May 13, 2015
The most potent weapon against the “viral” jihadist narrative on Arab social media may be an alternative that celebrates freedom, argues Nadia Oweidat, a Jordanian-born analyst with the New America Foundation. In researching Arab social media, she notes an explosion of Facebook and YouTube sites that express this theme of personal freedom. These are the ideas that emerged in the “Arab Spring” of 2011 rather than today’s louder, darker, more intolerant, jihadist images.