ABSTRACT
In February 2011, Western journalists began reporting on Syrian women’s/LGBTQ+ rights activist Amina Abdallah Arraf al Omari’s blog A Gay Girl in Damascus (AGGiD). In June 2011, Amina was revealed to be a hoax perpetrated by Scotland-based, US graduate student Tom McMaster, who apologized and deleted AGGiD. The media blamed McMaster and amended and potentially redacted its AGGiD related reports. This case study argues that AGGiD was accepted as real because it reflects Western fantasies of Muslims/the Middle East and LGBTQ+ people, facilitated safe reporting on Syria, and offered a first-person perspective that news audiences increasingly seek. This critical cultural case study of AGGiD will examine the ideological blind spots in Western reporting about the Middle East and marginalized cultural groups, considers the challenges of confirming reports by first-person citizen journalists in dangerous contexts with limited field access, and suggests potential sources of information used in the creation of AGGiD.
