Mediated mobilisation after the Arab Spring: how online activism is shaping Bahrain’s opposition

ABSTRACT

Drawing on fieldwork interviews and analysis of opposition social media posts, this article investigates how online forms of activism have been utilised by opposition groups during Bahrain's post-Arab Spring crackdown. Arguing that the antisystem opposition in particular has embraced ‘mediated mobilisation’ techniques, this article highlights the popularity of hybrid campaigns as drivers of online and offline activism. Contrasting the then-legal opposition society al-Wefaq with the banned, underground youth movement known as the February 14 Coalition, this article asserts that Bahrain's decentralised and anonymous antisystem opposition enjoys a structural advantage over regime-tolerated groups in their use of online activism. This article makes the case that mediated forms of mobilisation have fundamentally altered inter-opposition dynamics in post-Arab Spring Bahrain, and have strengthened the ability of antisystem groups such as the February 14 Coalition to challenge both the government and Bahrain's more established opposition societies.

本文根据田野访谈以及对反对派社交媒体的分析，考察了阿拉伯之春期间巴林反对派团体如何利用社会行动的在线形式。反体制抗议尤其充分利用了媒体动员技术。在线行动与线下运动的混合非常流行。作者对当时合法的反对派社团al-Wefaq与被禁的地下青年运动即所谓的2-14阵线做了对比。巴林分散匿名的反体制运动在利用在线行动方面，其结构上的优势要大于体制所容忍的那些群体。媒体化的动员已根本地改变了阿拉伯之春后巴林的参与形势，增强了反体制群体如2-14阵线挑战政府以及巴林既有反对派会社的能力。

KEYWORDS:

• Bahrain
• Arab Spring
• al-Wefaq
• February 14 coalition
• online activism
• mediated mobilisation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Kylie Moore-Gilbert holds a BA (Hons) and MA in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Cambridge, and received her PhD in Gulf Politics from the University of Melbourne in 2017.

ORCID

Kylie Moore-Gilbert http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8954-9486

Notes

1 The fieldwork research discussed in this article was approved in 2015 by the University of Melbourne's Humanities and Applied Sciences Human Ethics Sub-Committee, ID 1544824.1.

2 The dataset examined 539 textual and 609 visual Facebook posts across the following three days in 2015: 14 February (the anniversary of the uprising), 24 October (ʿAshura) and 10 June (a control day selected at random). For more information about this study see Moore-Gilbert (2018a).

3 See: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=feb14.com.

4 The February 14 Coalition's ‘Pearl Charter’ can be accessed via: www.14f2011.com/ar/meethaq.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program scholarship.