The Gulf Crisis and Rise of Digital Nationalism in Qatar: A Case Study of Tweets

Abstract

The Gulf Crisis started on June 5, 2017 when three member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC); that is Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arabs Emirates, as well as Egypt issued a coordinated statement that subsequently severed the ties with Qatar. The boycott soon escalated into a Qatar blockade as a result of the quartet closing their borders; including an air, sea, and land embargo against Qatar. Immediately after the blockade, the legitimacy of the Gulf Crisis was questioned, particularly on the social media. Both the social, and traditional media were actively used in questioning the crisis legitimacy; and the citizens of both Qatar and the quartet countries were actively involved in this discourse by engaging in twitter war, pushing narratives, and counter narratives, and eventually culminating in a new hike in digital nationalism in the region. Drawing on tweets on popular hashtags in the early days of the crisis, this study explores the rise of digital nationalism among Qataris by looking into the underlying features and its implications on the citizenry population. The study found that Qataris engage in virtual world, to fight off misinformation, which is being propagated by the countries that imposed the blockade. The study reports that the twitter war heightened the sense of belonging and solidarity among Qataris, and brought all Qataris to the same platform under the present leadership, and made Qatar even stronger.