freedom rankings, particularly 
because they focus on outdated standards, and particularly because they neglect 
the important ways in which digital media have provided safe and self-powered 
alternatives. Both digital media and independent media outlets (which are quickly 
becoming interdependent and overlapping) have presented routine challenges 
to state power, and practitioners in both systems are subject to interference and 
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al-Masry al-Youm and Egypt’s New Media Ecology 95
harassment by state authorities. The Egyptian media system under Mubarak was 
thus a battleground where set-pieces about democracy, the proper reach of state 
authority, the scope of civil and political rights, and disagreements about foreign 
policy were performed much more rigorously than over-reading definitions of 
authoritarian media systems might suggest. to explore this important issue, it is 
important to consider a prototypical example of such professional yet independent 
media outlets present in contemporary egyptian politics.
Al-Masry Al-Youm and the Challenge to egyptian state media Hegemony
Al-Masry Al-Youm emerged in 2004, after a loosening of press laws in egypt that 
coincided with the Bush administration’s short-lived period of democratization 
in the Middle east. no coherent theoretical rationale has successfully explained 
why the egyptian state at this particular juncture decided to open its press system 
to media outlets which almost immediately began to offer readers more critical 
evaluations of state policies than had traditionally state-run media. However, the 
events of 2003–6 do suggest strongly that authoritarian regimes react to pressure 
from their primary patrons, in this case the United States (Brownlee 2008). Unlike 
most newspapers in egypt, which either are operated indirectly by the state, 
like the flagship state paper, Al-Ahram, or by the licensed political parties, Al-
Masry Al-Youm offered a model which had not been seen in egypt in decades—a 
privately-financed company staffed by journalists and editors who appeared to be 
independent from the state security apparatus. Al-Masry Al-Youm was followed 
in short order by the founding of the opposition weekly Al-Dustur, which was 
widely regarded as having an islamist bent, and the daily newspaper El-Badeel in 
2008, a left-leaning, secular outlet sympathetic to the burgeoning labor movement. 
Collectively these outlets comprised an entirely new sector in the egyptian print 
environment—the independent press.
Collectively these papers were instrumental in breaking or giving in-depth 
coverage to countless stories that put the government in a bad light and which 
originated in the country’s rich and vociferous blogosphere—from the torture 
scandal originally broken by the blogger Wael Abbas, to the sexual harassment 
of women in downtown Cairo, and more recently the killings of Baha’is in an 
upper egypt village, and the fatal police beating in June 2010 of Khaled Said 
(his murder would spark a Facebook movement that contributed heavily to the 
uprising). Journalists at these papers often worked hand-in-hand with bloggers—
who were even more willing to cross the so-called red lines of egyptian journalism 
(Faris 2010a). Some of these bloggers eventually came to work for Al-Masry Al-
Youm, and some Masry journalists have their own blogs. Al-Masry Al-Youm was 
a pioneer in creating digital content in egypt prior to the uprising—years before 
the events of January 2011, the paper had transformed itself into a hypermedia 
operation, complete with video journalists and an extensive online archive. this 
last point is crucial. even if a reporter for a paper was arrested, his article was 
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likely to be left online for anyone to see. The digital components of Al-Masry 
Al-Youm reinforce the idea that we cannot artificially separate digital media from 
traditional (broadcast) media.
one of the primary stories told to push the narrative of an egyptian media 
environment descending into greater repression in the years 2007–10 was the arrest 
and imprisonment of Al-Dustur editor ibrahim eissa over reports of President 
Mubarak’s death in the summer of 2007. Eissa’s trial followed closely on the heels 
of the 2007 sentencing of four newspaper editors to prison for “defaming” President 
Mubarak and his son Gamal. Rumors of the President’s ill health and possible 
demise swept through the egyptian public sphere late July of 2007, facilitated 
by text-messaging and social media (Faris 2008). Press outlets—particularly 
those in the independent press—aggressively pushed this story line and openly 
inquired about the health of the president and his whereabouts. it certainly did not 
help matters that Muburak himself went into a kind of occultation for weeks and 
made no public appearances, leaving the stage open for various performances of 
concern, celebration, and speculation. the newspaper that ran with this story most 
aggressively was al-dustur, the independent paper that had recently transitioned 
from a weekly to a daily paper. Its editor, Ibrahim Eissa, wrote a widely-read daily 
column in which he skewered the hypocrisy, corruption, and ineffectiveness of the 
Egyptian state. His dispatches, no doubt irksome to those in power, were allowed 
to be printed with little interference until the emergence of panic concerning the 
health of President Mubarak. The state, claiming that rumors of the president’s 
death negatively impacted the state’s standing in international markets, arrested 
eissa and charged him with spreading false rumors, one of the few press red lines 
to survive the opening of the press environment in 2004. the state blamed all sort 
of potentially interested parties for the rumors, including bête noirs Hamas and 
of course the Zionists (Lynch 2007). The crisis came to an end when Mubarak 
himself finally made a public appearance on August 30th, although there were 
some who questioned the legitimacy of the resulting video.
if the media situation in egypt is in serious decline systemically, as Freedom 
House indicates, one would expect that decline to be borne out in available 
statistics. For instance, if newspapers were reporting on torture in 2008, and the 
situation has declined, one might expect there to be less reporting on torture in 
2009. or if journalists are getting in trouble for reporting rumors about President 
Mubarak’s health in 2007, one might expect journalists to stop speculating about 
President Mubarak’s health, for fear of their own safety and to ensure that they 
remain free to do their other work. Yet reporting on both torture and the health 
of President Mubarak continues to take place at significant rates in Al-Masry 
Al-Youm and in digital media. Bloggers continued to speculate about Mubarak’s 
death, and Al-Masry Al-Youm continued investigating rumors of Mubarak’s ill 
health. this is not to say that the legal environment for journalists was not also 
in decline, as Freedom House claims, but rather that both of these things can co-
occur simultaneously.
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we can also see this by comparing coverage of the 2007 death Crisis reportage 
and the reports of the president’s illness in July 2010. if there was, in fact, a 
chilling effect on journalists of the 2007 eissa affair, we should be able to see it in 
the 2010 coverage. Yet ibrahim eissa himself—who spent time in prison precisely 
for reporting on Mubarak’s health—devoted an entire column to addressing 
the question of Mubarak’s health. Unlike reporting in the official press, which 
typically concludes with platitudes, like “He was full of energy. May God grant 
him good health,” Eissa took the president head-on and suggested that he was too 
old to capably lead the country (Attalah 2010).
Journalists at Al-Masry Al-Youm, Al-Dustur, and Al-Sharouq covered the story 
as well. Mohamed amin exclaimed in disgust, “there is no information!” and 
blamed the president and the secrecy surrounding his health for the persistence 
of rumors (2010). Columnist Osama Haykel claimed that “the intensity of the 
controversy is greater this time [than in 2007]” (Haykal 2010). Over the course 
of the crisis, Al-Masry Al-Youm ran dozens of stories and published videos—from 
news items to man-on-the-street interviews to op-eds—about the president’s 
health. all of these items existed online even when eissa was in prison and when 
journalists everywhere were probably fearful for their safety if they contributed to 
this debate. these hybrid print-digital artifacts were largely impervious to regime 
interference, since no one tried to take down the paper’s web site, and if they had, 
there was an army of bloggers and digital activists waiting to excerpt, re-post or 
tweet the content.
what this refusal to end speculation suggests is that the egyptian media 
system itself was largely impervious to state repression of individual editors and 
journalists, and that digital activists and journalists were leading the charge in 
crossing red lines. the system is able to maintain a contested multidimensionality. 
Pathways of public dissent, even when interrupted by state repression, were 
quickly rerouted to other press outlets, or even to the same outlets where new 
editors and writers stepped into the line of fire and risked their own persecution for 
the cause of open dissent. digital media enable this multi-dimensionality.
First it ensures that offending stories live on in Google caches, or more 
typically on the sites themselves, where they are rarely if ever removed by egypt’s 
comparative technically weak censorship strategy (in contrast to China’s). The 
best egyptian newspapers either have already transformed themselves into 
hypermedia entities—complete with blogs, videos, and interactive, participatory 
content, or exist only online to begin with. the egyptian independent press, despite 
constraints, was one element of this multidimensionality. Bloggers continued to 
write about Mubarak’s health, and about his possible death, including a well-
trafficked Facebook page called “Mubarak is Dead.” The digital media were a 
source of constant rumor-making, speculation and rumination about Mubarak’s ill 
health and the future of egypt after his death. and the willingness of digital activists 
and traditional reporters to cross red lines and to investigate state misbehavior 
reinforced one another in a mutually constitutive way that could be seen most 
clearly when bloggers, Facebook activists and independent journalists at Al-Masry 
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Al-Youm and elsewhere all seized on the story of Khaled Said’s unjust death in the 
summer of 2010. The Facebook group We Are All Khaled Said, and general disgust 
with the practices of the egyptian police, would be a major contributing factor in 
the uprisings (Snider and Faris 2011).
egypt is a peculiar authoritarian environment in the way that it has incorporated 
the internet. the regime made little effort to interfere with content on the web 
directly, through keyword filtering or blocking. Other authoritarian regimes in the 
region have learned from the egyptian regime’s decision not to close down its 
media system. Bahrain, for instance, also witnessed an uprising in the winter of 
2011. But with the help of Saudi and emirati troops and a sophisticated digital 
filtering and surveillance system, the regime was able to maintain its grip on 
power (Mitchell 2012). Since 2011, that same regime has moved aggressively 
against all journalists. the country’s 2002 Press law imposed harsh restrictions 
on journalists who violate the country’s red lines, and those measures have been 
even more punitively enforced since the Arab Spring began. Yet, despite ranking 
definitely as “Not Free,” Freedom House notes, “the Bahraini media’s coverage 
of news and politics is more critical and independent than reporting in most other 
Gulf countries” (2012). For example, the arrest of the owner of an online news 
organization called Rasad News in Bahrain, like many similar outfits in Egypt 
and Tunisia, is effectively a Twitter and Facebook based boutique media outlet. 
while the Bahraini regime did shut down the pages, rasad news was operational 
again with a new Facebook page, and actively pursuing its critical work. Digital 
entrepreneurs and their partners in Bahrain’s independent press seem willing to 
press on in spite of repression, and the costs for doing so are significantly alleviated 
with the mass diffusion of participatory social media platforms.
Standard indices of press freedom have failed to capture some of the dynamism 
and individual agency characterizing contemporary authoritarian media systems, 
like Egypt’s. The recent history of the Egyptian media system indicates that digital 
technologies were crucial factors in creating a general climate of dissent and 
criticism that went beyond official regime determined red lines. Our understandings 
of authoritarian media systems have focused too heavily on state responses and 
policies, and not enough on the ability of individual journalists and activists to 
produce and share content with their fellow citizens. enterprising journalists and 
digital activists have contributed to long-run changes in political systems, even 
while facing political repression. Future research must further investigate the 
content of authoritarian media systems more openly, and more closely consider 
the ways that individuals can now create, share, and act upon political information 
on social media platforms, as well as the ways those platforms may and may not 
effectively escape state control.
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Chapter 8  
Communicating Politics in Kuwait
Fahed al-Sumait
Since the arab uprisings that began in december 2010, scholars, pundits, and 
policymakers have given considerable attention to the role of digital media 
technologies in facilitating political change across the Middle east. However, 
prior to those momentous events such technologies where already altering the 
political landscape in several countries within the region. in this chapter, i describe 
one such country, Kuwait, and the ways in which oppositional political actors 
have been utilizing digital technologies in tandem with other localized venues 
for several years to circumvent mass media obstacles, interact with constituents, 
mobilize activism, and ultimately contest specific forms of power. I concentrate 
primarily on a time period preceding the arab uprisings by drawing on insights 
from key political actors in Kuwait, where a constitutional monarchy has been 
incrementally ceding power to one of the oldest and most autonomous of arab 
parliaments.1 I focus on three groupings that represent significant political forces 
in both Kuwait and the region and whose discourses are increasingly influencing 
public sphere debates and, consequently, impacting political dynamics.
analysis of the arab Middle east tends to focus on political hotspots, leaving 
in-depth discussions of peaceful, indigenous political change—such as that 
found in Kuwait—largely absent from mainstream discourse. Yet, Kuwait is a 
particularly interesting case to examine with regard to the issues of political power 
and information infrastructure. this constitutional emirate—with a population of 
2.6 million and about 10 percent of the world’s oil reserves—has the region’s 
longest existing democratically elected legislature and some of its highest levels 
of per-capita media usage (Al-Roomi 2007, Mellor 2005). It is often described 
among the most free of Arab states, with significant development toward political 
liberalization (al-roomi 2007, Brown 2009, rizzo 2005, Salem 2008, tetreault 
2000). In 1938, Kuwait became the first Arab country to experiment with a formal 
consultative council called a majlis (Herb 1999), and in 1961, it established the 
1 Most arab countries have some form of parliamentary or congressional council, 
though their degree of legislative power or even formal consultative role is generally 
limited in comparison to Kuwait or to more advanced democracies. there is an arab inter-
Parliamentary union which was established in 1974 and on which 21 arab countries plus 
Palestine have representatives. However, like the vast majority of its individual members, 
the union itself has limited powers or influence.
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State Power 2.0100
Gulf’s first constitution. These efforts at political liberalization have been achieved 
with little violence or continuous external pressures to democratize.
Kuwait’s media conditions are also indicative of a relatively robust information 
infrastructure for the Arab Middle East. The country is continually ranked among 
the most free of media environments in the region (Freedom House 2012, reporters 
Without Borders 2010, 2011). Local newspapers and satellite stations are partisan 
and often driven more by political interests than economic concerns which, 
for example, helps explain why its per-capita distribution of local newspapers 
is nearly three times that of any other arab country. Mobile phone penetration 
exceeds the population by a ratio of 3:2 and its percentage of internet users is in 
the top third percent among all arab nations (Central intelligence agency 2009, 
Internet World Stats 2011, Mellor 2005). With regards to social media, Kuwait’s 
percentage of Facebook users is second among all Arab countries and, despite 
its small population, the country currently generates more tweets than any other 
(Arab or non-Arab) Middle Eastern nation, except Turkey (Mourtada and Salem 
2012). In short, it stands out as a well saturated, vibrant and largely free media 
environment in a region known for persistent authoritarianism and media controls.
in addition to its distinctions, Kuwait’s struggle with political liberalization 
reflects similar and important dimensions in nearby states: mixed Sunni and 
Shi’a Muslim populations; an economy reliant on natural resources; a hereditary 
monarchy; entrenched tribalism and other identity-based political groupings; and 
a rapidly changing media environment. Like the entire Middle East, information 
and communications technologies are rapidly diffusing. widely available and 
affordable satellite television has already changed the nature of regional political 
and social debates (Eickelman and Anderson 2003, Lynch 2006, Seib 2007) and 
Internet expansion continues to open opportunities for social networking, political 
blogging, information access, and even political change (Bunt 2003, Hofheinz 
2007, Howard 2011, Wheeler 2006). Such conditions are as important in Kuwait 
as they are in the broader region. in short, Kuwait represents a combination of 
both unique and shared elements with neighboring countries, making its analysis 
important in itself and simultaneously relevant to larger discussions about 
information infrastructure, political power and, ultimately, the process of political 
liberalization.
to demonstrate this, i describe the various communication channels, or means, 
by which three important identity groups within the country’s opposition send 
and receive messages to and from the Kuwaiti public. My intent is to illustrate 
how information infrastructure and political power intersect within the country’s 
broader communicative environment. in-depth examination of such an environment 
inevitably involves other important facets, such as political messaging and 
targeting strategies, public opinion and reception, factors of political economy, 
the social and cultural context, and so forth, which are not dealt with here. that is 
to say, focusing exclusively on the medium can only tell part of the contemporary 
political story about Kuwait or the region, though i argue it is an important part 
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Communicating Politics in Kuwait 101
of a larger narrative concerning government opposition forces and the evolving 
nature of their political communication within the Middle east.
The findings presented here are based on in-depth interviews with 51 political 
actors over a 10-month period beginning in June 2010. i categorize the respondents 
according to three primary groupings: islamists, liberals and female politicians.2 in 
terms of their (former or current) positions, the interviewees represented numbers 
approximating 40 percent of Kuwait’s legislature and half of the cabinet (of a 
unicameral 50-member legislative assembly and 16 ministers per cabinet), as well 
as civil society leaders, political activists, academics, journalists and the leaders of 
each major political “party.” thirty percent of the respondents were Shi’a, which 
is roughly representative of the national composition, and just over 40 percent 
were female, which is similar to their representation in the country’s workforce. 
all were Kuwaiti citizens ranging in age from the late 20s to the 70s. what follows 
are their descriptions of the traditional and digital forms of communication they 
use to interact with citizens and promote their political agendas.
Traditional Communicative means
i segment the following analysis according to two overarching communication 
mechanisms: traditional and digital. the traditional is comprised of conventional 
means found in most political environments—mass media, personal networking, 
lobbying, etc.—as well as time-tested provincial means unique to Kuwait and 
similar Gulf countries—duwaniyyas, religious gatherings, and social events. 
that is followed by a digital section that describes the growing use of new 
media technologies with an emphasis on generational and gender differences. 
as i will demonstrate, each of the groups examined has adapted the available 
communication means to their particular needs, with more marginal groups—
such as youth and women—effectively supplementing traditional politicking 
with innovative workarounds, of which digital media technologies are playing an 
increasingly critical role.
2 I focus on these three categories of actors who are defined according to their primary 
self-expressed political identity. Islamists are an assorted force but unified in explicitly 
defining their political agendas through their Muslim identities. Self-described liberals, 
represent a long-standing force in Kuwaiti politics often characterized by their calls for 
secularism, formal political parties, and improved minority rights. Female politicians are 
included due to their rapidly growing, though still marginal, role in arab politics. while 
significant contributors to public sphere debates, it should be noted that each group, like any 
conception of “a public,” has porous boundaries and participants are not always exclusive 
to a single domain. 
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State Power 2.0102
Conventional media
Print and broadcast sources were the most commonly relied-upon forms of 
conventional media in Kuwait, though respondents described these as heavily 
partisan. Such partisanship can be an advantage for organizations that share 
political orientations with particular outlets, but since the largest partisan position 
is pro-government, opposition groups had more difficulties than advantages in 
this domain of the media environment. one analyst described it this way: “the 
number of newspapers is far greater than the capacity of Kuwait, but most of these 
newspapers are political. they are politically motivated … the thing is, if you 
want to see the media at large, most of the media, especially the TV [stations], 
are clients of the government. So there is a problem.” a respondent from a liberal 
political organization elaborated on the condition: “listen. three-quarters of the 
newspapers in Kuwait are not government-controlled, but [are] government-
friendly. And they block most of our work. And in this day and age, you cannot 
reach the public face-to-face only. You need the media to reach the people. and 
we have a problem with the media. they are not a free and open media.” Such 
partisanship is an obstacle for all opposition groups in Kuwait, but since women’s 
political organizations and female candidates held a wide variety of political 
orientations, they were not systematically deprived of media coverage based on 
ideological grounds to the degree claimed by many of the islamists and liberals.
Beginning with islamists, these groups had limited media outlets directly 
affiliated with their political views, so they often supplemented their direct 
media communications—such as press releases and public statements—with 
pseudo-events created to garner media attention. the nature of such gatherings 
vary in location, size, and even the titles associated with them—rallies, lectures, 
conferences, and so on—but they follow a common pattern of public assembly 
in which political figures give impassioned speeches and statements on amplified 
podiums about current issues directed at both the attendees and the media. the 
leader of a Shi’a group and seven-time Parliament Member (MP) discussed his 
organization’s efforts t  reach people through these events; both directly and via 
the associated media coverage. “we have to go down to the streets … if we have 
any problem or issue we can [reach] the streets by using the media and radio-
stations and TV. We do this with [public] conferences every one or two weeks. 
We announce that ‘these people will come and speak and if anyone has questions 
they can come and ask him’.” In a sense, these gatherings functioned somewhat 
like continuous campaign speeches with multiple speakers. They also carried the 
opportunity for personal networking with attendees.
