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ABSTRACT
This paper examines digital mobilisation with respect to knowledge production, legitimacy and power in Sudan since new communication and surveillance technologies became widespread. Enthusiasm for digital opposition peaked with the Arab Spring and troughed through the repressive government apparatus. Social media (SMS, Facebook, Twitter) and crowdsourcing technologies can threaten the government’s control over the public sphere as participatory practices. To arrive at this finding, we argue the significance of epistemological tools of those who control the representation of digital power, and approach state legitimacy as an ongoing and fragile process of constructing “reality” that requires continuous work to stabilise and uphold. At the same time, the paper describes an international counterpublic of security researchers and hackers who revealed that the Sudanese government invested greatly in controlling the digital landscape. We analyse Nafeer, a local grass-roots initiative for flood-disaster-relief that made use of digital media despite the digital suppression. Nafeer’s challenge to the state came from the way it threatened the state-monopoly over knowledge, revealing both the fragility and the power of state legitimacy.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks goes to all participants of the Digital Publics and Counterpublics workshop on 9–10 September 2016, especially to the organisers Sharath Srinivasan, Stephanie Diepeveen and George Karekwaivanane, and to the anonymous reviewers and the main editors of this journal for their thoughtful comments. We further thank the MPI for Social Anthropology and the LOST colloquium in Halle (Saale), Germany for the conducive environment of exchange and input at different stages of writing. Our gratitude goes to the interviewees who entrusted us with their information.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Gladwell, Malcolm. “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted.” The New Yorker, 2010.
2 Meier, “Building Egypt 2.0”; Bernal, Nation as Network; Pintak, Lawrence. “Crowd-Sourcing Tunisia: Separating Electronic Rumor from Reality.” The Seattle Times, 2011. http://old.seattletimes.com/html/opinion/2014000628_guest23pintak.html.
3 Matveeva, “Conflict Cure or Curse?”; Future Tense, “Netizen Report”; Chaos Computer Club. “Gutachten für NSA-BND-Untersuchungsausschuss: BND-Operationsgebiet Inland.” Gutachten. Chaos Computer Club e. V., October 6, 2016. https://www.ccc.de/de/updates/2016/operationsgebiet-inland.
4 Foucault, Discipline and Punish.
5 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power.
6 Boltanski, On Critique.
7 About 18–24 months fieldwork in Sudan by each researcher. While our research was not focussed on this topic, both authors collected relevant stories, interviews and information. We further gathered and analysed publicly available information after hacks that completed the picture. In order to increase anonymization, we decided to limit information about our methodology.
8 Latour, “On Technical Mediation.”
9 Langmia, “The Role of ICTs in the Economic Development of Africa,” 146.
10 Chadwick, “Web 2.0,” 10.
11 Gates, “Billgate’s Letter.”
12 Bott and Young, “The Role of Crowdsourcing for Better Governance in International Development,” 49.
13 Anderson and Rainie, “Main Findings,” 16.
14 Cherlet, “Epistemic and Technological Determinism in Development Aid.”
15 Bernal, Nation as Network.
16 Okolloh, “Ushahidi, or’testimony’.”
17 Habermas, The Structural Transformation.
18 Postill, “Digital Politics and Political Engagement,” 167.
19 Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere.”
20 Callon, “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation”; Latour, “On Technical Mediation”; Star and Griesemer, “Institutional Ecology, Translations’ and Boundary Objects”; Czarniawska-Joerges and Sevón, Global Ideas; Rottenburg, Far-Fetched Facts.
21 Latour, “On Technical Mediation,” 32.
22 Rottenburg, Far-Fetched Facts, xxxi.
23 Fehér, Heller, and Márkus, Dictatorship over Needs, 137.
24 Barker, Political Legitimacy and the State; Suchman, “Managing Legitimacy,” 574.
25 Bourdieu, Sur l’État.
26 Weber, Economy and Society, 213.
27 Berger and Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality, 110.
28 Boltanski, On Critique, xi, 54.
29 Kubik, The Power of Symbols against the Symbols of Power, 12.
30 OFAC, Sudan Sanctions Program.
31 Kehl, Danielle, Tim Maurer, and Jacob Brogan. “Time to Rethink Tech Sanctions Against Sudan.” Slate, January 30, 2014. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/01/sudan_sanctions_are_keeping_secure_communications_tools_from_activists.html.
32 ITU, “Statistics.”
33 “Social Activism and Transnational Networks: Nafeer and Sudanese Flood Relief,” 35–36.
34 Ibid.
35 The Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies.
36 cf. Marquis-Boire et al., “Some Devices Wander by Mistake - Planet Blue Coat Redux,” 4 and 7.
37 Reporters Without Borders, “Ennemis d’Internet - Iran.”
38 “China: Electronic Great Wall Getting Taller | Enemies of the Internet.” http://12mars.rsf.org/2014-en/2014/03/10/china-electronic-great-wall-getting-taller/. Accessed May 27, 2015.
