Analyzing Palestinian Women’s Activism Within the Online Counterpublic: A Case Study of #Tweetyourthobe on Twitter

The Palestinian flag and the Palestinian struggle have always been rooted within Palestinian campaigns and activism. Although there are many studies done regarding Palestinian women’s activism, there is still a lack of research on Palestinian women’s presence in the online counterpublic. This paper looks at a new form of Palestinian activism: the traditional Palestinian thobe (dress) within the digital counterpublic (social media). Focusing on Habermas’ work on the public sphere and Fraser’s critique, the Internet has become a place for ‘counterpublics’ where minority groups from every community are represented, acknowledged, and able to freely discuss cultural, social, and political issues of the day. Counterpublics’ potential in the Palestinian women’s movement is examined through the #TweetYourThobe case study, which encourages Palestinian women to tweet their traditional Palestinian thobe. Twitter data was collected through Twint software and organized using Tableau Public, a tool which eased the analysis process of reviewing every tweet from December 2018 until December 2019 manually. I argue that with the accessible spaces of digital counterpublics, Palestinian women were able to form a campaign to raise awareness of the cultural, political, and national identity of Palestinians through the thobe that is just as effective as the common movements that are done with the use of the Palestinian flag or land.