The Evolution of Sudanese Websites
In the past, the Sudanese diasporas connected with their family members,
relatives, and friends through letters delivered by hand, due to deteriorating
communication infrastructure of postal services and telephone lines. As a result of the
growing need to communicate with people in the homeland, several websites have been
created and maintained that provide Sudanese emigrants with a sense of connectedness to
their country. Examples of these websites are
www.sudaneseonline.com, http://http://www.sudan.netwww.sudan.net,
http://http://www.sudan-forall.orgwww.sudan-forall.org, and sudaneseonline.org. These websites are open for all
Sudanese, regardless of discrepancies based on political affiliations, religious
commitments, ethnicities, gender, age, or professions. These are dynamic spaces in which
Sudanese emigrants and Sudanese in Sudan actively participate. Participants, who reside
in Sudan, and in the diaspora, utilize their physical existence in these diverse locations to
provide each other with current news taking place in Sudan and in other regions. Public
Sudanese web sites are designed with structurally similar sections, such as electronic
bulletin boards, news, digital libraries, Sudanese music, commercials, articles and
commentaries, press releases by political parties and individuals, photo albums, poems,
archives, and cartoons. These websites, which are mostly managed by Sudanese nationals
residing outside Sudan, succeed in pulling together thousands of Sudanese people who
belong to different social, political, ethnic and religious groups. Sharkey (2004) states
that “In the 1990s, the Internet helped Sudanese in the diaspora to build communities
across distances. At the same time, hampered by the weakness of the Sudan international
communications, particularly outside Khartoum, migrants managed to keep in touch with
home communities and to send remittances to them”(p. 136).
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The Sudaneseonline.com Website
Sudaneseonline.com website was launched in November 17, 1999, and is based in
the United States. According to Alexa.com, a company based in the United States that
specializes in rating websites, sudaneseonline.com has the international traffic rank of
9,791 and 23rd traffic rank in Sudan. The website has 5.4 daily page views per visitor and
9,100 subscribed members residing around the world (see Table 3). The website’s worth
is estimated at $336,068, based on qualitative factors that reflect the website’ credibility
and accordingly its market price. I have chosen ‘Sudaneseonline.com’ for the primary
case study because of its high national and international traffic rank, for its sufficient
daily page views, and for its high website worth (compared to other Sudanese websites).
The website ‘Sudaneseonline.com’ is the only Sudanese website that its participants
come together in many cities around the world and perform social activities. In addition,
many ‘sudaneseonline.com’ participants are simultaneously active on other Sudanese
websites. Klein et al (2010) assert that “researchers who plan to develop an Internetbased
study must realize that many of the people they will wish to include in their studies
are members of more than one targeted website” (p. 377). Sudaneseonline.com
participants, who simultaneously have memberships in other Sudanese websites, have
rich online experiences, which make them good informants for this study.
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Table 3
Ratings Features of Competing Sudanese Websites
Rating
feature
Sudaneseonline.org Alnilin.com Sudanforall.org
Sudaneseonline.com
Global
traffic rank 98, 016 4, 274 453, 222 9, 791
Traffic rank
in Sudan 835 9 - 23
Number of
participants - - 711 9, 100
Total sites
linking in 353 324 66 510
Daily
pageviews
per visitor 9.6 11.7 2.4 5.4
Source: Adapted October 19, 2014 from http://http://www.Alexa.comwww.Alexa.com , a company specialized in
rating websites, and the websites mentioned-above.
The discussion board is the name given in sudaneseonline.com website to the
public electronic bulletin board. The website, including the discussion board, is published
in both Arabic and English languages. On the topics of electronic bulletin boards (i.e.,
threads), while first numbers (e.g., 10 in the first thread) indicate people who read the
thread and posted comments (responses), second numbers (e.g., 1945 in the first thread)
show the number of people who read the thread, but did not participate in the discussion
(readings) (see Figure 2). About 44.4% of sudaneseonline.com website’s visitors reside
outside Sudan (see Figure 3)
.
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Figure 2. Sudaneseonline.com website interface showing its Discussion Board in Arabic.
Retrieved October 14, 2014 from
http://www.sudaneseonline.com/board/470.html.
Figure 3. Percentage of visitors by country for sudaneseonline.com.
Retrieved October 19, 2014 from
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/sudaneseonline.com56.6
8.2
4.6
4.2
1.9
2.2
5.5
8.8
Sudan
Saudi Arabia
United States
United Arab Emirates
Qatar
Canada
Egypt
Norway
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Democracy and Democratization
Democracy is a widely accepted political concept among both academics and the
public for its value as a tool to achieve good governance and individual happiness. Good
governance is defined as “a set of social institutions that fully represent the people,
interlinked by a solid network of institutional regulations and accountability ‘with
ultimate accountability to the people’, whose purpose is to achieve the welfare of all
members of society” (UNDP, 2002, p106).
