Geographers mobilize: A network-diffusion analysis of the campaign to free Ghazi-Walid Falah

Thumbnail Image

Files

de Socio 2010 Geographers mobilize.pdf (2.86 MB)

Links to Files

Permanent Link

http://hdl.handle.net/11603/7351

Collections

SU Faculty and Staff Collection

Author/Creator

Author/Creator ORCID

Date

2010

Type of Work

Text

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

de Socio, M. 2010. Geographers mobilize: A network-diffusion analysis of the campaign to free Ghazi-Walid Falah. Antipode 42(2): 310-335.

Rights

Subjects

Political geography
Israel-Palestine
Political prisoners
Social network analysis

Abstract

In summer 2006, Professor Ghazi-Walid Falah, a political geographer and editor-in-chief of the journal Arab World Geographer, was arrested by Israeli police after taking photographs of rural landscapes in Northern Galilee. Falah was subsequently held for 23 days, incommunicado, and without charge. An international campaign to “Free Ghazi” was launched by his family, friends and colleagues, largely over academic listservs and other media. Utilizing social network analysis and contextualizing the campaign within structures of telecommunications technologies, the purpose of this paper is to assess the various factors that contributed to the campaign’s coalescence, its rapid development, and its global reach.