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Al-Etaibi, Abdulla
2023.
Social Change in the Gulf Region.
Vol. 8,
Issue. ,
p.
41.
Article contents
The Consequences of Some Angry Re-Tweets: Another Medium is the Message
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2019
Abstract
Most research on the Gulf states focuses on oil and its impact on state power. The literature on rentier theory almost unanimously agrees that oil rents buy off citizens and lead to socio-political stagnation. Massive protests and government attempts to address citizen demands in Kuwait between 2011 and 2013 call into question that narrative. Since those protests, the Kuwaiti government has taken steps to increase its representation of public officials and accessibility in the public sphere, including by expanding the government's presence on Instagram. How have Kuwaiti citizens voiced their opinions to government accounts? And how has the government responded to online criticism?
This essay looks at the pattern of interactions between the state and Kuwaiti citizens on Twitter and Instagram using a content analysis of government accounts. The findings raise questions about the validity of the payoff thesis and understandings of consent and acquiescence. My analysis illustrates that there is a public dialogue that moves beyond the rigid structure of state and society by which the literature has traditionally understood Gulf rentier societies.
- Type
- Special Focus: The Online Public Sphere in the Gulf
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Middle East Studies Association of North America, Inc. 2019
Footnotes
1
Geoffrey Martin is a PhD student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada. I would like to thank both Bashar Marhoon and Jassim Al-Awadhi, who were crucial in making this project a reality.
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37 All tweets and Instagram posts have had usernames and other details removed to respect the confidentiality of participants.
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41 The sample of posts I analyze are drawn from the Instagram accounts of 34 MPs, 2 Cabinet Ministers and 19 Government ministries/organizations. In February 2017, Instagram had roughly 360,000 users in Kuwait. By May 2017 there were 1.5 million. Salem, “Social Media,” 60.
42 Michael Herb, Kuwait Politics Database, Georgia State University, http://www.kuwaitpolitics.org.
43 Figure 7 leaves out two MPs: Marzouq Al Ghanim and Safaa Al Hashem. Ghanim has 498,000 followers and Hashem 350,000. Both are celebrities in their own right and are not representative of the sample.
44 See: https://www.instagram.com/kuwmun/.
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