[REPORT] How Social Media is Reshaping Arab Identity Among Gen Z

Arab identity has long been tied to external factors, and the issue concerning its continuity has made countless headlines over the years, particularly in relation to how it is passed down from one generation to the next. Almost since the beginning of time, Arabs have found themselves oscillating between two extremes: a complete adoption of Western standards and ideologies, and a contrasting absolute resistance to such concepts, which felt both foreign and daunting. With growing narratives that depict Western principles as dark and imperialistic in nature (El Amrani, 2005), it is becoming increasingly challenging, yet all the more crucial, to meticulously examine how younger generations in the Arab world perceive the West and its standards, especially online and on digital platforms that can accurately reflect Arab reality in an AI-driven era.

The Arab Identity is No Longer Just “Inherited”

For the most part, Arab identity could be perceived through a conventional “vertical” lens (Looti, 2025), whereby older generations pass on their traditions and beliefs to younger ones. United by a common language and bound by shared history, religions, and cultural traditions, the Arab region single-handedly ensured that its heritage and pluralistic identity was transmitted between generations, though that also created a form of bias itself. In societies as religiously pluralistic yet socially conservative as those found in the Middle East and North Africa region, the vertical transmission often subtly attempts to flatten existing differences between people to establish a unified front, which ultimately stigmatizes individual expression or minority sub-identities (Bishai & Rustom, 2019). The Arab region’s attachment to its norms allows us to go as far as to even suggest that, in the vast majority of cases, the youth’s conformity to said norms was treated as a given rather than as a point of discussion.

This was the natural flow, until a new “horizontal” lens (EBSCO, 2023) came into play and flipped the whole narrative. This relatively new method of transmitting information was drastically amplified post–internet introduction in the 1990s, and the momentum of challenging the status quo in the Arab region slowly started gaining traction among locals, particularly amid decisive regional events like the Arab Spring, which stripped political leaders of their grip on power and rewired local and global perspectives on fundamental issues like freedom, surveillance, and dissent. (Martin & Simone, 2012)

With the rise of social media and online communication platforms, the “horizontal” lens mainly constituted various unfiltered opinions shared by users. For Gen Z users in particular, digital spaces offered much more than a source of entertainment; they allowed for active political discourse and molded the “hybrid” Arab identity that we know today (Yaseen et. al, 2026).

Within the invisible walls of the internet, Arab Gen Z users found a comfort zone equipped with a sense of freedom to express themselves, perhaps sometimes beyond the constraints imposed on them by local governments, institutions, and societies. For the first time in a while, the Arab youth were granted an actual escape from the Authenticity trap that long tied the older generation to misconceptions, generalizations, and at times, oversimplifications of intrinsic political issues that are rampant in the Arab world (Kraidy, 2008). In doing so, they have dismantled the long-standing narrative that anything foreign is a danger, replacing the older generation’s protective isolation with a digital-first worldview that favors curiosity over suspicion. It is important to note, however, that despite its generally positive outlook on open digital dialogue, Gen Z is not abandoning Arab identity. Instead, it is renegotiating its definition and presence online, with real political consequences (Ayish & AlNajjar, 2019).

Language as Resistance and Belonging

Through the current digital landscape, Arab Gen Z users redefined core concepts and ideologies like resistance and belonging. For a vast proportion of this demographic in particular, using digital communication has become synonymous with dismantling generational, class, and post-colonial divides that have long dictated who has the right to speak and how (Yaseen et. al, 2026). If the internet provided the walls for a new Arab sanctuary, language became its secret code.

Through mechanisms like “Code Switching” (Sharma, 2023), young Arab users are doing more than just alternating between languages; they are actively establishing a safe “Third Space” that challenges the previously state-imposed linguistic norms and standards surrounding Arabic language. As a matter of fact, this generation’s almost instinctive shift between multiple languages mid-conversation directly defies a deeply rooted form of “institutional bias” that has long deemed colloquial speech unfit for serious intellectual or political discourse (Yaseen et. al, 2026). Perhaps even more noteworthy is the fact that this intersection of languages has never been random. The specific foreign languages woven into Arab digital speech today are largely inherited from the colonial era, most notably French and English, introduced during the 19th and 20th centuries when much of the Arab world fell under European colonial rule. Following the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, the territories of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Palestine were partitioned into spheres of British and French control (Asi, 2022), while Egypt had been under effective British occupation since the late 19th century, and the Maghreb under French rule since 1830. In that sense, what reads today as fluid multilingualism is, in part, a linguistic residue of that colonial encounter, one that Arab Gen Z has managed to reclaim on its own terms.

