#2 Social Media Use in the Arabian Gulf with Sarah Vieweg

The ways we consume and create media and content continue to evolve at a rapid pace. The
Demystifying Media seminar series at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and
Communication explores the impact of these changes across the communications landscape
and finds new ways to navigate forward.

Each term, we will bring several experts—media practitioners, academics, and researchers—
_working on the cutting edge of these global changes to campus to discuss the impact of the
21st-century media revolution with students, faculty, and staff. Find our podcasts, interviews,
and talk recordings on our website.

Damian Radcliffe (00:05):

Hello. I'm Damian Radcliffe, a Carolyn S. Chambers Professor in Journalism at the University of
Oregon. This is the second in our series of Demystifying Media Podcasts. Today, I'm joined in
the studio by Dr. Sarah Vieweg, a user experience researcher at Facebook in California, who
amongst other roles previously worked as a research scientist in the Middle East of the Qatar
Computing Research Institute. Welcome, Sarah.

Sarah Vieweg (00:26):

Thank you.

Damian Radcliffe (00:28):

A little earlier today, Sarah participated in our latest Demystifying Media lecture series, giving a
talk entitled Sex, Savannas and Shopping" How the Arabian Girl Uses Social Media. It's a great
title, Sarah. For people who haven't had the chance to catch the full talk, which will be up on
our website by the time they hear this, what were the kind of key points that you covered
during your talk today?

Sarah Vieweg (00:48):

I really wanted to create a sense of empathy first and foremost for an area of the world that is
largely understudied and I think quite often misunderstood when it comes to how people go
about their day to day lives, the values and ideologies to which they attain, and how their lives
are organized. I really wanted to first provide background on the Arab Gulf, particularly Qatar
and Saudi Arabia, and then show how the values and norms that guide day to day life translate
into social media use. For example, family honor is an extremely important value that kind of
guides everyday behavior. Bound up in the sense of honor is very much the need to be modest,
a sense of privacy, which is very nuanced and detailed in the Gulf, as well as gender segregation
and gender relationships.
Damian Radcliffe (01:42):
How might that manifest itself in terms of social media usage? What do people do differently in
the Gulf to the way they use social media in North America, for example?

Sarah Vieweg (01:50):

Right. Women in particular tend to most often have private social media accounts. If they have
an... Well, women do have Instagram accounts. They tend to be private. They'll only allow other
women and close male family members to follow them, but they often follow loads and loads of
people. There's a lot of activity happening on social media, on Instagram in the Gulf, but just
the way in which it happens has to be very regimented. This is because women in the Gulf have
to be very careful about, like I said, maintaining that sense of modesty and making sure, for
example, a photo of their face is not released because that's just considered to be immodest.

Sarah Vieweg (02:26):

If immodest behavior is caught or immodest behavior is seen by others, it brings great shame
not only to a girl or a woman, but also to her family. Not just her nuclear family, her extended
family. Depending on kind of what the immodest activity is, it could have effects that
reverberate through her tribe and potentially really affect how she is viewed as a member of
the culture. It's the responsibility of all Qataris to maintain the reputation and the honor of
themselves as Qatari to maintain that culture.

Damian Radcliffe (03:02):

They're not necessarily chasing followers in the way that say a lot of people might typically be
doing Instagram or Snapchat?

Sarah Vieweg (03:08):

No, I would say certainly not. It does depend. There are definitely some ladies who identify as
makeup gurus or fashion gurus and they are chasing followers, but they will by and large have
two accounts. They're going to have one maybe that their close family is aware of and knows
about and then another one in which they go into very detailed, very beautiful examples of how
to put on eyeliner, for example, or maybe how to style one's hair. But yeah, certainly it's not
like they're getting on Twitter and begging people to follow them.

Damian Radcliffe (03:41):

Let's take a step back and explore. How did you get into this fascinating topic?

