The Internet is an increasingly contested space, particularly in countries with repressive governments. Infringements on Internet freedom, particularly through Internet filtering and surveillance, have inspired activists and technologists to develop technological counter-measures, most notably circumvention tools to defeat Internet filters and anonymity tools to help protect user privacy and avoid online surveillance efforts. The widely heralded role of online activism in the Arab spring and the increasing incidence of Internet filtering around the world have spurred greater interest in supporting the development and dissemination of these tools as a means to foster greater freedom of expression online and strengthen the hand of activists demanding political reform. However, despite the perceived importance of this field, relatively little is known about the demand for and usage patterns of these tools.
In December 2010, we surveyed a sample of international bloggers to better understand how, where, why, and by whom these tools are being used.
From previous research, we know that circumvention tools are effective in evading national Internet filtering, though they can be slow, insecure and difficult to use. We also know that worldwide circumvention tool usage is limited. In our recent report on circumvention tool usage, we found that at most (and likely far fewer than) 3% of Internet users in countries that engage in substantial filtering use circumvention tools once a month or more. Through this survey, we aim to better understand usage of these tools by a specific community of politically- and internationally-oriented bloggers.
The full, aggregated results of the survey are available at: International Bloggers and Internet Control: Full Survey Results
How did traditionally disenfranchised young Arab women, whose voices were largely absent from the public sphere and certainly from international policy making circles, harness new media technologies during the “Arab Spring” to reshape traditional power dynamics within their countries and with the West? This paper introduces several of the key figures leading the revolutionary convulsions in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, and Yemen and explores how young women used social media and cyberactivism to help shape the “Arab Spring” and its aftermath. It analyzes how young women used citizen journalism and social networking to counter the state-dominated media in their countries and influence mainstream media around the world, finding that in the process, they reconfigured the public sphere as well as the expectations of the public about the role women can and should play in the political lives of their countries.This paper offers empirical evidence of how the emergence of small media that rivals the scope and reach of mass media helped shift the balance of power between mainstream, authoritative state voices embedded in broadcast and print media, which are primarily male-owned, and alternative, individual, female voices embedded in the small media of blogs and mobile telephony. Based on semi-structured interviews with activists from Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen along with virtual and physical ethnography, participant observation, and content analysis, this paper argues that the Arab Spring was not just a political revolution, it was a social, sexual and potentially religious one as well. This paper argues that not only have cyberactivism and social media platforms shifted the power dynamics of authoritarian Arab governments and their citizenry, but they have also reconfigured power relations between the youth who make up the majority of the population and the older generation of political elites who were overwhelmingly male and often implicated in the perpetuation of the status quo. Female cyberactivists stand out for their use of new media technologies and access to platforms that blurred the boundaries between private and public spaces, transcended national boundaries, and created bridges with transnational media and activists groups.