https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4809-0207
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ABSTRACT
Drawing on the case of the Hirak movement born in Algeria in 2019, this article casts light on the mechanisms of transformation of the anti-regime movement when it comes to the transnational dimension. Based on a qualitative case-study research design, the article first unpacks the transformative dynamics of the movement when it bypasses the context of origins regarding the framing, organizational, and protesting dimensions. Then, the article looks at the effects of such changes against a background characterized by high political conflict and harsh repression. Findings show that digital media supporting transnational activism have three main effects that are deeply intertwined: they mix up the sociopolitical cleavages of the country of origin by facilitating the hybridization of actors’ registers and repertoires of action at a global level; they contribute to politicizing specific issues by escalating the levels of contention; and they allow new measures of a regime’s transnational repression.
Acknowledgements
We are incredibly grateful to the activists who shared their personal and political experiences in interviews with us. Without them, we could not have written this article. We would also like to thank Nicole Doerr, Bidisha Biswas, and the other participants, who gave us invaluable feedback on our work during a seminar at the Copenhagen Centre for Political Mobilisation and Social Movement Studies. Finally, we would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and the Guest Editors of this themed issue for their helpful advice that allowed us to improve the quality of the manuscript.
Notes
1 Omar Benderra et al., Hirak en Algérie: l’invention d’un soulèvement (Paris: La fabrique éditions, 2020).
2 Omar Carlier, “Hirak: un mouvement socio-politique inédit et inventif. Temps suspendu et/ou en devenir,” Insaniyat: Revue algérienne d’anthropologie et de sciences sociales 87 (2020): 13–45; Fatma Oussedik, “Le hirak: quelques réflexions sur les enjeux d’un mouvement contestataire en Algérie,” Insaniyat: Revue algérienne d’anthropologie et de sciences sociales 88 (2020): 69–82.
3 Alice Mattoni, “A Situated Understanding of Digital Technologies in Social Movements: Media Ecology and Media Practice Approaches,” Social Movement Studies 16, no. 4 (2017): 494–505; W. Lance Bennett, “Social Movements Beyond Borders: Uunderstanding Two Eras of Transnational Activism,” in Transnational Protest and Global Activism, ed. Donatella della Porta and Sidney Tarrow (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 203–26.
4 Jeffrey S. Juris, Networking Futures: The Movements against Corporate Globalization (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008); Donatella della Porta and Lorenzo Mosca, “Global-Net for Global Movements? A Network of Networks for a Movement of Movements,” Journal of Public Policy 25, no. 1 (2005): 165–90; Donatella della Porta, ed., The Global Justice Movement: Cross National and Transnational Perspectives (London: Paradigm Publishers, 2007).
5 Bennett, “Social Movements beyond Borders.”
6 W. Lance Bennett and Alexandra Segerberg, The Logic of Connective Action: Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Paolo Gerbaudo, Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism (London: Pluto Press, 2012); Merouan Mekouar, Protest and Mass Mobilization: Authoritarian Collapse and Political Change in North Africa (London: Routledge, 2020). See also Sihem Najar, ed., Le cyberactivisme au Maghreb et dans le monde arabe (n.p.: Karthala, 2013). To be sure, even before the so-called Arab Spring in 2009, in reference to the wave of protests in Iran following the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, scholars talked about the “twitter revolution.” See Felix Tusa, “How Social Media Can Shape a Protest Movement: The Cases of Egypt in 2011 and Iran in 2009,” Arab Media and Society 17 (2013): 1–19.
7 Philip N. Howard and Muzammil M. Hussain, “The Upheavals in Egypt and Tunisia: The Role of Digital Media,” Journal of Democracy 22, no. 3 (2011): 35–48; David M. Faris and Patrick Meier, “Digital Activism in Authoritarian Countries,” in The Participatory Cultures Handbook, ed. Aaron Delwiche and Jennifer Jacobs Henderson (London: Routledge, 2013), 197–205.