As an added benefit for holding these events, media regularly turned out to 
cover them as news stories, thus amplifying the group’s messages. this interviewee 
continued: “We are using these [public lectures] very effectively with the TV 
stations, which are the private stations, and the newspapers. [The media] come 
each time … we want something that people not only hear, but see repeatedly, 
so the picture will remain in [their] head all the time.” Other Islamist groups 
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Communicating Politics in Kuwait 103
described a similar process. Here, a prominent member of a conservative Salafi 
alliance explained the mass media’s indifference toward his group’s messages and 
how they use regular public lectures to get around these. “[Journalists] are saying, 
‘Okay, say what you want to say, but we will not take this [issue] as our matter, 
our problem’ … So we also hold [public] lectures … This is how to reach [the 
people]. And the media, they show these [events].” In such a manner, the Islamists 
and others depended on journalists’ systemic attraction to news events, even if 
reporters did not ascribe to the content of the communicated messages. the net 
effect is that some degree of coverage was afforded despite ideological obstacles 
in the press.
liberals, too, employed such public presentations to reach people and the 
press, but since they are less cohesive as a formal group than many of the islamists 
organizations, they were less consistent at drawing regular media attention. one 
long-time liberal explained how traditional oppositional groupings of liberals began 
the practice of public lectures decades ago, which others later adopted. “we were 
one of the first groups to start holding meetings outside of duwaniyyas3 [during 
an unconstitutional parliamentary suspension in the 1980s], so the government 
cannot control it … It developed and now everyone is using this [approach of 
public lectures]. Now they are more sophisticated. These days they use a lot of 
gadgets [like podiums, microphones, TV screens, and social media coverage].” 
He went on to explain how these were only part of a broader strategy liberals used 
to reach the public. “we also go through newspapers, especially the opposition 
newspapers [to reach the public] … and then direct contact through duwaniyyas 
and civil society groups like the graduate society, trade unions, and so on.” Civil 
society organizations were frequently described by all groups as key targets of 
political messages, but as noted here, they also served as a type of communication 
venue to supplement efforts through the news media and public lectures.
Provincial forums
a second important group of traditional communicative mechanisms are 
commonplace in Kuwait. i characterize these as provincial to draw attention 
to their local origins. i am not, however, suggesting that these are somehow 
unsophisticated, as the colloquial use of the term sometimes denotes. in fact, the 
opposite is the case; these localized mechanisms of communication are highly 
sophisticated and personally tailored to great effect. Given their localized nature, 
provincial channels were employed regularly by males. However, women were 
at a distinct disadvantage here. to illustrate both the shared and unequal forms of 
provincial communicative means I first discuss the most common elements and 
3 Diwaniyyas are mainly family-owned gathering places central to Kuwait’s social 
and political atmosphere. they vary considerably in formality, function, and composition 
but are a regular part of social life for the majority of Kuwaiti men.
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State Power 2.0104
then demonstrate the unique obstacles faced by women, as well as some of the 
solutions they adopted to overcome these.
Both funerals and weddings double as opportunities for political networking 
and two-way communication. as in most islamic societies, funerals and weddings 
are public events at which people offer condolences or congratulatory messages to 
entire families. in Kuwait, both events are regular social “obligations” for many 
Kuwaitis and especially the male gatherings are announced in the daily newspapers, 
publicized through text services, and spread by word-of-mouth. in the case of a 
death, relatives observe a three-day mourning period wherein they receive visitors 
for condolences. Even if one only knows an extended family member of the 
deceased, it still is considered appropriate to show respect by attending the ritual. 
these events are held in gender-segregated spaces that accommodate a large 
number of visitors, traditionally in a duwaniyya or other large hall. upon arrival, 
guests shake the hands of the deceased’s close family and offer their condolences 
before sitting with the other guests for an unspecified period of time. In a similar 
fashion, part of the traditional wedding ceremony is usually held in a hotel hall, 
outdoor tent, or other large space. Any male who knows either side of the family 
will often attend. Like the funerals, guests first shake the hands of the groom’s 
close family members and then mingle with other guests, usually over a buffet 
dinner. As with the funerals, these events are a culturally specific opportunity for 
face-to-face interaction between the elected and electorate. Most notably, during 
the mingling periods politicians are frequently approached by other attendees to 
discuss issues of concern.
Since both events are part of social life in Kuwait, political actors utilize 
these opportunities to interact with the general public. one former minister, in 
his sixties, explained the frequency with which he attends such events, which was 
common for the average male of his generation and status. “i go to maybe 10 or 
15 condolences a week and maybe two to three weddings.” He then elaborated on 
the political capital to be gained. “MPs like to go to the weddings because they 
meet so many people. it is a free gathering with a free dinner. it is worth going to 
because [the MP] will get their photos taken with the groom’s family and it might 
be in the newspaper the next day. And the family will keep the photo forever to 
remember that MP came to their wedding … With the condolences, [politicians] 
still go even if [they] are not close to the family. It shows a gentle psychological 
touch. it’s good Pr.”
Beyond the publicity associated with these events, they are also opportunities 
for politicians to explain their initiatives. A Salafi MP stated: “Of course, we have 
to go to the condolences. we have to visit people, either in the hospitals or at 
the weddings. and this is one of the ways that we are contacting people … and 
also some of [the attendees], they come and ask questions, ‘what is going on in 
the Parliament,’ and i have to explain.” a four-time independent MP described 
yet another benefit of these events. “Sometimes we get comments, very good 
comments, great comments—let me say—in the weddings. when we stop in any 
reception, some guys they give me their opinions. and also sometimes when i 
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Communicating Politics in Kuwait 105
go to condolences they sit beside me and they say maybe two words, but these 
two words are very important for us … All these things I do normally [as social 
obligations], I also get [political] feedback.” The combined benefits of good public 
relations, occasions to explain initiatives, and opportunities to collect valued 
feedback allowed these almost-obligatory social events to double as effective 
provincial communicative mechanisms.
another localized means of communication are the duwaniyyas themselves. 
every male with a political position interviewed for this research described these 
as a primary means for interacting with the public. these family-owned spaces 
function as sites for condolences and sometimes wedding receptions. they are 
used to socialize, organize, and campaign. they help people share, and expose 
one another to, competing political views, and they form the backbone of Kuwait’s 
interpersonal communicative infrastructure among men (Al-Roomi 2007). In short, 
a great deal of social and political life in Kuwait occurs in and around the country’s 
duwaniyyas. as one MP and former minister aptly summarized: “duwaniyyas are 
our life.” Another quote from a Salafi Islamists was characteristic of most people’s 
descriptions. “i have my own duwaniyya every Saturday. So sometimes about 
100 to 200 people come every week, they enter the duwaniyya to either say hello 
or they have some problems that they want me, of course, to help them with. or 
sometimes I get new ideas [from attendees]. Of course, I also visit duwaniyyas 
almost every day.” thus, for male politicians these are among the most important 
venues in the country and cannot be overstated.
women faced at least two distinct disadvantages by not regularly participating 
in duwaniyyas. they did not have the same opportunities to interact with large 
segments of the population as did their male counterparts, and women’s issues 
were less likely to be discussed in these male-dominated spaces. Women did, 
however, have some exceptions and alternatives. Beginning with the exceptions, 
in the last elections female candidates increasingly campaigned in duwaniyyas to 
present their agendas and get feedback from male attendees. One of the female 
MPs, who wore a traditional hair covering (hijab), talked about her initial concerns 
in attending these forums. “Especially in the last elections [of 2009], more men’s 
duwaniyyas were welcoming women with certain positions, mainly MPs. when i 
was running for election, i was very reluctant to enter men’s duwaniyyas for the 
first time. I was really questioning myself. ‘What should I wear? Should I dress the 
way i usually do or wear the islamic abaya.’4 I don’t want to offend [the men]. I 
don’t want to embarrass myself, so i was a bit reluctant. But now i enter the men’s 
duwaniyyas the same way i am entering the women’s duwaniyyas or the mixed 
duwaniyyas, and people are accepting me the way i am.”
Another female MPs took a different track. “Even when I ran for the parliament, 
i decided not to go to the duwaniyyas. this was my decision. i even announced it 
4 an abaya is a black body-covering worn by traditional Muslim women that goes 
over the clothing and symbolizes modesty. it does not cover the hair or face but it does 
cover everything from the shoulders down, including the arms. 
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State Power 2.0106
[publicly]. I talked with my family and a number of people. Because of our family 
[honor], I decided not to go to duwaniyyas. But if i get a private invitation, i do 
go … but I did have different kinds of gatherings with women and men, [or just] 
women. Sometimes i had such gatherings in nGos or in some public areas. So 
i meet people everywhere.” this strategy had limitations in comparison to other 
candidates, but the fact she won a seat suggests that avoiding duwaniyyas was 
not a guarantee for failure. Her success might be due, in part, to the alternative 
communicative options women employed.
indeed, women have some exclusive social forums that female candidates 
have used effectively as communicative means. a third female MP described these 
as a direct counter to the male duwaniyyas: “Way back to the first establishment 
of Kuwait, the duwaniyya was there, and at that time, definitely, the duwaniyya 
is okay for men. But women, they have their own gathering inside the houses 
at special hours of the day, usually in the early morning about this time, where 
they’ll call it [midday tea] and again before sundown.” The earlier female tea 
sessions were mainly the domain of older, non-working women, but the younger 
generations were more accessible at the evening tea sessions. a campaign manager 
for one of the successful female MPs explained how they used these along with 
existing female social networks to rally support for her candidate. “We had [our 
candidate] visit many duwaniyyas and spend time at our [campaign] headquarters, 
but we also had her meet with the older women at afternoon tea, because many 
women they have nothing [to do] in the day. So they go to [afternoon tea] and talk 
and spend time with friends … Some women also had the [religious gatherings] 
in their homes [to talk] about the Quran and the hadith. we had good success 
with these.” in such a fashion, women candidates gained some advantages over 
their male counterparts. whereas women could increasingly participate in male 
duwaniyyas, men did not have the option of visiting women’s tea or religious 
sessions. this may not have been enough to counter the intrinsic disadvantages 
women faced with regard to the duwaniyyas, but it was an innovative attempt 
to work around the problem. However, an even more important communicative 
workaround employed by all the successful female candidates—as well as many 
of the men—was an increased reliance on digital media technologies, to which i 
now turn.
Digital Communicative means
in 2006, a popular movement erupted which sought to change Kuwait’s electoral 
districts from 25 to 5. the existing districts divided the polity in such a way that 
state-sponsored clientelism—the exchange of votes for money or favor—and the 
dominance of specific groups in key districts made it relatively easy to influence 
electoral results. A five-district division was seen as a path to fairer representation 
and less gerrymandering. what was especially noteworthy was that this change 
was driven by an independent youth movement and facilitated by digital media 
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Communicating Politics in Kuwait 107
technologies. one of the young bloggers behind the movement illustrated the 
mobilizing capacity of these technologies with his telling of the events. “i’m a 
blogger to begin with. So it all started with the blogs and interactions that you have 
with your readers … So when the issue [of redistricting] was discussed within 
parliament, naturally I picked up on it in my blog, and started writing and writing 
about it, and with that, creating levels of frustration among the readers … So 
from that came the website Kuwait5.org.” using his website and blog, this activist 
and his colleagues developed customizable content to maximize the effect of their 
political message. “we basically had easy steps on how you can get involved in 
the campaign. we had parliament members who we wanted to pressure … and 
we had different options to contact them, email if they had an email, or fax, or 
SMS messages, or calling them. and you had the choice of what you wanted. and 
when you click on the option you wanted, you’d get a script that says exactly what 
you have to do.” Following their success in spreading the message of a need to 
redistrict, the online activists eventually began physically mobilizing people. “and 
it picked up really well … and it was tremendous. Pressure was directed exactly 
where we wanted it, but then you reach a point that the people want more. So then 
we started with the rallies … so with this, coupled with pressure from outside, we 
started driving people to the first rally. We managed to get 250 people, and from 
one rally to the other it kept building. We came up to 3,000 [demonstrators] at 
some point.” this so-called “orange revolution” has been noted for its innovative 
use of technology (Salem 2008, Tétreault 2006) and its success encouraged other 
Kuwaitis to take note of the power of online activism.
Cases like this demonstrate how digital media technologies are playing an 
increasingly political role in Kuwait. By digital media, i refer to the various forms 
through which digital information is transmitted using electronic technologies, 
such as the internet, mobile communications equipment, and satellite television. 
Of particular interest here are media over which political actors exert a significant 
degree of control in the creation and distribution of messages. this includes internet-
enabled platforms like websites, blogs, emails, and social networking sites, as well 
as hand-held technologies such as cell phones. digital technologies have had a 
variety of effects on the growth and forms of political activism around the world 
(Bennett 2007, Bennett 2008, Hick and McNutt 2002, Norris 2000) and are seen as 
central to the creation of a public sphere and the process of liberalization in Muslim 
countries (Eickelman and Anderson 2003, Howard 2011, Lynch 2003, Seib 2007). 
Both digital activism and liberalization are also evident in Kuwait, where political 
actors are progressively turning to new media to circumvent conventional media 
obstacles, target specific segments of the population, and contribute to a more 
robust public sphere. with regard to these digital media, two noteworthy patterns 
were evident among the groups interviewed. islamists and liberals were divided 
in their utilization of these technologies, mainly along generational lines, while 
women, regardless of generation, embraced them with potent effect.
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generational Differences
Both islamists groups and liberals were heavily split along generational lines in 
their descriptions about the effectiveness of digital media for communicating with 
the public. older members were generally less apt to utilize these, even if they 
recognized their growing importance. An elder member of the Salafi Alliance and 
three-time MP declared: “Not yet, we’re not so active [in the use of digital media]. 
we will be. Some of our young people used this in the last election to counteract the 
smear campaign [against us] that some people thought the government used. But 
this is something that I intend to make better use of next time [there is an election], 
to organize for it.” Likewise, an elder figure in a Shi’a alliance acknowledged the 
importance of new media in general, but his group had yet to make a concerted 
effort to tap its potential. “Because of the technological revolution, the whole 
world is just like a small crystal ball. With the iPhone and Google you can get 
almost any information. Everything … We have a website [for our group], and 
there are some people who look at this, but this is not very advanced until now. It’s 
not very effective.” while such actors gave lip service to the importance of digital 
media, they were not priorities in their communication arsenal.
A long-time figure in the liberal movement and former five-time MP was in 
agreement with the older Islamists when asked about digital media. “It is there. 
It is being used now. But what role or how effective the influence is in political 
activities, though, is questionable. their effects in promoting democracy or in 
political activities are limited because [the people who use these technologies] are 
dispersed. It’s mostly individualistic and I don’t see any coordinated efforts [by 
political groups] to use these yet.” Even if this particular political figure did not see 
coordinated new media efforts, they did exist in Kuwait and around the region. in 
fact, despite older politicians’ general lag in adopting these technologies, a growing 
number of Kuwaitis were turning them—especially the younger generations.
Not surprisingly, younger political actors were the most likely to talk about, 
and demonstrate, the political importance of digital media. The youngest Salafi 
member in Parliament responded this way when asked if he used new media: “Of 
course! We have our own divisions [of volunteers] in these areas, and for myself, 
i also have to follow up and to answer the questions which are raised by either the 
Facebook or the Twitter every day. And especially the emails. But for the Twitter 
and Facebook, because they don’t wait, so I deal with them immediately. Of course 
the SMS is also very important.” the leader of the liberal national democratic 
Alliance, in his early 40s, confirmed the value of new media for his group. “We’re 
trying to reach [the public] by the new trend, which is social networking, the 
Internet, by Facebook, Twitter, and blogs, and by face-to-face [interaction], and 
inviting people [to lectures through these means]. When we have an event here, 
we start using Twitter and Facebook and blogs and [text] messaging services to 
reach the people, as much as we can.” He then discussed how these technologies 
sometimes generated interest even beyond the intent of his group. “i’ll give you 
an example. We had an event here and we invited some of the MPs to talk [about a 
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Communicating Politics in Kuwait 109
specific issue] but we didn’t open it to the public. What we did, we sent messages 
to our members through our email system and SMS. and some people who got 
this message put it on Twitter and Facebook and stuff, retweeting it. Without even 
putting any certain advertisement about it, we had around 600 people here [for 
the lecture].” Both of these political actors, and others of their generation, worked 
directly to tap into the potential of new media. these technologies helped generate 
crucial feedback, community interactions, and general publicity. As the opening 
story to this section demonstrated, they also held great potential to mobilize people 
to action.
twitter is a particularly interesting case of social media in Kuwait that serves 
as both an outgoing and incoming political communication tool. as noted, mobile 
phones outnumber people by a ratio of 3:2 and Kuwaitis, like people in other 
wealthy countries, are increasingly dependent on their phones for a variety of 
purposes. This makes Twitter an especially useful means of instant communication 
that some MPs have been quick to capitalize on. Indeed, as also mentioned, despite 
its small population, last year Kuwait was second only to Turkey when it comes 
to total volume of tweets by a Middle Eastern country (Internet World Stats 2011). 
One MP described how Twitter worked with surprising effect for some of her 
parliamentary colleagues. “I’ll tell you an example of how powerful [Twitter] is. 
A few days ago [one group] proposed a grilling for the Prime Minister for not 
sending troops to Bahrain [in response to recent protests]. At night was when the 
press release came out … in the following few hours, at night, there was a huge 
wave against this [proposed grilling] on Twitter … immediately, the next day, 
they changed their tune because they saw that was going to hurt them. it started in 
Twitter … I mean, how would you monitor public opinion that quickly if it wasn’t 
on Twitter?” Like many older sophisticates, the MPs she described were quickly 
realizing the benefits associated with new media, though some tentative users 
delegated their oversight to junior staffers. even though some actors were still 
coming to terms with the power of new media, it was clear that female politicians 
of all ages had embraced these technologies with zeal.
gender Differences
Female politicians relied heavily on digital media technologies to communicate 
their messages. despite an almost 30-year gap between the oldest and youngest 
of Kuwait’s female MPs, each successfully used new media technologies in their 
political campaigns and continued to do so once in office. Age, it seems, was 
less of a determining factor in their adoption of digital communications than with 
the men. all the females to serve in Kuwait’s parliament had personal websites 
outlining their key messages, personal profiles, and showing reposted media 
coverage about them. The sites included feedback mechanisms, volunteer signups, 
and other interactive features. each site also contained cross-media integration 
with Facebook accounts, YouTube videos, and email subscriptions. One of the 
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State Power 2.0110
female MPs responded this way when asked about new media. “Oh yeah, oh yeah, 
I have a website, you can see my long journey [leading to politics] and some of 
my speeches on YouTube, and my Twitter [account]. [These media helped me] to 
expand the number of people who see me and support me. From young people 
… to everyone who uses the internet, which is most the people in Kuwait these 
days.” She also described these platforms as mechanisms for getting around what 
she characterized as a biased media environment, though the oldest female MP 
had a slightly different view on the media scene. For her, new media were simply 
part of a robust and relatively free mediascape. “Yes. the new media is important. 
we use the media more and more now to express our ideas and our point of view, 
especially having more tV channels, private tV channels, the internet. we feel 
more free to criticize the political practices, whether for our fellow MPs or to 
criticize the government’s policies. So, having these open media channels, whether 
it’s TV channels, or also newspapers, or new media, I think politics is getting more 
active in Kuwait and more reachable to the ordinary men and women.” these 
women both saw digital media as useful tools for communicating their messages 
and reaching different segments of the population, even if they differed in the 
innovative credit they gave to new media technologies.
the campaign manager of a female MP explained their use of such technologies 
during the 2009 campaign. “So we had the website, we had Youtube, we had 
Facebook, we had Flickr, we had Twitter—although it had just started to pick up 
in Kuwait. We made really good use [of these media] and dedicated a lot of the 
campaign resources to new media and online ads.” He then described the critical 
importance of these media for sending targeted messages. “and it wasn’t just 
collecting members; we were actually utilizing [these technologies]: sending out 
messages, targeted messages … where we would ask people for a certain action 
and the response was amazing. We had email lists that we kept piling up throughout 
the campaign. even with SMS—although SMS i wouldn’t consider new media 
anymore—but the way we targeted people with it was new: geographically, 
demographically.” The benefits of this strategy were apparent in his candidate’s 
success, demonstrating that a host of new media technologies supplement and 
circumvent existing media channels. the general consistency with which all 
the female MPs used such media speaks to the power of digital technology to 
overcome some of the communicative obstacles faced by female politicians.
