This dissertation explores the role of Internet censorship and circumvention in the Arab world as well as Arabs’ views on the limits to free speech on the Internet. The project involves the creation of an Internet censorship circumvention tool named Alkasir that allows users to report and access certain types of censored websites. The study covers the Arab world at large with special focus on Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen. This work is of interdisciplinary nature and draws on the disciplines of media and communication studies and computer science. It uses a pioneering experimental approach by placing Alkasir in the hands of willing users who automatically feed a server with data about usage patterns without storing any of their personal information. In addition to the analysis of Alkasir usage data, Web surveys were used to learn about any technical and nontechnical Internet censorship practices that Arab users and content producers may have been exposed to. The study also aims at learning about users’ experiences with circumvention tools and how such tools could be improved. The study found that users have successfully reported and accessed hundreds of censored social networking, news, dissident, multimedia and other websites. The survey results show that while most Arab informants disapprove censoring online anti-government political content, the majority support the censoring of other types of content such as pornography, hate speech, and anti-religion material. Most informants indicated that circumvention tools should be free of charge, fast and reliable. An increase in awareness among survey respondents of the need for privacy and anonymity features in circumvention solutions was observed.

LL.M. (International Law) / Since 1945 there has been a noticeable broadening of what constitutes a threat to international peace and security. Traditionally, the definition of “threat to international peace” was limited to a conflict among nations, which were conflicts common in the world. The core threat to international peace used to be organized inter-state conflicts only. Today however, the nature of threats to international peace has changed drastically to include internal conflicts – as there are examples of cases where these have spread across the borders or have led to massive refugee situations. In this dissertation, I review the mandate of the United Nation’s inter alia the changing definition of ‘threat to international peace’.

This thesis explores Shi’a-Sunni relations in Gulf politics during a period of regional upheaval, starting with the 2003 invasion of Iraq through the Arab revolts of early 2011. It seeks to understand the conditions under which sectarian distinctions become a prominent feature of the Gulf political landscape, focusing on the three Gulf countries that have been affected most by sectarian tensions: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. The study analyzes the contagion effect of the civil war in Iraq, the 2006 war in Lebanon, and the Arab Spring on local sectarian dynamics in the three states. Specifically, it explores the role of domestic institutions—parliaments and other quasi-democratic structures, the media, and clerical establishments—in tempering or exacerbating sectarianism. It finds that the maturity and strength of participatory institutions in each state played a determinant role in the level of sectarianism resulting from dramatic shifts in the regional environment since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. I conclude, therefore, that the real roots of the so-called “rise of the Shi’a” phenomena lie in the domestic political context of each state, rather than in the regional policies of Iran or the contagion effect of events in Iraq or Lebanon. Although the Gulf Shi’a took a degree of inspiration from the actions of their co-religionists in Iraq, Iran and Lebanon, they ultimately strove for greater rights in a non-sectarian, nationalist framework. The rise of sectarianism in the Gulf has been largely the product of excessive alarm by entrenched Sunni elites or the result of calculated attempts by regimes to discredit Shi’a political actors by portraying them as proxies for Iran, Iraq, or the Lebanese Hizballah. What is qualitatively different about the post-2003 period is not the level of mobilization by the Shi’a, but rather the intensity of threat perception by Gulf regimes and Sunni Islamists.

This diploma thesis is focusing on analyzing a possible influence of new media on politics with an emphasis on the three most popular social networks as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The main methods used in this thesis are analysis and subsequent comparison of acquired facts. This thesis has two subtopics. Firstly, it is the action and the access of Czech and world politicians on the social networks. Secondly, it analyses the events of the Arab Spring in the years 2010 and 2011. This thesis is based both on professional literature of Czech and foreign authors, that follows up mass media, mass communication and new media, as well as on studies analyzing social networks as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, on Czech and foreign newspapers, TV broadcasts and post electoral studies.