8 Philip N. Howard and Muzammil M. Hussain, Democracy’s Fourth Wave? Digital Media and the Arab Spring (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
9 Warda Hadjab, “Algiers–Paris Round Trips: Diasporic Pathways of a Public Civil Dissidence,” Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 14, no. 3 (2016): 314–33. On the aspect of using transnational activism when it comes to an authoritarian setting within and outside the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, see Halleh Ghorashi and Nayereh Tavakoli, “Paradoxes of Transnational Space and Local Activism,” Focaal 47 (2006): 90–102; Adam Simpson, “An ‘Activist Diaspora’ as a Response to Authoritarianism in Myanmar: The Role of Transnational Activism in Promoting Political Reform,” in Civil Society Activism under Authoritarian Rule: A Comparative Perspective, ed. Francesco Cavatorta (London: Routledge, 2013), 197–234; Laura Hammond, “Somali Transnational Activism and Integration in the UK: Mutually Supporting Strategies,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 39, no. 6 (2013): 1001–17; Mathilde Zederman, “Party Politics in Transnational and Authoritarian Settings: Tunisian Pro- and Anti-Ben Ali’s Regime Parties in France,” in Political Parties Abroad: A New Arena for Party Politics, ed. Tudi Kernalegenn and Emilie van Haute (London: Routledge, 2020), 185–200.
10 Claire Beaugrand and Vincent Geisser, “Social Mobilization and Political Participation in the Diaspora during the ‘Arab Spring,’” Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 14, no. 3 (2016): 239–43.
11 Najar, Le cyberactivisme au Maghreb et dans le monde arabe.
12 Ibid.
13 Hanan Badr, “Before the ‘Arab Spring’: How Challengers Pushed Counter-Issues in Egypt’s Hybrid Media System,” Media, War & Conflict 14, no. 4 (2021): 522–41; Gadi Wolfsfeld, Elad Segev, and Tamir Sheafer, “Social Media and the Arab Spring: Politics Comes First,” The International Journal of Press/Politics 18, no. 2 (2013): 115–37.
14 David A. Snow and Danny Trom, “The Case Study and the Study of Social Movements,” in Methods of Social Movement Research, ed. Bert Klandermans and Suzanne Staggenborg (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 146–72.
15 Adele E. Clarke, Carrie Friese, and Racehl Washburn, eds., Situational Analysis in Practice: Mapping Research with Grounded Theory (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2015).
16 Ibid.
17 Coordination de l’Intercollectif des Algériens de Paris/ Île de France; Collectif Débout l’Algérie; and Collectif Liberons l’Algérie.
18 Most popular activists having a YouTube channel and being active weekly on Instagram and YouTube are Abdou Semmar and Amir DZ (living in France), and Larbi Zitout (living in London).
19 All the interviews are kept anonymous to protect our informants.
20 Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of the Experience (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 21.
21 David A. Snow and Robert D. Benford, “Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization,” International Social Movement Research 1 (1988): 197–218.
22 Robert D. Benford and David A. Snow, “Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment,” Annual Review of Sociology 26, no. 1 (2000): 611–39.
23 Ibid.
24 Bidisha Biswas, “Nationalism by Proxy: A Comparison of Social Movements among Diaspora Sikhs and Hindus,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 10, no. 2 (2004): 269–95; Fiona B. Adamson, “Constructing the Diaspora: Diaspora Identity Politics and Transnational Social Movements,” in Politics from Afar: Transnational Diasporas and Networks, ed. Terrence Lyons and Peter Mandaville (London: Hurst, 2012), 25–42.
25 Donatella della Porta and Mario Diani, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Social Movements (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Frank G. A. de Bakker, Frank den Hond, and Mikko Laamanen, “Social Movements: Organizations and Organizing,” in Handbook of Social Movements across Disciplines, 2nd ed., Conny Roggeband and Bert Klandermans (Amsterdam, Netherlands: Springer, 2017), 203–31.
26 Frances Fox Piven, “On the Organizational Question,” Sociological Quarterly 54, no. 2 (2013): 191–93; W. Lance Bennett and Alexandra Segerberg, “Communication in Movements,” in The Oxford Handbook of Social Movements, ed. Donatella della Porta and Mario Diani (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 367–82.
27 Paul Routledge, “Geography and Social Movements,” in The Oxford Handbook of Social Movements, ed. Donatella della Porta and Mario Diani (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 383–97.
28 Charles Tilly and Sidney G. Tarrow, Contentious Politics (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2007); Jennifer Earland Katrina Kimport, Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011).