Conclusion
Like many parts of the world—and especially in the Middle East—political 
communication in Kuwait appears to be transitioning to a new era. this era is 
one in which the means of communication are continually evolving with some 
potent effects. i have focused the analysis primarily on means, since this is 
both the lynchpin of communicative strategies and an area where unique local 
adaptations are highly apparent. as well, communicative means provide insight 
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Communicating Politics in Kuwait 111
into Kuwait’s information infrastructure and the process of political debate in 
the country. The traditional mechanisms outlined in this chapter exemplified a 
robust set of historical pathways for reaching the public and remained the most 
important tools for communicating political intentions. digital media increasingly 
augmented these channels and created new venues for reaching the electorate. 
Kuwait’s political actors exhibited specific patterns as to who employed which 
media and to what effect. ideology may have determined the levels of access 
these groups had to traditional means, but it explained little about political actors’ 
motivations in using some communication channels over others. islamists and 
liberals were mainly divided along generational lines and female politicians of 
varied ages ardently embraced them as part of a larger strategy for circumventing 
traditionally gender-biased communicative obstacles.
in terms of infrastructure, the relative openness of Kuwait’s political and 
information environment allows significant space for groups to openly debate one 
another and contest specific forms of power with little fear of direct repression from 
the state. this is due, in part, to the fragmented nature of the opposition groups, 
which ensures that political battles are often between themselves and rarely pose 
a direct threat to the monarchy itself. as noted, the government also possesses 
distinct advantages over the traditional means of communication in comparison to 
the various political groups described here, and it has more resources at its disposal 
for employing digital means—this is in addition to its control over the larger 
media infrastructure through licensing and legal authority. So despite the innovate 
communication strategies of the political actors outlined in this chapter, there will 
always be an asymmetrical relationship between them and the state in terms of 
access, resources, and power. this is not to say such groups are powerless or their 
innovative forms of communication are irrelevant; in fact if one measures political 
success in terms of legislative victories and social mobilization, these groups have 
been very successful at times. However, in Kuwait, such victories represent only 
one realm where the state’s authority is explicitly affected. Structurally speaking, 
the state’s other modes of power—such as control over the economy, the police, 
military, and intelligence services, etc.—are not publicly contested. Put another 
way, the information infrastructure in Kuwait has done little to directly erode the 
state’s “hard power” and it is not likely to do so in the foreseeable future.
Perhaps as important as infrastructure, then, is the geopolitical and historical 
context. the regional uprisings have illustrated the fragility of some arab 
autocrats in the face of an angry and (at least temporarily) unified public. Each 
of the countries which underwent a recent political transition, or that is currently 
in a state of instability, has a unique set of conditions comprising its political 
and information environment. Furthermore, countries like Kuwait, have witnessed 
social mobilization and significant political debates both online and offline for 
several years now. in either case, information infrastructure is not a mono-causal 
variable capable of explaining authoritarian erosion any more than it can explain 
its persistence. However, when domestic political conditions, regional context, 
and information-communication technologies combine with human agency and 
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State Power 2.0112
a desire for change, then a potent recipe brews. this was obvious in the case 
of countries like Tunisia and Egypt where long-standing dictators where rapidly 
deposed, but has also been evident in countries like Kuwait where political 
change has been temperate in comparison. For example, when the arab uprisings 
achieved a sufficiently high level of momentum and attracted the world’s media 
attention, opposition MPs in Kuwait took their issues out of the parliament and 
on to the streets, organizing several street protests that eventually succeeded in 
the dismissal of Kuwait’s Prime Minister. Kuwait’s stateless citizens, called the 
Bidun, also capitalized on the moment to organize demonstrations and demand 
more political rights. in both cases, digital technologies played a critical role in 
terms of mobilizing protestors, declaring unified goals, documenting the protests 
and reactions to them, and then disseminating this information to the broader 
global community. as important as digital technologies were in each case, it was 
ultimately the regional context that made their actions successful.
Even when media-facilitated political change does happen on a significant 
scale, the arab uprisings have demonstrated that such change is only one of the 
many steps necessary toward creating more accountable forms of governance and 
eroding authoritarianism. If and when such a difficult first step is accomplished, 
there are still no guarantees that the resulting direction will continue on a path 
toward democracy or even greater liberalization. in Kuwait, digital media are 
playing a critical role in the country’s political debates, but for the foreseeable 
future it is still a supporting role alongside conventional and provincial forms 
of media. despite the innovations of gendered and generational political actors, 
Kuwait, like much of the world, is still reliant on traditional mass media for 
reaching the broadest audiences and attempting to persuade political behavior. 
this is an especially point for the broader arab Middle east where access to 
technology, literacy limits, economic disparities, ineffectual educational, political 
indoctrination, and a history of oppression are rampant. Therefore, media like 
tV continue to be paramount to regional politics. in assessing the political 
communication used by opposition groups within Kuwait, it can be concluded 
that the state’s hard p wer is little eroded. even with the introduction of new 
communication technologies being adapted to the local context, the likelihood 
that a more robust and free information infrastructure by itself will trigger further 
democratization is unlikely; a statement that I would argue is applicable well 
beyond the national and regional context described here. Such conditions can, 
however, open up new pathways that are necessary, if not sufficient, for political 
change. Based on countries like Kuwait, it can be surmised that communication 
technologies are not enough to guarantee political transformation in the region, 
but certainly political change in this part of the world will increasingly be reliant 
upon them.
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Chapter 9  
Social Media and Soft Political  
Change in Morocco 
Mohammed ibahrine
during the “third wave” of democratization around the world in 1990s, the internet 
did not figure prominently. This has changed in the context of rapid digitalization 
since late 2010, especially in countries where authoritarian political structures 
and traditional cultural patterns still predominate. in the arab region, social 
movements, dissidents and activists adopted social media, following the example 
of the revolutions in Iran (small media) and Eastern Europe (Samizdat) to trigger 
the long-awaited “fourth wave” of democratization. after his accession in 1999, 
Morocco’s Mohammed Vi initiated a “new concept of authority” that promised 
a free press, the respect of human rights and individual freedom. the post-
Hassan ii Morocco has been more democratic in form and substance. However, 
many authoritarian features have re-emerged as their cultural and institutional 
foundations turn out to be more resilient.
to understand contemporary Moroccan politics, analysts must focus on the 
effects of the emerging digital communication technologies. the thesis of this 
chapter is that digital media constitute a new site of power configuration in 
Morocco. the crucial moment of power construction is meanwhile decisively 
determined by the control of the pipelines of images and messages along with 
extensive formal and non-formal networks of distribution. Communication power, 
in the form of the ability to create and disseminate information, has been given to 
relatively powerless segments of society through the use of digital technologies 
(Castells 2009).
this chapter provides insight into islamists’ digital communication strategies 
by investigating the tactics of informing, interacting, mobilizing, recruiting and 
networking with their audiences, members and constituencies. By Islamists, I 
mean organizations that seek political power by using Islamic religious discourse 
and reference. the chapter also examines how and why islamists have adopted 
these digital technologies to mediate, edit and frame their political discourses. in 
countries where the authoritarian grip over the channels of political communication 
is tight, Islamists have turned to digital platforms as an efficient tool for creating 
and distributing political messages to targeted audiences, especially to younger 
supporters, and for mobilizing followers and supporters for demonstrations. what 
is striking about Moroccan Islamists is that they are well integrated in the political 
field and system by publicly distancing themselves from political violence and by 
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State Power 2.0114
participating in the parliamentary elections since 1998. Secondly they were among 
the first Islamists in the Arab region to adopt and adapt their communication 
strategies to the digital environments.
the chapter also examines the recent use of social media and digital platforms 
by dissidents, activists and social groups other than the islamist. these groups 
are getting their inspiration from islamists application of digital platforms. while 
islamists are creatively capitalizing on the decentralizing effects of the internet 
for the quick dispersion of political information into all directions regardless of 
the authoritarian and highly hierarchical control of the information, the Moroccan 
regime was facing serious challenge to understand to how to control the explosion 
of the digital free flow of information and keep its tight grip, control and monopoly 
of the media landscape. the chapter concludes that the ascension of Moroccan 
islamist power in 2012 gave credit to the information and communication 
technologies in eroding the origins of Moroccan authoritarianism.
Islamist movements as “resistance Identity” and  
“Project Identity” movements
The concept of “identity of resistance” is particularly useful in providing a first 
framework for analysis of political collective action in the digital age and then 
in understanding the ongoing transformation in the networked public sphere and 
in the hierarchy of political power in Morocco. an appropriate starting point for 
interpreting the implications that the use of the internet by islamist movements 
have for politics in Morocco is Manuel Castells’s suggestion that “the rise of 
the network society calls into question the process of construction of identity” 
(Castells 1997: 11). Castells himself applies this theoretical assumption on 
Islamist movements. He notes: “The search for meaning takes place then in the 
reconstruction of defensive identities around communal principles” (Castells 
1997: 11). He goes on to point that: “In the network society, project identity, if 
it develops at all, grows from communal resistance.” the Castellian argument 
is that cultural battles are the power battles of the information age. He identifies 
power as a “battle around cultural codes, symbols, which relate political and 
social actors, institutions and cultural movements, through religious leaders and 
symbols” (Castells 1998: 348). Castells argued that Islamists are engaged in a 
serious battle for the reconstruction of cultural identity. to win the hearts and 
minds of their target audiences, islamists realized the strategic importance of 
digital and direct communication channels. Similarly, cultural forces armed with 
digital political communication strategies can produce, legitimate and implement 
political contents. Islamist movements in Morocco “seek the transformation of 
the overall social structure” (Castells 2004: 8).
the use and role of the internet in recent Moroccan political transformation 
is to be understood in the context of the ongoing conflict between the Moroccan 
regime and social movements, especially islamists. Before the arrival of the 
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internet, islamist movements in Morocco did not use digital platforms and social 
media but small media first to spread their messages to their target audiences 
through extensive informal networks in mosques and souks and secondly to 
overcome systematic censorship. the iranian revolution can be regarded as a role 
model with regard to the impact of small media on political change. with the 
publication of “Small Media Big revolution” in 1994 by Sreberny-Mohammadi 
and Mohammadi, small media have become a serious agent for political revolution. 
By small media, i mean cassette tapes, photocopies, tape recorders, and telephone 
usage (Sreberny-Mohammadi and Mohammadi 1994). The distribution of 
audiocassettes with religious sermons of ayatollah Khomeini in the late 1970s 
contributed to the fragmentation of political as well as the cultural authority of 
the Shah’s regime. the iranian revolution of 1979 has illustrated the particular 
impact of audiotapes at spreading the messages of ayatollah Khomeini and the 
importance played by small media in fostering political and religious discontent, 
thus triggering radical political change.
eastern europe is another region where small media in the form of Samizdat 
triggered great political and societal transformations the late 1990s. Samizdat, 
a russian word, refers to privately and clandestinely printed and distributed in 
contrast to the state owned printing and distributing channels (Joo 2004: 572). 
Citizens of these countries were unable to publish because of the state rigid rules 
of control and censorship. By samizdatising, they typed their work and then passed 
the copies to other people in the samizdat network. A successful samizdat should 
have a powerful appeal to snowball through many regions, networks and audiences 
and spread the voices of freedom (Feldbrugge 1975: 5). While it originated in 
literary circles, samizdat was designed to convey a clear political message that 
defied the Stalinist status quo (Joo 2004: 572). Vladimir Bukovsky, a leading 
member of the russian dissident movement of the late 1980s caught the essential 
kernel of the context and concept when he said: “I myself create it, edit it, censor 
it, publish it, distribute it, and … get imprisoned for it” (Bukovsky 2012). The 
inherent idea on which Samizdat relied is self-publishing. Passing along copies by 
hand depended on the intensive informal communication networks, which were of 
central significance for the functionality of this type of media activism. Dissidents 
and activists produced their documents and tracts and passed them from reader to 
reader to avoid the state tight censorship.
the French Political islam expert, Gilles Kepel demonstrated the extent to which 
islamist preachers, activists and groups exploit communication channels for their 
political goals and objectives. He showed the role of cassette recordings of the sheikh 
Abdal-Hamid Kishk’s sermons in circulating Islam, thus creating a mass following 
for Islamist movements (Kepel 1984). The Egyptian and famously charismatic 
Sheikh Kishk popularized the teachings and tenets of Islam through his cassettes, 
which still echo in the population not only in Cairo’s streets but also throughout 
the arab and islamic world. islamists around the world realized the usefulness and 
effectiveness of cassettes as a political mass communication medium and started to 
follow suit. Moroccan islamists operate with similar media strategies.
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in Morocco, islamist movements were also pioneers in the use of small media. 
Situated outside the strict regime’s control, small media provided during the last 
third of the twentieth century, the much-needed means of political communication 
for political opponents, activists and preachers, who have been blocked off by rigid 
and restrictive media policies since the independence in 1956. Given the high rate of 
illiteracy, it were especially audiotapes, that easily reached the illiterate population 
and functioned as a resource of political, religious and cultural resistance. By dint 
of these alternative small media tools, Moroccan islamist movements created for 
themselves a place in the “communication sphere” to influence the Moroccan 
public opinion in favor of islamist perspectives. as stated above, since the late 
1970s and early 1980s islamist movements actively engaged in communicating 
with Moroccans to introduce their messages in to social and political circulation. 
Since they had been strictly barred from accessing the mainstream mass media, 
they resorted to small media, including books, private published magazines 
and audio and videotapes to disseminate their religious sermons and political 
information.
Digital Platforms and Islamization of Public sphere
over the last 50 years, Moroccan contemporary politics has been shaped by two 
conflicting ideologies, namely secularism and Islam The cultural and political 
fragmentation in Morocco accounts for the pressing need of an articulation of 
identity in terms of “identity of resistance.” Islamist movements’ undertakings 
with respect to identities involve antagonism. their identity-building preserving 
antagonism aims at enhancing islamic identity, which they perceive not just as 
different from that promulgated by the regime, but threatened by it. Social and 
economic as well as religious themes are the site of political antagonism. the 
internet’s arrival was heralded as an important force in the Moroccan political life. 
the potential power of the internet did not go unnoticed by islamist movements. 
Given the fact that islamist movements in Morocco had no direct access to the 
public sphere by means of mass media, the importance of the internet has grown 
rapidly. armed with the belief in the strategic importance and high utility of the 
internet, both actual and potential, al-adl wal-ihsan, the leading islamist political 
organization in Morocco, set up a variety of websites beginning in the year 2000.
the internet gained momentum for islamist movements in Morocco on 
28 January 2000, when al-adl wal-ihsan, launched a website to release a 
memorandum, a voluminous and a critical letter, entitled “to whom it Concerns” 
translated in many european languages. after the regime banned the private 
newspapers, which published the full text of the memorandum, al-adl wal-ihsan 
went online and published the memorandum. it also launched other websites 
that contained a range of information concerning its religious writings, cultural 
activities and political discourses. according to alexa.com, in 2012, al-adl wal-
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Social Media and Soft Political Change in Morocco 117
Ihsan website is ranked 236th in Morocco, making it the most browsed political 
website in Morocco (Ben Moussa 2011: 76).
among the most important cases of political use of the internet in Morocco 
was that of nadia Yassine, the daughter of the leader of the most famous political 
opponent of the Moroccan regime. She launched a website in arabic, english 
and French containing detailed information about her life, ideas, and activities 
(including audio clips of her public lectures—for example one given at the 
University of California at Berkeley). Al-Adala Wat-Tanmiya party also set up an 
array of websites with different objectives and target audiences: one website for 
the party, another for the election campaign, and also for the newspaper at-tajdid, 
the central organ of the Party of Justice and Development (PJD).
The political, social and religious discourse reflected in dozens of Islamist 
movements’ websites challenged traditional identifications of Moroccan identity. 
The process of identification took place when the websites exposed unjust 
situations and renew group commitments. in 2002, islamists websites covered the 
second aqsa intifada in a way to incite organized collective political action by 
invoking an injustice frame that highlighted moral indignation and traces problems 
to specific actors. At the same time, Al-Adala Wat-Tanmiya and Al-Adl Wal-Ihsan 
have been proven able to transmit large amounts of political and religious content 
via their digital platforms. the volume and speed at which they transmitted 
political information about the election of 2002, the second aqsa intifada, and al-
Mudawana means that they have continually improved their strategies and tactics 
in informing, communicating and campaigning.
Political, social, religious and economic issues were deconstructed, 
reconstructed and discussed through the digital presence of islamists (Ben Moussa 
2011). The websites became new platforms where conflictual polarizations 
of the pre-existing identity are played out anew. al-adl wal-ihsan succeeded 
to integrate the websites with an overall communication plan (especially the 
use of email and email lists). The use of Internet added to the other forms of 
political communication. Since the internet became popular, especially for young 
Moroccans to communicate, Islamists benefited greatly from this trend in matters 
of the political communication. on March 12, 2000, islamists mobilized an 
estimated 500,000 participants to demonstrate and during the second aqsa intifada 
demonstration on april 7th, 2002, they mobilized about one million. on March 
12, 2000 an estimated 40,000 supporters of the social reforms demonstrated in 
rabat, the administration capital of Morocco. islamist movements managed to 
mobilize 500,000 participants in Casablanca. this massive counter-demonstration 
by islamist had put the regime and the then socialist-led government in a defensive 
position.
Many scholars argued that the new technologies of communication would 
allow religious and political identities to flourish (Eickelman and Anderson 1999). 
Eickelman and Anderson pointed out that “a proliferation of media and means of 
communication multiplied the possibilities for creating communities and networks 
among them, dissolving prior barriers of space and distance and opening new 
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State Power 2.0118
grounds for interaction and mutual recognition” (1999: 3). The potentialities of 
the political use of the internet related not only to the number of people it could 
reach but to its impact on select and specific audiences.
in the case of al-adl wal-ihsan, the access to print media was at best 
extremely limited, censored, and controlled and at worst non-existent. in 1973 
Yassine wrote an open letter Al-Islam Au At-Tufan: Risala Maftuha Ila Malik Al-
Maghrib (lslam or the Deluge) and sent it to the king. Following the samizdat 
tactics, Yassine himself created it, edited it, censored it, published it, distributed 
it, and was imprisoned for it. Yassine’s nasiha (morally religious advice) angered 
the king, who reacted by suppressing the text. It was widely known that to be 
in possession of the letter was punishable in Morocco so that the circulation of 
such material could be controlled. The regime successfully managed to stifle the 
circulation of the letter and thus minimized its effects on Moroccans. while the 
Nasiha originated in religious circles, Nasiha like the samizdat was designed to 
convey a clear political message that defied the authoritarianism of the Moroccan 
political regime.
In 2000, Yassine sent a new nasiha to the new king. The regime again quickly 
attempted to censor the circulation of this letter. Yassine published his memorandum 
in many independent newspapers, a new communication channel that have offered 
the islamists a new chance to voice their concerns. Generally, Moroccan media 
have a negative orientation towards Islamist movements. The official media as 
well as the socialist and the liberal party press have never granted the islamists a 
space to articulate their political and religious accounts. Further, they negatively 
portray the islamists and present them pejoratively as “barbus” or “mouvance.” 
