The ‘story’ of digital excess in revolutions of the Arab Spring

ABSTRACT

The media sphere having become increasingly crowded with the arrival of each new medium on the scene, the narrative about, or ‘story of’, the world has grown in complexity and the emergence of a unified meaning of reality seems to have become problematic. Like their counterparts elsewhere, the Arab media also are marked by such excess, with the social and mainstream media vying with each other for people's attention. Yet, a unified and shared meaning of reality evidently has emerged there: without it, coordinated action resulting in revolutions of the ‘Arab Spring’ in 2011 would have been unlikely. Marshalling a theory of media attention and accounts of political and media practices in the Arab world, this essay argues that a unified and shared meaning emerged in spite of an excess of mediation because the oppositional narrative, which used the social media as a conduit, had its roots in the people's ‘real-world’ political practices and these practices had resulted in unity among people attuned to different political discourses.

KEYWORDS:

• Narrative
• social media
• political practice
• media practice
• information overload
• Arab Spring
• Arab media