As dark as such eras were for Arabs, there is, nonetheless, a quiet form of resilience and defiance in proceeding to include colonizing countries’ languages in colloquial discourse and daily life, even post-colonialism. For the most part, Arabs did a rather good job of processing colonial trauma through syntax (Krishanu, 2025); rather than allowing outside forces to strip them of their culture and heritage, Arabs learned the hard way that warding off linguistic imperialism and cultural hegemony is best done when you speak your colonizer’s language, and this has been even clearer with the rise of digital communication.

This “linguistic reclamation” is perhaps most visible in nations like Algeria or Lebanon, where the languages of former settlers, once tools of the “mission civilisatrice” (Burrows, 1986) designed to separate the elite from the “indigenous”, have been metabolized into a modern, digital vernacular. In Lebanon, for example, online communities opted for a Latin-based script to type Arabic phonetically (similar to the logic of an alphabet once devised by poet Saïd Akl); they effectively “hacked” the colonizer’s tongue and subverted its syntax to build a borderless sanctuary.

However, this linguistic “secret code” is a double-edged sword. While it dismantles state-imposed norms, it inadvertently reconstructs the very class and wealth divides that colonial powers originally designed. In Lebanon, for instance, the ability to “code-switch” is often a byproduct of an expensive private education (Zakharia, 2010), a privilege not afforded to everyone.

For many in lower-income or rural Lebanese communities, where the school system may not prioritize or provide high-level foreign language fluency, the digital space can feel less like a sanctuary and more like a gated community. When the supposedly cool or intellectual online dialogue is conducted in a mix of French and English, it effectively silences those who only speak their native Arabic. In this sense, the “Third Space” risks becoming an accidental echo of the colonial past: it creates a new digital hierarchy where belonging is determined by parents’ ability to pay for a globalized education, reinforcing a divide based on social status rather than a shared national heritage.

Beyond the mechanics of code-switching, the true soul of this digital resistance lies in the strategic use of dark humor. In a region where traditional political discourse is often met with severe consequences, young Arabs have reclaimed the internet as a space for some kind of survivalist satire. This digital sanctuary allows them to express themselves more freely than they ever could in the physical world, using irony to metabolize collective trauma.

To understand the resilience of Arab digital resistance, one must first examine the strategic use of plausible deniability (Pinker et al., 2008). In communication theory, this refers to the use of ambiguous speech or action that allows a speaker to deny a “loaded” message by pointing to its literal, innocent meaning. For Arab Gen Z, this has evolved into a form of Strategic Absurdism (Korkut et al., 2022., a tactical maneuver where mundane acts are used as shields for high-stakes political dissent.

The most concrete example of this occurred in Egypt during the 2023 currency devaluation (Al Jazeera, 2023). When the state-run National Institute for Nutrition suggested chicken feet as a cheap, protein-rich alternative to meat, the digital response was not traditional anger, but a wave of “luxury” satire. Young creators began filming high-production unboxing and fine-dining tutorials of chicken feet, adopting the upbeat, elite persona of a global food influencer to “review” the dish. By treating the food of the poor as a gourmet delicacy, they created a masterful legal shield: if the state were to suppress the content, they would be criminalizing a citizen for technically following government advice. This over-compliance turns the tools of everyday life into a weapon of resistance, proving that in the Arab digital sanctuary, the most effective way to challenge power is to treat its failures as a joke, allowing youth to speak the truth while remaining legally untouchable.

The Death of the “Satellite Consensus” and Birth of a Digital Majlis

For decades, Pan-Arab media giants like Al Jazeera and MBC shaped a collective identity through a centralized broadcast model (Watkins, 2019), in which a handful of editors and producers controlled the flow of information to audiences across the region. This was the Satellite Era, where a few editors in Doha or Dubai decided what the “Arab Street”, a term referring to the spectrum of collective Arab public opinion, often in contrast to the positions held by Arab governments, should care about. Today, social media has fractured this monopoly. Arab Gen Z no longer waits for the 8:00 PM news; they form their worldview through decentralized, algorithmic feeds. This shift has transformed identity from a passive experience (watching) to an active one (participating). The public sphere is no longer a physical square or a state-run TV channel; it is a 24/7 digital conversation where traditional gatekeepers have been bypassed.

