Since its inception, social media has been touted by some as a way to bring people together, even to collaborate and advance revolutionary causes.
But research from the University of Kansas has found that when people don’t view each other as equals — even if they have common goals — social media can be a way to dismiss others’ ideas and isolate them.
In 2019, millions of people across Algeria took to the streets and to social media during Hirak, the Arabic word for protests, after President Abd Alaziz Bouteflika announced his intention to campaign for an unprecedented fifth term.
University of Kansas researchers interviewed more than 30 Algerian women who took part in Hirak, advocating for women’s rights and feminist issues as part of the protests. They examined communication on social media to see how it contributes to an idea called connective democracy, which advocates for using digital media to bring together different groups with similar goals .
While Facebook — the most popular social media platform in Algeria — allowed feminists to collaborate and refine their messages, the study showed it actually helped to exacerbate violence and oppression women faced in society.
“Hirak happened in part because people were afraid to talk about issues in Algeria,” said Rim Chaif, KU doctoral candidate and the lead author of the study. “People were afraid to go in the street and speak about their rights. So when it started, Algerians broke the silence of many years by protesting.
“A lot of women were participating in the Hirak and advocating for their own political and civic needs. Feminism in Algeria has been historically marginalized. And so the idea of this article came from thinking about how — if at all — these feminist causes could be incorporated into the pro-democratic movement in Algeria.”
Chaif, an Algeria native, is fluent in the nation’s three most common languages: Arabic, French and English. Chaif conducted the study with Christopher Etheridge, assistant professor of journalism and mass communications. It was published in the journal Social Media + Society.
Studies in democracy building have long focused on divergent groups coming together around a common goal. Since the advent of social media, these platforms have been touted as a way to enable people to work together to reform government.
“There is a Western idea of bringing people together to talk about their differences and identify the ways that they have commonalities, and so a lot of scholars have wondered if those principle can be applied digitally,” Etheridge said. “And given that those are really predominant topics in Western thought about how to build democracy, can they be applied in the Middle East and North Africa?”
Respondents in the study indicated that although social media did enable them to find others who wanted to advocate for feminist causes and women’s rights, but it did not bridge gaps with more traditional Algerian social thought. Instead, it served to propagate violence women had experienced offline.
“During Hirak, there were various groups, including liberals and feminist groups, each with their own demands,” Chaif said. “Despite their differences, they were united in calling for a change. However, each group wanted its demands to be incorporated in the broader Hirak agenda.
For example, Chaif said feminists advocated for family code reforms and the abolition of restrictive laws and practices. In the offline space, many times they were faced with violence.
“And we found that this violence went on also in the online platforms,” Chaif said. “Feminists were told, ‘no, we need to focus only on that main goal we are all fighting for. So, let’s set aside women’s issues for now and not address our differences until we achieve our overall goal.’ One of our study participants mentioned encountering a post on Facebook that said women should stay home, why are they even out protesting?”
Research in the role of social media in society often examines if bridges gaps in perceptions or allows people to isolate themselves with other like-minded individuals. Chaif and Etheridge cite research that argues the technology can serve the role of uniting people from different backgrounds, if they agree on a common goal. However, as the Algerian women pointed out, it also served to perpetuate existing biases, and that “misogyny was in the atmosphere,” as one respondent said.
“That was a really powerful quote that we thought illustrated this idea that you can bring people together if those people perceive each other as equals, but in this situation, one group did not perceive the other as equals, and they knew it,” Etheridge said. “Negotiating with somebody who doesn’t see you sharing common ground is very difficult. And so, incorporating the feminists’ platform into this broader demonstration required overcoming a level of misogyny that wasn’t moving.”
Chaif said she hopes to examine the experiences of other groups that took part in Hirak, to see if they faced similar hostilities as part of a larger body of work exploring the role of social media, technology and society and the strategies people use through them to affect change.
“Connective democracy and other deliberative democratic efforts must consider the state and nature of the existing state structures before deploying these strategies,” the authors wrote. “Simply stated, coalitions constructed through common identity and network building are not as connective in environments where minority voices are structurally marginalized.”
