Analyzing the Role of Social Media in the Arab Spring Uprisings: A Free Essay Example

Social media represents a strategic stimulus, both for governments and for citizens, since it can be used to foster dissent, as well as boost democratic values across an entire society. Social media is a new catalyst for social change that can represent a threat or opportunity. The events in North Africa and the Middle East, more precisely in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, as the focus of this analysis, now known as the Arab Spring, would suggest that there is a new revolution in the emerging social media with immense strategic implications for the future. This analysis examines the current use of social media and seeks to show the potential use of these media in the Arab Spring uprisings. It also shows how the use of these new forms of media can be used as a diverse set of political interests to organize and communicate actions within and between states. The central hypothesis is that social networks served as a means of enhancing the action of political movements, organized by civil society, in the demonstrations that took place in the Arab Spring. The course of action of the protesters was different in each state, but the coincidence of events (Arab Spring) and the articulation of movements took place through social networks.

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Based on the premise that networks have a transnational character, this essay presents how the Arab Spring movement had the social network as its main means of disseminating manifestations, as this was fundamental for the movement to emerge. Besides the network theory, constructivism is used to interconnect the identity of societies at the domestic level and the systemic level. The theory of social movements brings a greater understanding of the need for civil society to unite and disseminate their demands for change (Bhattacharya, Niloshree, and Vinod 44). Through these theories, the essay will show how social networks were one of the instruments used during the Arab Spring movements, as they crossed national borders in the dissemination of information directly without the intervention of traditional media (Cottle 649). In this way, the demonstrators managed to coordinate and structure protest movements to the regimes in which they lived, reaching an impact at the international level and thus widening the scope of view on what was happening in the different states of Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia.

With the advent of social networks, the functions of the internet have grown exponentially, significantly changing, not to say definitive, the methods of communication, the production of information, and the viral circulation of the same. Mobile telecommunications have provided the potential to transform not only time but space (Green 281). What characterizes Facebook, as indeed Twitter - distinguishing them from the more traditional means of communication - is the nature of their communication. Social networks, by expanding the function previously performed by blogs, have paved the way for a new type of communication, called "mass self-communication", that is an interactive communication that allows the conveyance of the message not vertically and, therefore, one to many, but in a horizontal mode from many to many.

The mass self-communication is distinguished also by the typical mass of traditional media as the characteristic of being able to reach a potential level, a worldwide audience in real-time, adding that proper of' self-communication or an autonomous production message from individuals traditionally users of the same and not producers (Rane and Sumra 99). One of the direct consequences of the birth of this type of interactive communication is the possibility, on the part of the social actors, to overcome the traditional information scheme that sees a producer of the message and more users of the same (center> periphery), allowing anyone who has a social account to be able to become an active producer of content that potentially, through sharing, can become usable by a much wider audience (polycentrism).

In fact, and regarding the object of study of this essay, traditional media such as Al-Jazeera, blogs, and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook were united by the information function they carried out, each following its logic. However, except for this generic function, they used different tools, reaching different audiences and creating different engagement. If until 17 December 2010 it was mainly blogging that fueled a counter-discourse concerning the messages of the official speech of power by acting as "platforms for the production of dissent", it is significant to note that, starting from that date, the center of gravity of the counterpower and counterinformation was embodied by social networks, and in particular by Facebook.

Arab Spring began in December 2010, with the demonstration of the young Tunisian, Mohamed Bouazizi, who, when setting his own body on fire, was desperate for the lack of opportunity for the youth of his country. The movements took place in North African and Middle Eastern states and were also felt in other states in the region, namely: Algeria, Djibouti, Mauritania, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Western Sahara, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, and Syria (Castellas 96). The causes for the movement were similar, but the results of these movements assumed singularities in each state. The movements were formed by protesters from the most diverse social classes, but mainly by graduated adults who had no expectation of getting a job and a promising future.