29 As for the role of digital media in the Arab Uprisings, see Sahar Khamis and Katherine Vaughn, “Cyberactivism in the Egyptian Revolution: How Civic Engagement and Citizen Journalism Tilted the Balance,” Arab Media and Society 14 (2011): https://www.arabmediasociety.com/cyberactivism-in-the-egyptian-revolution-how-civic-engagement-and-citizen-journalism-tilted-the-balance/; Mohammed El-Nawawy and Sahar Khamis, “Political Activism 2.0: Comparing the Role of Social Media in Egypt’s ‘Facebook Revolution’ and Iran’s ‘Twitter Uprising,’” CyberOrient 6, no. 1 (2012): 8–33.
30 Interview with an activist living in Paris but who participated in 2019 mass protests in Algeria, October 2020.
31 Interview with an activist living in Paris, March 2021.
32 Interview with an activist living in Paris, October 2020.
33 See “22 Février 2019 pour une Algérie Meilleure et une Démocratie Majeure,” Facebook.com, https://www.facebook.com/22-F%C3%A9vrier-2019-pour-une-Alg%C3%A9rie-Meilleure-et-une-D%C3%A9mocratie-Majeure-1229595360540200.
34 For example, Facebook pages collected nearly 10,000 votes for Mustapha Bouchachi, a renowned lawyer, human rights activist, and member of the Front des Forces Socialistes. See Zahra Chenaoui, “En Algérie, le mouvement s’interroge sur la suite: ‘Manifester, ça ne suffit pas,’” Le Monde, March 29, 2019, https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2019/03/29/en-algerie-la-crainte-de-voir-le-mouvement-echouer-est-grande_5442945_3210.html.
35 “Ecris ta constitution,” Facebook.com, https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063859411019.
36 According to the initiators, Hack Hirak was “the first hackathon which aimed to put into practice Civic Tech in Algeria, a technology that allows engagement, participation or improves the relationship between the population and government institutions by strengthening communication with citizens and improving government” (The Algerian Center for Social Entrepreneurship, “Hack Hirak | Un hackaton citoyen pour une Algérie,” Facebook.com, April 26, 2019, https://www.facebook.com/events/the-algerian-center-for-social-entrepreneurship/hack-hirak-un-hackaton-citoyen-pour-une-alg%C3%A9rie-%D8%AD%D8%B1%D8%A9-%D9%88%D8%AF%D9%8A%D9%85%D9%82%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%B7%D9%8A%D8%A9/2074053279560366/).
37 Didier Le Saout, “Faire Hirak à Paris. les mises en scène d’une révolution contre le ‘système Algérien,’” L’Année du Maghreb 21 (2019): 131–46.
38 “Collectif Débout l’Algérie” is one of the numerous collectives created online (through a Facebook group) acting at the transnational level (Le Saout, “Faire Hirak à Paris”).
39 Teresa Graziano, “The Tunisian Diaspora: Between ‘Digital Riots’ and Web Activism,” Social Science Information 51, no. 4 (2012): 534–50; Kari Andén-Papadopoulos and Mervi Pantti, “The Media Work of Syrian Diaspora Activists: Brokering between the Protest and Mainstream Media,” International Journal of Communication 7 (2013): 2185–206; Ahmed Al-Rawi and Shahira Fahmy, “Social Media Use in the Diaspora: The Case of Syrians in Italy,” in Diaspora and Media in Europe: Migration, Identity, and Integration, ed. Karim H. Karim and Ahmed Al-Rawi (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 71–96.
40 Sidney Tarrow and Doug McAdam, “Scale Shift in Transnational Contention,” in Transnational Protest and Global Activism, ed. Donatella della Porta and Sidney Tarrow (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 121–50.
41 “Wesh Derna,” Facebook.com, https://www.facebook.com/WeshDerna/app/212104595551052/?ref=page_internal.
42 Interview with an activist living in Paris, October 2020.
43 Interview with an activist living in Paris, online interview, August 2021.
44 Interview with an investigative journalist living in Paris, March 2021.
45 Radio Corona Internationale, https://rsf.org/en/radio-corona-internationale.
46 “Web Radio-DZ.be,” Facebook.com, https://www.facebook.com/Web-Radio-DZbe-875888982437457/.