Sarah Vieweg (03:46):

I was living in Qatar for a lot, for almost three years, and I went over to study social media in
crisis in mass emergency situations. That's why I was recruited. While I was there, it was very
important to me to understand and become a part of the culture as much as I could as a non-
Muslim and a non-Arabic speaker. I was fortunate to work in a government funded research
Institute where I had several Qatari colleagues who were friendly and kind of were very just
good about taking me under their wing. As I would chat with them and try to get to know them,
we would, of course, talk about day to day life. I started to realize that their social media habits
were different than mine and the way they perceived it was different from how I perceived it.

Sarah Vieweg (04:30):

As a scholar of social media, I thought, hey, there's no research done on this. Let me fix that. Let
me start doing this.

Damian Radcliffe (04:37):

How do you go about doing that?

Sarah Vieweg (04:40):

It starts in the Gulf. It's not like oftentimes when we do this kind of research in the West, we
recruit maybe it'd be a family and friends or we might just put a post up and say, "Hey, I'll give
you $50 and some cookies and tea if you come talk to me for an hour." It does not work in this
part of the world. You need to have entree. You need to have connections. After I'd been there
for about a year, I was able to start going to people and say, "Would you be willing to talk with
me for 45 minutes or an hour? Can I just get your views on social media?" Everyone I asked
always said yes. Then from there, I would also snowball and oftentimes they would offer and
say, "Hey, would you like to talk to my sister as well or would you like to talk to so-and-so as
well?" That's kind of how I went about recruiting.

Sarah Vieweg (05:24):

It's also important to note, these interview studies, these are kind of ethnographically based
aspects of research. Sample sizes are quite small. The research that I've done with myself and
my colleague Nora Abukoder. Borders around like maybe 50 participants in total, so not huge
sample sizes, but we go deep as opposed to broad.

Damian Radcliffe (05:49):

What are some of the biggest challenges then as a researcher because you said you were an
outsider to some extent looking in in a society that is quite conservative and perhaps wary to
some extent of people who are not from that culture and society?

Sarah Vieweg (06:05):

A challenge is certainly my bias, who I was able to access. I only was able to access people who
are bilingual, English and Arabic. I'm already going to be dealing with a part of the population
that is likely more liberal and more open and more educated and also younger. The oldest
participant I think we had was 38, so from 18 to 38. I wasn't able to access monolingual Arabic
speakers, wasn't able to access older people. There's definitely that sample bias. But I will say
on the other hand, me being a foreigner was actually also an attribute because Nora and I
spoke over this. My colleague Nora is Saudi. When she was doing interviews in Saudi, she
wasn't able to ask certain questions because there was a fear of judgment from other Saudis.
Whereas for me, people would maybe...

Sarah Vieweg (06:57):

They opened up to me a little bit more on certain topics because they knew I wouldn't judge
them.

Damian Radcliffe (07:04):

What were some of the motivations and drivers for social media use that you discovered
through this research?

Sarah Vieweg (07:06):

I think there's definitely a great desire to know more about the rest of the world and to connect
to people even if it's not reciprocal. It's not like a Facebook situation where we have to friend
each other. On Instagram, I can follow someone who's a fashion blogger in Germany and I can
get access to that, and it's really lovely and wonderful. There's also a desire to speak English
with other people. Well, even if we're not having a conversation, I can just learn slang and learn
different things about... American culture is something that's highly vaunted in particular. I
mean, Western culture, but American culture overall is something that I have found...

Sarah Vieweg (07:48):

I found it really surprising how much Qatari, how much people on the GCC really do love
America and love American culture even though they express love for their own country. But
America is something that they see as very, very special.

Damian Radcliffe (08:04):

People who visit their region for the first time might be surprised to sort of see you can go to
Dairy Queen and Chili's and TGI Fridays and those places are packed on the weekend.

Sarah Vieweg (08:12):

Yeah, they are. Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely that I don't want to say infiltration, but that
influence. At the same time, you see a lot of... I spoke about this a little bit earlier today, this
tension between wanting to become modern while maintaining tradition. Those two are
necessarily at odds with each other if we look at it from a more theoretical academic
perspective. What does that mean to modernize while maintaining tradition? Qatari is in the
thick of that right now.

Damian Radcliffe (08:40):

How are they navigating that very difficult line?