The Internet leveled the field and offered the Islamists a direct channel to present 
their discourse directly to Moroccans without being reedited, misrepresented and 
gated. Islamists targeted specifically highly educated Moroccans such as students 
and professionals. This specific group of people was among the highest users of 
the internet and is politically engaged in cyberspace. digital platforms triggered 
a renaissance of the watchdog function and paved the way again for it to act as 
the fourth estate in controlling the misconduct of the political regime. islamist 
movements in Morocco purposively spread unmediated literature for political 
purposes. one of the strengths of their websites had not been the content alone but 
the richness in terms of variations and organization of information. For Graham 
Meikle, the success of digital activists demands soft skills not in the state-of-the-
art design or animation, but in information management and provision (Meikle 
2002: 78). The provision of information is a crucial element of the development 
of activist politics. islamist movements in virtual spaces had increasingly become 
more efficient in publishing and distributing religious and political information 
and discourse.
a public space is in the process of being formed around the intersection of 
political, social and religious issues. with these topics, islamists aim at appealing 
primarily to middle-class professionals such as educators, engineers, doctors 
and administrators. these sets of issues attract youthful educated audiences 
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and thus fit the information-seeking behavior of young Moroccans. Islamist 
movements framed their verbal and visual messages on the internet to get and 
hold the attention of their target audiences and thus have a desired communication 
impact. islamists’ websites have been used successfully in promoting a coherent, 
collective assessment of what these events mean within the overall process of 
political change. A traditional concept of authority has come under attack, and has 
been shaken in many forms. Consequently, political power has become a contested 
domain, rather than an accepted reality. the growth of religiously based political 
identities is paralleled with a decrease of nationally based political identities. the 
internalization of these religious messages via new electronic media has increased 
the salience of islamic and pan-arab political identities at the expense of national 
identities (Nisbet and Myers 2010).
the internet and digital platforms greatly contributed to the creation of 
an Islamized form of public space beyond the official broadcast media and 
mainstream print media. The dynamic shift of the content from offline to online 
has caused a change in the overall structure of Moroccan public sphere in favor 
of islamic discourses. the changes in public sphere towards more opening and 
participation are contingent upon change in the communication strategies of 
islamist movements. the increasingly assertive autonomy of islamists by dint of 
the new digital media platforms brought into the open a new understanding of how 
these movements regularly circulated their religious tracts and material. one of 
the most significant consequences of the use of the Internet by Islamists has been 
the creation of mediated culturally and religiously based networks of identities and 
collective belonging.
The recent parliamentary elections of 2012 have led to the creation of the first 
ever elected islamist-led government in modern Morocco’s history. the PJd, a 
moderate islamist party won 107 out of 395 seats in the parliament, 27.1 percent 
of the seats, a record victory for the PJd. this election was free and fair and the 
voter turnout was up from 37 percent in the last elections to 45 percent. the Justice 
and Development Party (PJD) led by Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane formed 
a coalition government with the Istiqlal Party (IP), National Popular Movement 
(MNP) and the Progress and Socialism Party (PPS). Many observers interpreted 
the win as a result of the arab Spring’s calls for political change, and the PJd’s not 
yet tarnished reputation by the corruption scandals and political maladroitness so 
commonly associated with the other established parties.
Youth engagement and Digital activism
in Morocco, internet access was initially limited to social, educated and urban 
elites, but since 2010, the internet has become the communication platform 
preferred by Moroccan youth. Forums, blogs, wikis, and YouTube videos are in 
vogue. Young people started to generate their own media contents, practicing 
new kinds of journalism and becoming “citizen amateurish journalists.” Blogs, 
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State Power 2.0120
Forums, and social websites are contributing to the development of the media in 
Morocco; citizens increasingly use it as a samizdat-platform for their news and 
views. also, dissidents and activists are capitalizing on these new digital media 
because they have learned from the islamists’ best practices in the application of 
digital communication strategies and tactics. they saw how creative, aggressive 
and effective islamists used digital media over the last decade. Civil society groups 
and new social movements, including feminists are using social media to inform, 
mobilize, campaign, recruit, and build coalitions.
Considering that youth unemployment in Morocco has grown over the last 
few years, because of the exogenous and endogenous conditions, recent estimates 
suggest that 41 percent among Moroccans aged 15–24 are unemployed. In 
response to the protests of 2011, the new Constitution stated the creation of the 
Youth Council. The Ministry of Youth and Sports has been working in designing 
and developing proposals for an effective implementation of this council. the goal 
of this Youth Council is to engage young Moroccans in participating in the process 
of decision-making. The top issue on the agenda of the Youth Council is youth 
unemployment. the access to higher education has contributed to the emergence 
of better-educated youth who is more responsible and more active politically. 
with the help of mass media and social media, these young Moroccans started to 
organize themselves for collective civic and political action.
the recent use of social media by Moroccan activists and dissidents triggered 
a revival of the watchdog function of the media and paved the way for it to act 
as a fourth estate or even fifth estate (Dutton 2009) in monitoring political abuses 
by the regime. In summer 2008, an amateur cameraman filmed traffic police 
taking bribes from drivers. The so-called Targuist Sniper video was uploaded on 
the video-sharing website Youtube, where it was widely viewed. this led to a 
police investigation and the subsequent arrest of the police officers involved. This 
episode raised cyber-activism against routine corruption to a new level, setting 
an example that was followed in other cities. in the historical context of the arab 
Revolutions, Morocco has been witnessing significant political transformations. 
triggered and inspired by the uprisings in the two north african countries, tunisia 
and Egypt, a protest movement known as the February 20 Movement held rallies 
and marches throughout the country during 2011 to demand democratic reforms, 
a parliamentary monarchy, social justice, the end of absolutism, and the abolition 
of corruption. the triggering demonstration occurred on February 20, 2011. the 
February 20 dissidents and activists adopted the internet to organize and mobile 
protesters. according to Bashir Hazzam, a Moroccan blogger, blogging “enables 
people to publish their ideas easily, without control and for free.”
the ideal type of a modern protester in Morocco is Mouad Belghouat, who 
is a rapper and hip-hop artist, anti-monarchist and key figure in the February 20 
Movement. Belghouat is known as “Lhaqed” (The Spiteful) and he was famous 
for his parodies of royal speeches and the authorities. He also popularized the 
slogan: “live long the People.” this slogan was set to compete with the national 
slogan, “Live Long the King.” This is the first time in Moroccan contemporary 
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political history that people shout, “live long the People.” one of his titles 
modified the Moroccan motto in the end of the national anthem “Allah, Al Watan, 
the king” to “Allah, Al Watan, liberty.” Belghouat was very active in the Moroccan 
blogosphere, using his YouTube channel to upload YouTube video-clips like the 
famous “Kilab Ed-Dowla” (Dogs of the State). Equally revolutionary are his 
popular songs, which deplore injustice and inequality. they harshly criticized 
the king and the ministers. Some big families that are related traditionally to 
the palace are also targets of his satirical parodies. in September 2011, he was 
arrested while distributing leaflets and protesting and sentenced to one year in 
prison. after public protests over his incarceration, his sentence was reduced to 
four months. Supporters accomplished this by creating a Facebook group with 
thousands of members who demanded the liberation of the Spiteful. they called 
for demonstrations and most protesters wore t-shirts that read “Free the Spiteful,” 
and “we are all Spiteful.” His arrest attracted national and international media 
coverage. the New York Times described the whole situation a “banal enough 
affair.”
dissidents and human rights activists doubted the genuineness of the charges 
advanced by the regime. in the same vein, yet more emotional, his mother 
voiced in a Youtube video her anger and ascribed his arrest to his political 
engagement and digital activism. in the context of the arab Spring, the February 
20 Movement accumulated strong formal and non-formal networks. During its 
consecutive demonstrations in the streets and squares throughout the country, 
the February 20 Movement had posters with slogans that targeted the rampant 
corruption in Moroccan public institutions, and particularly public broadcasting. 
digital platforms offer an increasingly important addition, since every person can 
turn every digital device into a broadcasting or narrowcasting space. Moroccan 
social media users more and more carried out the role of grassroots reporter, fact-
checker and critics of the traditional media coverage of events. Thus Internet users 
have grown from observers to commentators, and sometimes even shapers and 
producers of events.
during the recent arab Spring protests, the Moroccan movement was 
fractious yet it made one great contribution to political reform in Morocco. the 
triggering demonstration occurred on February 20, 2011. A few weeks later, the 
monarch Mohamed Vi responded by announcing and introducing constitutional 
reforms. in his “historic” speech of on March 9, 2011, the Monarch Mohammed 
Vi demonstrated a political will to transform his monarchy from an “executive 
monarchy” to a constitutional monarchy. For the first time in Moroccan, a new 
constitution was drafted by Moroccans and was approved by a referendum by 
more than 95 percent of voters. in the context of the arab Spring, which was 
characterized by hectic political instability, digital activism has gained momentum 
and shaped political outcomes. the demonstrations organized and coordinated by 
the February 20 Movement with the help of social media made the Moroccan regime 
respond to the events in a top-down approach. this time, the regime understood 
that the internet is a powerful political communication medium that empowers 
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civil society groups and thus undermines the entrenched authoritarianism of the 
Moroccan regime.
regime reaction to Digital activism
Morocco has a long tradition of offline surveillance and suppression of political 
opponents. the regime has always attempted, with the help of several strategies, 
to re-center the distribution of information and narrow channels of the national 
information system. it did not, however, fully realize the power of an internet-
enabled civil society. as demonstrated in the case of Al-Adl Wal-Ihsan, the regime 
apparatus lacked imagination in how to respond to the new situation, where digital 
platforms were used in lieu of print media. While the regime took active and quick 
measures to sensor the print media, it remains passive and idle when it came to the 
publication of the same document on the internet.
the regime passivity in matters of digital censorship continued, the Moroccan 
regime has not attempted to disconnect Internet choke points or mobile phone 
systems. Remarkably enough, the regime passivity went along with the issuing a 
few restrictive legal censorship mechanism such as the 2002 Press Code, the 2004 
audiovisual Communication law, and the 2003 anti-terrorism Bill as a legal 
framework for regulating media contents and for news delivery on the Internet 
and mobile platforms. For instance, the anti-terrorism Bill addresses the legal 
liability for internet content. the legal liability rests with the author, the site, and 
the Internet Service Provider (ISP). The three ISPs are Maroc Telecom, Medi 
telecom, and wana. Moroccan iSPs have the obligation (via the anti-terrorism 
Act) to screen and filter the contents on the Internet and must block infringing 
contents when aware of them. they bear joint liability with the internet site that 
must also filter and screen contents posted on their sites. The site owners are also 
legally liable for internet content. For example, if one user posts a comment on a 
newspaper site, and if the comment is deemed a threat to national security, both the 
author and the site are legally liable.
there are several explanations for the regime’s reluctance when it comes to 
internet censorship. one is that the Moroccan regime is, possibly, cognizant of 
the lasting economic consequences and losses that are closely intertwined with 
a temporarily shut down of telecommunications networks. The economic logic 
might be so powerful and pervasive as to make the regime enact to opt for 
interrupting the internet. another reason might be the underestimation of the 
political communication dimension of the internet. the Moroccan regime failed 
to realize the interactive and networking potentials that the Internet offers to its 
users. the third explanation is that the regime did not perceive the internet as a 
mass communication medium and wrongly thought that it was used exclusively 
by the Moroccan elites.
digital censorship has gradually gained the regime’s attention under the 
combined impact of the arab revolutions and the growing mobilization of the 
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Social Media and Soft Political Change in Morocco 123
Moroccan civil society. over the last two years, internet censorship has become 
a more frequent practice and a more common feature. as Howard, agarwal, 
and Hussain conclusively point out, the literature on digital censorship makes 
a distinction between four typically different political systems and regimes 
including democracies, emerging democracies, authoritarian regimes and fragile 
states (2011). Despite the globalization of digital censorship along the line with its 
rising rates in all four types, authoritarian regimes are more aggressive than other 
types of regimes (Howard, Agarwal, and Hussain 2011: 6). One can also observe 
that the less democratized the country, the greater the impact of digital censorship 
on civil society actors.
However, armed with digital devices, Moroccan islamists are transforming the 
cultural foundations of politics and authority by contesting the hegemonic (and 
official) interpretations of religious discourses as well as the relation between 
the triad of religion, authority and politics. Changes in digital communication 
technologies have a significant influence in a number of political communication 
areas. The new era of digital political communication is marked by an increasing 
flow of political information, which has made political actors rethink their 
communication strategies and tactics to react to every issue in real time, to 
predict the direction, intensity, and form of that influence. The Internet has 
transformed the form and function of the political communication strategies of 
islamists, by enabling them to deliver their political and religious message without 
being censored by the regime’s administrative mechanisms. in the digital age, 
islamists are using digital platforms to continue their management of information, 
communication, networking and relationship with their constituents. Islamists 
have managed to turn their emailing lists and online forums among other digital 
platforms into the most vibrant digital communities.
Since 1927, Time Magazine used to select the Man of the Year. this tradition 
has made its impact in 2006 and 2011 respectively. in 2006, Time selected as the 
Man of the Year “You” and in 2011, the “Protester.” Both “You” and “Protester’ 
reflected the zeitgeist of the time, because it shifted the focus from the powerful 
elite to virtually mobilized mobs and networked masses. The constitution of 2011 
had created a democratic political system that will make Morocco different. When 
the King appointed the islamist Ben Kirane as Prime Minster, he decidedly acted 
in the spirit of the new constitution and broke with the authoritarian tradition. 
He made it clear that Morocco’s incremental change is uniquely exceptional in 
the Arab region. Abdelilah Benkirane regarded what happened in Morocco as a 
“peaceful revolution.” Regional experts, like Kenneth Pollack, Director of the 
Saban Center for Middle east Policy, also referred to the recent changes in the 
Moroccan political field as a ‘quiet revolution.’ However, contrary to optimistic 
predictions, the “Arab Awakening” has turned into an “Islamic Awakening.” The 
advance of the well-organized islamists in electoral processes in tunisia, Morocco 
and Egypt has marked a “religious turn” in politics—and in interesting ways, it is 
a digitally-enabled one.
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Chapter 10  
leninist lapdogs to Bothersome  
Bloggers in Vietnam
Catherine McKinley and anya Schiffrin 
this chapter investigates how a vibrant blogging community developed in 
Vietnam over the last decade, and explains who the bloggers are and what they 
write about. It also discusses why Vietnam now wishes to control the flow of 
information through the blogosphere, what information it wants to control, and 
how it tries to do so. drawing on a close analysis of Vietnamese-language blogs 
as well as interviews, the chapter includes a number of case studies to illustrate 
the points it makes.
in Vietnam, as in many other closed societies, the internet has brought about 
rapid transformation. although the Vietnamese government has always been 
sensitive to public opinion, the internet has forced it to become more immediately 
responsive to public sentiment and accountable in new ways. the rapid rise of new 
technology has showed the ruling Communist Party that it can no longer control 
how information is disseminated and even less how it is perceived publicly. this 
is a dramatic change for a system in which the media was tightly controlled and 
expected to follow the party line.
Since Vietnam began a period of economic reforms (known as “doi moi”) in 
1986, the ruling Communist Party has emphasized rapid economic growth. as part 
of the reform process that opened up Vietnam to the world economy, the government 
allowed private enterprise to grow, signed international trade agreements, opened 
a stock exchange, let some unprofitable state-owned enterprises fail and closed 
down or merged some of its unprofitable banks. The result was unprecedented 
GDP growth, which from 1992 to 2008 was generally between 8–10 percent a 
year, according to the World Bank. The rate of poverty fell to 14.5 percent of the 
population in 2008 from 58 percent of the population in 1993 while per capita 
income soared to $1,130 by the end of 2010 compared to below $100 in 1986. not 
only was this growth essential for what was a poor country ravaged by decades 
of war, but delivering economic growth became the justification for the Party’s 
existence (Elliot 2012, Thayer 2009). Vietnam’s leadership aimed at forging a 
Singapore-type bargain in which increasing standards of living made up for the lack 
of free expression and human rights. The system worked relatively well: Vietnam 
kept growing, standards of living kept rising and while the government has been 
repeatedly criticized for human rights violations, the country was relatively stable 
and secure.
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State Power 2.0126
But a recent slowdown in economic growth, coupled with the development 
of an urban middle class that is willing to question its government’s motives and 
actions, has begun to change all that. Growth in 2011 was 5.89 percent and in 2012 
it is expected to fall to around or below 5 percent (although it may pick up again 
after that). In addition, high inflation, weakening exports, concerns over currency 
stability, and the exposure of massive debts at large state-owned companies that 
are damaging the nation’s sovereign credibility are raising concerns that the 
government is mismanaging the economy and allowing corruption and nepotism 
to thrive while ordinary people struggle. The unspoken deal, firm for so long, is 
showing signs of strain and “the party probably recognizes that it is now more 
vulnerable than at any point in the last decade,” according to the associated Press.
it is within this context that the internet is becoming an ever-more powerful 
tool used by many from small businesses to anti-government bloggers and social 
networkers. Bloggers weigh in on policy matters and criticize corruption, land 
seizures, and environmental problems. they force the government to respond to 
localized complaints while still focusing on overall economic growth, and the 
momentum generated by the Internet means the Party has to respond quickly, 
something it is not accustomed to doing. the amount of information and opinion 
available online is new to this closed and secretive society and problems can no 
longer be sealed off and dealt with quietly behind closed doors as in the past. 
Hanoi’s leaders are between a rock and a hard place. They want to stifle online 
dissent and deal with controversy privately but they know they must support the 
growth of a communication tool so vital to the economy.
Historical Background
in order to understand what a shift this move to public discussion has been for 
the Party, it is helpful to look back at how information was managed before the 
internet. as in many colonized countries, the media played an important role in the 
struggle for independence (Marr 1981) and newspapers were used both to provide 
information about the cause and to mobilize support for the anti-colonialist 
movement (Peycam 2012).
the Communist Party of Vietnam which came to power in the north of the 
country in 1954 and in the South in 1975 was influenced by the Leninist model 
of media control. Throughout the Vietnam War, the Party had a network of 
reporters and photographers who produced pictures and articles about the war 
for supporters overseas (Schiffrin 2002) and for domestic consumption. Once the 
Communist Party of Vietnam took control of the country it changed the structure 
of the media as well. there were no private media houses allowed and television, 
radio and newspapers were run by the government/Communist Party of Vietnam 
(Heng 1998). The Leninist approach was a top down approach in which party 
officials oversaw the coverage and made decisions as to what could be covered 
(Brooks 2000, McNair 1991). There were several enforcement mechanisms: 
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Leninist Lapdogs to Bothersome Bloggers in Vietnam 127
1) weekly news meetings in which news workers were told what they could cover; 
2) sporadic releases of news by government agencies; and 3) the appointment of 
Party members to oversee the organs. all of these control mechanisms remain in 
place and continue to guide news coverage by the official media (Crispin 2012).
as well as national newspapers published by the Communist Party (Nhan 
Dan) and the military (Quan Doi Nhan Dan), different government agencies and 
party organizations had their own publications. the quality, professionalism, 
frequency of publication and circulation varied widely but included magazines 
and newspapers published by the Police department, and then smaller agencies 
such as the customs office, the State Bank of Vietnam and so-called mass 
organizations such as youth organizations (which publish popular dailies like 
Tuoi Tre and Thanh Nien) Women’s Union, Farmer’s Union and Trade Unions 
(publisher of the daily Lao Dong). The publications were funded by direct 
government subsidies, subsidies provided by the management organizations and 
by mandatory subscriptions taken out by universities, state-owned enterprises and 
other government offices (Heng 1998). As in China, the Vietnamese government 
began scaling back financial support for media houses in the eighties and the 
media began publishing more sensationalistic and entertaining news in the hope of 
raising circulation (Heng 1998). The media also began to expose corruption (Heng 
1998, Heng 2003). From the turn of the current century, when Vietnam gave the 
official nod to private enterprises, corporate advertising has also been allowed and 
has played an increasingly important role on the financing of newspapers as state 
subsidies fall. the Press law of 1989 further opened up the media space. By the 
1990s, Vietnamese readers could find women’s magazines and home décor titles 
on newsstands in major cities. Thanks to widespread education, literacy rates are 
high in Vietnam with around 93 percent of the population classified as literate.