Traditional media in the Arab region often operate under strict state censorship or sectarian ownership, creating red lines around sensitive topics. Social media acts as a critical bypass valve, where users are granted a repercussion-free space to criticize governmental stances related to corruption, gender, and even sectarianism, which is deeply embedded within Arab states. When it comes to corruption, one of the best examples remains the 2019 Lebanese October 17 Uprising (Karkouti, 2022). During this period, digital platforms became the primary tool for “citizen auditing,” where viral videos of protesters confronting politicians in public spaces and real-time mapping of systemic financial mismanagement bypassed the sanitized, cautious reports of state-aligned media. These viral receipts stripped away the prestige of the political class, moving investigative power from the newsroom to the smartphone.

Similarly, the emergence of a “Digital Majlis” (Al Shaibah, 2024) has allowed for unprecedented transparency regarding gender and identity, most notably seen in Saudi Arabia during the campaign to end the Male Guardianship System (#IAmMyOwnGuardian). In traditional Saudi media, discussing the “Wilayah” (guardianship) system was long treated as a private family matter or a sensitive religious topic, making it a strict “red line.” However, young women began bypassing these barriers using a specific digital format: the Aesthetic Infographic. Rather than dry legal texts, activists leveraged what scholars have termed “slideshow activism” (Dumitrica & Hockin-Boyers, 2023): high-design, visually accessible slide decks on Instagram that simplified complex personal status laws, explaining a woman’s rights regarding travel, work, and healthcare in a way that was easy to digest and share (Khalid, Rola. 2025).

Because these infographics were shared via Instagram Stories and “Close Friends” lists, they created a semi-private, supportive space that functioned exactly like a traditional Majlis (council), but on a scale of millions. This allowed taboo topics like domestic abuse and bodily autonomy to move from whispered kitchen conversations to a collective regional discourse.

By the time legacy media outlets decided to cover the topic, the digital consensus had already been built, providing a safety-in-numbers effect that eventually contributed to real-world legal changes, such as the 2019 decree allowing women to travel without a male guardian’s permission (Emma Graham-Harrison, 2019). This proved that for Arab Gen Z, these platforms are a laboratory where they can deconstruct patriarchal oversight and redefine their identity before ever stepping foot into the physical public square.

Glitching the Sectarian Narrative

The horizontal connectivity provided by social media naturally “glitches” the sectarian silos of religiously conservative countries. This phenomenon was illustrated clearly by the cross-border meme culture (Al-Marashi, 2019) that emerged during the coinciding protests in Iraq and Lebanon in late 2019. In both countries, traditional media is largely owned by sectarian political parties that survive by evoking fear of the Other. Youth activists countered this by using platforms like Instagram and Telegram to produce satirical content that mocked all sectarian leaders, regardless of their sect, simultaneously.

A specific example was the “Kullun Ya’ni Kullun” (All of them means all of them) digital campaign in Lebanon (Shehadi, 2021), which was mirrored by the “We Want a Homeland” sentiment in Iraq (Tartir & Fazil, 2023). Protesters used TikTok to film themselves chanting the same slogans or sharing identical laundry lists of grievances: unemployment, electricity cuts, sectarian-based nepotism, and even lack of clean water and social services. By framing these issues as universal struggles rather than sectarian ones, the algorithm served Lebanese content to Iraqis and vice versa, creating a trans-sectarian identity. This de-sacralized the political elite; once a leader is turned into a viral meme, their aura of religious or political authority is permanently broken. In this digital sanctuary, the information silos built by legacy media were effectively bypassed, unifying a new generation around a shared regional conscience that prioritizes dignity over religious affiliation.

