🚨 New article alert in @democratization.bsky.social: Why do authoritarian regimes maintain access to open U.S.-owned social media platforms like Twitter - despite their subversive potential - and how do pro-government supporters use them?

👇 OA link: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Menasky

There are significant differences across sub-fields. Studies of Islamism/Jihadism, gender studies, and literature built on extensive fieldwork and original Arabic language sources. Foreign policy, security studies and to some extent econ themes have the potential to develop this more in the future

Having analyzed more than 150 articles over a period of 30 years, I found that 1 out of 3 articles published draws on neither Arabic sources nor on fieldwork in KSA. As a field, we should take Saudi society more seriously as a producer of meaningful information about Saudi politics & society

🚨 New article alert: I surveyed the methods and source selection of articles on Saudi Arabia that were published in area studies journals. What do we study when we study Saudi Arabia?

open access link to the article 👇

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Menasky

Embarrassingly, Berlin has to partially re-run the federal parliamentary election from 2021 after administrative failures. Germany‘s main center-right daily FAZ teasing in local dialect: “Surely, it will all go well this time. Even elections observers from Belarus and Iran are here!”

Important intervention by @jburnmurdoch.bsky.social in the FT: the govt‘s anti-immigration course is red meat for the base but doesn’t resonate with Labour voters. Tories might destroy the NHS and higher education over immigration but it won’t win them the next election

Abstract 👇

It seems the Saudi embassy in DC simply added “in 1727” to their previous account of Saudi state foundation. Quite surprising since the whole point of this new Founding Day pre-dating 1744 was to sideline Abdul Wahhab from Saudi history.

Nice try, BILD, but you’re wasting some $$ on ads here