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Show 262 Megan Miller REDEFINING SPACES: WOMEN'S USE OF COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA Megan Miller (Caren Frost) Middle East Center University of Utah honors college spring 2012 This paper deals with the use of communication technology by women in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and how it relates to concepts of private and public space, i.e., gendered spatial segregation. Using available scholarship and data on female internet usage in the MENA region, women's use of communication technology is analyzed in terms of its use as a venue for female discourse that is not limited by physical boundaries between public and private spaces. Communication technology has allowed women to enter an open, discursive domain without leaving the physical privacy of their homes, creating an alternate "public space." As the use of the Internet and online social networking sites by both men and women in this region increase, many authoritarian countries struggle to formulate effective policies for the "management" or filtering of information being accessed and shared. Because of the private nature of content shared by women online, as well as the inability of entrenched patriarchal systems to regulate such con-tent, this alternate discursive space is distinct from traditional public spaces and presents unique challenges to Islamic social constructions of private and public space. Questions are unanswered about how women use this space and what the ramifications are for their voices and rights in the future. This thesis explores what is known about the use of this alternate "public space." Caren Frost |