Their increasing financial independence from the state, coupled with the growth 
of a more demanding and complex urban readership, slowly both allowed and 
pushed some newspapers to break from the official mold and begin to cover stories 
that had not been provided by the official Vietnam News Agency and may not have 
received prior approval from censors, in particular stories about low-level official 
corruption.1 as in many other countries where television and radio often remain 
tightly under state control because of the expensive cost of setting up parallel 
structures (Djankov 2003), radio and television never made this change. By the 
2000s, the government responded to this change and began to officially endorse 
press coverage of corruption and other ‘social evils’ as part of an anti-Corruption 
campaign. it named the media as an anti-corruption tool of the state and tried to 
guide coverage and be seen to be addressing corruption within its apparatus. it 
1 Vietnam does not technically operate a system of pre-publication press censorship. 
However, the weekly meetings between government officials and editors in chief are a route 
through which instructions are shared regarding the types of stories that are deemed to be 
acceptable or unacceptable. editors are expected to ensure that coverage remains within 
these bounds. 
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State Power 2.0128
allowed foreign development partners to train local journalists in investigative 
reporting skills and slowly but surely gave news editors greater freedom to nudge 
against the glass ceiling that limits coverage of controversial issues, creating slow 
but constant pressure on censors (Mckinley 2008).
in 2008, this snail-pace reform of the media came to an abrupt end as a small 
number of papers began to point fingers at senior government officials, accusing 
them of corruption and nepotism and drawing the anger of powerful vested interests. 
two journalists were arrested and one jailed on charges of ‘abusing democratic 
freedoms’ and ‘propagating false information’ following their reportage of a 
case known as the Project Management Unit 18 (PMU18). Myriad others were 
questioned by police, who demanded to know their sources and made it clear that 
the editorial freedoms enjoyed until then were no longer on offer. The crackdown 
in the wake of PMU 18 coverage clarified for journalists that their new freedoms 
had been at the discretion of the Communist Party and could be withdrawn at 
any time. a door had been opened, showing what might be possible and allowing 
reporting staff and news editors to experience a degree of “free press,” and then 
closed again. at the time of writing, the post-PMu 18 media controls remain in 
place and many senior writers have either left the industry or complain that about 
the onerous restrictions. The brief opening had shown audiences that a new kind 
of news is possible, and piqued the interest of educated readers who questioned 
the news published by the Party organs. Journalists frustrated with the limits 
placed upon their professional activities responded to growing audience demand 
by moving online.
The Birth and reach of the Blogosphere
Vietnam joined the Internet in 1997, at first allowing only state-owned businesses 
and government ministries to use it but in 1999 opening the web up to the public. in 
2002, the government allowed the creation of up to 40 internet Service Providers 
(ISPs), up from only four previously. The growing competition reduced prices and 
made the internet more accessible with use of the internet growing by 30 percent/
year from 1997 to 2007, according to Thayer (Thayer 2007). Internet penetration 
by 2012 was estimated at around 34 percent of the population, according to figures 
by the Vietnam Internet Network Information Center.
early converts used email and online chats to communicate with family and 
friends overseas because “the post was slow and the telephone was expensive,” said 
a blogger in Ha noi. once online, people began to discover other online services, 
such as games, overseas news sites and blogs, but there was no Vietnamese-
language blogging platform and those who wrote their own blogs were dispersed 
among different overseas platforms (Blogspot, Wordpress, etc.). In 2004 Yahoo! 
responded to demand for Vietnamese services by launching a Vietnamese-language 
version of its 360° blogging platform. the platform attracted millions of users and 
facilitated creating an online community not seen before in Vietnam.
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Leninist Lapdogs to Bothersome Bloggers in Vietnam 129
Since then Vietnam’s blogosphere has grown to a thriving online community 
of several million people, with most of the growth taking place in less than a 
decade. While the majority of bloggers confine themselves to discussion of non-
controversial issues like friendship, fashion, gossip and shopping, a small but 
significant number blog about news and current affairs, often focusing particularly 
on issues like economic governance, policy, politics, and Sino-Vietnamese 
relations that the official media is unable to report effectively because of editorial 
controls imposed by the government.
The audience for these political blogs can be broken into four groups, the 
smallest of which is most directly influenced by what they read and the largest 
of which is usually only reached indirectly. the smallest group of readers is a 
relatively tight-knit “self-contained group” of fellow bloggers who regularly 
monitor each other’s posts. Broadening the reach of blogs is a second group: the 
family and friends of each blogger who read both for the blogs’ news value and 
to maintain ties of kinship and friendship. “My family, my friends, journalism 
students, people who see my by-line in the paper …,” said one journalist blogger 
listing her main readers. this group probably contains several million, often 
influential, people who are “30–60 years old, educated, frustrated, and want to 
share ideas,” added another.
they, in turn, forwards posts to a third group: their friends and contacts, who 
spread content more widely through a mostly urban and relatively young group of 
readers, particularly young professionals and urban students (some of whom may 
have returned from overseas study where they were exposed to other Vietnamese- 
and foreign-language blogs). These people will “jump in and out of favourite 
blogs … if there’s something new they will share it immediately,” said a retired 
journalist in Ha noi. the forth audience group is mainly reached indirectly, as 
urban readers take home the information they have read and discuss it with family 
members who are unlikely to access blogs themselves. “Although I don’t expect 
farmers and workers to read bl gs because they don’t know how to use (or have 
access to) computers, the population is very young and young people all over will 
begin to use the web. Then they’ll start talking to their parents and grandparents,” 
said one veteran blogger.
Because of their reach and because their authors tend to hail from the country’s 
intellectual and sometimes political elite, the few hundred political blogs discussed 
here are believed to have a disproportionately powerful influence over public 
opinion, which in turn influences policy. Writers include professionals such as 
writers, lawyers, doctors, teachers, and academics. “I think they blog because they 
used to write, and there are no (longer) any official outlets for their writing,” said 
a Vietnamese-american academic who follows the blogosphere inside Vietnam 
and maintains a popular blog himself. the largest sub group of professionals is 
thought to be journalists who “blog because they have access to news” they are no 
longer able to publish through the mainstream media, said a journalist in Ha noi. 
They upload news stories from official sources, provide personal comments and/
or content, or combine these activities.
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State Power 2.0130
The Official Response to Vietnam’s Growing civic Voices
as editorial controls over the state-owned media have tightened, blogs have played 
an increasingly important role in uncovering and disseminating information about 
corruption and other controversial issues that has no other route into the public 
domain. this has earned some bloggers a wide readership and considerable public 
respect, but also official ire. A series of arrests and the growing harassment of 
bloggers is evidence that Ha Noi wants to wrest control over information flows 
back from the blogosphere and into state hands. In a sign of how the repression of 
the internet has grown, Vietnam was included in “the 2012 list of the enemies of 
the internet” released by reporters without Borders. others include Burma, China, 
Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan 
which “combine often drastic content filtering with access restrictions, tracking 
of cyber-dissidents and online propaganda” (Reporters without Borders 2012). 
reporters without Borders also noted that after China, and iran, Vietnam now has 
the third largest number of bloggers in jail. Vietnam has been influenced by China 
for decades and followed a number of its economic policies. unsurprisingly, many 
believe China to be the role model followed by Vietnam’s government as it tries 
to control the blogosphere.
it wasn’t always this way. the government was initially slow to recognize 
the potential threat posed to information control by the unofficial online media, 
and for some years ignored it altogether. in an interview with a newspaper writer 
in the early 2000s, one senior official was confused when the writer asked him 
to comment on the impact of blogs on news flows: “He thought I meant ‘block 
calendars,’ he’d never heard of blogs,” the writer said.2 later, as blogs became 
better known and more widely read, the government began to monitor those written 
by Vietnamese living overseas but targeting readers inside the country. Some of 
the more scholarly blogs that commented on public policy were viewed as a useful 
resource. they were read regularly by senior ministers and their advisors, who 
saw them as windows on public opinion and sources of academic and scientific 
information that could be used to inform the policy making process. There is “not 
enough evidence to judge” how many of Vietnam’s leaders personally read blogs, 
said a blogger in Ha Noi, although he and other interviewees believe several key 
leaders either monitor or instruct their secretarial staff to monitor blogs they think 
may be opinion-forming and/or critical of the government: “They don’t speak 
about it but they do read blogs. i have personally printed some out and given 
(copies) to them,” said a newspaper executive in HCMC.
But several events in the mid 2000s soured this relationship. First, the rapid 
development of Yahoo!’s online community worried the government because 
it created a forum where people gathered without government approval or 
supervision. the creation of early news blogs made “bloggers realize they didn’t 
2 In Vietnamese, the word “blog” is pronounced the same as the word “block”—the 
name given to the kind of calendars that have a tear-off page for each new day. 
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Leninist Lapdogs to Bothersome Bloggers in Vietnam 131
have to own a newspaper to express their opinion,” said one blogger. in 2006, 
blogger Ha Kin, who worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, blogged about 
her experience organizing the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) 
forum held in Ha Noi. The blog was a personal view of an official event, and 
its publication demonstrated how information dissemination about such an event 
was no longer the exclusive domain of the official media. “She got up to 26,000 
hits a day, as much as a popular article on Vietnamnet,” said a second Ha noi 
blogger. in 2007 Co Gai do long blogged gossip about popular singer Phuong 
thanh and was promptly sued for damage to thanh’s reputation. the mainstream 
media, which had until then avoided coverage of thanh’s personal life because of 
strict editorial controls on such tabloid writing, received readers’ complaints that 
they were missing a story. Papers were forced to respond by picking up the story 
and covering the resulting lawsuit. this early demonstration of the blogosphere’s 
influence on the mainstream media showed “people who hadn’t blogged before 
the power of blogging … everyone wanted that notoriety,” the blogger added.
after building a following interested reading about celebrities, some bloggers 
upped the ante, using their sites to organize public demonstrations. anti-China 
protests in 2007 gained significant online coverage and organizational backing and 
became a rallying point for journalists who wished to support the demonstrators 
but were unable to do so via their state-owned news organizations: “Blogging 
became a political activity … in late 2007 the government realized that the 
blogging community could do something to threaten (it). There were many anti-
government blogs and personal attacks on top leaders,” one blogger recalled. 
These cases came shortly before the post-PMU18 crackdown on the mainstream 
media and increased the appeal of an alternative online outlet for mainstream 
media writers: “when journalists found they had an outlet to express their opinion 
without censorship they did it,” said a journalist who maintains her own blog.
what happened next is unclear: some interviewees believe that the government 
began to more closely monitor and attempt to control the blogosphere at the urging 
of the Chinese authorities, which were keen to suppress support for and news of 
anti-China demonstrations. Others believe a senior Vietnamese official who had 
come under attack by bloggers persuaded the Ministry of Culture and Information 
to issue regulations to curb blogging. Whatever the details, “officials are now quite 
aware of blogs,” which they increasingly view as unofficial news sites and wish to 
regulate like online newspapers, noted a blogger and journalist in Ha Noi.
a number of regulations to control blogs have been issued in recent years or are 
currently under discussion in draft form. in 2008, decree 97 on the “Management 
and use of internet Services and electronic information on the internet” was 
published. it formalized management of the internet under two ministries: the 
Ministry of information and Communication and the Ministry of Public Security. 
Prior to this, the Ministry of Posts and telecommunication had been responsible for 
technical management of the net, but there had been no comprehensive provision 
for the management of its content. in an early attempt to limit the publication of 
sensitive information online, article 6 of the decree prohibits acts including the 
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sharing of state secrets, opposing the state, and slandering or “hurting the prestige” 
of citizens (whether or not the information about that person or people is accurate). 
The decree also classifies Internet Service Providers as “Internet agents” and 
makes them responsible for monitoring content and user activity and reporting 
users in convention of Article 6. The decree clarifies that both the civil and penal 
codes might be used to punish infringement, making Internet use a potentially 
criminal act.
in 2010, a piece of lower-level legislation, Circular 14, was enacted to clarify 
some of the provisions of decree 97. it stated that one of the “unlawful acts” for 
which internet users might be punished was the “propagation of unlawful press.” 
Websites and social networks were told to store information about those who 
used/read them and to make this information available to the authorities when 
requested. Foreign service providers such as Yahoo! and Facebook, and blog hosts 
such as BlogSpot and Multiply—all of which are commonly used in Vietnam—
came under pressure to bring their servers onshore inside Vietnam. all refused.
the following year, in February 2011, decree 02 collated a number of media 
management rules, including one that clearly delineated between the official 
press and the unofficial online media, giving a degree of protection to the former 
but making it clear that these legal protections did not apply to the latter. Since 
then, a growing number of bloggers and online critics of the government have 
been arrested, harassed and jailed, mostly on charges of anti-State Propaganda, 
a vaguely worded criminal offense. in early 2012, a draft decree was published 
by the Ministry of information and Communication for comment by other 
government offices that, at the time of writing, remains in draft form. If published 
it will force offshore service providers to bring servers onshore to be overseen by 
the government and will make the use of pseudonyms and anonymous writing 
illegal.
Much of this legislation is unenforceable: For example, Yahoo! and Facebook 
both refused to consider bringing servers used by Vietnamese clients onshore and 
the government lacks the human and technological resources to enforce demands 
for information from ISPs (which themselves often lack the technology to shore 
the information demanded). But journalists and bloggers say the aim is not current 
enforcement. instead, the growing body of legislation is an arsenal the government 
plans to use over time to jail some dissenters and threaten others. the Criminal 
Code’s all-inclusive ‘anti-state propaganda’ clause regularly comes under fire 
from international press freedom organizations and foreign governments that 
are lobbying Vietnam to improve its press freedom record. the new regulations 
provide legal tools with which critics of the government can be punished: “the 
regulations make it possible for them to harass people” in the hope that intimidation 
will slow the publication of critical information on the internet, said one blogger.
to date there is little sign that these new laws are having the desired effect. in 
2012 the increasingly vocal online community began to talk openly about corruption 
and nepotism within the prime minister’s family, naming names and claiming to 
have access to high-level government information proving the prime minister’s 
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misdeeds. in response, in mid-September 2012 Prime Minister, nguyen tan dung 
issued an order banning state employees from reading or forwarding blogs that 
it said contained “slanderous, fabricated, distorted, and untruthful information 
(designed) to paint a gloomy picture of the country’s governing apparatus.” The 
order named three blogs: Quan Lam Bao (“Officials doing journalism”), Dan 
Lam Bao (“Citizen Journalism”), and Bien Dong (“East Sea”—the Vietnamese 
name for the South China Sea, where disputes with China over ownership of the 
potentially oil-rich Spratley and Parcel islands are a highly controversial news 
topic in Vietnam).
the order told the Ministry of information and Communication and the 
Ministry of Public Security to close the blogs, but an official in charge of media 
management within the public security ministry, who spoke on condition of 
anonymity, said his department lacks the technology to identify the compliers of 
these blogs, which are authored and edited anonymously. immediately following 
the order’s publication via Vietnam television’s main evening news program two 
of the blogs, Quan Lam Bao and Dan Lam Bao, posted notices on their sites saying 
they will continue to publish as usual: “nobody can shut our mouth or stop our 
freedom of expression … this is our mission, we will continue at any cost,” dan 
lam Bao told the associated Press. indeed, far from slowing readership, the prime 
minister’s order has piqued the publics’ interest in these controversial blogs and 
their readership rose significantly the day after the order was published as curious 
members of the public and state officials logged on the see what stories they 
cover. readership of dan lam Bao rose from 20,000 to 35,000 hits, according to 
statistics published by Google analytics and quoted by dan lam Bao.
The Growing Influence of Online Media on Government and Governance
Today the Vietnamese blogosphere is firmly entrenched and performs multiple 
roles. the presence of the blogosphere is boosting government accountability, 
providing not just an outlet for unhappiness with the system but also a place 
where conflicts can be mediated. An example of how the blogosphere has affected 
government accountability can be seen in the very different ways a series of 
disputes over land and corruption have been made public in the past two decades: 
the thai Binh protests of 1997, the Central Highlands protests of 2000, and the 
Ecoland Park protests of 2012. As is true of many developing countries, disputes 
over land are common especially as the government tries to transfer land that had 
been used by farmers over to big businesses and for real estate development. in 
Vietnam, land is also a sensitive issue. until the French colonized Vietnam, land 
was publicly owned (Kerkvliet) and the equal distribution of land was a large part 
of the land reform that took place after the Vietnam Communist Party took power. 
The fights over land use in Vietnam today are fueled by anger over corruption 
but ultimately may make the government more accountable and even democratic 
(Wells-Dang).
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land in Vietnam is all owned by the state but as part of the 1986 doi Moi 
reforms private land leases were introduced to encourage investment in agriculture 
and, later, private business. the granting of these leases has provided ample room 
for petty corruption as local authorities demand fees and favors in return for their 
allocation. also, the prioritization of leases for ethnic Kinh majority families over 
ethnic minority groups has caused much public discontent in minority areas. the 
first agricultural land leases were issued in the late 1980s for 20 years and will soon 
expire. However, in some places local authorities, keen to transform farmlands 
into lucrative construction sites, are forcing farmers to give up their land early, and 
this has created a groundswell of public discontent around Vietnam.
the province of thai Binh is in the red river delta and located some 80 
kilometers southeast of Hanoi. In 1997, demonstrations broke out there as 
villagers protested fees levied on them by local officials and alleged corruption 
by these officials. The protests lasted for months and were discussed everywhere 
except the official media. Foreigners compared notes and rumors at diplomatic 
cocktail parties and the Vietnamese also talked about it a great deal. There is a 
Vietnamese expression along the lines of “the 10 cent cup of coffee goes around 
the world,” that refers to how gossip was spread in the morning at the sidewalk 
coffee shops popular with urban Vietnamese. this was true in the case of the 
thai Binh protests. the authorities had apparently sealed off the province and 
they imposed a complete news blackout on the events at Thai Binh. To this day 
it’s not publicly known whether the police fired on the protestors or how many 
people were killed (Hayton 2010). But the fact that the protests had happened was 
confirmed to the outside world when in September 1997, the government admitted 
at a press briefing with foreign journalists that there had been some “incidents” 
in Thai Binh and that local officials had been disciplined (Schiffrin 1997). This 
was followed by a four-part series in the army’s newspaper Quan Doi Nhan Dan 
suggesting that local officials had been levying fees for infrastructure construction 
and then pocketing some of the money, but with satellite television still banned 
and the internet not yet connected, the State had a complete monopoly on the what 
news was reported inside Vietnam.
after the Quan Doi Nhan Dan article, newspapers announced that provincial 
governor and Central Committee member Vu Xuan Truong and 50 other officials 
were dismissed. Vietnamese media also ran articles about the great achievements 
of the province. the Grassroots democracy decree which was announced by the 
Party in 1997 was viewed as a response to the Thai Binh Protests (Hayton) and 
was meant to make local officials accountable.
Four years later in 2001, and again in 2004, more serious protests erupted: this 
time in the Central Highlands region, home to many of Vietnam’s Hmong and 
other animist or Christian minority hill people who have traditionally offered little 
support to the Communist authorities and in some places were then still living 
a nomadic slash-and-burn life. as part of its economic transformation, Vietnam 
in the 1990s targeted coffee as a key export commodity and chose the central 
highlands region for its cultivation. to build and farm these new plantations, 
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Leninist Lapdogs to Bothersome Bloggers in Vietnam 135
ethnic Kinh people were encouraged to move to the sparsely populated highlands 
region, and its population quadrupled from 1975 to the early 2000s (Human rights 
Watch paper). The land they cleared for coffee was taken from minority people 
who, with no traditional concept of private land ownership, were forced onto 
marginal lands. resources such as timber and grazing land were depleted, and 
the “net effect of these interlocking processes (was) a gradual dispossession and 
displacement of indigenous highlanders” (Salemink 2008). In response, Hmong 
church and other community leaders organized ongoing mass protests outside 
local government offices. The involvement of church leaders heightened tensions, 
as the Hmong community does not accept Vietnam’s official form of Christianity, 
which incorporates loyalty to the Communist Party, but practices its own version 
of the faith. in 2001, and again three years later, the authorities responded with 
force, bringing in the military to suppress the protests and forcing hundreds of 
protest leaders and participants to flee over the border to Cambodia. Many were 
caught, returned, and jailed.
through the period, the state media portrayed the protesters as enemies of 
the state supported by anti-Communist lobby groups overseas, ungrateful of 
the benefits state policy had bought to their undeveloped region. The foreign 
press and diplomatic corps was barred from entering the region, although news 
agencies nonetheless covered the news in a limited manor. inside Vietnam, a 
small number of urban internet users were beginning to access these reports. 
