Saudi Young Women #Activism: The Online Discourse Against the Male Guardianship System

Abstract

In Saudi Arabia, it is illegal for women to constitute political parties, form civil society organizations, or participate in political demonstrations. Nonetheless, Saudi Arabia young women have had the chance to take advantage of social media's ability to bring sociopolitical change, to freely express themselves, fight for their rights, voice their opinions, and draw attention to and confront the country's oppressive political and social conditions for women, particularly the male guardianship system. The #EndMaleGuardianshipSystem Twitter campaign, which started in 2016, has received the most attention out of all the women's online campaigns in Saudi Arabia. Twitter's ability to organize, record, and publicize content has given young Saudi women the confidence to voice their social and political ideas and demands and to campaign against this system. This article assesses the communication tactics and online discourse used by Saudi young women in their hashtag activism against the male guardianship system while addressing the question: What kind of online discourse was produced and shared against the male guardianship system? For this purpose, an online observation was conducted for the (سعوديات نطالب باسقاط الولاية# [#EndMaleGuardianshipSystem]), where three thousand tweets were collected and analyzed using the qualitative content analysis method. The research led to the identification of three communication strategies that were used by Saudi women: (1) political soft and assertive communication strategy; (2) religious medium and persuasive communication strategy; and (3) social hard and educative communication strategy.