USAbilAraby is the name used by the
US Department of State
The United States Department of State (DOS), or simply the State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs o ...
's Arabic Media Hub for its
Twitter
Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...
account and
YouTube
YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...
channel. The name, "USAbilAraby," means "USA in Arabic." As this suggests, the Twitter account tweets messages from the US government, primarily in Arabic and typed in Arabic script. Similarly, the YouTube channel broadcasts official messages in Arabic. USAbilAraby's first tweet appeared on February 9, 2011; its first video was posted on May 4, 2011.
History
The USAbilAraby Twitter account began tweeting on February 9, 2011. Its first tweet read:
:
#Egypt #Jan25 تعترف وزارة الخارجية الأمريكية بالدور التاريخي الذي يلعبه الإعلام الإجتماعي في العالم العربي ونرغب أن نكون جزءاً من محادثاتكم
In English: "The US State Department recognizes the historic role that social media is playing in the Arab world and we want to be part of your conversations #Jan25 #Egypt"
Within hours of that first tweet, the account had close to 300 followers;
as of April 17, 2011, the account had 6,208 followers and was included on 194 lists.
By 2022 this had grown to over 1.5 million followers.
The USAbilAraby YouTube channel began posting content on May 4, 2011. Its first video was titled "USG Official discusses death of former al Qa'ida leader Osama bin Laden (May 4, 2011)."
Political Context
Arab Spring
The USAbilAraby Twitter account began tweeting during
Arab Spring
The Arab Spring () was a series of Nonviolent resistance, anti-government protests, Rebellion, uprisings, and Insurgency, armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began Tunisian revolution, in Tunisia ...
. This was triggered in part by the self-immolation of
Mohamed Bouazizi
Tarek El-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi (; 29 March 1984 – 4 January 2011) was a Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire on 17 December 2010 in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, an act which became a catalyst for the Tunisian Revolution and the wider A ...
on December 17 in
Sidi Bouzid
Sidi Bouzid ( '), sometimes called ''Sidi Bou Zid'' or ''Sīdī Bū Zayd'', is a city in Tunisia and is the capital of Sidi Bouzid Governorate in the centre of the country. Following the suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi in Sidi Bouzid, it was the ...
,
Tunisia
Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisia also shares m ...
. When USAbilAraby began tweeting, the
Tunisian Revolution had led to the ousting of then-president
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (Tunisian Arabic: , ; 3 September 1936 – 19 September 2019), commonly known as Ben Ali or Ezzine, was a Tunisian politician who served as the second President of Tunisia from 1987 to 2011. In that year, during the Tun ...
. The
hashtags
A hashtag is a Tag (metadata), metadata tag operator that is prefaced by the Number sign, hash symbol, ''#''. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo sharing, photo-sharing services–especially Twitter and Tumblr–as a fo ...
"#Egypt" and "#Jan25" in USAbilAraby's first tweet are references to the
2011 Egyptian Revolution
The 2011 Egyptian revolution, also known as the 25 January Revolution (;), began on 25 January 2011 and spread across Egypt. The date was set by various youth groups to coincide with the annual Egyptian "Police holiday" as a statement against ...
, which began on January 25, 2011 and was, at that time, underway. Major protests in Yemen and Algeria, were also currently occurring. Protests in Bahrain, Iraq, and Kuwait began soon afterward, on February 9. On the same day, the Syrian government lifted its four-year ban on YouTube and Facebook.
Death of Osama bin Laden
The USAbilAraby YouTube channel posted its first content three days after
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden (10 March 19572 May 2011) was a militant leader who was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda. Ideologically a pan-Islamist, Bin Laden participated in the Afghan ''mujahideen'' against the Soviet Union, and support ...
was killed by
US Navy SEALs
The United States Navy Sea, Air, and Land (SEAL) Teams, commonly known as Navy SEALs, are the United States Navy's primary special operations force and a component of the United States Naval Special Warfare Command. Among the SEALs' main funct ...
in
Abbottabad
Abbottabad is a city in the Hazara Division of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan. It is the 40th largest city in the country and 6th largest in the province by population, and serves as the headquarter of its namesake tehsil and district ...
,
Pakistan
Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...
.
US State Department
USAbilAraby can be considered part of US Secretary of State,
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, lawyer and diplomat. She was the 67th United States secretary of state in the administration of Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, a U.S. senator represent ...
's 21st Century Statecraft project. 21st century statecraft is defined as "complementing traditional foreign policy tools with newly innovated and adapted instruments of statecraft that fully leverage the networks, technologies, and demographics of our interconnected world." In the same vein, four days after USAbilAraby began tweeting, USAdarFarsi (meaning "USA in
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
") was launched.
The USAbilAraby Twitter profile describes the account as being connected to the US Department of State's Arabic Media Hub.
However, the State Department's website doesn't specifically provide any information about such an organization by name. As a result, it is unclear what responsibilities it may have. Its set of responsibilities may, for example, resemble those of the US State Department's East Asia and Pacific Media Hub, the mission of which "is to help media organizations in the East Asia and Pacific region find U.S. Government officials to interview, on whatever topic or issue is of interest."
The East Asia and Pacific Media Hub offers to arrange film, radio, and telephone interviews with US officials for the media, and currently has presences on both Twitter and Facebook and can be reached by email.
The use of the word "hub" in "US Department of State Arabic Media Hub" suggests that the USAbilAraby Twitter account and YouTube channel may be joined by additional Arabic-language presences in social media in the future.
Reactions
The launch of the USAbilAraby Twitter account received more attention in US media than in Arab media. However, an article on AlBaghdadiya.com attributes the appearance of the USAbilAraby Twitter account to the events in Tunisia and Egypt and the value of channels like Twitter and Facebook for publishing news quickly and widely within this context. Similarly, an article on Raya.fm locates USAbilAraby within a larger phenomenon of new Arabic-language offerings from Western news outlets and bloggers, inspired by these events.
Language
It has been noted that USAbilAraby's tweets employ
Modern Standard Arabic
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Modern Written Arabic (MWA) is the variety of Standard language, standardized, Literary language, literary Arabic that developed in the Arab world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and in some usages al ...
, a formal register commonly used in media and official discourse.
This contrasts with other forms of Arabic used in social media contexts, particularly by non-institutional actors; these forms often employ dialect and may be typed in the Roman alphabet (see, for example,
Arabizi
The Arabic chat alphabet, also known as ''Arabizi'', ''Arabeezi'', ''Arabish'', Franco-Arabic or simply Franco (from ) refer to the Romanization of Arabic, romanized alphabets for informal Varieties of Arabic, Arabic dialects in which Arabic scrip ...
).
References
External links
*
*
* {{YouTube, user=USAbilAraby
YouTube channels launched in 2011
United States Department of State
Arab Spring and the media
Arabic-language mass media
Arabic-language YouTube channels
Twitter accounts