Esta pesquisa foi desenvolvida para examinar a articulação dos recursos de linguagem e seus efeitos de sentido e compreender o seu papel na transformação social que motivou, mobilizou e legitimou a Revolução Egípcia de 2011, um evento social do movimento popular Primavera Árabe, promovido na página do site de rede social Facebook denominado We Are All Khaled Said. Para isto, valemo-nos da abordagem metodológica da Teoria Social do Discurso, uma vertente da Análise de Discurso Crítica, desenvolvida por Norman Fairclough, que possibilitou o mapeamento da organização dos enunciados escolhidos ao corpus desta análise. / This research was conducted to examine the articulation of language features and their effects of meaning and understand their role in social transformation that motivated, mobilized and legitimized the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, a social event of the popular Arab Spring movement, promoted on the page social networking site Facebook called We Are All Khaled Said. For this, we used of the methodological approach of Social Discourse Theory, a branch of Critical Discourse Analysis, developed by Norman Fairclough, which enabled the mapping of the organization of the corpus utterances chosen this analysis.

This study examines Al-Ḥirāk Al-Shabābī Al-ʾUrdunī (the Jordanian Youth Movement), from now on the HSU, and aims to be a first scholarly attempt at mapping the organisation, strategy, challenges, and significance of this youth-led and youth-organised social movement. Taking an interpretive approach to organisational research, this thesis has used a wide range of primary and secondary data, benefited from extensive periods of participant observation as well as interviews with a variety of people including movement participants, in order to achieve a better understanding of the HSU. The main findings that result from this research show that the HSU is ideologically an umbrella to a variety of ideologies, from leftist or communists to Islamists, and that it chooses to organise informally and uninstitutionally in accordance with their political conviction of political parties and traditional opposition groups being a tool of social control for the regime. Politically, therefore, the movement represents a rupture with traditional politics in the country which are perceived by participants as part of a historically constructed system for exercising social control. Finally, the movement challenges traditional frames of ethnic and religious understandings of social and political subjectivities by mobilising a more inclusive discourse that tries to recover the debate on class struggle. Its political independence from other actors in the Jordanian political scene allows participant to raise more radical claims that seek regime removal as well as demands for reform, and these radical discourse within the movement greatly depend on the varying political opportunity structure in time determined by the Jordanian regime’s combination of conciliatory and repressive counter-strategies. An analysis of the strategic conversation between the regime and the HSU is key to exploring the social and political significance of movement strategies in bringing about change in the country as it determines the challenges to organisation encountered. However, relevant transformations in the culture of activism in Jordan are evident, and have the potential to transforming the future of political participation and organisation.

This dissertation explores civil-military relations in democratizing contexts, specifically how the historical relationship between the military and the broader public shapes responses to political crises such as riots and revolutions. I develop a novel theory, rooted in civil-military relations literature from political science and sociology, for how an army's historical interactions with the population and with foreign sponsors create doctrine by shaping organizational culture and practices toward the population. Doctrine, in turn, influences the military’s response to a popular uprising. The foundations of military doctrine are historical and include the military's institutional origins, role in national independence, and relationship to the ruling party. Subsequently, doctrinal innovation occurs as a result of interacting with the domestic population and foreign military sponsors. The dissertation features qualitative case studies of Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria during the Arab Spring and a quantitative data analysis of major uprisings worldwide since 1950. Both qualitative and quantitative evidence demonstrate that the nature of military doctrine explains soldiers' behavior during popular uprisings better than alternative arguments based on capacity, patronage, and ethnicity.