Hybrid Identity in a Politically Fractured Region

The Triple Influence: Regional, Gulf, and Global

Arab Gen Z is the first generation to be shaped by three competing cultural forces simultaneously. They are deeply rooted in Regional Movements (like the Palestinian cause or the Sudanese revolution), yet they are increasingly influenced by Gulf Soft Power: the high-tech, hyper-modern lifestyle exported by Dubai and Riyadh through influencers and mega-events. Intersecting both is Western digital culture, from K-pop and gaming to global social justice movements like Black Lives Matter or even feminism, which was previously considered too progressive or foreign. Absorbing these contradictory influences at once, wearing a traditional thobe, abaya, or keffiyeh while quoting American rap lyrics and advocating for climate justice, is a political stance in itself. It signals a lack of conformity and a refusal to be one thing in a region where identity is often weaponized by the state.

The Politics of “Cultural Remixing”

In heavily policed societies, choosing what to adopt or reject online is a tactical act. This generation practices a form of cultural remixing, often referred to as “cultural hybridity”, as a shield; they might use a Western meme format to critique a local social issue (Yaseen et. al, 2026). This allows them to stay connected to global trends while remaining deeply relevant to their local context. This selective adoption is a form of Digital Sovereignty: they are deciding for themselves what it means to be modern and Arab, rather than accepting the version of modernity sold to them by state-run media.

Recent poignant examples include the usage of viral influencer trends, such as the “Get Ready With Me” (GRWM) or Skincare Routine format (Walsh, 2024), to spread awareness about political issues like the Iranian protests or to weigh in on the Palestinian digital activism of 2021-2024.

The purpose, in essence, is to merely use the trend as a Trojan Horse. The digital activist basically tricks viewers into thinking that this is just another addition to the trend, before switching the focus of the video and addressing issues that carry heavy political weight, such as inflation, the detention of a local activist, or a specific humanitarian crisis.

The Diaspora Feedback Loop

The Arab identity is further complicated by the Digital Diaspora. Millions of young Arabs living in London, Berlin, or Detroit are no longer separated from their home countries; they are active participants in the regional discourse via social media. This creates a Feedback Loop: diaspora youth bring Western concepts of human rights and identity politics back into regional debates, while youth within the region provide the ground truth to the diaspora.

A definitive example occurred during the 2019 Sudanese Revolution. When the government enforced an internet blackout to hide a massacre in Khartoum, the diaspora launched the #BlueForSudan campaign, forced the crisis into the Western mainstream, and successfully lobbied the African Union and US Department of State to intervene. 

This constant exchange blurs the lines between inside and outside, making it impossible for local governments to isolate their citizens from global ideas. The diaspora acts as a digital megaphone, amplifying local struggles to a global audience and ensuring that the regional identity remains fluid and impossible to fracture.

Control, Surveillance, and the Limits of Digital Freedom

While social media is a tool for liberation, regional governments have developed a sophisticated toolkit to reclaim control, turning these platforms into sites of high-stakes algorithmic warfare. The bluntest instrument remains the internet outage, seen most dramatically during the 2022-2023 Iranian protests (Alfoneh, Ali. 2023), where digital blackouts were implemented to paralyze organization and prevent footage of crackdowns from reaching the global stage. Beyond total shutdowns, states use AI-driven keyword censorship to suppress specific political discourse in real time. In response, Arab Gen Z has pioneered algorithmic resistance (Wrey, 2021), which was demonstrated through the implementation of what this article terms “Al-Khawarizmi Tactics”. The name is a nod to Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (Britannica, 2026), the 9th-century Arab mathematician whose name is the etymological root of the word “algorithm.” The irony is hard to miss: the same Arab intellectual heritage that gave the world the concept of algorithms is now being invoked to subvert the very systems used to silence Arab voices. By writing Arabic without dots or mixing English characters into words, Arab youth “glitch” their text to remain readable to humans but invisible to state-automated filters (Wrey, 2021). This strategy ensures that they are able to turn the algorithm against itself.

The Survivalist Pivot: Hacking the Trend

This battle against censorship is defined by a constant cat-and-mouse game where youth weaponize global aesthetics to navigate local repression. This tension is best seen in how activists pivot from a superficial hook to a survivalist anecdote, a move that exemplifies the distinguishable Arab dark humor. A creator might start a video under the guise of a standard beauty tutorial, only to drop a jarringly practical tip: “I’m using this waterproof eyeliner because we’re expecting heavy tear gas today,” or “Don’t wear these sandals; you need these specific sneakers to outrun the security forces.” 

