Social media platforms have become critical components of rebel groups’ communication channels. While discussions on rebels’ social media presence usually centre around issues of violence and...Show moreSocial media platforms have become critical components of rebel groups’ communication channels. While discussions on rebels’ social media presence usually centre around issues of violence and disruption, mounting evidence exists pinpointing the non-violent tactics rebel actors employ online. Interested in how social media use contributes to the ability of established rebel groups to project, cultivate, and negotiate favourable online personas internationally, this research project offers an exploratory case study analysis of the 5-day long #AskHamas Twitter campaign that Islamic resistance movement for Palestinian liberation Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah - commonly known as Hamas, conducted in March 2015. A mixed method approach combining social network analysis and empathic close-text reading was employed to reconstruct the international reception of the online event. Framing the Twitter campaign conceptually as an instance of public relations (PR) management, findings substantiate that the #AskHamas Twitter event allowed Hamas to establishing direct, and relevant relations with its targeted Western audience. At the same time, evidence pinpoints the ultimate dependency of online campaigns on the willingness of targeted audience to engage seriously. In case of #AskHamas, meaningful exchange with Hamas was obstructed by deliberate trolling, mocking and ridiculing on parts of participating. Evidence collected in this study implicates the urgency to overcome violence-fixation in Western understandings of rebel actors, and the necessity to contextualise identified rebel online communication practices to their socially mediated context of creation and dissemination.Show less
Research master thesis | Middle Eastern Studies (research) (MA)
open access
Al-Hashd al-Shaʿbi or the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) is an umbrella of armed groups in Iraq that united in 2014 in cooperation with the government in order to defeat IS. Officially, the...Show moreAl-Hashd al-Shaʿbi or the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) is an umbrella of armed groups in Iraq that united in 2014 in cooperation with the government in order to defeat IS. Officially, the organization is under the control of the Prime-Minister (PM). In reality, however, it has retained operational and administrative independence, often directly ignoring orders from the PM and even attacking foreign forces in Iraq and the region. This thesis addresses the question of how the PMF has been able to retain much of its independence throughout the six years of its existence, in which the government has often attempted to rein it in. It also considers the implications of the PMF’s independence for the notion of the sovereignty of the Iraqi government. It finds that the PMF is not a singular organization, but rather a collective of independent groups that vie with each other for funding, influence, and power. The key grouping within the PMF is that of the Iranian-backed Hashd. Many other PMF groups rely on this alliance because of its control of the PMF’s central administration, which distributes funding. Iran and its allies in Iraq benefit from the PMF’s independence from potentially anti-Iranian PMs, and the cover and plausible deniability that the lack of oversight grants them. This is abetted by the support the PMF enjoys in the Iraqi parliament through its own presence there, and through political opportunists or pro-Iranian ideologues. The PMF uses its military, social, and political power to actively undermine the government in different ways. Iraq’s security sector can only properly be understood as an ‘armed political order’ in which different actors and groupings continuously vie for influence in violent and non-violent ways. The office of the PM is one venue for contestation, and the person of the PM only one of its actors. Coercive organizations of all sorts participate in this contestation. An anti-governmental Hashd group is not inherently different in this regard than a unit of the Iraqi Army. Its position is different because of the different structural constraints on both groups, and their alignment towards the government. The competition between the different Hashd groups and the recent protests which led to the appointment of PM al-Kadhimi indicate that no one – including the pro-Iranian camp – is truly dominant in the Iraqi armed order.Show less
Research master thesis | Middle Eastern Studies (research) (MA)
open access
This thesis examines the role of non-state cyber actors in violent conflicts, focusing on the case study of the hacker group Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) in the Syrian civil war. A network analysis...Show moreThis thesis examines the role of non-state cyber actors in violent conflicts, focusing on the case study of the hacker group Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) in the Syrian civil war. A network analysis of all cyber attacks related to the Syrian war between 2012-2015 shows that the SEA primarily attacked Western media. However, the thesis argues that the West was not the SEA's main target, rather, the cyber attacks were meant to influence and control the Syrian opposition with the purpose to weaken them.Show less
National identity is the one of the basic elements of a modern state because the belonging of people to the nation is based on their belonging to their identity. For every Third World country, the...Show moreNational identity is the one of the basic elements of a modern state because the belonging of people to the nation is based on their belonging to their identity. For every Third World country, the defining of national identity and the construction of national belonging is especially crucial to the social stability and the social development. Egyptians identity issue merged in 19th century, when Egyptian intellectuals were influenced by Western “nation state” thought and tried to identify the national identity of Egyptians. From the 19th century to 1967, we can find that the development process of Egyptian nationalism has a clue --- from a vague distinction of “Egyptians” and “un-Egyptians” to an attempt of construction the national history; from “the lack of nationalism” to the struggle between different kinds of nationalism to the dominant of Arabism. However, the disastrous rout of Egypt in 1967 Arab-Israeli War cut down this process and a series of political events in Sadat era was finally resulted in a new identity crisis in Egypt society. In that case, Egyptian government had no option but to re-shape the Egyptian national identity for the sake of repairing the crack of society which made by the identity crisis and maintaining its legitimacy. In Sadat era, Egyptian government amended history textbooks, constructed some new national museums and introduced some new symbols. However, The measures undertaken by the Egyptian government under Sadat did not create a new consensus over what the ‘Egyptian nation’ is. Quite on the contrary, many national identities compete with each other but none of them can be a dominant ideology.Show less
