Censorship and Freedom of Expression in the Middle East
This is an extract from my new report “State of Social Media, Middle East: 2018,” which was co-written with Payton Bruni and published earlier this year. Read the Executive Summary and other sections on Market Context, Facebook and Twitter, Snapchat and Bitmoji, YouTube, WhatsApp and Instagram, Arab Youth and Fake News.
Reporters Without Borders released their 2018 World Press Freedom Index, stating that “yet again” several Middle Eastern countries were ranked to have some of the worst press freedom in the world. For example, of the 180 countries studied, the report placed Yemen at rank 167, Saudi Arabia at 169 and Syria at 177.
Challenges to open news
Avoiding skewed reporting, or “news reports in the Middle East [which] can some- times feel like an echo-chamber for autocrats,” can be a challenge when journalists face prosecution from government authority, a Forbes article reported.
- The piece analyzed the challenges journalists in the Middle East face, citing the forced closure of Al Arab news in Bahrain as one example.
- It also explored the potential for new tools like Inkrypyt, “a decentralized journalism and media content hosting platform that ensures content authenticity, resilience and censorship-resistance.”
WhatsApp under fire in Syria
A suggested ban on WhatsApp calls in Syria had Syrians, and opposition activists who rely on the communication tool, worried.
An article by The National highlighted how a government enforced ban could be particularly problematic in Syrian cities, such as Raqqa, where damaged cell towers force residents to rely solely on apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger to communicate.
Developments in Egypt
Egypt’s new social media laws attracted considerable attention during the past year. Legislation means social media accounts with more than 5,000 followers can be monitored, and websites must receive a license from the government before they can be created.
Human rights activists in Egypt have also come under scrutiny. Activist Amal Fathy was arrested and fined for “spreading fake news” in a video she posted on Facebook.
The BBC said her video described how she had been sexually harassed, and that she had criticized the government for not doing enough to protect women. Her case, and others, was included in a 2018 report from Human Rights Watch which identified how counterterrorism and state-of-emergency laws in Egypt were often to prosecute critics.
Other notable developments
In late December 2018, protests in Sudan were purportedly accompanied by the blocking of major social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp.
Christiaan Triebert, who at the time was the Senior Investigator and Lead Trainer at @Bellingcat, (he’s now at the New York Times) tweeted about this, noting that Snapchat still appeared to be working.
In UAE, a British man was arrested, and later deported, after sending an angry WhatsApp message to a car dealer after the vehicle he purchased earlier that day broke down.
According to a 2018 paper by Chatham House’s Joyce Hakmeh “Through their cybercrime laws, the GCC countries have sought to get a stronger grip on social media, and to stymie the potential for spillover via online platforms of political unrest from other Arab countries.”
Read more about social media in the Middle East by downloading the full study today from the University of Oregon Scholars’ Bank, or view it online via Scribd, SlideShare, ResearchGate and Academia.Edu.
