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Arab Spring's Impact on Science through the Lens of Scholarly Attention, Funding, and Migration
The Arab Spring is a major socio-political movement that reshaped democratic aspirations in the Middle East and North Africa, attracting global attention through news, social media, and academic discourse. However, its consequences on the academic landscape in the region are still unclear. Here, we conduct the first study of scholarly attention toward 10 target countries affected by the Arab Spring by analyzing more than 25 million articles published from 2002 to 2019. Using a difference-in-difference statistical framework, we find that most target countries have experienced a significant increase in scholarly attention post-Arab Spring compared to the rest of the world, with Egypt attracting the most attention. We investigate how funding and migration networks relate to scholarly attention and reveal that Saudi Arabia has emerged as a key player among Western nations by attracting researchers and funding projects that shape research on the region.
Authors
Yasaman Asgari
Özgür Kadir Özer
Rezvaneh Rezapour
Mary Ellen Sloane