New study quantifies use of social media in Arab Spring - by Saud

 

source: http://www.washington.edu/news/2011/09/12/new-study-quantifies-use-of-social-media-in-arab-spring/ 

 

summary

A new study based on analyzing a tremendous amount of the social media contents finds that it has significant effect in the recent events of the Arab world. Social media became an important tool for those who seek democracy and freedom.

 

Throughout the Egyptian revolution, the tweets about the political demands had doubled ten times which considered as a dramatic increase and the same happened in Tunisia. The topics discussed in social media websites changed to concentrate on the political opinions, and usually these topics come immediately after huge protests in the street. These discussions had resulted to presidents of Egypt and Tunisia to step down.

 

Moreover, the use of the social media networks had increased even in the neighboring countries where people start to discuss the political situation in Egypt and Tunisia. Success of using social networks to demand political change made people in other countries discuss political issues in their countries too. These networks created a platform to discuss political issues that could not be discussed publicly.

 

Unluckily, the government Egypt shut down the social media websites and this resulted more people in the streets claiming their political rights. What happened in Egypt and Tunisia prove that the shared sufferings of people and their demand to acquire change can happen rapidly when they use the social media to set up a nation demands for freedom and democracy.

 

 

Comment:

Social media networks have played a crucial role in the Arab spring direction, those networks have lightened the first spark of the revolutions in many Arab countries such as Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. What makes social networks unique is that the citizen is number one journalist, considering the wide use of the smartphones, everyone now can share his or her views with millions of people who have the same interest.

Moreover, governments have no control on social media networks, so, people can discuss everything they may want to discuss with no reservations. Because of this, social media networks turned to be a great pressure on some of the anti-democracy governments since those networks contributed to the discovery of the corruption and the misuse of the power.