Social construction of reality through Facebook : understanding stories of the Egyptian Muslim sisterhood during the military coup era /

This study aimed to understand how the Egyptian Muslim Sisterhood constructed the reality through their stories on Facebook about the self, the Muslim Brotherhood Organisation, the society, and the regime after the military coup which toppled the first democratically elected civilian president, Muha...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Mohamed, Heba Zakarya Hamed (Author)
Format: Thesis
Language:English
Published: Kuala Lumpur : Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences, International Islamic University Malaysia, 2020
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Online Access:Click here to view 1st 24 pages of the thesis. Members can view fulltext at the specified PCs in the library.
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Summary:This study aimed to understand how the Egyptian Muslim Sisterhood constructed the reality through their stories on Facebook about the self, the Muslim Brotherhood Organisation, the society, and the regime after the military coup which toppled the first democratically elected civilian president, Muhammad Morsi. To do so, the researcher collected 3344 posts from the Facebook accounts of six members of Muslim Sisterhood during the period between 3 July 2013 and 31 March 2018. A qualitative content analysis was utilised to identify the stories that the Sisters told, their perceptions about the reality they constructed within these stories, and the changes in these perceptions during the selected period. Social construction of reality theory was used to provide an understanding of Muslim Sisterhood's construction of reality during this critical period of the Egyptian contemporary history when Muslim Brotherhood and its female wing Muslim Sisterhood are facing unprecedented repression under the post-coup regime, while the Egyptian society is divided between pro- and anti-coup or pro- and anti-Muslim Brotherhood. The findings showed that the Sisters told, collectively and continually, ten major stories, which are 1) It is a military coup, 2) The victims, 3) Us and others, 4) Anti-Islam war, 5) Media war, 6) The organisation's battle, 7) The massacres, 8) Muslim women at the centre of the storm, 9) Al-Haraer (the free women), and 10) The transformers. Facebook provided an open platform for the Sisters to tell these stories, free from the constraints of the regime and Muslim Brotherhood's official narrative, to show the individual differences in their perceptions of the reality. Interestingly, the findings also indicate that the Sisters institutionalised stable reality about the regime and the social actors during the military coup era, while their perceptions about the ordinary Egyptians, the Muslim Brotherhood organisation, and the self were still in the dynamic process of constructing the reality due to the differences among the Sisters themselves and the changes occurring throughout the time. Moreover, Facebook serves as an appropriate platform for tracing the changes in the Sisters' construction of reality throughout the time, since it archives the previous posts of the users and keeps them available. These conclusions may help politicians and media practitioners to utilise these dynamic perceptions in bridging the current division among the Egyptian society and encourage communication researchers to conduct more studies about the contribution of Facebook in constructing certain reality, especially within the conflict, repression, and exclusion contexts.
Item Description:Abstracts in English and Arabic.
"A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Human Sciences (Communication)." --On title page.
Physical Description:xiv, 163 leaves : illustrations ; 30cm.
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references (leaves 151-159).