In the last decade of the twentieth century, there was an increasing trend toward
democratization and human rights in the world, partly because of the collapse of the
Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War, and the spread of the capitalistic paradigm in
Eastern European countries (Ake, 1996). In addition to this, the development of
information and communication technologies, particularly satellite TV and the Internet,
contributed to democratization by shedding light on human rights violations committed
by autocratic governments and by exerting pressures on these governments by
international and non-governmental specialized organizations, e.g., Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch (Aajwa, 2004, O’Neil, 1998). The process of
democratization is a continual challenge. Each country faces this challenge on different
levels, whether political development and/or democratic transformation. For instance,
although the United States is considered one of the most democratic nations, the election
of President Barack Obama in 2008 was a new democratic development because he was
the first African-American president. This achievement demonstrates how democracy is a
social process that can empower marginalized groups to express their views about public
issues in order to improve their quality of life.
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African countries are experiencing internal and external pressures to initiate
democratization. Many experts argue that, while liberal democracy may be the core
political value in Western countries, African countries need to develop their own
versions of democracy that can accommodate various social structures, local heritages,
and development demands (Cheru, 2012, Rodney, 1981). Mattes and Bratton (2007)
contend that Africans learn about democracy through developing skills to understand
how governments operate. These skills enable them to have political information and
engagement, and to use new media (Internet). In most developing countries, due to
cultural and political factors such as religion, social norms and traditions, and dominance
of political violence or patriarchy, governments tend to deprive women and youth from
their political and cultural rights such as freedom of expression and freedom of
association. In order to address this marginalization of women and youth in developing
countries, Ake (1996) argues that Africa needs to apply “A democracy of incorporation.
To be as inclusive as possible” (p. 132).
Definitions and Clarification of Basic Research Terms
Many terms have been used to describe computer-mediated communities vis-a-vis
conventional geographic proximity. These include “online communities” (Josesffon,
2005; Jones, 2002; Hew, 2009), “virtual communities” (Cole, 2002; Hunter, 2002; Lord,
2002; Gupta, Kim, and Shin, 2010), “network-based communities” (Levin and Cervantes,
2002), “internet-based communities” (McFarlane, 2005), “web-based communities”
(Winerman, 2009), and “mediated communities” (Gooding, Locke, and Brown, 2007). I
choose to use the term “online communities” because of its wide usage among academics
and the public. Although Nolan and Weiss (2002) state that “the term ’virtual
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community’ has become so widespread in its use that there is a tendency to conflate all
social activity into a single concept and ignore the diversity of virtual contexts” (p. 293),
I believe that, since then, ‘online communities’ has become the standard term. In this
study, I use Rheingold’s (1993) definition of online communities as “ social aggregations
that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those discussions long enough,
with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace” (p.
5). I also use Hine’s (2003) definition of public electronic bulletin boards: “A forum
accessible over a network, where messages can be placed. Users can access the bulletin
board to leave messages or reply to those of other users. The bulletin board can be a
discussion forum or information source” (p. 157).
In this study, since subscription to sudaneseonline.com isn’t a condition to browse
the website, particularly the discussion board i.e., public electronic bulletin board, the
subscription is not a condition to participate in this study. Any person who visits
sudaneseonline.con can participate in this study.
By freedom of expression I mean individuals have the space to freely express
their opinions about different political, social, economic and cultural issues, by any
democratic means. They can participate in discussions in blogs and other forms of virtual
community, without being harassed, detained, or punished by the government or any
social group for expressing their opinions. By civil society associations, I mean social or
professional groups that pursue a public interest by organizing themselves in known
societies. I chose these two components of democracy i.e. freedom of expression and
civil society associations, for their direct relationships with individuals and for their
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significant role in realizing other components of democracy such as the rule of law,
independence of the judiciary, and free and fair elections.
Virtual ethnography is a research methodology approach to understanding the
Internet (Hine, 2003, Beaulieu, 2004). It adapts a number of conventional research
methods (participant observation, semi-structured in-depth interviews, and surveys) by
using information technologies in parts or in all of the stages of conducting research. The
basic feature of virtual ethnography is to cope with the emergence of a new form of
communities (virtual communities). It provides scholars with the possibility of gaining
access to larger populations (e.g., diasporas) or to certain communities, that are difficult
to reach because of their characteristics (shy people, people with disabilities, people who
are afraid of stigmatization), and for its minimal intrusion. A number of methodological
and ethical considerations make virtual ethnography a challenging task (e.g., field site,
identity, getting informed consent, protecting research participants). Virtual ethnography
enables scholars to be more reflexive because it requires intensive interaction with
research participants (Lopez-Rocha, 2010).