Sarah Vieweg (08:47):

They're trying. I would say certainly doing things like trying to provide guidance on how to use
media, for example. There are government organizations that are trying to put out like, this is
how parents should talk to their children about social media use. We know social media is going
to be a part of your kids' lives going forward. This is what parents need to know in order to
make sure that they're doing it in a safe way. There's also a lot of educational efforts happening
in Qatari, in the Middle East overall, in the Gulf overall. But certainly in Qatar there is a push to
bring on Western education and Western educational ideals to the region. But there's still
tension there and figuring out how do you take students who were raised in an Arab Gulf
school system and put them into an American college.

Sarah Vieweg (09:36):

There's difficulty and tension there. There's these attempts and again there's these tensions.
Everybody there is working them out right now.

Damian Radcliffe (09:46):

I love this example that you gave of parents struggling to kind of keep up with their kids with
technology and social media. Sort of getting other family members who have closer in age and
kind of more digitally savvy to kind of do the monitoring as sort of digital parenting.

Sarah Vieweg (10:01):

Yeah, absolutely. It's not uncommon for the 13 year old to have to look after the seven year old
because mom doesn't know even what the seven year old is doing. It's incumbent upon the
older siblings to monitor younger siblings, younger cousins and say, "Make sure that they're
doing things properly. Follow them on Snapchat. Follow them on Instagram. Make sure that
their photos are proper." The older kids definitely take on this role and they take it seriously.
They do look out after the younger family members. But that really is largely kind of an
expectation that the parents are very overt about placing upon the older children.

Damian Radcliffe (10:38):

Also, this phase moves incredibly fast and that's one of the challenges for kind of any parents or
older person in particular, but also for any kind of social media user. There's always the next
shiny bright thing that's kind of coming along. How did you see this landscape change during
the time that you were in the Gulf and subsequently still looking at what's happening in this
landscape?

Sarah Vieweg (10:58):

Instagram just kept getting more and more popular. Snap just kept getting more and more
popular. I was speaking one time with a participant and she was telling me about an application
I was unfamiliar with at the time called Fffoto. It's spelled like FFFOTO I believe. I don't
remember the details of the app, but it was something where she really liked it. You could put
like really interesting fun filters on photos and kind of make gifs or something like that. She said
she really liked it and she was showing it to me and some of the photos that she had followed
and stuff. She really wanted to be able to put her own out there, but she couldn't because I
think the private settings were not such that it was appropriate for her to be able to use it.

Sarah Vieweg (11:36):

What I did see is we're constantly coming up with these new applications. If it's not something
that's really robust coming from like an Instagram size or a Snap size or a Facebook size
conglomerate, if it's a smaller shop where it's not possible to hack your way around it and make
it culturally appropriate, then you're being left out. I did definitely see that happening. It's not
necessarily social media, but I did see people become more wary of WhatsApp once Facebook
acquired.

Damian Radcliffe (12:07):

Why do you think that was?

Sarah Vieweg (12:07):

They were concerned because they had known that the terms in terms of privacy at Facebook,
there was like definitely some rumor and some maybe misconceptions around the terms of
service, but there was concern that privacy would be invaded in ways that they didn't want to
be invaded if they stayed on WhatsApp. People went over to various other messaging services.

Damian Radcliffe (12:30):

You've touched on some of the differences that you see in social media usage. What about
some of the areas of commonality because I think there's a much greater sort of universal
experience of using social even in different cultures than most people might realize.

Sarah Vieweg (12:44):

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it is all about kind of putting yourself out there. It's a way to express
your identity. Regardless of whether that identity is largely more individualistic or collectivist,
you still want others to know about you and know about your day and experience your
experiences with you. There is also a desire to connect. I mean, it sounds trite, but to be social.
Loads of my Qatari friends, I would be with them and we're just hanging out and they're just
constantly on their phones like looking through Instagram. But you know what? People
everywhere else in the world do that all the time too.

Damian Radcliffe (13:21):

Guilty as charged.

Sarah Vieweg (13:22):

Yeah.

Damian Radcliffe (13:25):

All the lessons from how social media is used in the Arab world that perhaps brands or
individuals could bring to bear in North America and elsewhere?

