Web Network and Content Changes Associated with the 2011 Muslim Middle-East and North African Early Uprisings: A Naturalistic Field Experiment

This research gathered web network top-level domain (tld) interlink age among Muslim Middle East and North African Nations (MMENANs) in December 2010 and in April 2011, constituting before and after measures with respect to the 2011 Muslim Middle-East (MMENA) uprisings between these time points. This constitutes a naturalistic field experiment, with the uprisings occurring before April serving as the treatment condition. Evidence found that the MMENA uprisings are associated with increased presence of radical Islamist concepts on the MMENANs web domains, associating the terms: jihad, infidels, sharia, civil society, and democracy in a non-Western perspective. MMENANs that became more central in the network and therefore more powerful after the early uprisings may exert greater influence on other nations to increase presence of radical Islamist concepts in their web domains or to create hyperlinks to other nations´ pages already having such content. Organizations increasing in network in degree after the uprisings are accumulating more web capital based on their domains being increasingly linked from other MMENANs. Increased in degree MMENANs are perhaps serving as more active incubators or breeders of the ideology concepts in their web domains. They have increased numbers of links from other MMENAs that increase the diffusion of these concepts. MMENANs that increased in network out degree after the uprisings have societal members who are reaching out more to link with web content in other MMENANs. This may indicate they are seeking to more effectively develop their domestic religious/political constellation of concepts They would perhaps be most likely to have internal growth in popularity of the ideology and may reach critical mass to increase their own national anchoring of the ideology and associated practices.