Squaring the Circle: Bahrain's Pearl Roundabout

Khalaf, Amal

doi:10.1080/19436149.2013.822240

Cited by 13 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 1 publication

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“…Due to the Iranian revolution, it was not difficult to build on the anti-Iranian sentiments of Sunni communities on the other side of the Persian Gulf; that is why securitising the "Shia threat" has been effective. This tool came in handy during the "Arab Spring" events in 2011 (Matthiesen 2013: 33-49;Khalaf 2013), when, after a failed attempt to appease the demonstrators with promise of a direct financial transfer to each families (Barany 2012: 23), the government managed to de-incentivise many of the Sunni protestors by emphasising the sectarian nature of the demonstrations. Eventually this was not enough, and the government turned to the help of the GCC which implemented a short supportive intervention to ensure the survival of the regime.…”

Section: Case Study: Comparing the Case Of Qatar And Bahrainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Small regimes in the Middle East: a conceptual and theoretical alternative to small states in a non-Western region

Szalai

2020

Int Polit

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The concepts and theories of small state studies, a sub-discipline of international relations, have been connected to Western political development, making their applicability in regions outside of Europe questionable. Using the framework of the English School, the present article aims at identifying the main elements of small state theory which are needed to be altered to make it suitable for the Middle East and North Africa. Investigating the regional manifestation of main primary institutions which form the basis of the analysis of small states (namely statehood, sovereignty, conflict and cooperation), the research concludes that the leverage of Middle Eastern small states is highly different than it is expected by traditional small state studies, especially due to the regional norms related to statehood and conflict. Consequently, changing our conceptual framework of "small states" to "small regimes" would be also necessary to better interpret how such entities behave in the Middle East or other regions of the world.

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Section: Case Study: Comparing the Case Of Qatar And Bahrainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Small regimes in the Middle East: a conceptual and theoretical alternative to small states in a non-Western region

Szalai

2020

Int Polit

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“…9 In addition, of the available social media platforms, Facebook is arguably the ‘most effective at organising protests and creating or bringing together disconnected individuals and collectives into one social network’ (Aday et al, 2012: 16). In fact, Khalaf (2013: 271) describes the 2011 uprising in Bahrain as ‘a social alliance that had been – in part – summoned up via Facebook’. Future research could potentially broaden the approach of this study to account for the activity of Bahrain’s Shiʿi opposition groups across a range of social media sites, including Twitter and Instagram as well as messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram and Snapchat.…”

Section: Framing Theory: Decoding Visual Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

A visual uprising: Framing the online activism of Bahrain’s Shiʿi opposition

Moore-Gilbert

2017

Media, War & Conflict

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Drawing on content analysis and framing theory, this article examines the use of images in the social media activism of three Bahraini Shiʿi opposition groups throughout 2015: Al-Wefaq, a moderate political society in favour of constitutional monarchy; Haqq, an underground pro-republic political society; and the February 14 Coalition, a decentralized umbrella group of youth activists dedicated to overthrowing Bahrain’s Al Khalifa monarchy. The differing ideologies, objectives and approaches to activism within Bahrain’s Shiʿi opposition are investigated through an analysis of each group’s framing of themes including religion, violence, nationalism and sectarianism. The first empirical study of social media image activism in post-Arab Spring Bahrain, this article reveals the increasing fragmentation of the Shiʿi opposition following the 2011 uprising, and makes a valuable contribution to the broader debate surrounding the changing nature of activism in an increasingly visual digital age.

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“…These statues were often placed in public places by activists, confounding the country’s police who would often go to considerable lengths to remove and/or destroy them. As Amal Khalaf (2013) argues, ‘The monument [Pearl Roundabout], once used as part of the state’s image-economy, has been turned into a memorial for an uprising against the very state that created it’. These creative forms of resistance, coupled with the power of social media, allowed these acts of defiance to be shared with those who may have not witnessed the original act.…”

Section: Social Media Creative Resistance and Cultural Production Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Interactions on Twitter became more heated, and people who bought into the narrative that the Bahrain uprising was an exogenous event designed to spread Iranian hegemony in the region began to distribute ‘conspiratorial’ videos attempting to discredit the pro-democracy movement. Many of these narratives carried themes that alluded to the Shi‘a as sexually deviant fanatics, or apostate, who only carried Bahraini flags to pretend they were patriotic (Khalaf, 2013). Conspiratorial exposes became common, with activists and counter-revolutionary actors attempting to undermine each others’ narratives by creating images and videos debunking their claims.…”

Section: Social Media Creative Resistance and Cultural Production Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

Satire, social media and revolutionary cultural production in the Bahrain uprising: From utopian fiction to political satire

Jones

2017

Communication and the Public

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Social media has permitted activists to subvert censorship and state-controlled media. As a result, it has become a key medium for experimenting with and/or creating genres previously marginalised or discouraged by the Bahraini government. This article explores aspects of revolutionary cultural production and creative resistance in Bahrain since the uprisings in 2011 and examines the role social media has played in shaping and defining it. Focusing on memes, parody accounts and the YouTube serial Baharna Drama, this article looks at the rise of political satire online and the evolution of satirical forms over the progression of the uprising as a dialectic with government policy and propaganda. This article argues that social media has facilitated the emergence of new forms of satire in Bahrain and has allowed activists to assert, to both local and global audiences and in different registers, the integrity of a desired revolutionary aesthetic by confronting state attempts to paint the revolution as schismatic and divisive. As such, 2011 marked a new turn in Bahrain’s satirical heritage. It also argues that the subversive nature of satire makes it a favourable genre with regard to revolutionary cultural production and the public sphere, yet acknowledges that satirical forms, as a response to authoritarian policies, are rarely devoid of the tutelage necessary to make them a truly revolutionary form of counter-narrative.

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Squaring the Circle: Bahrain's Pearl Roundabout

Cited by 13 publications

References 1 publication

Small regimes in the Middle East: a conceptual and theoretical alternative to small states in a non-Western region

Small regimes in the Middle East: a conceptual and theoretical alternative to small states in a non-Western region

A visual uprising: Framing the online activism of Bahrain’s Shiʿi opposition

Satire, social media and revolutionary cultural production in the Bahrain uprising: From utopian fiction to political satire

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