Third International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

My research has been conducted on fifteen groups of young people (aged nineteen to thirty-four): eight in Italy, four in Tunisia, and three in Lebanon, with a total of 118 people interviewed, balanced for genre. We used the focus groups methodology (with the participation of seven to eight people). Focus groups took place at different locations between November 2016 and May 2017. Research has been funded by IULM University as a spill-over of the European Tempus Project eMEDia, and realized through the cooperation with UNIMED- Union of Mediterranean Universities. The research is dedicated to the relationship between political participation, news-making practices, and social media. As we know, Arab countries during the so-called Arab Spring had been widely considered as a laboratory for political participation. Nonetheless, the literature about the Arab Spring fell short in explaining the complex genesis of the phenomenon, on the one hand by isolating media as a casual factor in the spread of political demonstrations, and on the other by analyzing North-African condition through a biased perspective. Nowadays, it is interesting to focus on the consolidation of the information environment many years after the uprisings. For these reasons, I will focus on three main findings. The differences in the diffusion and daily use of social media not only between North and South side but also, which is more relevant, among different Arab countries. Only an in-depth analysis of local adoption strategies can provide an insight into the real meaning of “connected lives,” where Western theories are often based on a less nuanced and very orientalist representation of Arab societies (i.e., the way young people use Facebook in Beirut is different from the way people do in Algiers; each community share a specific version of the Arabic language for smartphone; and the same platforms are given different values in Tunis and in Southern Tunisia, where people claim to be traditionally excluded from national cultural and political life). Secondly, the awareness of similar problems in different contexts, such as the spread of fake news, trustworthiness of user-generated contents, and even the rise of new forms of unwaged labor in digital cultural industries. Thirdly, I will focus on the well-discussed political bias of social media, and on the relationship between audience engagement and political engagement. What is more surprising, according to our research people will reveal to be more skeptical - about the myth of direct democracy – in the countries where Facebook actually affected political life: in Tunisia, with the 2011 uprisings, and in Italy, with the rise of Five Stars Movement.