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When folkloric geopolitical concerns prompt a conspiratorial ideation: the case of Egyptian tweeters

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Abstract

The cartography of danger has recently expanded to turn several hotspots worldwide. This proves true when it comes to the Middle East where military interventions escalate and internal conflicts leverage. Implicating on the folkloric perception of the real geostrategic threats, this paper uses linguistic cues to explore the conceptualization of geopolitical concerns in a large-scale corpus of Egyptian tweets (2012–2017). Results reveal that the Conspiratorial Ideation is widely enabled and ushered to relieve the increasing anxiety ad hoc the rapidly changing political scene in Egypt and the pan-region. There, America, Israel, Iran and Cyprus are defined as the outsider plotters where the reigning regimes are accused of conspiring against the Egyptians. The threatened Egyptian geostrategic territories are claimed to be Sinai, Tiran strait, Halayeb triangle and Mediterranean gas fields. The suggested plotting scenarios are bootstrapped and discussed.

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Notes

  1. Although the literal translation of the original Arabic text is “deal of the century”, the word “deal” is rendered as “sale” to draw upon the rhetoric device observed in the two source texts {safka /sˤʌfqә/and saf’a /sˤʌfʔə/}.

  2. The Saudi argument of possessing the two islands draws on their semantic meanings. Tiran is said to etymologically mean “sea waves". in Tabuk’s dialect while Sanafir designate things of unknown origin. This was further interpreted in terms of failure to affiliate the inhabitants of Sanafir to known Hijazi tribes.

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This research did not receive any grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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  1. Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt

    Bacem A. Essam, Mostafa M. Aref & Fayrouz Fouad

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  1. Bacem A. Essam
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  2. Mostafa M. Aref
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  3. Fayrouz Fouad
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Correspondence to Bacem A. Essam.

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Essam, B.A., Aref, M.M. & Fouad, F. When folkloric geopolitical concerns prompt a conspiratorial ideation: the case of Egyptian tweeters. GeoJournal 84, 121–133 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-018-9854-7

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