The Arab Spring has impacted multiple countries in northern Africa and the Arab world and so far since the end of December in 2010, leading to the fall of the government in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Among the unarmed insurrections, social media and social networking technology functioned as a new strategy that empowered the protesters to gain successful uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt and inspired grassroots movements in other Arab countries.
The new media, namely Twitter, Facebook and Youtube, with online blogs and mobile telecommunications, played a significant role as the politics of connectivity, which connect, coordinate and communicate the protestors. Labeled as “Twitter Revolution” or “Facebook Revolution”, the new media to some extent engaged in the Arab Spring uprisings.
Through analyzing more than three million tweets on Twitter, content on YouTube and thousands of blog posts, a study led by analysts from University of Washington finds that social media played a critical role in shaping political debates in the movements during the Arab Spring and it inspired protestors through the Internet platform and spread democratic ideas and demands across the national borders.
Taking the use of social media in the unarmed insurrections in Tunisia and Egypt as cases to study, this essay aims to analysis whether the social media was the driving force that led to the movements during the Arab Spring since 2011.
Different from the prior movements and uprisings that were organised and directed by a chief leader, the insurrections in Arab Spring was structurally changed that started by a mass of the online connected young people. The Internet and social media first empowered the young people to stimulate the uprisings, whi...
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The digital unarmed strategies in Arab Spring are not the substitute to the physical actions and insurrections, yet they worked jointly with the traditional insurgency methods to reach greater audiences and appeal more public support. Social media is not the strategy that sparked or guaranteed the revolution, but it vitally contributed to the spread of movements.
Works Cited
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Dubai School of Government. 2011. Arab Social Media Report. 1(1), p3. [online] Available at: http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/dsg/unpan044212.pdf. [Accessed: 2 May, 2014.]
Aday, S. et al. 2012. New Media and Conflict After the Arab Spring. United States Institute of Peace. [online] Available at: http://www. usip. org/files/resources/PW80. pdf. [Accessed: 29 April, 2014.]
The issues of how technology is influencing our nation today has come into play with social media and surveillance in our personal lives. We use twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. to express our opinions on things and as a voice to inform people on what’s going on in today’s society. We have learned how to use the tools we’ve been given to change our lives forever; our government has access to all of our personal information in exchange for our protection against terrorism. In Bijan Stephen’s article on “Black Lives Matter” and Rebecca McKinnon’s chapter on “the Arab Spring”, they both touch on the power of technology in negative and positive ways.
The article named “spring awakening” wrote by Jose Vargas describes the impact of social media in converting the mentality of young Egyptian generations into bold and defend their inalienable rights as a citizen. This article justifies how social media can mobilize a tremendous number of people to stand up for their rights. The reasons that inspire my emotion is emerging of “Wael Ghonim” as a legendary vocal figure of action for change, revelation of social media as earthquake for change, and fundamental soci-political change.
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Washington University, author Marc Lynch pens a work he titled The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East to dispel thoughts and misconceptions that unrest in the Middle East, particularly in the areas of political and social mobilizations, are in fact a new phenomenon. Utilizing his wealth of experience within the Middle East and topics pertaining to it, Lynch choose to analyze what lead to the downfall of four of the Middle East’s regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Syria along with the unfolding of events leading up to the “Arab Spring,” along with the results and aftermath of aforementioned events. The “Arab Awakening” or the “Arab Spring,” as ordained by westernized news outlets, was a series of both non-violent
However, books and newspapers are not our sole source of the written word. Online blogs, articles, and newsletters now exist. Television and books have merged into one: the Internet. Revolutions, riots, and rebellions don’t just happen in our living rooms now, they happen on the go with us. On the subway, when we’re waiting in line at Subway, at our friend’s house as he talks about how he’s “way into subs.”
In 2010 the Middle East experienced a disturbing series of protests and riots against the government. The term Arab Spring was coined as an allusion for the 1848 revolutions that rocked the Arab world. This devastating revolution saw its inception in a chain of small scale protests for the democratization of the Arabian governments. With its start in Egypt and Tunisia it has not failed in affecting every Arab country from Libya, Sudan and Morocco in the West to Yemen and Saudi Arabia in the East. A branch of the same revolution has successfully managed to become the cause for a civil war outbreak in Syria and even stretched its influence outside the Arab world to affect Iran and Mali.
The authoritarian regimes of the Middles cycled through a pattern of anti-western policy until the globalization effects of economics and information demanded reform. As conservative Arab states try to maintain the autocracy they relied on after gaining independence, their citizens, affected by information and education expansion, challenge their resistant governments as typified by Syria’s unwillingness to capitulate. The proliferation of information and education underscored the protest movements of the Arab Spring because citizens’ contempt for their obstinate governments grew to large under economic pressures, as the current situation in Syria demonstrates.
Throughout all of the revolutions in Africa that have risen in since December, and even before that, social networking has played a major role in reporting the events; not only do these websites report news posted by its members, social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter have also been the meeting-place for people in these countries to organize themselves to protest. WikiLeaks has been but “a catalyst: both a trigger and a tool for public outcry,” sparking civil disobedience toward the government, and provoking acts of revolt and protest, which has been organized, largely, due to the globalizing effects of Twitter and Facebook (Dickenson). While it is evident that revolutions do not need a meeting-ground for protesters to organize, in the 21st century the internet has had an ever...
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Safranek, Rita. 2012. The Emerging Role of Social Media in Political and Regime Change. s.l. : Proquest, 2012.