The term ‘diaspora’ is associated with cultural dualism, identity, longings for
family and friends, and having an involuntary perspective on the homeland’s challenges
from a distance. Diasporic communities make cultural choices regarding their norms and
traditions, values, technology, and the role they can play to improve the socioeconomic
and political conditions they left behind. Scholars have infused the term ‘diaspora’ with
many meanings according to their cultural and political purposes (Brubaker, 2005). In
this study, I use Manning’s (2009) definition of diaspora “migrants who settle in distant
lands and produce new generations, all the while maintaining ties of affection with and
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making occasional visits to each other and their homeland” (p. 2). Bongila (2012)
contends that those in the African diaspora should have the right to participate in the
homeland’s political system (e.g., to vote in elections), because they are such
economically and politically active citizens.
Statement of the Problem
Although studies on the relationship between the Internet and democracy are
steadily accumulating, the existing literature suggests that there is some disagreement
about the role the Internet in democratization and political participation (Hirzalla,
Zoonen, and Ridder, 2011; Boulianne, 2009; Wang, 2007; Burns, 2006). Internet
communication among the African diaspora remains under-researched (Langmia, 2008),
and scholars have different views about the function of the Internet in expanding the
virtual public sphere. While Habermas (1998) claims that virtual communities can only
undermine undemocratic governments, he doesn’t address the capacity of the Internet to
create new political spaces in the 21st century. Dahlberg (2001b) argues that the
expansion of the public sphere for any virtual community depends on to what extent this
community is committed to what he calls “rational-critical deliberation” (p. 617). Tettey
(2001) argues that, while the Internet can provide information to people, information
alone is not enough to change the prevailing political environment in Africa. More
research is needed to address the role of the Internet in diasporic political participation,
particularly for those people who come from countries dominated by undemocratic
governance and armed conflicts.
This study investigates how Sudanese online communities expand the public
sphere among Sudanese diasporas across the globe. It considers how participants in these
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Sudanese virtual communities express themselves, form civic society associations, and
establish publishing spaces with stories and articles previously forbidden by government
authorities. How does the virtual public sphere contribute to the larger process of
democratization؟ In this research, I specifically focus on how the Sudaneseonline.com
website’s public electronic bulletin board i.e., the discussion board, expands the public
sphere among Sudanese diaspoaric communities. I apply the set of requirements
established by Dahlberg (2001a) to examine rational-critical deliberation among a variety
of online participants. The set of requirements are: 1) exchange and critique of reasoned
moral-practical validity claims, 2) reflexivity, 3) ideal role-taking, 4) sincerity, 5)
discursive inclusion and equality, and, 6) autonomy from state and economic power
(Dahlberg, 2001b).
This study is based on a naturalistic approach, which views the researcher as an
inseparable part of the society s/he studies and who tries to understand the everyday
world of a community (Siitonen, 2011; Robin and Robin, 2005 and Mason, 2004). I utilize
virtual ethnography for its suitability in exploring social Internet-based networks
(Hakken, 1999 and Howard, 2002). I use online participant observation, online semistructured
in-depth interviews with leaders and key informants (of Sudanese online
communities and online activists of civic society associations), and online survey as
primary sources of data. Other sources of information (e.g., books, journals, and
websites) will be used as needed.
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Objectives of the Study
This study is intended to realize the following objectives:
1) To identify the characteristics of sudaneseonline.com users who live outside Sudan
and are responding to the repressive political environment, internal armed conflicts,
oppressed freedom of expression, constrained civic society associations, and statecontrolled
media in Sudan.
2) To strengthen the understanding of Sudanese diasporic online communities and how
participation in these online spaces contribute to the expansion of the diasporic public
sphere.
3) To explore how participation in Sudanese diasporic online communities contribute to
freedom of expression and civil society principles.
Importance of the Study
This study aims to understand the role of computer-mediated communication in
social change. It sheds light on the capacities of online communities to extend spaces for
democratization, particularly for people from undemocratic societies and who experience
internal armed conflicts and large-scales diasporas. The study is also intended to clarify
how online communities can strengthen the sense of connectedness and belonging among
diasporic communities. The study will elaborate a more comprehensive understanding of
the diasporic public sphere.
Organizational Structure of the Study
The study is divided into six chapters. The first chapter introduces the current
conditions of the Sudanese context regarding freedom of expression, civic society
associations, and the failure of democratization. It also examines the emergence of
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Sudanese diasporic communities and websites from 2000-2012 and further explores the
problem. The second chapter explicates a theoretical framework and a review of the
literature on the interactive dynamics of the Internet, democracy and human rights, and
diasporic communities. The third chapter discusses methodological issues and
procedures. It explains in details how research questions are raised, implemented, and
answered. The fourth chapter presents and discusses the research findings derived mainly
from the online survey. The fifth chapter presents and discusses the research findings
derived mainly from the online participant observation. It discusses the six requirements
of rational-critical discourse within the Sudanese cultural context. The sixth chapter
presents conclusions and recommendations for future research.
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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter introduces concepts related to the emergence of electronic
democracy and online diasporic communities that came out of traditional societies that