How Enhancing Digital Trust and Privacy Protection Can Support a New Arab Spring
By Stuart Brotman
The heightened interest in greater digital privacy protection is not just an American phenomenon; there may be a different type of progressive movement emerging in the Arab Middle East. Although the Arab Spring protests of 2010-2012 may now seem like a moment in time, any new comparable movement will need to account for increased anxiety over digital trust in social media and eroding confidence in government regulation to address digital privacy concerns.
Northwestern University in Qatar is one of six American universities that have been operating degree programs in Doha’s Education City for more than a decade. Since 2013, a research team there has conducted a landmark annual survey of seven countries—Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Lebanon. This region is now back in the global headlines after the successful U.S. drone strike in Iraq of Iranian Major General Qassim Suleimani, particularly regarding what level of geopolitical destabilization in the region may follow.
Unlike the Arab Spring that began nearly a decade ago, when social media in the region was instrumental as a mobilization tool but still in its infancy, there now are social media influencers in these countries that can enhance citizen mobilization efforts. This is significant because these influencers can supplement, and in some cases, displace, the tightly-held news media controls that are prevalent in the Arab Middle East. This development can be helpful to the United States as it seeks a more direct link to nationals in these countries who otherwise might be inundated with anti-American reporting by state-controlled mass media.
Social media followers of these influencers now exceed those who check their email or play games online. Yet nationals in these countries also are wary of the news they get on social media, with only the Saudis and the Emiratis reflecting a significant sense of increased trust in these news sources.
One reason for this dissonance—relying on social media more while trusting its credibility less—may be due to a growing concern about online surveillance, with nationals in all countries except Qatar showing a sizable increase in apprehension. On average, about half of Internet users in the seven surveyed countries worry about companies using their personal information without their consent. In Saudi Arabia and Tunisia, there also is a growing fear of government surveillance. And in Egypt, the researchers were prohibited from even asking about this. Enough said.
Between 2017 and 2019, all the surveyed countries except Qatar showed increases in sentiment to have tighter government regulation of digital privacy put in place: two-thirds of nationals in the surveyed countries now indicate that the Internet should be more tightly regulated to protect user privacy. Such regulation, however, also can mean tighter control over what users are able to access online, including news that their country may not want them to know about. This would be counterproductive to those envisioning a new Arab Spring, since it would signal tighter control over social media along with mass media.
This can create doubt about any comprehensive government solution to quell online privacy fears, leading to changing digital behaviors that can help alleviate such concerns without enabling governments to inject more content control as a part of the policy bargain. With the exception of Egypt (an outlier again), the difference between 2017 and 2019 has been dramatic. During this time frame, forty percent of citizens in these countries have changed their privacy settings, thirty percent post less often and share less sensitive information, and twenty percent have stopped using some social media or have begun using pseudonyms on certain online platforms. They have migrated to WhatsApp for its privacy protecting capabilities, and away from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) also have become more prevalent in several countries due to their greater privacy protections. In the UAE, however, VPN use is illegal, which may tamp down confidence that government privacy regulation would be in the best interests of consumers. And not surprisingly, the researchers were not even allowed to ask about this possibility in Egypt.
For those who believe that an Arab Spring resurgence still is possible, it is heartening to note that social media now is achieving greater parity in reach with state-controlled media. This may be helpful as nationals in the seven surveyed countries increasingly look to social media influencers as essential digital figures who help them learn and interpret the fast-breaking news about developments in the region. And for privacy protection, they are discovering that self-help is possible, too.
The United States and its Western allies now have an opportunity to support a new and different Arab Spring. An important aspect will be their activities to help build trust for these influencers, provide better technologies for privacy protection, and enable more fact-based journalism that offers a nuanced context for rapidly shifting events in the Arab Middle East. These strategic confidence measures can help re-ignite the flame of democratic values that have dimmed over time.
Stuart N. Brotman is a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. He is based in its Science and Technology Innovation Program, focusing on digital privacy policy issues.
“2011 Egyptian protests Facebook & jan25 card” by Essam Sharaf is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