47 Jürgen Gerhards and Dieter Rucht, “Mesomobilization: Organizing and Framing in Two Protest Campaigns in West Germany,” American Journal of Sociology 98, no. 3 (1992): 555–96.
48 Houda Asal, Dynamiques associatives de la diaspora libanaise: fragmentations internes et transnationalisme sur le Web (Paris: Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, April 2012), http://www.e-diasporas.fr/working-papers/Asal-Lebanese-FR.pdf; Mathilde Zederman, “L’union fait-elle la force face à l’autoritarisme tunisien? Dynamiques d’alliances transidéologiques en France dans les années 2000,” Critique internationale 3 (2020): 91–110.
49 The “eradicators” were a faction within the Algerian political and military establishment during that country’s civil war, which from 1992 pitted Islamist rebels against a military-installed government.
50 In 1992, the general Tawfiq was one among those wishing to interrupt the electoral process favorable to the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) and one of the supporters of the hard faction of the politico-military ruling class, labeled the “eradicator clan.”
51 On the Algerian Civil War, also called “the Dark Decade,” see Luis Martinez, La guerre civile en Algérie (Paris: Karthala, 1998); Abderrahmane Moussaoui, De la violence en Algérie. Les lois du chaos (Alger: Éditions Barzakh, 2006).
52 Interview with an activist living in Oran, online interview, November 2020. This position is also shared by an investigative journalist living in Algeria, online interview, June 2021. Despite this position, it is important to note that Algerian authorities included Rachad, together with the MAK (Movement for the self-determination of Kabylie), in its list of terrorist entities in April 2021.
53 Interview with an activist living in Oran, online interview, November 2020.
54 Ibid.
55 Laurence Thieux, “Les réseaux sociaux: une arme à double tranchant pour les mouvements sociaux et leur lutte contre le ‘pouvoir’ en Algérie,” IEMed.org, March 10, 2020, https://www.iemed.org/publication/les-reseaux-sociaux-une-arme-a-double-tranchant-pour-les-mouvements-sociaux-et-leur-lutte-contre-le-pouvoir-en-algerie/.
56 Interview with an investigative journalist living in Algeria, online interview, January 2022.
57 Alexei Abrahams, “The Web (In)Security of MENA Civil Society and Media,” POMEPS Studies 43: Digital Activism and Authoritarian Adaptation in the Middle East (2021): 22–34, https://pomeps.org/the-web-insecurity-of-mena-civil-society-and-media; Annemarie Iddins, “The Digital Carceral: Media Infrastructure, Digital Cultures and State Surveillance in Post-Arab Spring Morocco,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 23, no. 2 (2019): 245–63.
58 Marwa Fatafta, “Transnational Digital Repression in the MENA Region,” POMEPS Studies 43: Digital Activism and Authoritarian Adaptation in the Middle East (2021): 41–47, https://pomeps.org/transnational-digital-repression-in-the-mena-region.
59 Interview with a member of a local association, online interview, November 2020.
60 “Sur le web, le ‘Hirak’ algérien face à la riposte de ‘trolls’ prorégime,” France 24, July 12, 2019, https://www.france24.com/fr/20191207-sur-le-web-le-hirak-alg%C3%A9rien-face-%C3%A0-la-riposte-de-trolls-pror%C3%A9gime.
61 Interview with an Algerian activist living in Algeria, online interview, June 2021.
62 Interview with an activist living in Paris, October 2020.
63 “Anti fake-news DZ,” Facebook.com, https://www.facebook.com/afndz54.
64 Extracts from interviews with three activists living in Algeria, online interviews, May 2021 and June 2021.
65 Thomas Olesen, ed., Power and Transnational Activism (London: Routledge, 2013); Marcus Michaelsen, “Exit and Voice in a Digital Age: Iran’s Exiled Activists and the Authoritarian State,” Globalizations 15, no. 2 (2018): 248–64; Fiona B. Adamson, “Non-State Authoritarianism and Diaspora Politics,” Global Networks 20, no. 1 (2020): 150–69; Tiberiu Dragu and Yontan Lupu, “Digital Authoritarianism and the Future of Human Rights,” International Organization 75, no. 4 (2021): 991–1017.