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. We find that changes in scholarly attention were unevenly distributed among target countries, with Egypt attracting the most attention. We reveal strong correlations between increases in scholarly attention given by source countries and increases in funding for research about the target countries as well as increased immigration of scholars from the affected region to them. Notably, our analysis reveals Saudi Arabia's positioning as a key player, among Western nations, that shapes research in the region.

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