How New Media Empower Yemeni People To Reveal War Stories

Abstract

Yemen was amongst Arab countries that underwent the so-called “Arab spring” in a bid to oust former president Ali Abdullah Saleh from power. In its aftermath, the country entered a national dialogue period that continued for more than a year. However, the Houthi movement backed by the former president, both a party to the dialogue, fell out with the government and spread their control over the Capital Sana’a in September 2015. A few months later, a Saudi-led coalition of nine countries launched a military campaign code-named “Operation Decisive Storm”. According to UNICEF, the ensuing war has turned Yemen into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Nonetheless, the humanitarian crisis and the ongoing war have rarely received enough attention from the mainstream media. This study investigates how the alternative media have provided Yemeni people, particularly the most vulnerable among them, with the tools and platforms to tell their stories to the world. The sample comprised accounts of Yemeni NGOs and social activists on Facebook and Twitter. Major findings indicated that Facebook represents unprecedented and instant medium for revealing painful stories of war on almost a daily-bases. In many cases, stories are told by affected people themselves including children and women and represent a source of news stories and features for mainstream media.