Broadcasting 139 table 5.1. Typology of diaspora interventions in the Arab Spring Broadcasting Representing Brokering Remitting Volunteering on the front lines Disseminating facts and claims for a shared cause through protest, online activism, and by holding awareness-raising events. Serving as formal delegates or informal proxies for homecountry causes and organizations to outside audiences and decision-makers, including through lobbying and in the policymaking process. The linking of previously unconnected actors and entities inside and outside of the home-country for the purposes of facilitating anti-regime mobilization and relief on the ground. The channeling of tangible and intangible resources to the home-country for the purposes of rebellion and relief. Traveling to the home-country and its border areas to participate directly in rebellion and relief efforts. consistently over time, the second part explains how diaspora movements’ collective repertoires varied (see Table 1.3). As I illustrate here, only Libyan movements in the United States and Britain were able to meet the needs of their compatriots and enact what I call a full-spectrum repertoire of interventions over the course of the revolution. Syrians and Yemenis, on the other hand, faced a number of challenges and obstacles in doing so. Chapters 6 and 7 then explain how this variation was determined primarily by two causal factors: the different capacities of diaspora movements to convert resources to the revolutions and relief efforts, and the varying degree of geopolitical support they received from states and other third parties. When resource conversion and geopolitical support were absent or died off over time, activists became disempowered to do much more than voice their solidarity and support from afar. 5.1 broadcasting In the wake of the Egyptian revolution’s ousting of President Hosni Mubarak on February 11, 2011, respondents across the three diasporas were both buzzing with anticipation and gravely concerned. While the protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square were broadcast live on Al Jazeera day and night, the only media allowed to operate in Libya and Syria in 2011 were state-controlled. Yemenis had more press freedoms, but their people had a long history of being neglected in the international media. Movements outside of the capital Sanaʻa were also prone to being ignored. Furthermore, internet penetration, particularly in Yemen, was spotty at best. As a result, observers in the diaspora worried that movements following in Egypt’s footsteps would be crushed in the dark. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press

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