Happy to announce that my article in IJMES is now open access (free to read). Digital De-Citizenship: The Rise of the Digital Denizen in Bahrain cup.org/3cgeo36 cc @QNLib @HBKU @CHSS_HBKU #Bahrain
"Beyond autocratic Bahrain, democratic states such as the UK & the US enable and abet the erosion of digital citizenship. The global surveillance industrial complex, less regulated than the arms trade, although no less insidious, has profited enormously from the Bahrain uprising"
"Perhaps the most striking notion of this is the dystopian potential of a civil society simulacrum, one in which online performances of citizenship are neatly orchestrated by autonomous accounts to give the illusion of a functioning and healthy public sphere" #disinformation
"The web is only a performative space for the neoliberal and loyal citizen, who does not exceed the boundaries determined by a top-down desire to portray Bahrain as an oasis of stability. ...cont..."
"....The digital realm has become functional, a means of facilitating transactions, enabling bureaucracy, and validating identity in the smart cities of the future. It is no longer the heterotopia that it once was. "
"Playing on the now ubiquitous “social distancing,” antisocial distancing is the process of separating humans from each other to diminish human interaction and militate against collective “social” action...cont..."
Perhaps this is all part of Gulf futurism, “the isolation of individuals via technology, wealth . . . the corrosive elements of consumerism on the soul and industry on the earth.”
"Much of what was articulated both on- and offline early in the uprising represented the expression of a radical form of citizenship and reimagining of the Bahraini nation as a democratic constitutional monarchy devoid of sectarian and familial rule. " #Bahrain
"When the regime sought to fragment the opposition through the implementation of a sectarian divide-and-rule policy, #Bahrainis pushed back and mobilized online to assert unity between Sunni and Shi‘a, as well as between the different factions of the opposition. "
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