39 Silverstein, Ken. “Official Pariah Sudan Valuable to America’s War on Terrorism.” Los Angeles Times, April 29, 2005. http://articles.latimes.com/print/2005/apr/29/world/fg-sudan29.
40 Stein, Jeff. “SpyTalk - CIA Training Sudan’s Spies as Obama Officials Fight over Policy.” The Washington Post, August 30, 2010. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/08/cia_training_sudans_spies_as_o.html.
41 Ibid.
42 Interviews with eight anonymous sources, Khartoum, Sudan, March 5–20, 2011.
43 Greenwald, Green. “NSA X-KEYSCORE Server Sites.” The Guardian, July 31, 2013. http://cryptome.org/2013/08/nsa-x-keyscore-servers.htm.
44 Nakashima, Ellen. “Report: Web Monitoring Devices Made by U.S. Firm Blue Coat Detected in Iran, Sudan.” The Washington Post, July 8, 2013. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/report-web-monitoring-devices-made-by-us-firm-blue-coat-detected-in-iran-sudan/2013/07/08/09877ad6-e7cf-11e2-a301-ea5a8116d211_story.html.
45 Marczak et al., “Mapping Hacking Team’s ‘Untraceable’ Spyware.”
46 Cano, “Government Grade Malware.”
47 Lamoureaux, Message in a Mobile.
48 Freedom House, “Sudan | Freedom on the Net 2013,” 8.
49 Reporters without Borders, “Sudan.”
50 Interview with second anonymous source, Khartoum, Sudan, March 6, 2011.
51 Amnesty International, “Sudan Escalates Mass Arrests of Activists amid Protest Crackdown.”
52 Usamah. “Usamah Mohamed.” http://usamahmohamed.blogspot.com/. Accessed October 17, 2016.
53 Sureau's screenshot, see also: Sudan Tribune. “Sudan Steps up Measures to Block ‘Negative’ Websites - Sudan Tribune: Plural News and Views on Sudan.” March 25, 2014. http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article50432
54 Ibid.
55 Interview with third anonymous source, Khartoum, Sudan, March 5, 2011.
56 UNOCHA, “Sudan.”
57 Mahé, “A Tradition Co-opted.”
58 “Nafeer.” https://www.facebook.com/gabaileid/. Accessed September 2, 2016.
59 “Madrasatna - انتسردم .” https://www.facebook.com/Madrasatna/. Accessed January 20, 2017; “Our Environment, Our Responsibility- Let’s Clean Sunut Forest!” https://www.facebook.com/groups/letscleansunutforest/. Accessed January 20, 2017.
60 Sperber, Amanda. “Abeer Khairy, The Woman Behind The Khartoum Flood Map”, The Daily Beast, 2013. http://www.thedailybeast.com/witw/articles/2013/08/15/the-woman-behind-the-khartoum-flood-map.html.
61 Glade, “Social Activism and Transnational Networks”, 42.
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid.
64 Supposedly many Nafeer people were involved into the Sudanese “Shadow Government”, a more governance-oriented group that mirrors the current government, with “shadow ministers” who make decisions.
65 Vokes and Pype, “Chronotopes of Media in Sub-Saharan Africa”; Pype, The Making of the Pentecostal Melodrama, 90–95.
66 Lamoureaux, Message in a Mobile.
67 Six Nafeer Facebook groups exist: Public (English); Public (Arabic); Closed Volunteers, historical data, communications team.
68 Abdelmoneim, Mobile application in disaster management.
69 Khairy, Abeer. Nafeer, February 27, 2014.
70 “Standby Task Force | A Humanitarian Link between the Digital World and Disaster Response.” http://www.standbytaskforce.org/. Accessed October 17, 2016.
71 Interview with anonymous source, Khartoum, Sudan, March 12, 2015.
72 Vokes and Pype, “Chronotopes of Media in Sub-Saharan Africa,” 4.
73 Hilali, Mohamed. “Sudanese Citizens Accuse Government of Negligence after Floods.” The Niles, 2013. http://www.theniles.org/en/articles/society/1998/.
74 Kushkush, Isma’il. “As Floods Ravage Sudan, Young Volunteers Revive a Tradition of Aid.” The New York Times, August 29, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/world/africa/as-floods-ravage-sudan-young-volunteers-revive-a-tradition-of-aid.html.
75 Bashri, “The Use of ICTs”, 81.
76 Ibid, 76.
77 Glade, “Social Activism and Transnational Networks”.
78 Ibid.
79 Mahé, “A Tradition Co-opted,” 236.
80 Ibid, 235–236.
81 Ibid, 239–240.
82 Ibid, 240–241.
83 Gal and Woolard, “Constructing Languages and Publics”, 129.