"We will not be silent": unpacking the identities of online anti-sexual harassment movements in the MENA region

July 2020 brought a wave of impactful online anti-sexual harassment activism in Egypt. One of the mobilising hashtags was 'We will not be silent', but who, in this context, is 'we'? This question can be asked of all the recent spate of online anti-sexual harassment movements that have been gaining visibility in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region since 2011. The answer differs between movements and across time, having visible consequences for each movement's mobilisation, organisation and discursive strategising.
While some focus almost exclusively on local issues, producing content in local colloquial dialects with reference to specific struggles of local women, other movements, including the example from Egypt, still centre local change, but simultaneously aim to participate in broader conversations about womanhood and seek the creation of cross-border communities. These differences impact not only the content produced, but also the movement's very identity, shaping their goals, audiences and the forms of participation they elicit. With social media platforms presenting rapidly changing environments, many movements can also be seen to shift their strategies over time.
This research aims to use the points of variation between six recent examples of anti-sexual harassment online activism within the MENA region, to identify how different conceptualisations of the "we" shape these movements, while also accounting for any temporal shifts that occur. This comparative case study project will use a mixed-methods approach combining analysis of social media content and interviews with activists. Through doing so, it seeks to answer the question of how a movement's identity impact upon its organisation, mobilisation and discursive strategising.
Not only will this research provide empirical evidence on the understudied post-revolution MENA region, it also seeks to remedy the tensions that arise in applying current feminist social movements theory to social media activism. While movement identity has a rich foundation of literature, as technology has advanced, feminist social movement theory has failed to sufficiently account for the specific modes of communication and transnational mobilisation that arise in these digital spaces. To explain these phenomena and propose solutions to the theoretical concerns, digital communications frameworks will be applied to the specific context of anti-sexual harassment online activism in the MENA.