TY - JOUR
T1 - The Culture of E-Arabs
AU - Al Lily, Abdulrahman Essa
AU - Ismail, Abdelrahim Fathy
AU - Abunasser, Fathi Mohammed
AU - Alhajhoj Alqahtani, Rafdan Hassan
AU - Al-Lami, Firass
AU - Al Saud, Al Johara Fahad
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 by the authors.
PY - 2022/12/28
Y1 - 2022/12/28
N2 - This article scrutinises the linkage between ethnicity and people’s behaviour on Twitter. It examines how offline culture manifests itself online among Arabs. The article draws upon the literature to identify the offline ethnic characteristics of Arabs, and through interviews with and observations of Arab social media users, discovers their online ethnic characteristics. It then compares these online and offline characteristics and, through this comparison, finds that offline culture has been enacted online among Arabs, sustaining expressions of generosity, religiosity, traditionalism, female privacy, over-flattery, collectivism, tribalism, pan-Arabism, and social contracts; however, in other ways, offline culture has been counteracted online, which has led to the destabilisation of power relations between genders, elites and non-elites, and majorities and minorities. A further finding is that online culture has been enacted offline among Arabs in that online performance has exerted influence over offline ethnic identity expectations. In short, there are three main findings: offline culture has been enacted online, offline culture has been counteracted online, and online culture has been enacted offline. The take-home finding of this study is the existence of ‘e-ethnic culture’, that is, although ethnic activity online tends to be based on and reinforces offline realities and may alter offline realities as well, not all online performances have roots offline.
AB - This article scrutinises the linkage between ethnicity and people’s behaviour on Twitter. It examines how offline culture manifests itself online among Arabs. The article draws upon the literature to identify the offline ethnic characteristics of Arabs, and through interviews with and observations of Arab social media users, discovers their online ethnic characteristics. It then compares these online and offline characteristics and, through this comparison, finds that offline culture has been enacted online among Arabs, sustaining expressions of generosity, religiosity, traditionalism, female privacy, over-flattery, collectivism, tribalism, pan-Arabism, and social contracts; however, in other ways, offline culture has been counteracted online, which has led to the destabilisation of power relations between genders, elites and non-elites, and majorities and minorities. A further finding is that online culture has been enacted offline among Arabs in that online performance has exerted influence over offline ethnic identity expectations. In short, there are three main findings: offline culture has been enacted online, offline culture has been counteracted online, and online culture has been enacted offline. The take-home finding of this study is the existence of ‘e-ethnic culture’, that is, although ethnic activity online tends to be based on and reinforces offline realities and may alter offline realities as well, not all online performances have roots offline.
KW - Arab social media
KW - Arab sociology
KW - Twitter
KW - digital anthropology
KW - digital sociology
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U2 - 10.3390/jintelligence11010007
DO - 10.3390/jintelligence11010007
M3 - Article
C2 - 36662137
AN - SCOPUS:85146509664
SN - 2079-3200
VL - 11
JO - Journal of Intelligence
JF - Journal of Intelligence
IS - 1
M1 - 7
ER -