الفهرس 
Review of LiteratureOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
This thesis aims at investigating how Egyptian women are categorized on Facebook and X, formally “Twitter”. by using Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA) (Sacks, 1965) and the Sociocognitive theory (van Dijk, 1998) as theoretical frameworks. Netnography (Kozinets, 1997), which is a qualitative ethnographic methodology adapted to study online communities (see Kozinets, 2010, p.1; Onal &Vasquez, 2013, p. 224), is also used in this study in order to apply its recommendations in selecting the online communities and gathering the online data from them. This study investigated 130 tweets collected from the following Arabic hashtags: #الأمهات_المصرية “Egyptian mothers”, #الأم_المصرية “Egyptian mother” , #جروبات_الماميز “mommies groups”, ”#جروب_الماميز “mommies group” and ”#ماميز” “mommies” on “X” and 25 top-liked Facebook comments collected from Women of Egypt – سيدات مصر Facebook page in order to find out the MCA features (e.g. categories, attributes and activities) which social media members associate with Egyptian women while categorizing them in Facebook comments and X tweets. These features were also examined in order to see if there are hidden ideologies embedded in the collected comments and tweets influencing how Egyptian women are categorized by social media members. This study concludes that there is a main gender ideology, which is “Women should stay in their private spheres and should not talk about public issues”, affecting how social media members describe and categorize Egyptian women by using the MCA features. It was also found that the women who do not act according to this ideology are negatively categorized by Facebook and X users in comments and tweets. Associating women with negative MCA features, if they do not act as it is expected from them, is a social power practiced over them in order to confine them in their private spheres.
This study is divided into introduction, Chapter one: Review of Literature, Chapter Two: Theoretical Framework and Methodology, Chapter Three: Analysis and Discussion of the Facebook data, Chapter Four: Analysis and Discussion of the X data and Conclusion. In the Introduction, I briefly present the history of the Internet and the rise of social media in the early 2000s. I then stated the aim and significance of the study and the research questions. The chapterization of this thesis is then illustrated to show how this study is divided and organized.
Chapter One: Review of Literature is divided into four main sections. In the first section, I define Computer Mediated Discourse and introduce the gender studies in this field; in the second section, Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA) is introduced and the studies which used this theoretical framework are presented; in the third sections, van Dijk’s Sociocognitive theory (1998) is explained and the studies which used this theory are discussed; in the fourth section, I present Netnography (Kozinets, 1997) and the studies which used it as a methodology.
Chapter Two: Theoretical Framework and Methodology is divided into two sections: Theoretical framework section and Methodology section. In the theoretical framework section, the theoretical background of Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA), van Dijk’s Sociocognitive theory and Netnography are provided to show how these qualitative theories are used in the study. In the Methodology section, the steps of Netnography used in collecting online data are illustrated and the quantitative research tool “Sketch Engine” used in the data analysis is presented.
In Chapter Three: Analysis and Discussion of the Facebook Data, the positive and negative MCA features associated with the “Egyptian women” membership categorization device (MCD) and “Egyptian feminists” category in the collected Facebook comments are highlighted. Sketch Engine’s frequency results of these associated features are also presented. This chapter ends with demonstrating the hidden ideologies found in the collected Facebook comments and affecting how Facebook commenters address and categorize “Egyptian women” and “Egyptian feminists”.
Chapter Four: Analysis and Discussion of the X Data highlights the positive and negative MCA features associated with “Egyptian mothers” and “Egyptian mommies” categories in the collected tweets on X. Sketch engine’s frequency results of these features in the collected tweets are also introduced in this chapter. This chapter ends with indicating the hidden ideologies in the collected tweets.
In the Conclusion, the findings of the study are presented by summarizing the answers to the study’s research questions. This chapter ends with stating the limitation of the study and suggestions for future research.