Muzammil M. Hussain

Name of Periodical: The Journal of International Affairs (Special Issue: Breaking Point: Protests and Revolutions in the 21st Century) Vol 68, No 1 Fall/Winter 2014-  Article Page 37-56

This article presents a brief characterization of the transformational consequences of the Arab Spring for global policy frameworks and democracy promotion efforts regarding Internet infrastructure. To do so, we begin with unpacking the battle that took place in Dubai in December 2012 at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12) between competing state powers, technology policy...

Name of Periodical: International Studies Review (Special Issue: International Relationships in the Information Age) Year of Publication: 2013

It has been 15 years since the last wave of democratization. But as a region, North Africa and the Middle East were noticeably devoid of popular democracy movements—until the early months of 2011. Democratization movements had existed long before technologies like mobile phones and the Internet came to these countries. But with these technologies, people sharing an interest in democracy built extensive networks and activated collective action...

Name of Periodical: Journalism: Theory, Practice, and Criticism Volume Number: 13 Issue Number: 8 Year of Publication: 2012 Page Numbers: 1022-1038

There is much concern about the long-tail of online political information that now competes with standard news content. Yet we know little about how successfully it does so, and why. From the 2008 US presidential campaign, I develop a rich, original meta-database to map the relationships between the top viral election videos (278 million views) and the known-universe of blogs that linked to them (13,000 links). Through a mixed-method ...

Digital media and online social networking applications have changed the way in which dissent is organized with social movement leaders using online applications and digital content systems to organize collective action, activate local protest groups, network with international social movements and share their political perspectives. In the past, authoritarian regimes could control broadcast media in times of political crisis by destroying newsprint supplies, seizing radio and television stations, and blocking phone calls. It is much more difficult to control media in the digital age though ...

Did digital media really "cause" the Arab Spring, or is it an important factor of the story behind what might become democracy's fourth wave? An unlikely network of citizens used digital media to start a cascade of social protest that ultimately toppled four of the world's most entrenched dictators. Howard and Hussain find that the complex causal recipe includes several economic, political and cultural factors, but that digital media is consistently one of the most important sufficient and necessary conditions for explaining both the fragility of regimes and the success of social movements...

Digital media have allowed spatially distant communities to realize shared grievances and political goals in many nondemocratic countries. It is also through digital media that citizens document, and sometimes test, the weaknesses and limits of state power. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have extended the capacity of societal actors in many cases, but are not as effectively used by states to improve governance. Thus, the condition of limited statehood had made many Arab regimes surprisingly brittle, especially during the mass mobilizations of the Arab Spring. Over the course...