The Differential Impact of Women's Participation in the Arab Spring: Social Media, Information Technology, Group Identities, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Barriers to Protest, Gender Participation

This excellent report has been professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction. The Arab Spring protests in 2011 uprooted regimes, challenged authoritarian leaders, and provided protesters new tools for mobilization. The use of social media and the involvement of women in public protests indicated changing protest repertoires and movement demographics in many countries. When women protested in 2011, they mobilized both physically and virtually. Assessing the influence women exert in social movements through social media can provide insights into factors that make a social movement successful.
This thesis ascertains that women physically mobilized to participate in the Arab Spring protests in Egypt, Yemen, and Bahrain. In Egypt and Bahrain, women also mobilized virtually using social media, while in Yemen women participated through traditional forms of social mobilization. An assessment of Twitter data in Egypt and Bahrain indicates that women communicated out to others more than their male counterparts, while men received more information from others. Data also indicates that women followed significantly more sources of information than men, thus contributing to the diversity of online protest networks. Notably, women represented nearly fifty percent of the most connected users in the Egyptian Twitter data, communicating to nearly twice as many users and following four times as many information sources, as their male counterparts.
CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND * A. RESEARCH PROBLEM AND SIGNIFICANCE * 1. Women, Information Technology, and Social Media in the Middle East * 2. Significance of Women's Participation in Online Activism * B. LITERATURE REVIEW * 1. Social Movements * 2. Social Media and Networks * 3. Women and Social Movements * 4. Intersections Between Social Movements, Social Media, and Gender Participation * a. Nonviolence * b. Diversity and Innovation * c. Creation of Group Identities * d. Communications * e. Lowering Costs and Barriers to Protest * f. Summary * C. METHODOLOGY * D. CONCLUSION * CHAPTER II - GENDERED CONTRIBUTIONS TO SOCIAL MOVEMENT SUCCESS * A. INTRODUCTION: ARE WOMEN ORCHESTRATORS? * B. WOMEN'S MOBILIZATION AND NONVIOLENCE: PREFERENCES, PRACTICES, AND OUTCOMES * C. DIVERSITY, INNOVATION, AND WOMEN'S CONTRIBUTIONS * D. GENDER AND THE CREATION OF GROUP IDENTITIES * E. COMMUNICATION AND GENDER * F. LOWERED COSTS AND BARRIERS TO PROTEST * G. CONCLUSION * CHAPTER III - INTRODUCTION TO THE CASE STUDIES * A. EGYPT * B. YEMEN * C. BAHRAIN * D. SOCIAL MEDIA: THE REVOLUTIONARY'S MEGAPHONE * 1. Years of Practice * 2. #Mobilization * 3. Repression * E. WOMEN: ON THE STREETS AND ON THE WEB * 1. Gender and Nonviolent Protest * 2. Contributions to Diversity and Innovation * 3. Collective Identity * 4. Communication * 5. Lowering Barriers to Protest * F. CONCLUSION * CHAPTER IV - DATA * A. INTRODUCTION * 1. Key Findings * 2. Twitter Data. * B. EGYPT * 1. Egypt Centrality Score Comparison * 2. Egypt User Activity Comparison * C. YEMEN * D. BAHRAIN * 1. Bahrain Centrality Score Comparison * 2. Bahrain User Activity Comparison * E. CONCLUSION * CHAPTER V - CONCLUSION * A. DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS * B. AREAS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH * C. CONCLUSION * APPENDIX * METHODOLOGY * A. DATA SET * B. DATA STRUCTURING * C. ANALYSIS * 1. Centrality Scores * 2. User Activity Measures * D. CHALLENGES