Jordan’s September 2024 Elections: Context and key facts
Jordanians went to the polls on 10 September 2024 to elect the members of the lower house of parliament. The election saw more than 1,600 candidates fighting for the votes of over 5 million registered voters, of which 53% were women.
It was a historical ballot for a number of reasons; It resulted in the moderate Islamist opposition making significant gains, in part due to anger in Jordan over Israel’s latest war in Gaza. The Islamic Action Front (IAF), the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, won 31 out of the 138 parliamentary seats, tripling its representation in the lower house.
But it was also a test for the new electoral and political party law meant to encourage a bigger participation of women, minorities and political parties in general in parliament. Still, tribal politics and discriminatory attitudes towards women have reportedly resulted in some female candidates being prevented from running for office by their tribes and the Independent Election Commission.
The European Union election observers concluded that the election was “inclusive” and “well-run”. Though only 1.6 million Jordanians cast their ballots amid low interest in the election, media and news sites failed to provide voters with the necessary information. The EU delegation also “observed that during the campaign, journalists operated under multiple legal restrictions to freedom of expression included in the Cybercrime Law and the Penal Code.”
It has to be noted that although Jordan’s lower house is elected, it wields limited legislative power, which is still subject to the King’s approval since Jordan is a constitutional monarchy ruled by the King. The monarch, who plays a dominant role in politics and governance, appoints all members of the cabinet and the upper house of parliament.
While Jordan remains one of the more liberal countries in the Middle East, Freedom House described it as “not free” in its 2023 Freedom Report, and others have referred to the Kingdom as a liberal authoritarian state.
Social media landscape
Some estimate that 6.4 million people – over half of Jordan’s 11 million population – have social media accounts. YouTube appears to be the most often used platform, followed by Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter).
Tik Tok was banned by Jordanian authorities in late 2022 after footage from truck drivers’ protests, in which one policeman was killed, had circulated on the platform. The authorities justified the suspension – which was supposed to be temporary – saying TikTok had failed “to deal with publications inciting violence and disorder.” But it is by no means the sole platform affected by censorship.
Freedom of expression has been heavily policed and curtailed in Jordan, including online. Jordanian authorities have a track record of instigating internet shutdowns, banning or blocking websites and social media apps. As of 2023, they banned around 300 websites, social media platforms and applications.
Social media platforms still played a central role in campaigning this election season, allowing candidates to communicate with potential voters and sidelining traditional media. Platforms like Facebook, X and WhatsApp have emerged as essential campaign tools and, analysts say, will change the way politicians reach and influence voters in Jordan in the future.
Shrinking civic space
Civic space in Jordan has been shrinking year on year. Throughout 2023 and 2024, the authorities continued quashing dissenting voices, arresting and harassing journalists and critics of the government.
In August 2023, Jordanian authorities overhauled the country’s decades-old cybercrime law. Packed with vague and undefined terms like “fake news” and “online assassination of character,” the law includes criminal penalties for broadly defined online speech and introduces additional punishments for the use of circumvention tools, like VPNs.
The amendments came at the time when the authorities were ramping up persecution and harassment of citizens organising peacefully and engaging in political dissent.
Heavily criticised by domestic and international rights groups at the time of its promulgation as potentially repressive, the amended cybercrime law has lived up to its potential. It “undermines free speech, threatens internet users’ right to anonymity, and introduces a new authority to control social media, risking a surge in censorship”, Human Rights Watch said in a statement at the time.
Between August 2023 and August 2024, the authorities charged hundreds of individuals, including activists and journalists, under the law for social media posts criticising the authorities, expressing support for Palestine, criticising Jordan’s peace deal with Israel, or calling for peaceful protests. Among those arrested and now facing trial is Ayman Sanduka, who addressed his October 2023 Facebook post to the King, criticising Jordan’s diplomatic relations with Israel.
Ever since Israel began its genocidal attack in Gaza in response to the deadly 7 October 2024 attack on Israeli citizens by Hammas, thousands of Jordanians have taken to the streets to peacefully express their support for and solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
Big Tech failures
Despite heightened tensions in the region triggered by Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza and a countrywide crackdown on peaceful protests, neither Meta, nor Google/YouTube or X appear to have rolled out or communicated about any plans meant to safeguard Jordanians and the September 2024 ballot. This stands in stark contrast to specific announcements Meta and Google issued about the measures the companies have taken in 2024 to protect people and ballots in the leadup to the European Parliament, USA or India elections. (X hasn’t really communicated about its guardrails ever since Elon Musk took over the platform in 2022.)
This omission suggests, once again, a fundamental lack of equity in how platform safety is being conducted by Big Tech companies, with transparency over election integrity plans the exception rather than the rule for the Global Majority despite the significant user base and high risks of tech-related harms to people and democratic processes across many countries. In Jordan, tech harms that were already prevalent, escalated in the months leading up to the vote.