Although the government blocked access to major foreign news sites, overseas 
Vietnamese communities bypassed this rudimentary firewall by emailing stories to 
relatively inside the country who then forwarded them to others. the State’s grip 
on information flows was weakening.
a third major land dispute demonstrates how far the online media has come 
in forcing transparency upon the State. in april 2012, 3,000 police and private 
security guards were bought in to clear around 1,000 farmers from their land in 
Van Giang (Hung Yen province) ahead of the planned development of a luxury 
Ecopark housing development in which many high-ranking officials are believed 
to have invested. the 500-hectare project required the removal of thousands of 
farmers from their land. Media coverage of the land clearance operation was 
banned well before the event took place. But then a blogger, Nguyen Xuan Dien, 
“blogged about it live when the police came,” according to a fellow blogger. dien 
was later taken into custody and questioned by police, but the story had been 
broken. Although an embargo on official news about the park remained in place 
and was strictly enforced, the next day news organizations—pushed to cover the 
issue by readers who had learned of it online—began to write editorials relating 
to land tenure and government corruption in land management. Blogs now offer 
their readers access to news that mainstream news groups cannot. indeed, they 
have become so institutionalized that they are now known as the “left lane” of 
information flows. While official news flows along the “right lane” (the correct 
driving lane in Vietnam), bloggers fill the left lane. “Readers access both, and 
when there’s not much on the right lane they will go to the left,” according to one 
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State Power 2.0136
journalist who also blogs. The forced release of information about the Ecopark 
case, as well as coverage earlier in the year of the unfair eviction of a tenant farmer 
near Hai Phong who protected his land using a homemade shotgun, have created 
such a public outcry that the government has promised to put reform of the land 
law on the legislative agenda.
This is not the first time bloggers have forced policymakers to act. In 2007 
the prime minister approved a Bauxite mining project in the Central Highlands, 
granting most of the work to a Chinese contractor. Opponents believed that the 
project was environmentally unsound and, because much of the work would be 
done by Chinese laborers and profits repatriated to China, economically of little 
value to Vietnam. in early 2009, war Veteran General Vo nguyen Giap wrote 
an open letter to the prime minster requesting additional impact studies and his 
letter was circulated online. academics joined him, launching a blog, www.
bauxitevietnam.info, to lobby for change. The state responded by blocking the 
site, which moved to another server, playing cat and mouse with the authorities 
until the lobbying momentum the blog had created eventually forced Hanoi to act. 
In April 2009/10 the Politburo agreed to review the project, which was sent back 
to the National Assembly (parliament) where normally passive members took the 
opportunity not only to re-evaluate the mine but also to openly question the prime 
minister’s decision to split the $1.1-billion project into smaller parcels, which had 
allowed his office to bypass the legal requirement that projects worth more than 
$1 billion be scrutinized by parliamentarians before being approved. the Bauxite 
site showed that blogs “can have significant influence, especially when policy is 
being made. (National Assembly) delegates used to monitor the mass media to 
gauge public opinion, but they no longer trust it. now they monitor blogs,” said a 
well-known blogger.
it also exposed high-level intra-party discussions, forcing a degree of 
transparency not often seen in Vietnam. when a group of retired war veterans 
wrote to the Politburo demanding that officials tainted by the bauxite case be 
reprimanded or removed, their letter was circulated through the blogosphere. 
Senior Politburo officials responded by telling the veterans to air their concerns in 
private, and rumors circulated that Politburo member trung tan San had visited 
one retired general and a tense conversation had ensued. the general responded to 
these rumors by posting a note on the bauxite blog explaining that the conversation 
had in fact been cordial. interviewees said that by doing so he dispelled rumors 
(and thus pacified the Politburo) while also keeping the discussion in the public 
domain. The extremely partisan nature of some more recent blogs, such as Quan 
lam Bao and dan lam Bao, reveal the previously hidden disputes between high-
level officials. The fact that the blogs currently under attack all oppose the prime 
minister suggests that the controversy is not coverage of politics, but coverage 
of personalities within the political structure. Blog Beo, a highly political blog 
written openly by the editor-in-chief of a large newspaper in Ho Chi Minh City, 
supports the prime minister and his policies and was not targeted under the recent 
administrative order.
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Conclusion
By censuring some blogs and not others the government is performing a balancing 
act—allowing some freedom but trying to maintain limits on what is said. 
However, the anger and mistrust that is giving rise to the social tension being 
played out in the blogosphere is not going to go away. as Vietnam continues to 
develop economically there will likely be more inequality and more corruption, 
more land grabs and more damage to the environment. the perception that access 
to resources is a rigged game will continue to grow and anger over these issues is 
fodder for the blogosphere in Vietnam just as it is in many other countries. Given 
that Internet use is growing, the Communist Party of Vietnam will likely continue 
doing what it’s been doing: allowing the Internet to thrive but cracking down on 
dissent when it perceives a threat.
However, the benefits of the blogosphere are greater than the risks. By holding 
the government to account and providing a space where people can air their 
grievances it may turn out that the internet will help the Party more than it harms it. 
The CPV knows it needs it must address corruption and knows the media to help it 
fight against corruption (Cain 2012, McKinley 2008) but continues to try to control 
the way that “help” is given. an october 2012 politburo meeting, that before it met 
had been rumored to be preparing to oust Prime Minister dung because of his 
alleged mismanagement of the economy, instead issued a public apology admitting 
its failure to contain corruption. President nguyen Phu trong ended the meeting 
by saying: “the politburo have seriously self-criticized and honestly apologize 
to the Central Committee for the shortcomings in party building, cases of moral 
decay among party members and cadres” (BBC, October 16, 2012). He said 
Vietnam’s top decision-making body had decided not to “discipline one member.” 
this unwillingness to upset the apple cart, even when the apples are believed by a 
growing number of people to be rotten, indicates Hanoi’s overwhelming desire to 
ensure stability. But in order to do so, it must walk a fine line between controlling 
information flows and suppressing bad news, and allowing enough news to reach 
Vietnamese citizens to assure them that their government is really addressing the 
ever-growing problem of graft.
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Chapter 11  
dynamics of innovation and  
the Balance of Power in russia
Gregory asmolov 
in recent years information technologies have played a variety of different roles 
in social and political movements. information and communication technologies 
(ICTs) suggest new ways of manifesting both symbolic power, for example 
new ways of framing and agenda setting, and material power, for example new 
opportunities for simplifying the organization of collective action. Manuel Castells 
explores the role of iCts in power relationships through the notion of mass self-
communication. According to Castells (2007), mass self-communication is a 
“building of autonomous communication networks to challenge the power of the 
globalized media industry and of government and business controlled media” and, 
more generally, “the capacity by social actors to challenge and eventually change 
the power relations institutionalized in society” (2007: 248).
This chapter analyzes the Russian protests of 2011–2012 as a case study for 
examining the role of iCts in the relationship between authoritarian power and 
citizens. From the mass self-communication perspective, the protests suggest 
another case study of the role of iCts in the emergence of political counter-power. 
In this case, the question that should be asked is to what extent the application of 
a particular technology was able to challenge the balance of power. i also argue 
that an analysis of the role of iCts role in political and social mobilizations should 
also focus on the process of emergence of new tools, rather than on analyzing 
functions of particular applications and platforms. examining the dynamics of 
the process can help to understand the role of iCts in a particular sociopolitical 
environment and to respond to the question of whether iCts erode or strengthen 
authoritarian power. the process under investigation is political innovation, in 
other words the capacity of participants in a political conflict to create new tools 
that seek to challenge or protect the balance of power. Addressing the dynamics of 
political innovation requires us to address the following questions: to what extent 
are oppressed groups able to adapt to new political challenges and introduce new 
tools, doctrines and forms of organization? To what extent is a government able to 
introduce or respond to innovation? What is the nature of the dynamic in a balance 
of power, and do iCt innovations favor one side or eventually preserve the status 
quo? Does innovation suggest a temporary advantage for a particular side or does 
it lead to permanent changes in the balance of power?
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there are a several reasons why russia, and in particular the russian electoral 
cycle of 2011—2012, provides a good case study for the analysis of the political 
innovation process. First, russia provides a fruitful environment for innovation 
due to the relatively high penetration of the internet and the degree of iCt literacy, 
especially in the big cities which are considered to be where the politically active 
middle class lives. Second, historically, since the end of the 1990s, the internet 
has had a consistently significant political role in Russia. While the traditional 
media, and in particular television, are controlled by government, the internet 
remains a relatively free space. Unlike the traditional media, the Russian online 
space has tended to have a more oppositional agenda and to suggest a contestatory 
framing of political events (Etling et al. 2010). In addition, Russian Internet users 
have already had experience of using online tools for the facilitation of collective 
actions to address social issues (Machleder and Asmolov 2011). Third, the period 
between the two rounds of voting in december 2011 and March 2012 constitutes 
a timeframe with a high concentration of political challenges and this served to 
accelerate the innovation process.
a framework for the analysis of Political Innovation
The role of innovation in the balance of power between the sides in a conflict is 
analyzed in the field of security studies, and particularly in terms of the Revolution 
in Military Affairs (RMA) concept. One of the questions for RMA concerns 
when a particular technology is able to empower one side in such a way that 
this substantively erodes the power of the other side. rMa refers to the “major 
change in the nature of warfare brought about by the innovative application of 
new technologies which, combined with dramatic changes in military doctrine 
and operational and organizational concepts, fundamentally alters the character 
and conduct of military operations” (Marshall cited in McKitrick et al. 1995). 
Similarly, the analysis of the dynamics of political innovation seeks to understand 
the extent to which ICTs can change the nature of political conflict and lead to 
substantial change in a balance of power between state and protesters. in the case 
of political conflict, the role of innovation is significant only if it is supported by 
changes in the organizational and doctrinal dimensions. For instance new tools can 
lead to new forms of protest. The framework for the analysis of the dynamics of 
political innovation suggests three layers:
a) The Structure of Political Challenges
the political environment is shaped by the structure and diversity of political 
challenges. innovation is triggered, inspired and driven by these challenges. 
therefore understanding the functions and dynamics of political iCt innovations 
requires an analysis of the structure of the political challenges. if the challenges are 
not considered sufficiently significant, this may mean there is a lack of incentive 
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Dynamics of Innovation and the Balance of Power in Russia 141
for innovation. in a situation of crisis and political instability, the challenges tend 
to become more significant. Innovation by the opposition side creates political 
challenges for the authorities, which may also respond with innovation.
b) The Structure of Innovation Opportunities
while innovation is led by the nature of the challenges, there are factors that may 
lead to opportunities being taken or cause them to be missed. Social movement 
literature introduces a variety of definitions of political opportunity structures. 
For instance, according to Garret, opportunity structures are “attributes of a 
social system that facilitate or constrain movement activity” (Garret 2006). In 
order to understand the role of iCt, we need to examine what capacity exists for 
using technology to address political challenges, in other words the innovation 
opportunity structure. that requires mapping the factors that allow or restrict 
innovation.
The innovation opportunity structure is associated with two factors. The first 
is whether the particular political challenge can be addressed through iCt-based 
tools. the second is whether the oppressed group has the technical capacity to 
develop such tools. this can include the capacity of programmers and activists to 
collaborate, the degree of information literacy and tech-savviness among political 
protesters, the level of internet penetration, the degree of internet freedom, the local 
legislation, and so on. we must also differentiate between two types of innovation. 
The first type is the development of original solutions by local programmers and 
activists. the second is the adaptation of existing solutions, including platforms, 
political strategies or tactics, from other countries. the latter requires the existence 
of “bridge persons” who are able to take experience from one political environment 
and apply it to another context (Zurckerman 2008).
c) The Role of the Balance of P wer between Protesters and Authorities
An innovation process is a chain that starts with a challenge to one side in a conflict 
that provides new opportunities for the application of iCt and in turn creates a 
challenge for the other side. the degree of challenge to both sides depends on the 
extent to which a particular innovation changes the existing balance of power and 
thus the status quo. innovation contributes to this dynamics, but also emerges as 
a part of the dynamics, while any response by the authoritarian power (whether it 
uses technological innovation or traditional forms of power) to innovation leads to 
the creation of a new political challenge that can be addressed by a new innovation. 
Consequently, innovation is a mutually reinforcing process, where both sides 
may use various applications or tools to increase their own power or decrease 
the empowerment of the other side. therefore, in order to follow the dynamics 
of innovation we need to address the interrelation between innovative solutions 
deployed by power and counter-power. in what follows, i present four case 
studies exhibiting innovation practices and technologies related to expanding the 
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State Power 2.0142
abilities for election monitoring, the organization and mobilization street protests, 
the consequent coverage and protests and opposition activities, and finally, their 
impact on the political solidarity and legitimacy of protest leaders and organizers.
election monitoring
election monitoring is a common political challenge in political systems with 
a low degree of transparency and a high probability of voting falsifications. 
Monitoring seeks not only to reduce the scale of fraud, but also to question the 
legitimacy of elections by exposing the scale of falsifications. In recent years the 
use of crowdsourcing platforms for election monitoring has become common. 
the ushahidi crowdsourcing platform has been used in many election campaigns, 
from Kyrgyzstan to Egypt (Meier 2011a). The Russian case presents the role 
of innovation in the emergence of multidimensional monitoring systems with a 
variety of iCt-based tools and platforms.
The crowdsourcing platform Map of Violations (kartanarusheniy.ru) was 
launched by the election monitoring nGo Golos. this was a website developed 
from scratch to address the specific needs of Russian election monitoring. Its 
structure included a number of special features such as expert evaluation, the 
rating of popular violations and the incorporation of crowdsourcing content with 
traditional media content. Strong collaboration with an online liberal media outlet, 
Gazeta.ru, helped to engage more people in monitoring, as well as to incorporate 
the results of crowdsourcing into the media agenda. Karta Narusheniy was able 
to collect thousands of messages during each election cycle. russian citizens also 
actively used social networks, Twitter and blogs to share first-hand information, 
documents, photos and video of violations. Citizen-based reporting and user-
generated content surprise no one these days. of greater interest are the scale, 
immediacy and value of the reporting. the outcome of monitoring depends on the 
relationship between the scale of falsifications and the capacity of citizens to cover 
these falsifications.
The crowd of Russian networked citizens was also able to collect, post, and 
share a critical mass of reports concerning falsifications including documents and 
video reports. For instance, a Youtube playlist posted after the elections included 
the 60 most viewed videos of documented violations. the capacity of the russian 
networked crowd relied on well-developed Internet infrastructure that allowed 
users to share information online almost in real time, and on the structure of the 
russian internet space, where interconnectedness between various platforms led to 
the rapid proliferation of information. The significant public exposure to the scale 
of fraud in the parliamentary elections visibly resulted in an accelerated process 
of innovation in the three-month period leading up to the presidential elections. 
a variety of new tools for election monitoring were introduced, addressing a 
diversity of monitoring-related challenges:
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Dynamics of Innovation and the Balance of Power in Russia 143
a) New Methods for the Collection of Violation Reports
the nGo Golos developed a service (sms.golos.org) which allowed the collection 
of reports from observers in real time through text messages. a group of activists 
developed, a special election monitoring application for smartphones. the 
application Webnablyudatel (webnabludatel.org) classified all violations and 
made it possible to instantly share video, photos and reports of these. later, a 
tweet observer platform was introduced in order to create better opportunities for 
twitter users to report violations.1
b) Data Mining and Verification of Monitoring Results
a platform, Svodny Protocol (svodnyprotokol.ru), was created for the collection 
and analysis of election observers’ reports and protocols. this system presents the 
idea of “bounded crowdsourcing,” where information was collected from a limited 
number of contributors who have special access to the event of interest and whose 
identities have been verified.
c) Mobilization of Observers
a number of platforms were created to enable any individual to become an 
observer. one such platform, aimed at simplifying the procedure for becoming 
an observer, was rosvybory.org. a similar function was offered by the Citizen-
observer project (nabludatel.org). In St Petersburg, a website, Saint Petersburg 
Observers (spbelect.org), was launched by a group of local activists.
d) Coordination of Monitoring
russian developers introduced Grakon (grakon.org), a special social networking 
platform for election monitoring. The purpose of this platform was to make 
election monitoring and coordination between various groups of observers as 
simple as possible.
analysis: election-monitoring and Balance of Power
A number of actions were undertaken to reduce the impact of the Map of Violations 
(Karta Narusheniy) and other monitoring efforts. One of the authorities’ strategies 
was to put pressure on the media. Gazeta.ru was forced to revoke its endorsement 
of Karta Narusheniy. Additionally, the authorities embarked on a court case 
against the platform, accusing it of distributing false information. Pro-Kremlin 
activists contributed false reports to the platform in order to demonstrate that it 
1 the platform was used at regional elections in october 2012.
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State Power 2.0144
was not credible. a video distributed on Youtube showed how this was done 
and described the dots on the Karta Narusheniy map as a “disease on the map of 
Russia” (Meier 2011b). Additionally, on election day unprecedented distributed 
denial-of-service attack (DDoS) attacks blocked the crowdsourcing platform, as 
well a number of russian online liberal media outlets.2. Anton Nossik, a well-
known Russian Internet expert, compared this attack with the long-time Soviet 
attempts to block reception of foreign radio broadcasts.
As a response to the DDoS attacks, online media began using Facebook, 
Twitter and other media that were not affected by the attacks for the proliferation 
of content related to the elections (Sidorenko 2011). Karta Narusheniy also used 
Google documents to continue collecting information. the emergency migration 
to alternative platforms demonstrated that the opposition and the liberal media 
were able to adapt to the attacks and create new patterns of information distribution.
Following the parliamentary elections, the state’s response strategy changed 
from one of legal prosecution and DDoS attacks to a more innovative track. 
Following an order from Putin, a special online system for election monitoring, 
webvybory2012.ru, was developed. this allowed people to follow the majority 
of Russian polling stations (about 95,000) online on the day of the presidential 
election. every polling station was equipped with two cameras, one focused on 
the ballot box and the other giving a general view of the polling station. once the 
voting was over, one of the cameras broadcast the counting of votes. the cost of 
this project was at least 13 billion rubles (around US$500 million).
opposition activists argued that the most common election violations could 
not be monitored by webcams. nonetheless, the cameras did allow numerous 
violations to be spotted. However, this did not finally lead to reconsideration 
of any election results. in this case the innovation served not to increase the 
transparency and accountability of the voting process, but primarily to create a 
widespread semblance of transparency and accountability. it is also important 
to note the enormous gap between the costs of the citizen-based crowdsourcing 
election monitoring systems and the system introduced by the authorities. the 
opposition also tried t  use innovation to overcome the limitations of the new 
state system. webvybory2012 did not allow any recording mode or function which 
would permit complaints about violations; however a few special applications were 
developed by protesters in order to increase the efficiency of the state surveillance. 
additionally, relying on the state system, the Video observer platform (http://
videonabludatel.org/) allowed tasks to be distributed among a network of online 
observers.
Innovation in the election-monitoring field challenged the balance of power 
between state and citizens. Michel Foucault used Jeremy Bentham’s concept of 
the Panopticon as a model for the total surveillance by a state of its citizens. Some 
experts argue that iCts and the internet contribute to a state’s capacity to monitor 
2 These attacks cannot conclusively be attributed directly to Russian authorities, but 
there is evidence indicating that Pro-Kremlin groups were involved in conducting them.