Treating state violence as a mundane inconvenience to be styled around strips the state of its ability to intimidate. Beyond mere survival, this technique is a strategic hack; by categorizing the video as “Lifestyle” or “Beauty,” activists trick the algorithm into reducing shadowbans. This effectively crashes the digital spaces of apolitical users, imposing political knowledge on audiences who might otherwise remain in a bubble of detachment.

Legal Consequences and the Fear of the “Like”

However, the freedom of the “Digital Majlis” ultimately stops at the door of the courtroom. Across the region, cybercrime laws have been weaponized as a way to connect online speech and offline punishment. In countries like Egypt, TikTok influencers have been sentenced to years in prison for “violating family values,” while in the GCC, a single critical tweet, or even a “like” on a dissident’s post, can result in a decade-long sentence for “threatening national unity.” This creates staggering tensions: while Gen Z is more digitally connected than ever, that connectivity is governed by a climate of strategic anonymity and constant risk-calculation. The state makes it clear that while you can “glitch” the narrative online, the physical consequences remain absolute.

A Disconnect Between Online Presence and Everyday Self-Expression

There is a clear disconnect between the progressive, fluid world Gen Z inhabits online and the rigid constraints they face the moment they lock their phones. A young Arab might lead a radical political debate in a virtual space, only to return to a physical reality governed by strict tribal, religious, or state-mandated codes. This gap is where the most danger lies; when digital boldness is unmasked in the physical world, whether through state doxxing or social outcasting, the consequences are immediate. The digital sphere serves as a pressure cooker of aspirations, but the physical public square remains a place where the old rules of authority still hold decisive power.

The Trap of the Digital Echo Chamber

While Gen Z uses algorithms to crash the spaces of others, they are equally vulnerable to being trapped by them. Social media platforms are designed to maximize engagement, which in a politically fractured region often means amplifying incendiary and polarized content. In countries like Iraq or Lebanon, algorithms can reinforce “Cyber-Sectarianism” (Iraqi Civil Society Solidarity Initiative, 2016) by feeding users content that confirms their specific grievances while shielding them from opposing views. This creates a dangerous feedback loop where, instead of promoting a unified regional identity, the digital sphere sharpens an “us vs. them” narrative. The very tools meant to connect the region can inadvertently build digital walls, eventually making genuine cross-sectarian or cross-border reconciliation even more difficult to achieve in the physical world.

A Generation Rewriting the Terms

The emergence of the digital Arab persona has fundamentally transformed identity from a static inheritance into a fierce, ongoing negotiation. For decades, “Arabness” was a concept often dictated by state-run media or pan-Arabist political dogmas, definitions that were frequently disagreed upon or felt exclusionary to those on the margins. Today, Arab Gen Z has moved the site of this disagreement to the digital sphere. By reclaiming the “Digital Majlis,” they have turned identity into a participatory project where millions of voices now debate what it means to be modern and Arab simultaneously, refusing to accept any singular, state-sanctioned version of their culture.

This generation is the first to negotiate these terms publicly, in real time, and across borders. Whether they are students in Beirut, coders in Cairo, or members of the digital diaspora in Berlin, their worldview is forged in a transnational exchange that bypasses traditional gatekeepers. This collective friction, the remixing of global trends with local survival, has made Arab identity more fluid than ever before. It is an identity no longer defined by geographic borders, but by a shared digital language that connects a teenager in Riyadh to a protester in Khartoum through a single viral loop.

However, the power to “glitch” the narrative comes with high stakes. As this generation continues to rewrite the terms of their own existence, the central question remains: who gets to shape that change, and at what cost? 

In a landscape where a tactical beauty tutorial or a coded tweet can be met with absolute state repression, the cost of this new identity is often measured in the very physical freedom it seeks to protect.

References

ADHRB Staff. 2021. “Bahrain: ‘Social Media Misuse’ and Suppression of Dissent Violate ICCPR.” Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain. February 2, 2021. https://www.adhrb.org/2021/02/bahrain-social-media-misuse-and-suppression-of-dissent-violate-iccpr/.

Al Jazeera. 2019. “#BlueForSudan: Why Is Social Media Turning Blue for Sudan?” June 13, 2019. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/6/13/blueforsudan-why-is-social-media-turning-blue-for-sudan.

Al Jazeera. 2023. “Egyptian Pound Has Lost Half of Its Value Since March.” January 11, 2023. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/11/egyptian-pound-has-lost-half-of-its-value-since-march.

