The Role Of Social Media In The Arab Spring 

The nature of propaganda to beget revolution has remained the same throughout the annals of human history. The birth of the internet gave a whole new dynamical shift in the conventional practices of spreading propaganda. The internet possession of gargantuan information made it impossible for regimes to regulate. As a result, this served as a fundamental tool for propagandist to disseminate their wide network of information without regime regulation. A prominent example of how the internet has altered the domain of spreading propaganda can be observed in the Arab Spring. The internet spontaneous growth over the past two decades lead to the democratization of generating information through process. Social media has broken the barrier of communication for people separated by large geographical distances. In the moment of contemporary revolutions and uprisings universally, it is concede that social media plays a crucial role. That said, to fully assess the role of social in the event of the Arab spring, various sources were examined ranging from Facebook posts to Tweets.

To summarize, the Arab Spring began as a series of protests and demonstrations, riots, and civil wars in the Arab world. The Arab Spring consist a multitude of causes. The main reasons vary from the dissatisfaction of the public to the government and the unequal distribution in income levels. Therefore it is not justifiable to view social media as the main determinant of the Arab revolution. However one may consider that social media may have heighten the effect of the Arab Uprisings rather than causing it. Social media was utilized as an effective organizational tool by both propagandist and activists. Taking advantage of the instant information transmission and wide network communication, Arab Spring activists have not only gained the power to overthrow their oppressor, but also help the Arab citizens become more aware of the underground communities composing of their brothers and sisters to listen to their stories. The increased in the number of times that people hear about current things and the individuals that experience other’s perceptions about events leads to the increase likelihood of people joining the revolution.

In countries such as Yemen, Tunisia, and Egypt, a riot made up of thousands, have been organized through Twitter and Facebook. An Arab Spring activist from Egypt quoted “We use Facebook to schedule posts [and] Twitter to coordinate (4: 04 PM-Mar,18,2011). ” The combination of Twitter and Facebook networking sites were used to record the helm of riots in the Middle East and support. The introduction of social media created a strong driving force throughout the Arab community. Online tweets rocketed from 99,000 a day in October 2010 to over two million over the span of one month. With two weeks preceding of the protests, 32,000 Facebook groups and 14,000 Facebook pages were created in Egypt. Earning over 7 million subscribers in Egypt, Facebook witness its largest number of active online users ever in the nation.

The uprisings of Twitter and Facebook can be showcase in an example of twitter user Juan Mercao Philippine who said majority of twitter user share this message through our entire world for Twitter user “My name is freedom. Born in Tunisia, raised in Egypt, studied in Yemen, fought in Libya and I'll grow up in the Arab world. (12: 00 PM - 20,Dec,2010 @AliTweel, Twitter)” The repeated sharing of the tweet is due to the manner in which it harnessed a powerful personal message representing the soul of the Arab community which acts to empower other users. Facebook, too, played a role, but a different one in offering the primary platform for the propagandists to form network among themselves and share collective protests. A key example can be seen in the event of the murder of Khaled Said who was tortured and killed by the police for exposing materials of corrupt officials. The Facebook Arabic page “We Are All Khaled Said” was created in the protest to the murder of Khaled Said. The owner of the page Wael Ghonim, an Egyptian political activist, catalyzed and took advantage of the Egypt political climate to help promote revolution. For that reason, the page has drawn itself not only to the Arabs, but also many western supporters outside. The total success of social media in helping spark the revolution lies in its effective organizational tool to connect users around the world by educating them and gradually making the users accustom and comfortable to become a greater part of the revolutionary movement.

The setup of Facebook pages and Tweets can be credited for creating an additional role in elevating the public consciousness. The biggest impact was seen in the Facebook page “ We are all Khaled Said”. In the course of weeks, the page attracted 500,000 members overall who disseminated the photographs depicting Said’s body. In this manner, the group utilize the the networking abilities of the social network platform in the engagement of a cyberactivism campaign against the Egyptian oppressive government Hosni Mubarak. Cyberactivism is the act of using the internet to advance political ideologies that are very complex to push offline. Facebook was able to generate a collective shift in social realization (Storck, 2011). As a result, collective awareness was formed though social media (Storck 2011). It was the power of social media that promoted the first revolution to occur in Thahrir Square in Cairo. The momentous scene of the protest was captured by a famous tweet of Hossam el-Hamalawy who stated “ We r at very critical stage. The counterrevolution is out in full steam. You will collect our dead bodies from garbage bins if we don't win. (12: 49: -Jan,25,2011 @ 3arabawy, Twitter ). ” Realizing social media power as the revolution driving force, Hosni Mubrak suspended the internet for a few days. However after just 18 days of protests, the reign of President Hosni Mubarak came to an end when it was announced he would resigned. The overthrow of Hosni Mubarak was an pivotal achievement of Egyptian history and a reminder that “Social media didn't’ just make history, it…Made…History” (…).

It is important to note that social media facilitated the events of Arab Spring, but it was not the actual cause. Social media did not only play the role as an organizational tool and raising social awareness, but it had broken the psychological barrier of fear by helping users connect and share information. It has given the necessary courage and strength to the Arab world to remind themselves that they are not all alone, that there are others who experience injustice, brutality, and hardships. In the end, as Wael Ghonim said, “Everything was done by the people [for] the people, and that’s the power of the Internet. ”