HMØK00011U Digital Activism and Social Movements in The Context og The Arab Uprisings

This class aims at examining the politics and tactics of digital activism in the Arab world, and its connections to the social and political movements expressed by the Arab uprisings. The course will provide an extensive survey of the existing scholarship on digital activism and Internet studies. It will look at Arab digital activism in a socioeconomic, cultural, and political perspective, tracing its origins back to the beginning of the 2000s and discussing its influence in the formation and functioning of the social and political movements erupted in the Region in late 2010. The course explores the question whether Internet-generated participatory culture is able to affect the structure of contemporary mass movements, and to give a new form to political practices and institution-building. The class will adopt a critical perspective in analyzing the current debate over ideas of freedom, access, participation, democracy as expressed by networked communication technologies; and in  discussing networked publics and the possibility for them to generate new public spheres  and stimulate political change. The course will look at actual activist practices in the realm of Arab digital activism, and provide with several case studies, both on a local and on a regional scale, comparing them with tactics and strategies adopted by global socio-political movements. The class will adopt a multidisciplinary approach, addressing questions such as the value of digital activism from both an aesthetic and political point of view; exploring the connections between art and activism, and the link between culture and technology; and raising issues concerning the broader political economy of the Internet. The course will be highly-interactive and participation-oriented, and will rely on a wide range of learning material, including wikis, Internet forums, and social media generated content.