Alfoneh, Ali. 2023. “Iran’s 2022–23 Protests in Perspective.” Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. April 13, 2023. https://agsiw.org/analysis/irans-2022-23-protests-in-perspective/.

Al-Marashi, Ibrahim. 2019. The Square Centre. October 30, 2019. https://www.thesquarecentre.org/2019/10/30/these-memes-explain-the-protests-in-lebanon/

Al Shaibah, Asma.(2024) Transforming Traditions: Youth and the Digital Evolution of the Emirati Majlis. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 12, 478-501. doi: 10.4236/jss.2024.129028.

Asi, Yara M. 2022. “The Colonial Legacy in the Arab World: Health, Education, and Politics.” Arab Center Washington DC. https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/the-colonial-legacy-in-the-arab-world-health-education-and-politics/

Ayish, Mohammad, and Abeer AlNajjar. 2019. “Arab Millennials’ Articulation of Identity in Cyberspace: A Study of Three MENA YouTubers.” Arab Media & Society 27 (Winter/Spring): 26–40. https://www.arabmediasociety.com/arab-millennials-articulation-of-identity-in-cyberspace-a-study-of-three-mena-youtubers/

Beck, Martin, and Simone Hüser. 2012. “Political Change in the Middle East: An Attempt to Analyze the ‘Arab Spring.'” GIGA Working Papers 203. Hamburg: GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies. https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/62315/1/723730601.pdf

Bishai, Linda, and Elly Rostoum. 2019. “Identity and Inclusion: Rethinking Citizenship in Arab Societies.” Arab Center Washington DC. https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/identity-and-inclusion-rethinking-citizenship-in-arab-societies/

Bisin, Alberto, and Thierry Verdier. 2000. “A Model of Cultural Transmission, Voting and Political Ideology.” European Journal of Political Economy 16 (1): 5–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0176-2680(99)00045-2.

Britannica. 2026. “al-Khwārizmī” https://www.britannica.com/biography/al-Khwarizmi

Burrows, Mathew. “‘Mission Civilisatrice’: French Cultural Policy in the Middle East, 1860-1914.” The Historical Journal 29, no. 1 (1986): 109–35. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2639258.

Dumitrica, Delia, and Hester Hockin-Boyers. 2023. “Slideshow Activism on Instagram: Constructing the Political Activist Subject.” Information, Communication & Society 26 (16): 3318–36. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2155487

EBSCO. n.d. “Cultural Transmission.” Social Sciences and Humanities Research Starters. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/social-sciences-and-humanities/cultural-transmission.

Encyclopedia Britannica. 2024. “Black Lives Matter.” Last modified May 2, 2024. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Black-Lives-Matter.

Graham-Harrison, Emma. 2019. “Saudi Women Can Now Travel Without a Male Guardian, Reports Say.” August 1, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/01/saudi-women-can-now-travel-without-a-male-guardian-reports-say

Hosny, Reham, and Mohamed A. Nasef. 2025. “Lexical Algorithmic Resistance: Tactics of Deceiving Arabic Content Moderation Algorithms on Facebook.” Big Data & Society 12 (1). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20539517251318277

Human Rights Watch. 2025. “Egypt: Mass Crackdown Targets Online Content Creators.” September 10, 2025. https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/09/10/egypt-mass-crackdown-targets-online-content-creators

Iraqi Civil Society Solidarity Initiative. 2016. “How to Read the Iraqi Protest Movement.” February 8, 2016. https://www.iraqicivilsociety.org/archives/5022.

Kalita, Krishanu. 2025. “Post Colonial Language Politics: Identity, Power, and Resistance.” Hindu College Gazette. January 23, 2025. https://www.hinducollegegazette.com/post/post-colonial-language-politics-identity-power-and-resistance.

Karkouti, Ibrahim. 2022. “The Legacy of Lebanon’s October Revolution.” The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. November 3, 2022. https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/legacy-lebanons-october-revolution.

