Breaking Digital Firewalls
Analyzing Internet Censorship and
Circumvention in the Arab World
Walid al-Saqaf
Media and Communication
Örebro Studies in Media and Communications 17 I
ÖREBRO 2014ÖREBRO STUDIES IN MEDIa aND COMMUNICaTIONS 17 2014
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walid al-saqaf is a software developer and a researcher in Media and Communication Studies at Örebro University. He has a B.Sc. in computer engineering and master in Global Journalism. Utilizing his multi-disciplinary background in applied and social sciences, he has produced this inter- disciplinary dissertation entitled Breaking Digital Firewalls. The power of the Internet to promote free speech has become widely debated since the start of the Arab Spring particularly as social media were used by citizens to disseminate content that promoted dissent against Arab regimes. Some Arab governments opted to practice Internet censorship in an apparent attempt to stop citizens from challenging their authority.
However, a significant number of Arab users used censorship circum-vention tools as one way to bypass government-erected firewalls. Under-standing how such tools are used to resist Internet censorship is an excit- ing and promising area of research.
Through this dissertation, it was possible to empirically prove that de-veloping a censorship circumvention tool is indeed viable in that it allowed users to bypass website filtering in most cases and consequently, help promote freedom of expression online.
By developing a circumvention solution from scratch and deploying it to better understand Internet censorship and how it could be resisted, this dis-sertation contributes to media and communication scholarship in a novel and profound way.
The value of such research is appreciated in light of the predictions that the next one billion Internet users will come from the developing world. This suggests that the battle between authoritarian regimes’ desire to con-trol information and citizens’ determination to keep the Internet free using circumvention tools will continue for many years to come.
issn 1651-4785 isbn 978-91-7529-023-2
