Algorithmic Culture and Networks in the Middle East
Laila ShereenSakr
UC Santa Barbara
The joint availability of massive social and cultural data sets (including social media and digitized cultural artifacts) make possible fundamentally new paradigms for the study of social and cultural activities and histories. It is imperative that at this moment culture and historical inquiry are maintained. Access to information in the Arab world, and justice, have been reframed through open source industry models, social media platforms, and Arab software localization.
This paper investigates how digital media practices impact political critique of methods (abstraction, categorical givens) and goals (surveillance, marketing, positivism). It begins by discussing the challenge today in producing knowledge that is analytically rigorous, durable, and is independent from various power centers and policy circles, securitized and militarized. Through analyses of the traces people leave online, this research formulates and studies various assemblages of material bodies and their ideas—creating alternative geographies of movement and new spatialities of information patterns, i.e., new networks of revolution. It responds to questions such as: What are the new forms of sociality and political action enabled by global networks? To answer these questions, I consider the multiplicities of networks: solidarity networks, artistic networks, academic networks, virtual networks; networked images as political instruments; and the network as a medium of global political action since the Arab uprisings; the new body politic as a body without skin. This paper traces various Arab collectives online and digital activism campaigns, including We Are All Khaled Said, No to Military Trials for Civilians, You Stink, Free Bassel Safadi, Kafa, Jinsayati, Uprising Women, Take Back the Tech, HarassMap, and Women2Drive. These analyses of activist movements in places ranging from Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt reexamine categories of indicators that signal a cohesive body politic within the context of various social configurations through digital media campaigns.