L'assassinat de Rafic Hariri, le 14 février 2005, est un événement fondateur. Un mois plus tard, le 14 mars 2005, la manifestation pro‐Hariri sur la place des Martyrs, rebaptisée place de la Liberté, transforme en effet cette place publique en un espace public. Cette même place sera utilisée ensuite aussi bien par les pro‐Hariri (la formation du 14 mars) que par les anti‐Hariri (la formation du 8 mars). La question qui nous intéresse est de savoir comment cette suite d'événements a été reprise et médiatisée par les différents médias, au point de faire de la place des Martyrs le lieu d'un rendez‐vous annuel des partis en présence. Notre objectif est donc de montrer dans quelles conditions cette place a été transformée, le 14 mars 2005, en un espace public et d'étudier quels moyens ont été mis en œuvre pour cela. Notre perspective ne se limite pas aux médias libanais mais s'étend jusqu'à la presse internationale, dont nous faisons l'hypothèse qu'elle a joué un rôle important dans la construction de cet événement. Le paradoxe et la nouveauté de cet événement tiennent à ce que la notion d'espace public est relativement étrangère au paysage libanais. Au contraire, la confessionnalité est reconnue au Liban et même mentionnée dans la Constitution du pays, en contradiction avec la conception d'un espace public (notamment bourgeois) reposant sur le principe de la laïcité. Pour traiter de cette question, nous montrons que l'occupation de la place des Martyrs révèle le lien étroit qui associe religion et laïcité, contrairement aux représentations stéréotypées qui tendent à opposer ces deux pôles. Une approche communicationnelle nous permet de mettre en évidence la relation entre ces deux pôles. / The assassination of Rafic Hariri, February 14th 2005, is the founding event. A month later, March 14, the demonstration pro‐Hariri in Martyrs' Square, renamed Freedom Square, transform the public square into a public sphere. The question we are interested by is how different media broadcasted this sequence of events ; as to make Martyrs’ square a yearly meeting of all parties. Our target is to show under what conditions this place has been transformed, March 14th 2005, into a public space and to explore different ways that allowed reaching the target. Our perspective is not limited to Lebanese media, but extends to international media, which we suggest that they had an important role in the construction of this event. The paradox and novelty of this event is that the concept of public sphere is relatively foreign to the Lebanese scene. The contrast is that, the confessionality is recognized in Lebanon and even mentioned in the constitution, on opposition of the conception of public sphere based on the principle of secularism. To answer this question, we’ll try to show that the occupation of Martyrs’ square reveals the close link between religion and secularism, unlike the stereotypical representations that tend to oppose these two poles. A communicational approach highlight the relationship between these two poles.

Esta pesquisa foi desenvolvida para examinar a articulação dos recursos de linguagem e seus efeitos de sentido e compreender o seu papel na transformação social que motivou, mobilizou e legitimou a Revolução Egípcia de 2011, um evento social do movimento popular Primavera Árabe, promovido na página do site de rede social Facebook denominado We Are All Khaled Said. Para isto, valemo-nos da abordagem metodológica da Teoria Social do Discurso, uma vertente da Análise de Discurso Crítica, desenvolvida por Norman Fairclough, que possibilitou o mapeamento da organização dos enunciados escolhidos ao corpus desta análise. / This research was conducted to examine the articulation of language features and their effects of meaning and understand their role in social transformation that motivated, mobilized and legitimized the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, a social event of the popular Arab Spring movement, promoted on the page social networking site Facebook called We Are All Khaled Said. For this, we used of the methodological approach of Social Discourse Theory, a branch of Critical Discourse Analysis, developed by Norman Fairclough, which enabled the mapping of the organization of the corpus utterances chosen this analysis.

abstract: The Arab Spring revolutions of 2010-11 raised important questions about how social-movement actors use new communication technologies, such as social media, for communication and organizing during episodes of contentious politics. This dissertation examines how organizers of and participants in Tunisia’s Arab Spring revolution used communication technologies such as Facebook, blogs, news websites, email, television, radio, newspapers, telephones, and interpersonal communication. The dissertation approaches the topic through the communication paradigm of framing, which the author uses to tie together theories of social movements, neo-patrimonialism, and revolution. The author traveled to Tunisia and conducted 44 interviews with organizers and participants about their uses of communication media, the frames they constructed and deployed, their framing strategies, their organizing activities, and their experiences of the revolution. The most common frames were those of the regime’s corruption, economic issues, and the security forces’ brutality. Interviewees deployed a hybrid network of media to disseminate these frames; Facebook represented a single node in the network, though many interviewees used it more than any other node. To explain the framing process and the resonance of the frames deployed by revolutionaries, the dissertation creates the concept of the alternative narrative, which describes how revolutionaries used a hybrid network to successfully construct an alternative to the narrative constructed by the regime. The dissertation also creates the concept of authoritarian weakening, to explain how citizens can potentially weaken neo-patrimonial regimes under conditions concerning corruption, poverty, and the introduction of civil society and of new communication technologies. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Journalism and Mass Communication 2018