The Arab Spring and Journalism as Public Knowledge

What is it about?

Using the 2011 Arab Spring as a case study, this article makes a theoretical case for understanding journalism as a technologically situated way of learning about the world. Though social media and digital technologies were used to gather facts about uprisings in the Middle East, these facts were given significance through journalism's broader meaning-making apparatus, inflecting these events with an often liberal democratic sensibility.

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Why is it important?

Journalism is often understood as a neutral reflection of the world and events as they happen. By looking at this particular case, we come to understand how certain events are made sense of and granted meaning and importance beyond their immediate geographic, political, and temporal context. In this way, journalism acts as a kind of liberal democratic epistemology – an institutionalized way of knowing about the world.