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Social Media and Youth Rebellion in Africa

Social media and Youth Rebellion in Africa

Introduction

Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Morocco, Libya ... Countries in revolt, through the use of the Internet, make known, in real time, to the whole world what happens in individual territories. New technologies, particularly social networks, play a crucial role in protests that are inflaming the Middle East and North Africa: the authorities try to block communications and the dissemination of "unauthorized" on the web, while the activists are doing their best to continue to witness what actually happens videos and stories. It's really the decisive presence of social networks? We asked Michele Sorice, professor of sociology of communication and political communication at "LUISS Guido Carli" (Free International University of Social Studies) in Rome.

Discussion

There is debate these days about whether Africa (Saharan, that is) will be agitated by his own "Arab Spring". So far it seems that popular revolts and revolutions that are changing the political and social landscape in the Arab-Muslim countries (from Morocco to Barheim) are limited to those areas. Even with significant contextual differences (had little to do with the monarchy of Barheim pseudo-secular socialism Ben Ali in Tunisia or the perennial green revolution Gadhafi) the similarities that underlie the protests are also evident (youth unemployment; classes eternalized corrupt rulers in power, lack of opportunities for the working classes, and in recent years economic liberalization coupled with increased political repression). And all washed down with "Al-Jazzira effect," the Qatari television has given voice and face of the protests (Grinker & Steiner2010).

How soon, then the African spring? Maintains Michela Wrong in an article published in El Mundo on 27/05/2011 that "You will not see the riots (...) further south. To organize a revolt like that has lived in Tahrir Square is needed a group of people more critical than that inhabits most of Africa. " Though later the writer qualifies his words a little, deferring revolutions "10 years", its content, is based on the vision of an Africa where corruption is endemic and tolerated ("all justify corruption because they themselves use it in their day to day "is quoted in the article) and where" there is no feeling of solidarity between different social classes. " Other arguments used to dismiss the chances of pro-democracy riots in sub-Saharan Africa are the theoretical absence of two factors that were essential in the revolutions of the Maghreb: young people with university education and the use of social networks. Let's see, however, that these visions of social reality in sub-Saharan Africa are at least partial, and largely ignore the social, political and popular happening in many African countries (Furley, 1995).

The first argument is used by Wrong type "THA" (This is Africa) and connected to the reasoning of the new barbarism, used at the time by Kaplan (Ruiz-Giménez Arrieta, 2002) to explain the civil wars of the 90 West Africa: Africa is so irrational, corrupt, uncritical and belligerent, led by tribal dynamics can not be explained from a political ...