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Dynamics of Innovation and the Balance of Power in Russia 145
its citizens. as we can see from the russian case, however, in a context where 
every citizen is potentially a networked broadcasting sensor the situation can 
also be the opposite, with an increasing number of citizens monitoring the state. 
information technologies have empowered the other side of the Panopticon by 
creating self-organizing surveillance networks focused on the observation of the 
authorities (Asmolov 2011). The introduction of the Russian surveillance system, 
webvybory2012, which is in fact the largest Panopticon in human history, can be 
viewed as the state’s attempt to use innovation to restore the balance of power 
within the Panopticon structure through engagement of people’s gaze within a 
state-backed network of sensors.
innovation did not lead to a reconsideration of the voting results. However, 
iCts enabled a questioning of the legitimacy of the elections and triggered political 
protests. Innovation in the field of election monitoring led to the emergence of 
new political opportunities and challenges that were in turn addressed by sets of 
innovations in other fields. The further case studies address the other elements in 
the innovation chain.
mobilization and organization of Protests
one of the common challenges for the organization of protests is mobilizing 
citizens. Following the parliamentary elections, russian political activists used 
a range of existing online platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Vkontakte, 
liveJournal and others, to mobilize participation in protest rallies. one of the 
most successful Facebook event pages was created by a journalist, Ilya Klishin, 
for a protest at Sakharov Square in Moscow on December 24, 2011. More than 
54,000 people joined the event page. the actual number of participants in the rally 
was somewhere between 29,000 (according to official police data) and 120,000 
(according to organizers’ data).
the use of traditional online mobilization tools, however, was not felt by 
Russian opposition activists to be sufficient. “The space of Facebook and Twitter 
became too narrow for us,” says Klishin (in personal). He started a practice of 
creating dedicated websites for specific protest events by launching the dec24.
ru website, providing up-to-date information and links to mobilization groups on 
different platforms, for a rally to take place on December 24, 2011. The need 
to expand the range of mobilization tools was also related to the structure of 
the political challenges faced. organizers of protests faced pressure, including 
questioning, prosecution and arrest, from the russian security services. 
additionally, the authorities required legal approval for the organization of protest 
events. Both challenges demanded new forms of protest and new strategies for 
their organization—below are four such categories of new organizational forms.
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State Power 2.0146
a) Car protests
On a few occasions, social networks and blogs were used to organize simultaneous 
flash mob protests in few cities, during which people with white ribbons 
symbolizing the protest on their cars gathered at a specific time and location. Some 
of these protests attracted more than 1,000 cars. Pro-Kremlin movements later 
adopted the same form of protest.
b) Single Protest
according to russian law, a protest by one person does not require special 
permission. An example of how this can be exploited through amplification by 
iCts was provided by olesya Shmagun, who made a poster that read “Putin, go 
out and take part in public debates!” and stood with this by the entrance to Vladimir 
Putin’s office. She was questioned by the government security service, but was not 
detained. later, she published the story of her protest, together with photos, on her 
liveJournal blog. Just a few dozen people were able to see Shmagun’s protest in 
the offline world, but the blog post drew attention and was shared by many blogs 
and media outlets.
c) Large-scale Decentralized Mobilization
In February 2012, the opposition initiated the Big White Circle action (Khoklova 
2012a). The idea behind this was to cover the circular road around Moscow’s 
center (known as the Garden Ring) with a chain of protesters. Unlike the previously 
mentioned protests, this did not receive a permit from the authorities. additionally, 
it was a particular challenge to cover the entire Ring of about 15 kilometers. A 
special online tool, the Feb26.ru website, was developed to organize this protest. 
This allowed people to check in at locations of their choice on the map of the 
Garden Ring, and showed which locations were already occupied. Unlike other 
protests, the Big white Circle had no organization committee or individual leader. 
the role of leader was played by a website. Seven-thousand-eight-hundred-and-
forty-three people registered for the action and the online circle showed a relatively 
equal distribution of check-ins. While this would not have been enough to cover 
the whole circle, the actual number of participants was more than 20,000.
the action had two layers: it included people standing in the road and hundreds 
of cars with symbols of the protest driving around sounding their horns. the 
police distributed their forces around the circle, but no action was taken against 
the protesters. the nature of protest required the mobilization of a large number of 
policemen dispersed over a wide territory; therefore, it was difficult to concentrate 
police forces in one place. this case demonstrates how iCts enable new forms 
of protest which have no clear leader, are decentralized, can bypass some legal 
restrictions and create new challenges for the authorities. the ideas of the protest, 
as well as its leadership functions, are embedded within the online platform.
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Dynamics of Innovation and the Balance of Power in Russia 147
d) Migration of Occupy Protesters
Following the russian presidential elections, protesters tried to create occupy 
camps. this was an adaptation of the protest tactics used in the uS and other 
countries. the police attempted to close the camps and arrest the activists. as a 
response, activists started to use Twitter and social networks to coordinate the 
migration of camps from one location to another. the migration was so fast and 
well-coordinated that police were not able to respond fast enough and follow 
protesters. at some point the security forces became exhausted and a camp, 
#occupyabay, succeeded in surviving in one location for a few days.
analysis: mobilization and Balance of Power
in order to understand the role of iCts in a power relationship, it is crucial to 
examine the capacity of both sides to apply innovation to its mobilization tactics, 
as well to restrict counter-mobilization. one the one hand, the authorities tried 
to limit the opposition mobilization through a number of methods, including 
prosecution, intimidation, arrests, as well as DDoS attacks on the platforms used 
for mobilization. Later, new legislation was introduced that significantly restricted 
the freedom to hold demonstrations. on the other hand, the challenge for the 
authorities was to mobilize supporters of the Kremlin in order to show that the 
protesters were a minority. they used a different type of online tool to mobilize 
people. A website, massovki.ru, that was usually used to engage paid participants 
for different types of public crowd event, such as the filming of a movie crowd 
scene, was used for the mobilization of pro-government rally participants. 
However, the mobilization of pro-government crowds mostly relied on offline 
strategies using so-called “administrative resources,” where various organizations 
including large factories and universities are required to send a particular number 
of people to a political event. For instance, this type of mobilization was used for 
a large pro-Putin rally at the Luzhniki Stadium on February 23, 2012 (Asmolov 
2012).
the opposition response to this was on two levels. on the one hand, they 
continued to introduce new forms of protest, exploring the limits imposed by the 
authorities. For instance, in May 2012 a group of famous writers organized the 
Kontrolnaya progulka (Control walk) when thousands of people were just walking 
on the streets of Moscow following the writers. at another level, the activists used 
ICTs to question the credibility of pro-government protests. Bloggers sneaked into 
pro-government events and interviewed people who had been forced or paid to 
participate.
the russian case represents a struggle between bottom-up strategies of 
mobilization by an opposition relying primarily on innovation, including 
technological tools and new ways of organizing protests, and top-down 
mobilization by a government using primarily traditional strategies, while at the 
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State Power 2.0148
same time trying to limit the innovative potential of the opposition. in some cases, 
as at the pro-Putin rally in Luzhniki, the top-down vertical mobilization used by 
the authorities was able to mobilize more people than the bottom-up mechanisms. 
However, what we can see is that different strategies for mobilization create very 
different kinds of crowd, and the difference in nature of the two kinds of crowd 
may be more important than the number of people.
Coverage of Protests and opposition activities
one of the challenges faced by opposition activists in an information environment 
with a high degree of state control over the traditional media is the coverage of 
protests. obviously, user-generated content was widely used. However, innovation 
led to the emergence of new practices with greater capacity to influence framing 
and agenda-setting. the mobile-based, real-time broadcasting platforms ustream.
com and bambuser.com were used to provide live coverage of the protests against 
the result of elections from the heart of the crowd. Some of the streams had an 
audience of more than 40,000 people at one time. a russian blogger with the 
nickname Vova-Moskva became a “livestreamer” and provided real-time footage 
of protests, including clashes between the protesters and the police. at one of the 
protests he broadcast his own arrest. He also used crowdfunding to support his 
work. A member of the Duma, ilya Ponomarev, broadcast live from the police 
station in Novosibirsk where he was detained for “illegal distribution” of his 
newspaper.
during the protests people detained in police cars used their mobile phones 
to broadcast live and to send photos. the detained participants of the rallies also 
actively used twitter to update of their arrests, as well as to share information 
about the location of the police car taking them to the station. At the peak of 
the arrests, twitter feeds were full of dozens of reports from those detained. the 
live broadcasting and tweeting of arrests increased transparency around the police 
actions. when an individual broadcast news that he had been detained, a group of 
his friends followed him to the police station and demanded his release. a group 
of volunteer lawyers was also following the information. a website, ovdinfo.org, 
aggregated information from different sources about arrests. when the number 
of arrests increased after the inauguration of President Putin, a political activist, 
Maxim Katz, created a center for the coordination of assistance to those detained, 
which sent lawyers as soon as information about arrests was received. the use of 
iCts made it easier to hold the police accountable for their actions.
an additional challenge for the protest coverage was that of the representation 
of numbers of participants. the statistics on participation were highly contested, 
with the authorities always giving low numbers and the organizers arguing that 
the number of participants was very high. a programmer, anatoliy Katz, created 
the white Counter, an application that was used to count protesters. the counter 
was based on an analysis of the large number of images taken every second. It was 
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Dynamics of Innovation and the Balance of Power in Russia 149
used first time on June 12, 2012 demonstration. While police sources claimed that 
18,000 people participated in the protests, according to the counter it was 54,000.
while participants in the opposition rallies produced a lot of online content 
in real time, almost no user-generated content came from pro-government 
demonstrations. the traditional, state-controlled media covered pro-government 
rallies extensively, while limiting the coverage of protests and framing opposition 
rallies as marginal activities. the dominant presence of oppositional content online 
is challenged by a number of tactics that can be attributed to pro-government 
interests. one of the tactics used was “hashtag spamming,” where pro-Kremlin 
activists used oppositional hashtags to distribute pro-government information or 
spam. the distribution of paid content in support of the authorities or against the 
opposition was also a popular method in the blogosphere. additionally, armies 
of bots were leaving pro-government comments on various liberal websites and 
blogs.
ddoS, hashtag spamming and “bot renting” could not be directly attributed 
to the Kremlin. However, the tactics of pro-government activists and their links 
to the Kremlin were exposed when a group of hackers claiming to be a part of 
the international Anonymous network published email exchanges between a 
number of pro-Kremlin activists and members of the presidential administration. 
the contents of these individuals’ mailboxes were published on a special website, 
slivmail.com. In this case hacking was also a part of the dynamics of innovation, 
aiming to decrease the credibility of pro-government activities online. this method 
was inspired by Wikileaks and can be viewed as an adaptation of international 
experience to the russian political context.
Political solidarity and Legitimacy of Protest Leaders
The activities of pro-government networks also included using technology 
to delegitimize the leaders of the opposition. For instance, the mailbox of a 
blogger and opposition leader, Alexey Navalny, was hacked several times. The 
content of email exchanges were used to argue that navalny was getting paid 
for serving various “enemies of russia.” navalny’s twitter account was also 
hacked and hackers started writing offensive messages purporting to come from 
him. However, the major legitimacy challenge faced by opposition leaders was 
not from the government, but from within the opposition. in the russian political 
environment, many citizens have lost trust not only in government, but also in 
opposition politicians. the opposition forces are very diverse and divided. they 
include nationalists and liberals, social-democrats, anarchists, environmentalists 
and many more.
one of the most challenging issues for this type of opposition is coordinating 
activities between different factions and groups, as well as making decisions about 
the form and content of protests. to increase the transparency and legitimacy of 
decision-making around protests, the key discussions concerning the organization 
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State Power 2.0150
of protests were live-streamed on a new online channel, Networked Public TV 
(rusotv.org). Another tool that helped to increase trust and transparency in the 
organization of protests was the use of online voting to select rally speakers. 
However, despite claims that the nature of internet protest is leaderless, the 
question of how to establish a legitimate group of leaders became increasingly 
relevant once the time of big protests passed and the struggle entered a routine 
phase. a few months after Putin’s inauguration, activists decided to conduct online 
elections and create a “Coordination Board of the opposition.” a special concept, 
procedure and dedicated platform (www.cvk2012.org) were developed under the 
direction of an opposition politician from Yekaterinburg, Leonid Volkov.
Volkov developed a complex and sophisticated system that addressed a variety 
of challenges, including the verification of voters, for ensuring that every Russian 
citizen who participated in the process voted only once. a variety of existing 
online platforms were used, as well as those developed especially for voting. in 
addition to online voting, a network of offline polling stations was created all over 
the country. the russian online liberal tV channel, Dozhd, provided space for 
debates between candidates. the system faced a number of challenges, including 
DDoS attacks on election weekend and efforts to compromise the system through 
massive participation by members of a Russian financial pyramid, MMM. 
Eventually 170,012 people registered on the system, 97,727 verified their identities 
and 81,801 voted. a board of 45 activists was selected. once the opposition had 
failed to achieve an annulment of the official voting results, it had decided to 
create its own alternative voting system. while the outcome of the voting is still 
unclear, these elections were the most innovative and large-scale online political 
experiment to date initiated by the russian opposition.
Conclusion
the outcome of the russian protests demonstrates that iCts alone cannot erode 
authoritarian power. the elected parliament and elected president remained in 
place. no political reform has begun. on the contrary, some new anti-liberal laws 
have been passed. However, this study also suggests that any evaluation of the 
role of ICTs that is dependent on a specific political outcome is misguided. The 
definition of success of political protests depends on expectations, which can vary 
greatly, as well as on dozens of political and socioeconomic factors existing in a 
particular political context. Moreover, any “cause and effect” evaluation focuses 
on short-term outcomes and ignores the possibility of long-term influence.
what is important for evaluating the role of iCts is the extent to which society 
is able to address challenges and a consideration of state-citizen dynamics as 
a whole. this study suggests that in order to understand the role of iCts in a 
power relationship between authorities and opposition we need to focus not on the 
outcome of particular iCt applications, but on the extent to which each side is able 
to use iCt-based innovation to address new political challenges, and the degree to 
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Dynamics of Innovation and the Balance of Power in Russia 151
which this is capable of disrupting the status quo. this process is conceptualized 
as the dynamics of political innovation.
Concerning the extent to which the oppressed are able to adapt quickly to new 
political challenges and introduce new tools, doctrines and form of organizations, 
we can note the diversity of iCt-based innovations introduced by the russian 
opposition in response to political challenges. this has included not only new tools 
and applications, but also new forms of protest and new organizational strategies. 
In some cases, like those of the Occupy migration tactics or the Wikileaks-type 
activities, this was an adaptation of Western strategies. In other cases, like that of 
the feb26.ru website, it was a novel innovation that addressed particular russian 
challenges and relied on local features of the protests.
in addition to opposition actors, the government also introduced some 
innovative responses. However, the characteristics of these innovations were very 
different. First, in most cases it was a response to innovation by the opposition. 
it focused primarily not on empowering the authorities, but on neutralizing the 
increasing power of the opposition. Second, some of these innovations were 
based on illegal methods and, while they served the interests of authority, 
could not be directly attributed to state institutions. third, in comparison to the 
innovations of the opposition, some of the tools proposed by the authorities 
were disproportionally expensive. Fourth, unlike the cases of innovation by the 
opposition, the technological innovations introduced by the authorities did not 
lead to any real change in the state’s own modus operandi. the organizational and 
doctrinal aspects remained unchanged.
lastly, regarding shifts in the balance of power, we can observe that the way 
opposition activists used iCts was in fact able to change the balance of power 
in many fields, including election monitoring, the mobilization of protests, and 
agenda setting. on the other hand, the innovations created by the opposition cannot 
be considered as effectively disruptive. it has not led to a primordial advantage for 
the opposition or to a strategic shift in the balance of power. eventually, the state 
was able to the restore the status quo that had been challenged by the innovations 
of the opposition. However, in most cases the state action to restore that balance 
relied not on innovation, but primarily on traditional doctrinal and organizational 
strategies including the use of administrative resources for top-down mobilization, 
on new forms of regulation based on new legislation, and on the mobilization 
of traditional forms of power like the police to prosecute political activists and 
restrict demonstrations. the role of innovation in the state’s restoration of the 
status quo was in most cases minor. while the state was able to restore the balance 
of power, its capacity to respond to opposition challenges with innovations of its 
own was more than limited.
with the opposition demonstrating a considerable capacity to address 
political challenges through innovation, including diverse solutions which can 
be implemented in a short time, the state may face a situation where addressing 
innovation without innovation of its own will require more and more radical forms 
of traditional power. However, offline administrative resources and other traditional 
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State Power 2.0152
power resources may become exhausted and more radical and repressive actions 
may be required. eventually, this will contribute to destabilization and lead to the 
creation of new and significant political challenges, which will be addressed by a 
new wave of innovation. this may lead to a further proliferation of protests and to 
increasing opposition empowerment.
Consequently, an analysis of the dynamics of innovation in the case of the 
russian elections may suggest that in the long term iCts can contribute to the 
erosion of authoritarian power and the strengthening of opposition activism. at the 
same time, the significance of innovation and the realization of its potential depend 
on the structure of the challenges that arise and on a variety of socioeconomic 
and political factors. A few months after the 2012 presidential elections, floods in 
southern russia caused the death of more than 170 people. while the response of 
the authorities was heavily criticized as insufficient (Lipman 2012), the Russian 
people were able to use the internet and to create a variety of tools that helped to 
provide a self-organized emergency response (Khokhlova 2012b). The major role 
of volunteers in emergency relief was another example of a shift in the balance of 
power in a field traditionally dominated by state actors.
any crisis situation can create new challenges and can trigger a shift in the 
balance of power. as a consequence, a crisis provides opportunities for iCt-based 
innovation and can be a driving force for development of the role of iCts in social 
and political systems. Viewing crises as a fruitful time for iCt innovation suggests 
that the development of the sociopolitical role of iCts is cyclical in nature, 
developing from one crisis to the next. this suggests that focusing on the analysis 
of the process may give more answers than focusing on particular situational 
functions. when a society develops the capacity to address challenges through 
innovation, this could lead in the long term to significant political transformations.
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Chapter 12  
anonymous vs. authoritarianism
Jessica l. Beyer
In June 2009, as the Iranian state cracked down on the election demonstrators, 
users around the world navigating to the popular file-sharing site The Pirate Bay 
discovered that its normal pirate ship logo was green and labeled “the Persian 
Bay.” The new green pirate ship had a banner across it that said, “Click here to 
help Iran.” The link led to a forum focused on supporting the Iranian protesters 
on a website hosted by a subset of anonymous, why we Protest. in the aftermath 
of the 2009 iranian elections, widely believed to be rigged in favor of the iranian 
regime, iranian citizens began protesting the presidential election outcome. People 
outside Iran watched horrified as Iranian protesters were beaten, shot, firehosed, 
and violently taken into detention by the Basij (McDowall 2009), a plain clothed 
paramilitary organization (Anderson 2009). Many of these Iranian protesters 
were using the internet to help coordinate their protests and spread information. 
Social networking sites, such as Twitter, became central to coordination efforts as 
protesters used such sites to organize flash mobs and spread information. Twitter 
became important enough that in June 2009, the US government asked that the 
site delay its regularly scheduled maintenance to stay online so iranians could 
continue to use it, a request that Twitter honored (Grossman 2009). Scholars have 
also argued that while twitter and the internet did not cause anything to happen in 
Iran in 2009 it certainly facilitated protest (Howard 2010).
the iran-focused section of the why we Protest anonymous site has remained 
online since 2009. on the website anonymous users continue to offer how-
to guides outlining ways for people to remain anonymous online. the site also 
provides instructions for citizens and activists outside iran who want to create 
proxies for in-country iranian protesters. among the resources the site offers are 
practical protest advice, such as how to make do-it-yourself gas masks. The site 
also includes a place where protestors can upload videos and pictures so the media 
can access the material, hosts discussion areas where protestors can plan protests 
and promote the democratization cause, posts links to other places trying to help 
the Iranian protesters, and provides a forum to help protestors and others track 
missing people. while the decision to become involved in helping the iranian 
protesters was debated, ultimately, the why we Protest anonymous participants 
decided that their primary motivation was supporting freedom of information. the 
why we Protest anonymous group is only one of the many anonymous activist 
groups and other online actors working to support the Iranian protesters. Support 
for the Iranian protesters marked the beginning of Anonymous groups mobilizing 
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State Power 2.0154
on behalf of democratization efforts in general in the Middle east and north 
africa, as well as in other parts of the world. anonymous has since supported 
democratization movements in the “arab Spring” countries, using names such 
as “operation Syria,” “operation egypt,” “operation Bahrain,” and “operation 
algeria.”
undoubtedly, there are limitations to the effects that any online group can have 
in authoritarian contexts. However, because authoritarian governments attempt to 
project the image of an omnipotent state (Wedeen 1999, Yurchak 2005) the actions 
of Anonymous groups and other hacktivists pose a challenge to this image and 
serve to highlight the limitations of state power. Although the power of hacktivist 
groups such as Anonymous is limited to the online world, hacktivists facilitate 
protest, communicate international solidarity with beleaguered dissidents, educate 
novices to the potential of digital media, and erode the perception of power that 
authoritarian states have worked hard to create. Thus, groups such as Anonymous 
are important new actors in the sphere of political protest because they loosen the 
stranglehold that most authoritarian governments maintain on the media and other 
information sources.
