The protests during the uprisings in the Arab world from 2010 onwards have underlined that social movements are an important political and social factor also in authoritarian contexts. While empirical data from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA region) was mostly not considered in theory-building before the "Arab Spring", the global relevance of the region has ever since become apparent in the academic literature.
The research in Bern focuses on movements since the beginning of the 2000s. The main aim is to understand the movements as actors who have paved the ways to the protests, their goals (ideologies) and protest repertoires, as well as the context today, ten years after the first protests. The contemporary focus, however, does not mean that historical precursors are not considered. The focus countries are Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, and Syria.
The research area is divided into two sub-areas:
- Building on the research area on media in the MENA region, the relationship between social movements and their strategic use of media will be explored. An ongoing project is the research on the use of humor in the Algerian media since the 2019 protests in the country.
- Linked to the dimension of the actors’ protest repertoires are their goals and ideologies. The focus hereby is on liberalism and Islamism.
