Browsing by Subject "Arab Spring"

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Open Access
Making History or Celebrating Change? The Role of Twitter in the 2011 Egyptian Revolution
(2012-08-30) Chartoff, Hannah
The Egyptian Revolution of 2011 and the popular protest movement that led to its success represent a significant departure from recent Egyptian history. Plagued by an authoritarian government and weak civil society, the Egyptian population as a whole had little incentive to risk openly opposing the government and demanding change. This paper forwards a model of how such an unexpected revolution might occur, then demonstrates how social media outlets like Twitter can assist in drawing protesters to the streets. The paper then examines the flow of information posted to Twitter during the Egyptian revolution by tracing the number of times key protesters were “retweeted” over time. Though social media is shown to have the potential to facilitate revolution, the data from January and February 2011 in Egypt suggest that Twitter in this case served as an expression of protesters’ sentiments as the revolution occurred, rather than as a force motivating the revolution; that is, the 2011 Egyptian protesters used Twitter to celebrate and document their success, not to make history or plan protests.
Open Access
The Influence of Democracy Aid on the Arab Spring Protests: Did Western Democracy Assistance Help Nations Respond Positively to the Protests?
(2013-04-01) Lang, Courtney
The unprecedented Arab Spring crisis that erupted in late 2010 and spread rapidly across the Middle East and North Africa is history in the making. As the Arab Spring progresses, it has become clear that some nations have been more successful than others in their responses to the crisis, although the reasoning for this is yet to be determined. This thesis suggests that Western foreign aid influenced the way in which these nations responded to the crisis, particularly in regards to their transition to a more legitimate democracy. More specifically, this thesis hypothesizes that those nations that received a significant amount of Western assistance responded more successfully than those that received little. The results gathered from the case study analysis conducted in the paper support this hypothesis. These findings reinforce the literature that argues that foreign aid is effective, and as such, open the door for further research into the ways in which Western foreign aid can be utilized in the future.
Open Access
“Three Tentacles of Terror”: Israeli Securitization after the Arab Spring
(2016-04-25) Deardorff, Tessa
Securitization theory, while designed to describe the politics surrounding extra-military threats to a nation, has rarely been used as a frame to analyze countries that exist in a state of deep and permanent securitization. In these nations, which include Israel, security is a mainstay of political and daily life and discourse. This thesis uses a modified version of securitization theory to analyze the reasoning and motivations behind Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s responses to regional and domestic events between the beginning of the Arab Spring in December 2011 and the end of Operation Protective Edge in August 2014. It argues that the Prime Minister maintains a set of three discourses – the enemy nation-state threat, the para-state threat, and the domestic militant threat – pervasive in modern Israeli society and anchored in the nation’s understanding of its political and military history. The Prime Minister skillfully deployed these discourses over the thirty-three-month period in order to garner national and international support for increased domestic securitization and military operations, both of which served to further his political and personal agenda. I break the discourses into three sections: first focusing on the history of the discourses, then analyzing the Prime Minister’s juggling of the discourses from the beginning of the Arab Spring to the end of Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012 largely in the name of the Camp David Accords, and lastly analyzing his use of the domestic militant discourse in order to undermine the Palestinian unity government and provoke Operations Brother’s Keeper and Protective Edge during Summer 2014. My analysis underscores the utility of securitization theory in analyzing the complexity of Israeli politics. Even in a nation as subject to military threats as Israel, a leader may not always be acting in the state’s best interest.