Effects Of Social Media In The Arab Spring

Social Media and Its Effectiveness in the Arab Spring According to the data from the Arab Social Media Report in 2011 by Mourtada and Salem, the amount of social media usage increased immensely during the Arab Spring period from January 1st to March 30th. The number of Facebook users in the Arab nations almost doubled, up from 14,791,972 (as of April 2010) to 27,711,503 (as of April 2011) (Mourtada and Salem 9). Similarly, in the first three months of 2011, the number of tweets increased from 55 million to 155 million a day (Mourtada and Salem 15). This increase in social media usage was used to spread awareness regarding the Arab Spring revolution. The Arab Spring was a series of democratic revolutions in the Middle East that resulted in

According to Fahim in "Slap to a Man’s Pride Set Off Tumult in Tunisia," on Dec. 17, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia, a street vendor, placed himself on fire after a policewoman embarrassed him in public and foreclosed his fruit stand. After a few weeks, the images of Bouazizi in flames were released to the internet by Shamseddine Abidi, a 29-year old interior designer. Abidi posted the images on his Facebook page, which led to news of the unrest was spreading quickly on Arabic television channels, as well as the foreign news channels (Fahim 5). Similar to Bouazizi in Tunisia, in Preston’s "Movement Began With Outrage and a Facebook Page That Gave It an Outlet," a picture of Khaled Mohamed Said’s bruised face was spread on the internet by Said 's family and caused an enormous outcry in Egypt. When Wael Ghonim, a Middle East marketing director for Google, publicized the frightful images of Khaled Mohamed Said’s dead body on the Facebook page “We Are All Khaled Said,” the webpage quickly drew the attention of up to 500,000 subscribers (Storck 22). Another example of the effect of social media is the Syrian refugees ' crisis in 2015, which American media do not cover very much. However, through abundant images that were posted on my friends’ Facebooks, I know this is a serious humanitarian crisis. Social media has

For example, the protest lasted eighteen days in Egypt 2011; the activists and protesters used Twitter to organize and arrange their uprisings. Twitter helped the protesters immediately inform and alert each other to police movements. According to Mourtada and Salem, the most common trending hashtags across the Arab region in the first three months of 2011 was ‘#egypt’ with 1.4 million mentions (16). By including ‘#egypt’ in their tweets, any Twitter users could involve and coordinate in the Egyptian demonstrations. As a result, the volume of tweets ‘#egypt’ increased extremely. Another example, according to data from "Bahrain Internet Usage and Telecommunications Report" by Internet World Statistics 2010, Bahrain stays on the top countries terms of Internet high penetration with "a penetration rate of 88%" (2). Consequently, activists take advantage of social media when they need to organize protesters. In the documentary film Bahrain: Shouting in the Dark by Al Jazeera in 2011, tens of thousands demonstrators came out on the streets and gathered in the heart of the capital, Pearl Roundabout, to rage against the ruling Khalifa family. Social media has not only helped protesters hold online discussions, but also organize a mass