Censoring pro-Palestine and other voices
Tech platforms, and Meta in particular, have a yearslong track record of content moderation failures in the Arabic language and of silencing pro-Palestinian content from across the globe. In Jordan, Meta’s censorship policy is no different. At least 90 Jordanian journalists reporting on Palestine and the protests in Jordan in support of Palestine and against Israel’s ongoing genocidal campaign in Gaza, had their Instagram or Facebook accounts blocked and/or removed, according to an interview we conducted on 20 August 2024 with a Jordanian human rights activist, who asked that their identity be concealed for fear of reprisals.
When a human rights activist working for a trusted flagger organisation intervened on behalf of some of the journalists, Meta allegedly said it had blocked or removed the accounts because they violated Instagram community guidelines. The journalists allegedly violated the rules on dangerous individuals and organisations, which Meta has been using to censor pro-Palestinian voices for years, most notably during the 2021 Gaza war. According to the human rights activist, some accounts were removed due to false reporting.
Jordanian activists who have been engaging with Meta, have raised concerns about the lack of transparency around the implementation of the tech platform’s election and other policies. This also includes Meta’s refusal to share how many employees are monitoring which countries in the region. The silencing of pro-Palestine voices and other speech across its platforms has led some to conclude that the company’s content moderators for Jordan are not from the country and lack understanding of the local context. “Content moderators in Meta’s team aren’t aware of the context. People from different countries might not be aware of the nuances in Jordan, even if they had been raised in the region,” said one activist, who requested that their name be withheld for fear of retaliation.
Activists have also said that since Israel’s most recent war in Gaza, Meta blocked and/or restricted Facebook pages supporting the Palestinian cause. Meta’s transparency reports appear to be silent on the matter.
“Since the war on Gaza started, Meta has been restricting freedom of speech. Journalists had their posts removed, their [Facebook] pages are getting blocked, pages of political parties are getting removed, student groups have been affected by these things,” a human rights activist speaking on conditions of anonymity told Digital Action. “We can’t talk about democracy in Jordan if Meta is cherry picking the opinions that are going online. That’s affecting how social media companies are shaping public opinion that is also shaping our political life. In Jordan freedom of speech is restricted generally, you’re getting arrested for protests and then when you’re silenced on social media, the whole system collapses.”
Endangering rights defenders and activists
Meta’s transparency reports show that Jordanian government’s requests for users’ data have surged exponentially in 2023 – the last year data is available – rendering it the highest to date. The authorities have been seeking to gain more access to users’ data year on year. Between January and December 2023 they requested data of nearly 2,300 users or accounts, as compared to 652 in 2020. In 2023, the tech giant produced information for up to 33% of government requests. In previous years, the rate varied between 50% to 60%.
This is important and highly problematic, according to a human rights activist interviewed by Digital Action, who asserts that Meta is failing to conduct due diligence when asked by the authorities to share information about accounts belonging to activists. “Meta says they’re doing their best not to give information about activist accounts to the government but in a recent meeting they said ‘we can’t be too sure,’” the activist said.
Online gender-based violence and misogyny
The overall environment on social media is hostile towards women, with social media users regularly engaging in misogynistic comments, leading many women to resort to self-censorship across social media. Four individuals interviewed for the briefing, including the Communist party politician Sara Abaza, said that social media companies and Meta, in particular, have been failing women in Jordan for the longest time.
Abaza recalled receiving abusive and misogynistic messages and comments from Facebook users in the past telling her to “burn” or “get back to the kitchen”. All four interviewees agreed that while content with online misogyny and gender based violence is still circulating online, the volume of such content has decreased with the passing of the controversial cybersecurity law. “It’s the only positive, an unforeseen consequence of the law, because people are now scared to make such comments,” said Abaza. It is noteworthy that, in the absence of platform safety measures, it took a draconian, illiberal law to stymie the deluge of harmful content targeting women.
Despite such a hostile environment, women have been leading pro-Palestine protests, which swept through Jordan post-October 2023, and female activists were allegedly disproportionately targeted by the authorities.
A social media campaign that appears to have been kicked off by male influencers sought to stop their sisters and mothers from taking to the streets, calling on women in general to stay at home. Likely backed by Jordan’s security apparatus, the campaign was meant to create the impression that that was the dominant view, according to a human rights activist who asked that we withhold their name due to possible reprisals. “That’s because the Palestinian cause unites people in Jordan and the authorities don’t want this.”
Conclusions
Meta, Google/YouTube and X haven’t been transparent about their plans to safeguard people and the September 2024 elections in Jordan at a time of heightened tensions in the country and the region. It is therefore near to impossible to gauge whether any of the tech platforms allocated appropriate resources.
Indeed tech harms that were already prevalent, escalated in the months leading up to the vote. In a context of increased government repression of civic space and dissent, the evidence suggests that Facebook and Instagram have not safeguarded their digital platforms as safe and free spaces for the legitimate expression of journalists, women, political dissidents and human rights defenders. The data and testimonies gathered for the briefing also suggest that Meta may be censoring some content at the request of the Jordanian authorities.