Giant poster dedicated to Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, located near the Presidential Palace in Abu Dhabi. Picture by Artur Widak/NurPhoto USA/PA Images. All rights reserved.In the aftermath of the ‘Arab Spring’, as counter-revolution casts its repressive shadow across the Middle East and North Africa, the tools that a short while ago enabled revolutionary organisation on a mass scale have subsequently changed hands.
Once celebrated, and in some quarters credited, as playing the defining role in the Arab uprisings of 2011, social media and the internet more broadly have now been transformed into a central component of authoritarian control, as the balance of power has shifted firmly away from the masses in the region.
This is evident in the United Arab Emirates where government critics, bloggers and human rights defenders have been disappearing at an alarming rate as a result of their social media activity, while dozens of online news publications from the Huffington Post to Al Jazeera have been blocked by the authorities for publicly expressing views counter to that of the state.
