Relationship between Social Media and social protests

Introduction

Social media has become the most emerging platform for those who are eager to bring revolution. The unfolding of the Arab Spring protests sheds light on the significant role of social media in the Middle East's contemporary political arena. The emergence of Social Media has been a groundbreaking development that has made a crucial contribution to regime transformation in some cases, and on some of the post-revolutionary countries' political culture. Still, it must be understood that Social Media is not the reason behind the Arab Spring uprisings; rather, it is a powerful tool for the organization of protests. The root causes of the uprisings are the social, economic and political issues in each country, along with global problems such as the rising prices of essential products. In addition, it should be noted that the weight and patterns of the Social Media phenomenon differ from one country to another (Papic, pp. 56-78). In the next section, we will examine the relationship between social media and social protest with reference to the context of middle-east.

Discussion & Analysis

In recent years, Social Media platforms such as blogs and especially social network sites (SNS) have become ubiquitous: in April 2011, Twitter had 175 million subscribers worldwide and, in August 2011, Facebook had 750 million subscribers. The rising popularity of these SNS in the Middle East was part of this trend. The number of Facebook users in Egypt increased dramatically, with 4.5 million Facebook users in August 2010, 5.2 million in January2 February 2011, 6.6 million in March, and 7.3 million in August. This increase was, in part, a response to the central, symbolic role of Social Media in the "Tahrir Square Revolution" that toppled Husni Mubarak from power (Evangelista, p. 4).

In August 2011, the numbers of Facebook users were also significant in Tunisia - 2,602,640 (24 percent of the total population); Bahrain - 287,020 (23.6 percent); Saudi Arabia - 4,034,740 (15 percent); Lebanon -1,201,820 (29 percent); and elsewhere as well. On the other hand, Libya and Yemen, for example, the percentages of Facebook penetration were far smaller (0.8 percent and 1.4 percent). However, the fact that very few Libyans and Yemenisuse, Facebook does not necessarily imply that Social Media had no effect on these countries. There, as well as in Syria and Iran, where Facebook and Twitter use was also low, sites like YouTube enabled protestors to disseminate videos of peaceful popular protests and violent government crackdowns to the world (Sander, p. 435).

From a historical perspective, the important role of Social Media in the Arab Spring is reminiscent of the crucial roles played by other media forms in helping to stimulate and sustain earlier socio-political revolutions, e.g. print media during the Protestant Reformation; cassette tapes at the time of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran; and the assistance of television, in the tearing down of the Berlin Wall a decade later (Kahn & Kellner, pp. 87-95).

The notion that so many others share the same goals empowers the individual to take ...