Social media, in my opinion, is the defining factor of the Arab Spring revolts. Never before in history could humans so instantaneously communicate their ideas, thoughts, feelings, and plans to millions of others around the world. What used to take the effort of inviting people one-by-one, either by letter, phone, SMS, or face-to-face can now be done with a few clicks of a button. Putting together such a large social movement is a Herculean effort to begin with, but social media is really what made it possible so quickly. Need a pound of bread to feed protesters? Just send a quick tweet with the correct hashtag, or a Facebook post, and chances are someone in the protest who is monitoring social media will see it and get it to you. You heard that the police are planning to shoot any protesters? Same deal, let the world know via social media. Without social media, the protests would have been severely handicapped in relation to how the protests were handled with social media.
However, as powerful of a tool social media was to the revolts, they would have happened regardless. The people were tired of being oppressed across the Arab World, and the powder keg was ready to explode at any point. Had social media not existed, it may have been longer for them to occur, or have taken longer to have any effect, but they would have happened.
However, as powerful of a tool social media was to the revolts, they would have happened regardless. The people were tired of being oppressed across the Arab World, and the powder keg was ready to explode at any point. Had social media not existed, it may have been longer for them to occur, or have taken longer to have any effect, but they would have happened.
I like your ideas, but i think you might be over romanticizing the role of social media in the Arab Revolts. Yes, it was a great tool for organization. I would see it more as a mobilizer than a defining factor however.
ReplyDeleteYou say that it would have happened regardless, but the way that you refer to the use of Social Media during the revolts makes it sound like you are not quite sure of this.
I had the same opinion as you for a long time, but the more that I look into the role of Social Media at this time, I seem to disagree