Affordances of Websites for Counterpublicity and International Communication: Case of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood

Scholars and policy analysts are actively debating the potential of new/social media in transforming the Middle East. Nevertheless, excessive focus has been placed on specific kinds of new/social media technologies, such as blogging / microblogging (Twitter), video-sharing (YouTube, Snapchat), and social networking (Facebook, Instagram), which allow individuals to actively and swiftly participate in multiple digital systems. These new/social media technologies can quickly get overwhelming for users and lead to the dilution and fragmentation of the specific communication potential of diverse technologies. Media theorists argue that it is important to understand the value system/affordances of technologies, instead of getting distracted by them, to maximize their utility in varied contexts. In the rest of this introduction, I elaborate on the value system of technologies and situate the need, goal, and implications of this piece.

According to Mishra, the four foundational components of the value system of technologies are Content—allows individuals, including amateurs, to become easy creators of multimedia content through simple and free publishing and distribution; Collaboration—facilitates aggregation of individual actions into meaningful collective results; Community—allows sustained collaboration around common ideas and motives across time and space; and Collective Understanding—allows sophisticated analysis of the communication dynamics of a group's work to provide feedback, add value, and facilitate growth of the community.¹ A lack of understanding of the value system and undue enthusiasm around the use of new/social media tools often lead to an emphasis on the immediacy of communication instead of consideration of context and need.

In the cacophony celebrating (and debating) technologies that usually afford "collaboration" and "community" by being active and swift, the dynamics and affordances of websites—characterizing "content"—are drowned and seldom explored, specifically, their role in impacting public sphere / counterpublic realities and international communication in Middle Eastern authoritarian contexts. Counterpublics are alternative, non-dominant publics, amid wider / dominant publics, who voice oppositional needs and values through communicative practices. In this case study, I explore the traits of counterpublicity in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood's (MB) cyber communication content in Ikhwanweb, its official English-language website, in the context of the years preceding the Egyptian uprising that ousted authoritarian president Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

Ikhwanweb was founded by Khairat el Shater, deputy chairman of the MB, and was launched in 2005; in this piece, I focus on the written texts posted on the website from 2005 to 2011 and credited to Ikhwanweb—either authored by MB members or contributed by independent sources and bylined by the MB. The "About Us" section of Ikhwanweb states that the main mission of this website is to "present the Muslim Brotherhood vision right from the source and rebut misconceptions about the movement in Western societies,"² making Western agents the intended/stated audience for this website. According to McDonald and Dirk, "Ihkwanweb [sic] raises awareness on a global scale to issues impacting Brotherhood members and supporters" (para. 7); material posted on Ikhwanweb—from the Brotherhood's evolution and history to contemporary conflicts and engagement in controversies in and outside of Egypt—facilitates the sharing of experiences on a global scale.³

The evolution of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, since its founding in the country in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, has been associated with climactic resurgences interspersed by successive government crackdowns. The periods of resurgence usually have been marked by the coming into prominence of individuals, such as Sayyid Qutb or Hassan al-Hudaybi, who significantly influenced the Brotherhood's ideology and activities during their period of eminence. These episodes of resurgence, however, have been accompanied by major government intrusion and interference. Both dynastic and nationalist Egyptian governments have accused, suppressed, and tortured Brotherhood members after plots, or alleged plots, of assassination and over-throw were uncovered to the point that the group was officially banned from 1954 till the ousting of Mubarak (only to be banned again in 2013). For several decades, the MB neither enjoyed legal status nor was recognized as a political party, and despite official renunciation of violence in the 1970s, the Brotherhood continued to face...