Master’s Student Dana Hasan and Dr. Amal Nazzal Publish an Academic Research Paper
Master’s student Dana Hasan, under the supervision of Dr. Amal Nazzal, from the Faculty of Business and Economics, and in collaboration with the academic and researcher Dr. Sulafa Zidani from Northwestern University, publish an academic paper in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Communication (IJOC).
IJoC is a well-established peer-reviewed academic journal (Q1) with an impact factor of 1.6, an H-Index of 61, and an SJR2023 rank of 0.72, according to the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) indicator.
The research provides a critical analysis of social media companies and their work and organizing dynamics in producing algorithmic discrimination and digital surveillance over the Palestinian digital content on Facebook and Instagram, manifested during the 2021 Sheikh Jarrah movement, and how Palestinian users maneuvered these surveillance practices through creative visual and textual tactics utilized to maneuver layered surveillance, arguing that these tactics serve to reinforce indigenous knowledge and resistance. The research explores the interlocking global forces imbricated in the relationship between technology and oppression.
Dana Hasan is the Technical Advisor at the Palestinian Ministry of Labour. She holds an MBA degree and previously worked as a research and teaching assistant at Birzeit University. Her research interests critically explore digital communication technologies and their relationship to power, surveillance, activism, and digital rights, and the mediated politics of the Palestinian struggle within the colonial context.
The research team expressed that conducting and publishing this research was tiring and challenging, as research participants were from and outside Palestine, yet publishing a Palestinian research paper extracted from a master's student’s work and dedication is extremely important and necessary.
Dana Hasan and Dr. Amal Nazzal praised the fruitful research collaboration with Dr. Sulafa Zidani, originally Palestinian from Haifa, who is an assistant professor in the department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University in the United States. Dr. Zidani has a courtesy appointment in the Middle East and North African Studies Program and in Northwestern Qatar’s Institute for Advanced Studies in the Global South. Prior to joining Northwestern, she worked as an Assistant Professor in Comparative Media Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and conducted her PhD work at the University of Southern California (USC).