Sarah Vieweg (13:34):

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, just thinking about what you're advertising and how you're
advertising it is a big one. Don't put a group of 16 year old boys and girls together in an ad that's
not appropriate in this part of the world. It's really easy for various brands to say, "Okay. This is
for this part of the world. This is for the rest of the part of the world." Be mindful of... Again,
like there's this need to maintain a sense of modesty and a need to maintain a sense of privacy.
Make features in social media that people can turn on to make gender specific selections or to
enhance privacy in an easy way so you're not having to hack around and create 15 different
groups of people who can see 15 different things, 15 different aspects of yourself. Understand
that identity is faceted.

Sarah Vieweg (14:32):

It is nuanced and make social media... We need to be mindful of creating features and creating
experiences that allow people to express those facets more easily.

Damian Radcliffe (14:44):

Are those characteristics that you'd like to see people in other regions bring to their social
media usage or perhaps just a slightly greater awareness of the implications of some of their
behaviors online?

Sarah Vieweg (14:56):

Yeah. I don't know that's something I would necessarily like to see. I think it would be good for
there to be more of an awareness around it. Whether or not people adopt it, I don't really have
a strong line on that. But yeah, the ability to understand that you can project yourself and you
can use the features of the social media to project a certain self in certain context is something
that I think is important that people should be aware of all over.

Damian Radcliffe (15:20):

Yeah. One of the things, for example, we tell our students is be wary of your digital footprint.

Sarah Vieweg (15:26):

Yeah, absolutely.

Damian Radcliffe (15:26):

Recruiters will look at what you have posted online. You need to be aware that more often than
not what goes online stays online.

Sarah Vieweg (15:34):

Yeah, absolutely. I think about that sometimes. I'm 40 and I think, gosh, if social media had
been around when I was in college. I'm sure a lot of people around my age say that.

Damian Radcliffe (15:42):

Yeah, absolutely. Then lastly, I just wanted to touch on, we kind of entrepreneurship and I think
that's really fascinating. In the Middle East, social media is often used in different ways. We
have seen a real emancipation in a lot of cases for women entrepreneurs who've been able to
use social to kind of break through barriers that might exist for them in the real world that they
can bypass through digital technology.

Sarah Vieweg (16:10):

Yeah, it's been absolutely fantastic. I mean, in the Gulf, they caught on to selling things on
Instagram right away. It's still not a common thing in the US. When I was here in the US in 2015
for a conference, I was talking about this and people were so shocked, like what do you mean
people are selling things on Instagram? That doesn't happen here. It's an avenue for women to
sell cupcakes, flowers, abayas, kaliji or Gulf-centric kinds of extra accessories. It's a way for
them to gather or to gain a sense of empowerment because it means they can work from home
and make their own money, but also enhance their sense of self and be entrepreneurs. Also,
there's a big market for things that are kind of like homegrown.

Sarah Vieweg (17:05):

One of my favorite Instagram sites, the woman who run it sell very Gulf inspired accessories.
Everything from like laptop covers to dresses to mugs. These are things that people in the
region are hungry for. They've really tapped into a great market and are able to spread not only
like culturally significant products, but support themselves.

Damian Radcliffe (17:32):

What's the next for your research in this region?

Sarah Vieweg (17:32):

In this region? Certainly from a Facebook perspective, I would like to dig more into why and
how we can make Facebook a little bit more amenable and maybe a little more attractive. We
have the Instagram market cornered and I have done some research and heard some reasons
why people aren't on Facebook. I want to tap into that a little bit more and understand better if
there are features that we can enhance or create to make it, like I said, a more popular, more
used platform.

Damian Radcliffe (18:05):

Fantastic. We'll draw our conversation to a close there. I hope you've enjoyed this discussion.

Sarah Vieweg (18:10):

I have.
Damian Radcliffe (18:11):
Thank you, Sarah, for joining us. A reminder that you'll be able to see Sarah's full presentation
and talk on our website, which is demystifying.uoregon.edu. In the meantime, thanks again,
Sarah for joining us. Catch you all next time.

Sarah Vieweg (18:24):

Thank you.