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This article presents and discusses voices of active social media users from the urban Sudan on the social impact of internet and mobile communication, with a focus on changes in individuals’ attitudes to established patriarchal norms, in particular regarding relations between the sexes, and between young people and their parents’ generation. The picture that emerges from interviews and online sources is that of young people often impatient with the pace of change in their society, while at the same time professing that the new technologies have enabled them, in their own lives, to break established norms, to expand the realm of their private sphere, and to assert their own voice. Such sociocultural change risks going unnoticed if one focuses mainly on the political side of the Arab Spring; it may, however, be as important as regime change to the understanding of current dynamics in the Arab world.
This article presents and discusses voices of active social media users from the urban Sudan on the social impact of internet and mobile communication, with a focus on changes in individuals’ attitudes to established patriarchal norms, in particular regarding relations between the sexes, and between young people and their parents’ generation. The picture that emerges from interviews and online sources is that of young people often impatient with the pace of change in their society, while at the same time professing that the new technologies have enabled them, in their own lives, to break established norms, to expand the realm of their private sphere, and to assert their own voice. Such sociocultural change risks going unnoticed if one focuses mainly on the political side of the Arab Spring; it may, however, be as important as regime change to the understanding of current dynamics in the Arab world.
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