The social movements that spread through the States - Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia, were in opposition to the repressive political regimes and yearned for governmental transformations. With that, the protesters were acclaiming for a division of powers clearly and democratically, so that there was greater popular participation (Rane and Sumra 102). The political regimes of the States were vulnerable and fragile to social movements because the stability mechanisms adopted as a form of governance by the States, in which the governments used a game of concessions and surfer of benefits to the population (Cottle 650). This was because such autocratic regimes did not have alternative resources that only a fully assumed autocracy was able to maintain. Because of these weaknesses in the regimes, social movements found loopholes and gained strength and impacted the region.

Another important factor to understand the reasons that propagated the protests in the Arab Spring was the economic situation in which the states were. Poverty was reaching alarming levels. In Egypt, for example, the unemployment rate reached 12% in 2010 and the rise in food and energy prices created a lot of discomfort for the population (Barsoum 33). The rise in unemployment also generated discontent, because there was no prospect of a promising future for young people who had just graduated from university (Castellas 97). The social inequality present in the States was also a latent characteristic in the Arab regions.

Through social networks, societies interconnect. Lafleur (2008) discusses transnationalism, which demonstrates that any individual action that is not necessarily linked to the State is an important variable for the formulation of policies in the State itself and others, proving the interaction between individuals and the consequent interference in other states (Lafleur 15). Thus, the social network would be outside the control of the State, being a transnational movement. It is understood that citizens were largely responsible for the dissemination of events through social media, which enabled the spread of popular uprisings. The use of social networks made it possible to enhance the demands of the masses. The new dynamic of globalization allows non-state actors to gain the capacity to stimulate changes in the state structure, organizing themselves in social movements (Rane and Sumra 105). A social movement is a challenge for those in power, as society unites to fight for what is not good, and as it happened in the Arab Spring, collective actions caused significant effects in countries and dictators the wanted to somehow control the flow of this information, that control ended up being flawed and useless.

The use of social networks was shown throughout the research as the main means of communication between civil society, and among these means, Facebook was the most used, becoming the most important social network in the Arab revolt. According to studies by Salem and Mourtada (2011), the number of Facebook users in January 2010 was 11, 978,300 people, increasing to 21, 361,863 in December 2010 (Arab Social Media Report 3). This means a 78% increase from the beginning of the year until the time when the Arab Spring began. In that period, Tunisian Facebook registrations experienced a significant implementation: they went from 860,000 units registered in October 2009 to around 2,400,000 in January 2011 (Arab Social Media Report 3). Facebook's users in Egypt increased considerably from 4 million subscribers registered in October 2010 to 6.5 million registered users immediately after the fall of the government in March 2011, continuing to increase even thereafter, reflecting the continued tensions. in the country (Arab Social Media Report 6).

However, not only did the phenomenon of affiliation with Facebook increase significantly, but the analysis of content, activities, and interactions radically changed the nature and function of its use. The entertainment that until a few weeks before was the main interactive activity on Facebook, during the period of revolt, became marginal (10.74%) being the majority of traffic focused on informing foreign countries about Tunisian affairs (33.06%), inform their compatriots about the developments of the protests (31.40%) and to organize and manage the actions of the activists (Arab Social Media Report 3).

On Facebook, moreover, even more than the written word, it was the images that caused the network to vibrate, given the crudeness and immediacy of their unequivocal and incontrovertible nature, and their mimetic, empathetic and mobilizing power (Robertson 532). The communicative importance of the textual and iconographic mixture lies in the fact that "if we can see something, it must be true". In this way, the images testified to the veracity of the riots, exponentially enhancing the textual content of the posts and slogans and, at the same time, they helped to deconstruct the official story by revealing its falsity and laying bare the manipulative mechanisms of the official media.

In the Tunisian revolution of 2011, Twitter played an important role in developing "a transnational communication process" aimed at connecting activists, journalists, and bloggers with Tunisians from the Diaspora and other professionals who used this social network to update and stay updated on-field events (Cottle 651). Precisely for this reason, it played a marginal role in the organization and coordination of the protests and the development, by the protagonists of the revolt, of an argumentative debate aimed at identifying causes and opponents and denouncing the violence and repression of the regime.

The Arab world did not use social networks on a large scale, but after the Arab Spring event, it is clear that the multiplication of the use of social networks in terms of political activism, which occurred from that period and the revolts that have since witnessed in the countries in question, intensified the explosion of sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube in the Arab scenario (Robertson 534).