Web Network & Content Changes Associated with the 2011 Muslim Middle-East & North African Uprisings: A Naturalistic Field Experiment James A. Danowski, Ph.D. Dept. of Communication University of Illinois at Chicago Chicago, USA jimd@uic.edu Han Woo Park, Ph.D. Dept. of Media &. Communication YeungNam University Gyeongsan, South Korea hanpark@ynu.ac.kr Abstract—This research gathered web network top-level domain (tld) interlinkage among Muslim Middle East and North African Nations (MMENANs) in December 2010 and in April 2011, constituting before and after measures with respect to the 2011 Muslim Middle-East (MMENA) uprisings between these time points. This constitutes a naturalistic field experiment, with the uprisings occurring before April serving as the treatment condition. Evidence found that the MMENA uprisings are associated with increased presence of radical Islamist concepts on the MMENANs web domains, associating the terms: jihad, infidels, sharia, civil society, and democracy in a non-Western perspective. MMENANs that became more central in the network and therefore more powerful after the early uprisings may exert greater influence on other nations to increase presence of radical Islamist concepts in their web domains or to create hyperlinks to other nations’ pages already having such content. Organizations increasing in network indegree after the uprisings are accumulating more web capital based on their domains being increasingly linked from other MMENANs. Increased indegree MMENANs are perhaps serving as more active incubators or breeders of the ideology concepts in their web domains. They have increased numbers of links from other MMENAs that increase the diffusion of these concepts. MMENANs that increased in network outdegree after the uprisings have societal members who are reaching out more to link with web content in other MMENANs. This may indicate they are seeking to more effectively develop their domestic religious/political constellation of concepts They would perhaps be most likely to have internal growth in popularity of the ideology and may reach critical mass to increase their own national anchoring of the ideology and associated practices. Keywords-Muslim; Middle East; North Africa; web mining; jihad; sharia; civil society; social network analysis; I. INTRODUCTION The fact that we had been gathering research data just prior to the beginning of the MMENAN uprisings enabled us to replicate the analysis after the initial phase of the uprisings to serve as a naturalistic field experiment to examine changes in the structures of networks among MMEMANs and in concepts associated with jihad, sharia, civil society, and democracy. This provides a unique opportunity to observe what effects the early uprisings period have had on these variables. II. BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW Social networks in relation to MMENA uprisings have been of interest for at least nearly twenty years [1]. As does most social network (SNA) research, that early study analyzed networks among individuals as nodes. Nevertheless, network analysis using nations as nodes has also been useful, studying both the network of telephone call traffic, of internet development, and of web interlinks in relation to civil society development [2]. The recent wave of MMENA uprisings beginning earlier this year and continuing have been so recent that scholarly research has yet to catch up with them. Mainly news and opinion in the popular press are the sources available. As usual, these are not highly analytical treatments. Moreover, they have furthered a potentially misleading concept of “Arab Spring.” Our research will show that this concept is associated with increases in the network power of radical Islamist concepts. So, for those opposing such perspectives, this period may be better conceptualized as the “Arab Storm.” The current study draws on a series of earlier studies on internet development and civil society in the MMENA and provides a scholarly platform on which to construct analysis of the internet and web networks in relation to some key religious and political concepts. These include: civil society, democracy, jihad, infidels, and sharia. That research began by empirically examining the premise of foreign policy in previous USA presidential administrations which asserted that the development of the internet in the MMENA is a necessary first step toward democracy. The rationale was that internet and web communication lead to civil society development, considered a necessary condition for the establishment of democracy [2]. The current USA administration has extended