Khalid, Rola. 2025. “Saudi Young Women #Activism: The Online Discourse Against the Male Guardianship System.” CyberOrient 18 (1). https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cyo2.47

Knell, Yolande. 2023. “What Chicken Feet Tell Us About Daily Life in Egypt.” BBC News. March 19, 2023. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-64951519

Korkut, Umut, Aidan McGarry, Itir Erhart, Hande Eslen-Ziya, and Olu Jenzen. 2022. “Looking for Truth in Absurdity: Humour as Community-Building and Dissidence against Authoritarianism.” International Political Science Review 43 (1): 9–23. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0192512120971151

Kraidy, Marwan. 2008. “Youth, Media and Culture in the Arab World.” Academia.edu. https://www.academia.edu/3650270/Youth_Media_and_Culture_in_the_Arab_world.

Lebanon Law Review. 2024. “The Neo-Lebanese: A Case for a Non-Territorial Nation?” March 1, 2024. https://lebanonlawreview.org/neo-lebanese/.

Looti, Mohammed. 2025. “Arab Culture: Essential Orientation Guide.” Psychepedia. November 14, 2025. https://psychepedia.arabpsychology.com/trm/arab-culture-essential-orientation-guide/.

McGreal, Chris. 2023. “What Are the Roots of the Israel-Palestine Conflict?” The Guardian. November 16, 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/09/why-israel-palestine-conflict-history.

Medow, Zack. 2022. “The Spread of Non-Violent Action: The Case of the 2018–2019 Revolution in Sudan.” In Civic Mobilizations in Authoritarian Contexts. Washington, DC: Freedom House. https://freedomhouse.org/report/special-report/2022/civic-mobilizations-authoritarian-contexts/Sudan-summary.

Pinker, Steven, Martin A. Nowak, and James J. Lee. 2008. “The Logic of Indirect Speech.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105 (3): 833–38. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0707192105.

Sharma, Nitika. 2023. “Let’s Talk About Code-Switching: A Double-Edged Sword.” Berkeley Graduate Division. November 14, 2023. https://grad.berkeley.edu/news/announcements/lets-talk-about-code-switching-a-double-edged-sword/.

Shehadi, Nadim. 2021. “All Means All’s Message to Lebanese Leaders: Get Lost.” Arab News. June 20, 2021. https://www.arabnews.com/node/1879706.

The Square. 2019. “These Memes Explain the Protests in Lebanon.” October 30, 2019. http://www.thesquarecentre.org/2019/10/30/these-memes-explain-the-protests-in-lebanon/.

Tartir, Alaa, and Shivan Fazil. 2023. “Why Iraqis Are Still Searching for a ‘Homeland’ 20 Years after US Invasion.” Arab Barometer. March 20, 2023. https://www.arabbarometer.org/media-news/why-iraqis-are-still-searching-for-a-homeland-20-years-after-us-invasion/.

Walsh, Tom. 2024. “TikTok as a Site of Social Protest in Iran’s Gen-Z Uprising.” Media, Culture & Society 46 (4): 732–52. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09579265241234351

Watkins, Jessica. 2019. “What to expect from the Post-Pan-Arab Media.” The London School of Economics and Political Science. January, 24, 2019. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2019/01/24/what-to-expect-from-the-post-pan-arab-media/

Weinstein, Brian. 1980. “Language Planning in Francophone Africa.” Language Problems and Language Planning 4 (1): 55–78.

World Movement for Democracy. 2016. “#IAmMyOwnGuardian Campaign Aims to End Guardianship System.” May 2, 2017. https://www.movedemocracy.org/iammyownguardian-campaign-aims-to-end-guardianship-system.

Wrey, Max. 2021. “Dotless Arabic: How Social Media Users Are Rolling Back Linguistic Development to Fool AI Trawling Technologies.” Digitalis. June 14, 2021. https://digitalis.com/news/dotless-arabic-how-social-media-users-are-rolling-back-linguistic-development-to-fool-ai-trawling-technologies/.

Yaseen, Maha S., Razan Alzyod, Amer Al-Adwan, and Rami Sa’di. 2026. “English and Identity in the Digital Age: Social Media, Code-Switching, and Linguistic Hybridity Among Jordanian Gen Z.” World Journal of English Language 16 (2): 502–11. https://doi.org/10.5430/wjel.v16n2p502.

Zakharia, Zeena. 2010. “Language and Vulnerability: How Educational Policies Exacerbate Inequalities in Higher Education.” Middle East Institute. April 2, 2024. https://mei.edu/publications/language-and-vulnerability-how-educational-policies-exacerbate-inequalities-higher.