3 emerging threats on social media in the Middle East and North Africa

This is the second article in a two-part series examining trends restricting social media access and usage in the Middle East and North Africa. Read Part One here.

The Middle East is a large, complex region with a diverse history and culture. Parts of the region are among the most digitally connected in the world yet this connectivity can often be juxtaposed with restrictions and cultural considerations which can curtail the use of these technologies. 

We have seen how new laws and regulations can limit free speech and reduce access to content. Similarly, attacks on journalists and content creators have also been on the rise.  

According to the 2023 World Press Freedom Index, “the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) continues to be the world’s most dangerous region for journalists, with a situation classified as ‘very bad’ in more than half of its countries.” Partly that’s because of wars in Syria and Yemen, but it also reflects a region that Reporters Without Borders (RSF) describes as “under the yoke of authoritarian regimes.” Of the 180 countries around the world featured in their latest ranking, only one MENA nation – Israel – is in the top 100. It came 97th.  

Meanwhile, governments in the region are also increasingly adept at using digital tools, including social media, as platforms to try to shape their narratives at home and abroad. 

Against this backdrop, we also see a number of emerging threats to media freedom and creative expression in the Middle East. Not all of the challenges stem from the region, but their impact is the same: stifling the flow of information and broadening the spectrum of dangers that journalists and social media users must navigate.

(1) A growing critique of Silicon Valley and U.S.-based platforms

Last year’s report highlighted the inadequacy of a lot of major tech platforms’ Arabic language content moderation. Alongside this, we are also seeing continued – sometimes growing – criticism of these companies, particularly with regard to content from, and about, Palestine. This ranges from the blocking of accounts to perceived bias about not treating Palestinian and Israeli voices equally. 

Analysis of Meta’s handling of 2021’s Gaza war, commissioned by Meta, concluded the company “violated the rights of Palestinian users to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, political participation and non-discrimination,” AP said. It had done this, The Washington Post explained, “by erroneously removing [Palestinian users’] content and punishing Arabic-speaking users more heavily than Hebrew-speaking ones.” 

The freezing of social media accounts – and the blocking of content – on Western-owned platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Twitter, has led Palestinians to move to TikTok, Arab News declared. The continued rise of Telegram can arguably also be partly attributed to this issue and push-back against Western-owned platforms.

(2) Manipulation is everywhere

We need to recognize that “friendly” governments are also trying to influence social media. Writing for Time, Marc Owen Jones noted that “authoritarian regimes in the Gulf, along with Western companies and expertise, are using digital technology and social media to try and hack democracy wherever they find it, including in the U.S.”

The U.S. is involved in these new frontiers of cyber warfare, too. An investigation by The Intercept revealed that Twitter had worked with the Pentagon to promote the U.S. military’s activities in the Middle East. This included “whitelisting a batch of accounts at the request of the government […] which includes U.S. government-generated news portals and memes, in an effort to shape opinion in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, and beyond.” 

Meanwhile, Politico has highlighted disparities between how tech giants are addressing misinformation – including state-sponsored platform manipulation – in major Western markets and other parts of the world, including the Middle East. 

“Suspected Kremlin agents peddle falsehoods masquerading as Instagram models. The terrorist organization Hezbollah posts propaganda updates as if it were a news organization. More than 2 million Iraqis join Facebook groups where guns are bought and sold without checks,” they wrote.

“Welcome to the world of Arabic-language social media – a Wild West where content moderation is minimal, foreign governments act with abandon, and jihadists foster online hate in arguably some of the world's most war-torn countries.”

(3) Posting out of country becoming a greater issue

Several high-profile cases in the past year have highlighted how social media users can be penalized in MENA countries for posts published while they were living and working elsewhere. 

Salma al-Shehab received a 34-year prison sentence, followed by a 34-year travel ban, for her Twitter activity. She used the platform to follow and retweet dissidents and activists while studying for a Ph.D. in the U.K., the Guardian noted. 

Al-Shehab was arrested in early 2021 after returning to Saudi Arabia for a holiday and received a six-year prison sentence for violating the country's counter-terrorism and anti-cybercrime laws. This was increased to 34 years on appeal, with the additional travel ban added on to the end of her sentence.

“The ruling is the longest prison sentence given to a Saudi women’s rights defender,” remarked The Freedom Initiative, a Washington D.C.-based NGO. 

Similarly, in October, the Saudi government sentenced a 72-year-old U.S.-Saudi dual national to 16 years in prison, plus a 16-year travel ban, after tweets were used to find him guilty of trying to destabilize the kingdom, and of supporting and funding terrorism. Saad Ibrahim Almadi was released from prison in March 2023, Axios reported, “but the 72-year-old is still under a Saudi imposed travel ban that prohibits him from returning home to Florida.”

The tweets in question were “posted while inside the United States, some of which were critical of the Saudi regime,” The Washington Post said. Almadi was arrested last November after he traveled from Florida to Riyadh to see his family.

His sentence was based on 14 tweets, Almadi’s son told the BBC. These included criticism of the demolition of old parts of the cities of Mecca and Jeddah, a reference to the slain Saudi Journalist Jamal Khashoggi and concerns over poverty in the Kingdom.

None of the issues and trends related to media freedom and freedom of expression that have been highlighted in this series are new. You can find examples of these issues across previous reports that I have been producing for more than a decade. However, these trends do feel as though they are becoming more prominent, demonstrating the continued obstacles that some creators and consumers experience in the MENA region. As such, they are developments that social media users – and advocates for media freedom – must continue to monitor and vigilantly track. 

Read more about these issues and wider trends in Social Media in the Middle East 2022: A Year in Review, by Damian Radcliffe and Hadil Abuhmaid with Nii Mahliaire, published by the University of Oregon-UNESCO Crossings Institute.

Photo by camilo jimenez on Unsplash.