The origins of anonymous
the birthplace of anonymous is the image board system 4chan.org. 4chan.org’s 
board design allows users to post without user name or other personal identifiers, an 
attribute that most of the other board systems that the 4chan community has spread 
to share. thus, the “author” of nearly all posts on 4chan.org and other related 
online spaces is “anonymous”—which is the origin of the name “anonymous.”
Before 2008 anonymous’ action was generally focused on a nihilistically-
defined pursuit of entertainment for entertainment’s sake (lulz) with the extreme 
anonymity of the community a double edged sword—fostering highly intelligent 
creativity at the same time as creating an environment testing boundaries of 
offensive and shocking speech and imagery (Bernstein et al. 2011, Beyer 2011, 
Knuttila 2012, Phillips 2012). Some Anonymous actions have had normatively 
good results, but tend to be framed as produced for the “lulz,” or potential 
entertainment value. However, in 2008, anonymous activities shifted to mobilize 
explicitly for political causes. Anonymous groups’ first campaign was against the 
Church of Scientology, and most scholars and journalists define this as a major 
turning point for anonymous (Beyer 2011, Coleman 2011, norton 2012a, olson 
2012). Anonymous began its action against the Church of Scientology using the 
same tactics it had used in actions framed as “lulzy” prior to becoming an explicitly 
political force. In particular, it used Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, 
hacking Scientology computers, ordering large numbers of pizzas to Church of 
Scientology centers, and faxing reams of black paper to Church offices, among 
other tactics.
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Anonymous vs. Authoritarianism 155
However, Anonymous members also began protesting offline outside Church of 
Scientology offices across the world in highly organized and coordinated protests 
that obeyed local laws, contained a cohesive message, used the iconic Guy Fawkes 
mask popularized by the film V for Vendetta, and set forth an agenda framed 
in explicitly political terms. Of the many striking attributes of the Scientology 
protests, the most observable was the shift in using normative language to frame 
the protests, rather than speaking of the protests as the pursuit of entertainment 
for entertainment’s sake. This does not mean that the idea of entertainment was 
annexed, rather, that for the first time, there were equally strong voices arguing for 
anonymous to exercise its power to help citizens.
the Church of Scientology protests gave anonymous a taste of its potential 
and after 2008 anonymous began engaging in other political action. as part of 
the move into more explicitly political activities, the anonymous community also 
splintered into three loose affiliation groups (Beyer forthcoming, 2011). The first 
to emerge argued anonymous should refrain from using illegal tactics, such as 
DDoS attacks, and focus on using only legal means to achieve its ends. This group 
is represented on the why we Protest website mentioned previously. Second, a 
large subsection of the anonymous community rejected the idea that anonymous 
should be involved with anything political and argued that anonymous should 
only engage in collective action for the sake of entertainment. The third group 
argued that anonymous should be engaged in political protest but that it had to 
stay true to its roots and continue to use online tactics such as DDoS attacks. This 
third group is the part of Anonymous that most frequently finds its way into the 
press and it is this group that is usually responsible for high profile Anonymous 
“hacktivist” actions. This part of Anonymous has continued to grow in numbers 
over time, but it also continues to defy quantitative measurement or definition.
the name anonymous is now given to participants in any number of online 
communities as well as anyone who participates in a collective activity that is 
defined as an Anonymous action (Beyer forthcoming, Coleman 2011, Norton 2012, 
Phillips 2012). To further complicate the organizational definition of Anonymous, 
their media materials often communicate that anonymous is not an individual or a 
group, but rather an idea whose “time has come.” Some have asked whether anyone 
who expresses support for, agrees with, or identifies herself with Anonymous or its 
actions should be counted as one of Anonymous (Coleman 2012, AnonNews.org). 
as the illustrations suggests, anonymous does not have a formal membership, or a 
leadership structure with clearly identifiable hierarchy, as well as no defined single 
agenda. anonymous actors contain programmers, experts, irC server hosts, press 
release writers, among other who engage in purposeful action. when anonymous 
mobilizes, it is because someone has suggested a target and enough members 
have decided that the proposed action is important (and, often, entertaining). If 
the proposal fails to gather enough support, then nothing happens. Norton (2012b) 
framed anonymous action in the following way:
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anonymous is a classic ‘do-ocracy,’ to use a phrase that’s popular in the 
open source movement. as the term implies, that means rule by sheer doing: 
Individuals propose actions, others join in (or not), and then the Anonymous 
flag is flown over the result. There’s no one to grant permission, no promise of 
praise or credit, so every action must be its own reward. anonymous action is 
facilitated by an array of online tools such as Internet Relay Chat (IRC), posting 
boards, Twitter, wikis, blogs, websites, and other software.
For any given Anonymous action there are likely Anonymous members who 
do not agree with that action, and there are high levels of disagreement within 
the community about partisan politics. For example, during the 2011 protests in 
wisconsin against the Governor’s efforts to remove public employee collective 
bargaining rights, some anonymous members proposed that anonymous mobilize 
on behalf of the protesters. in response to the suggestion, other members argued 
about whether anonymous should involve itself in partisan politics when there 
was no way that all anonymous members could agree on a political platform. in 
contrast, anonymous members do tend to share a belief in freedom of information 
(Beyer forthcoming) and a belief in civil liberties in general. This shared belief 
is one of the reasons anonymous has repeatedly challenged authoritarian 
governments all over the world, including working to support protesters across the 
Middle east and north africa during the arab Spring.
anonymous and the arab spring
anonymous actions in iran, Syria, tunisia, egypt, and Bahrain offer an example 
of how a transnational network of Internet-based activists do challenge state 
power. anonymous not only provides new conduits for information transfer in 
situations where states have attempted to completely close society off from the 
outside world, but it challenges the image of an omnipotent state.
Syria serves as an entry example of the challenge anonymous poses to 
authoritarian regimes. In Syria, Hafiz al-Assad’s state committed considerable 
resources to build a cult of Assad—a cult in which Assad knew “all things about 
all issues” (Wedeen 1999: 1). Following Hafiz al-Assad’s death, Bashar al-
assad’s government has continued to project the image of an all-powerful and 
unchallengeable state, responding to the increase in criticism of the regime that 
followed the so-called “Damascus Spring” with a severe crackdown on critics and 
others whom the regime perceived to be a threat (England 2008). As the Syrian 
government has waged war against its unarmed population and Syria has descended 
into civil war, assad’s government has continued to shape discourse around the 
violence. Externally, he has hired public relations firms to help shape his image 
(Carter and Chozick 2012). Internally, he has claimed that reporting on Syria is 
false, and has accused the United States of fostering the conflict (Baetz 2012) and 
claimed that the civil war is being perpetuated by terrorists (MacFarquhar 2012).
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Anonymous vs. Authoritarianism 157
tied to these efforts to shape discourses about and inside Syria has been an 
ongoing effort to surveil and curtail the political uses of information technology. 
Reporters without Borders (2012) reports that Syria has become one of the most 
dangerous places on the planet for journalists. the restrictions on information 
transfer have become so tight that activists must use Lebanese and Turkish proxy 
networks to upload information, moving close to borders to access international 
internet cables. Much of the sensitive political information leaves the country 
using “sneaker networks” of people smuggling USB drives from person to person 
until contents can be safely uploaded online (Ulbricht 2012). Information and 
images are then shared with major news sources, such as the New York Times, 
as well as organizing online archives of the information for global distribution 
(Goodman 2012). In Syria, Internet cafés have been the site of state surveillance 
as owners have been compelled to log comments people posted online since 2007 
(Steavenson 2012). Overall, the media environment in Syria is highly restricted 
and dangerous for anyone attempting to use any technology to show the world 
what is happening inside the country.
the Syrian government is also supported in its efforts to create a monopoly 
on information by a range of actors, including the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA). 
The SEA is a group of pro-government hackers that has been active online using 
many of the same tactics that Anonymous members use, including DDoS attacks 
as well as hacking websites and replacing the content (Fisher and Keller 2011). 
SEA also engages in “protests” on the Facebook pages of groups that it views 
as anti-Syrian. In two well publicized instances, the SEA hacked a Reuters-
affiliated Twitter account (Fox 2012) and Al Jazeera’s website in response to their 
reporting on the Syrian conflict. The SEA has targeted Anonymous websites, and 
Anonymous has also attacked the SEA website in response (Pavel 2012). Despite 
SEA’s public statements that it is not affiliated with the Syrian government, in June 
2011 assad referred to the group in a speech saying, “there is the electronic army, 
which has been a real army in virtual reality” (Fisher and Keller 2011).
in response to the Syrian government and the Sea, anonymous and other 
transnational internet-based activists have actively challenged the state’s attempt 
to maintain control over information. on June 3, 2011, the Syrian government 
“turned off” the internet in Syria in response to the unrest in the country 
(Reporters without Borders 2012). Following this major initiative, the only 
internet connections remaining were those used by the Syrian government. in 
response, Anonymous pledged to engage in attacks on Syrian government sites, in 
particular, Syrian embassy sites, announcing (AnonOpsSyria 2011):
this is a message from anonymous. it has come to our attention that the tyrant 
and human rights abuser Bashar assad the so called president or dictator of Syria 
has shut down the internet within Syria, thus further isolating and terrorizing the 
freedom loving people of Syria who have already suffered so much from this 
evil regime. So today we will begin a program of removing from the internet the 
web sites of the Syrian embassies abroad.
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In the following weeks, Anonymous also engaged in other attacks on the Syrian 
government’s online infrastructure, including the Ministry of defense where 
anonymous posted, among other things, one of the iconic anonymous “logos,” 
photographs of tortured protestors and the following message in english and 
Arabic (syrianona 2011):
to the Syrian people: the world stands with you against the brutal regime of 
Bashar al-assad. Know that time and history are on your side—tyrants use 
violence because they have nothing else, and the more violent they are, the more 
fragile they become. we salute your determination to be non-violent in the face 
of the regime’s brutality, and admire your willingness to pursue justice, not mere 
revenge. All tyrants will fall, and thanks to your bravery Bashar Al-Assad is 
next.
to the Syrian military: You are responsible for protecting the Syrian people, and 
anyone who orders you to kill women, children, and the elderly deserves to be 
tried for treason. no outside enemy could do as much damage to Syria as Bashar 
al-assad has done. defend your country—rise up against the regime!
Following this foray, in September 2011, Anonymous again hacked multiple 
Syrian government websites, this time including official “city” websites, replacing 
content with links to guides on how to remain anonymous online; information 
about the city, such as the number of people killed by the government in the city; 
and videos about government action against protestors (Pavel 2011). In early 
2012, anonymous, in collaboration with lulzSec and the Peoples liberation 
Front, hacked into a mail server used by the Syrian Ministry of Presidential Affairs 
and released hundreds of emails. the initial email release in February 2012 was 
considered embarrassing to the regime and included emails discussing strategies 
to manipulate uS public opinion, emails showing assad had received advice from 
iran, and texts revealing assad was using a third party address to buy music on 
iTunes in spite of sanctions (Booth, Mahmood and Hardy 2012). In July 2012, 
WikiLeaks stated that it was working with news agencies1 to release another block 
of Anonymous-obtained Syrian files—more than two million email messages 
(WikiLeaks 2012). Initial analysis of these email messages revealed that Western 
firms provided communications equipment to the Syrian regime (Satter 2012).
Other Internet-based activist groups are also working on behalf of the Syrian 
people. For example, Telecomix, a collective of hackers similar to Anonymous 
operating in europe, revealed that the Syrian regime was using a BlueCoat (a 
US software company), for censorship and surveillance of the Internet (KheOps 
2011)—something the US State Department has since investigated (Horowitz 
2012). In mid-August 2011, Telecomix hacked the Syrian Internet. Users logging 
1 the news sources include Al-Akhbar, Al-Masry Al-Youm, L’espresso, Norddeutscher 
Rundfunk, OWNI, and Público.
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Anonymous vs. Authoritarianism 159
in and attempting to visit websites such as Google, instead, saw a page that stated, 
“This is a deliberate, temporary Internet breakdown. Please read carefully and 
spread the following message … Your internet activity is monitored” (Greenberg 
2011). The page then directed users to a new page that included information about 
strategies and tools to remain anonymous online (Greenberg 2011). It also offered 
advice, technical information, and strategy via irC channels to interested activists 
around the world. telecomix has engaged in types of activism similar to those 
anonymous members use, although it began as an explicitly political project and 
does not affiliate itself with Anonymous (Greenberg 2011, Orange 2012).
anonymous participants’ action on behalf of Syrian protesters was just one of 
many organized anonymous projects on behalf of citizens in authoritarian states. 
For example, Anonymous has also taken action against the Tunisian government. 
in a press release uploaded on January 5, 2011 and viewed over 43,000 times as of 
August 30, 2012, Anonymous announced (Anonymousworldwar3 2011a):
To the Tunisian government: Attacks on the freedom of speech and information 
of your citizens will not be tolerated. any organization involved in censorship 
will be targeted. Attacks will not cease until the Tunisian government hears 
the claim of freedom from its own people. it is in the hands of the tunisian 
government to bring this to a resolution.
in response to the tunisian state’s attempts to stop protests and restrict the 
movement of information in Tunisia, Anonymous attacked Tunisian government 
websites using DDoS attacks and hacking, as well as helped to give people in 
Tunisia a conduit to move information out of country (Norton 2012a, Ryan 2011). 
As Anonymous attacked government websites, it replaced the pages with the Pirate 
Bay pirate ship image (a reference to Operation Payback, the umbrella campaign 
under which Operation Tunisia fell) and a message from Anonymous that stated 
(Derrick 2011):
anonymous has heard the cry for freedom from the tunisian people. anonymous 
is willing to help the Tunisian people in this fight against oppression. This is a 
warning to the tunisian Government: violation of the freedom of speech and 
information of its citizens will not be tolerated. Cyber Attacks will persist until 
the tunisian Government respects all tunisian citizens’ right to Free Speech and 
information and ceases the censoring of the internet.
anonymous also distributed tools to help tunisian activists distribute 
information privately after discovering that the tunisian government was 
harvesting usernames and passwords from online forums being used to coordinate 
protest (Ragan 2011). Anonymous released what an Anonymous member described 
to Wired’s Quinn Norton as a “care package” (Norton 2012a). This included a 
browser add-on allowing Tunisians to access Google’s Blogger, Facebook, Gmail, 
Yahoo, and Twitter safely (Ragan 2011). It also included a technical manuals, 
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State Power 2.0160
like How to Bypass Internet Censorship, providing instructions for how to build 
homemade gas masks, information about how to use anonymizer tools like Tor, 
lists of links to proxies, and more (Ragan 2011).
Along with other hacktivist groups such as Telecomix, Anonymous was also 
active in supporting protesters in Egypt, using similar tactics field-tested in Tunisia 
(Wagenseil 2011). In line with standard Anonymous action, it began its work in 
egypt with a press release, viewed by over 90,000 people as of august 30, 2012. 
The press release (mmxanonymous 2011) stated that Anonymous would be acting 
on behalf of the egyptian people and continued with coordinated action on behalf 
of the Egyptian people similar to that in Tunisia (Somaiya 2011). Anonymous has 
also engaged in action in other arab Spring countries, such as a smaller mobilization 
against the Algerian regime (Cushing 2011, Anonymousworldwar3 2011b), and is 
currently engaged in ongoing efforts to support protesters in Bahrain’s violent 
crackdown. As part of this effort, Anonymous members have used DDoS attacks 
on government sites, brought down Bahrain’s Formula one website, and engaged 
in other action to support Bahraini protestors (Mezzofiore 2012).
despite anonymous’ successful innovations in supporting citizens in repressive 
political environments, there are limits to its political impacts. in the past, some—
including anonymous participants—have facetiously called anonymous the 
“final boss of the Internet” (e.g. JC 2008). It is true that Anonymous exercises 
a certain level of cultural influence and power online. However, in its support of 
protesters in authoritarian contexts, anonymous is limited by the very instrument 
that grants it power, as the egyptian government illuminated in June 2011 when it 
“turned off” the Internet (Vanhemert 2011). Then, it is the citizens on the ground 
who were agents of change—and, as the history of revolution show, the internet 
is not a monocausal condition for political change, but rather a mix of conditions. 
anonymous members are aware of their limits to bring about political change, and 
many press releases state explicitly that they stand behind those who are the ‘real’ 
change agents. in a press release during operation tunisia, anonymous members 
stated: “anonymous has heard the claim for freedom of the tunisian people. 
Anonymous is willing t  help the Tunisian people in this fight against oppression.”
although there are limitations to the change that groups such as anonymous 
can bring about in authoritarian regimes, overall, the net effect of information 
technology in this area is one of a challenge to state authority. as stated previously, 
authoritarian states combine their on-the-ground policies with a projected image 
of themselves as all-powerful, all-knowing, and impossible to challenge (Wedeen 
1999, Yurchak 2005). However, every time Anonymous facilitated the movement 
of information from within an authoritarian state and into the hands of the global 
media, it publicly challenged the state’s monopoly on the political narrative. even 
more, when Anonymous members successfully took down government websites, 
and defaced official government websites with anti-government content, these acts 
highlighted the new limits of state power today.
as anonymous continues to pose a challenge to state authority, it is also a 
growing movement that can and will adapt to learned lessons and new challenges. 
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Anonymous vs. Authoritarianism 161
Anonymous provides a conduit for individuals everywhere who want to work to 
support democratization efforts and activists. For transnational internet-based 
activist groups, such as anonymous, information technology has allowed for the 
curation of a world-wide “audience” to become directly involved in challenging 
restrictive regimes’ information management practices. anonymous’ actions 
provide an opportunity structure that channels and empowers individuals who 
want to be directly involved in helping protestors in countries with repressive 
governments. Thus, as the Anonymous network or groups with similar aims 
continue to grow, the influence of transnational Internet-based activists poses a 
new set of actors and activities that erode the power of recalcitrant rulers.
it is also important to note that although this chapter focuses on the actions 
Anonymous has taken against authoritarian governments, Anonymous regularly 
uses the same tactics and rhetoric against democratic governments. For example, 
at 8 a.m. eastern australian time on February 10, 2010, several australian 
government sites crashed due to a DDoS attack, followed by a “storm” of 
pornography-related emails, faxes, and prank cell phone calls to government 
officials. The pornography was specifically chosen to match content that would 
be banned under a proposed Australian government Internet filtering plan. At the 
peak of the attack, the Parliament site received 7.5 million hits per second, rather 
than the normal hundreds per second. observers estimated that about 1,000 people 
around the world participated in the attacks, which were carefully coordinated to 
occur at the same time to stress the operational limits of the system, even though the 
attackers were located globally in different time zones (AFP 2010). The attackers 
also sent emails to media outlining the reasons for the attacks on the government 
(Cheng 2010). One such statement noted the campaign would last “as long as 
the individuals that make up Anonymous decide that action needs to be taken to 
protect the freedom of the internet” (AFP 2010). This action was one of many 
that targeted the Australian government over the government’s efforts to filter 
the internet. the action against the australian government was similar in tactics 
to the anonymous action against the uS government and major corporations on 
behalf of WikiLeaks in late 2011. The Australian government has responded by 
arresting australian participants. Participants in other countries were not arrested, 
as they were living outside the jurisdiction of the australian state. the examples 
of anonymous members’ actions against democratic regimes are as numerous as 
examples where these activists worked to challenge authoritarian power. Thus, it 
is important to recognize that anonymous and other transnational internet-based 
networks are using information technology to challenge and undermine the power 
of authoritarian states; but they are also using the same strategies, tools, and people 
to challenge any state, in the name of internet freedom.
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