Campaign Processes During the Arab Spring

Essay: Campaign Processes During the Arab Spring and their Effectiveness Student’s Name Instructor Course Title Date Essay: Campaign Processes During the Arab Spring and their Effectiveness The Arab Spring is one of the latest political and social movements that started in the spring of 2011 in the Arab world, including North Africa and the Middle East. The event manage to capture international attention, but also exposed several regions to a wave of popular uprisings and civil rights movements that managed to a bid to remove dictatorships in the region (Batstone, 2014, p.28). In a matter of a few months, regimes that existed for numerous years had been brought down, either through violence or non-violence strategies. During the Arab Spring, various campaign processes were used to enhance the success of the movement. For instance, the social networking sites and the internet in general were used as the major platform of mobilizing people and encouraged active engagement. This paper critically analyses the campaign used in during the Arab Spring and how they influenced and encouraged active engagement in the political processes. Campaign Processes Use of the Social media The social media played an important role in coordinating the political campaigns that took place in the Arab world, thus enhancing the success of the Arab Spring movement. Although the Arab Spring would not solely made popular by the social media, evidence indicates that social networking sites were important tools of popularizing the movement (Badoura, n.d, p.1). As a tool, social media has both a positive and negative consequences in terms of the way the sites shape the outcomes of different regions. For instance, social media would become effective in Tunisia and Egypt since the regions experienced impacts which are more positive than negative. On the contrary, other regions such as Libya, Syria, Algeria, Yemen, and Bahrain received little benefits as a result of social media campaigns as a result of intensive government interventions that made most social media functions to backfire. When the fruit vendor in Tunisia set himself on fire, the incident was popularized quickly in the social media, resulting to the Arab Spring to be branded as “Facebook revolution” (Andersson, J. n.d, p.1). Despite the fact that numerous cases of violence were recorded during the Arab Spring, it can be argued that the movement was mainly spread on the basis of nonviolent methods. Some scholars have analysed the Arab Spring on the basis of the defections that occurred among the security officials. Other researchers have offered a structural explanation that led to the Arab Spring, with WikiLeaks being spread as a result of the popularity of the Arab Spring. Political organizations, social movement institutions, and other interest groups led to a direct impact on policy formulation that would enhance the spread of the movement (Burstein & Linton, 2004, p.381). Although this Facebook revolution was mainly considered as nonviolent, there is evidence indicating that countries such as Tunisia had various levels of civil resistance that differed from other violent episodes that were prevalent in the other parts of the Arab world. Networked Social Movements Before the Arab Spring, the terms “networked social movements” and “networked politics” were very uncommon when it came to the analysis of collective action and political protests. Nevertheless, the rapid expansion of the digital age, particularly due to increased access to the internet and the adoption of social networking made political protests spread fast using the modern technologies. Political events that have occurred recently, and more specifically the Arab Spring, stimulated huge interest on the impacts of online technologies in the formation of networked social and political movements (González-Bailóna & Wang, 2016, p.95). Studies have shown that social networks have played an instrumental role when it comes to coordinating several groups of people, particularly when there is no central organization or authorities to control these movements. However, some scholars believe that the theoretical analysis of such movements is usually based on implicit assumptions and evidence suggests that there are no empirical tests that are consistent with the findings that have been proven in network science or social network analysis. Nevertheless, huge amount of evidence has shown that social networks are organic forms of organizations which manage to develop structures that enhance the flow of information (González-Bailóna & Wang, 2016, p.95). The social media influence has also been experienced in other parts of the world, which differ greatly from the Arab Spring. For instance, Alastair Campbell resigned recently leading to the restructuring of official communications at 10 Downing Street and it signified the influence of social media on political (Craig, 2003, p.82). Campbell was an example of spin doctors who are popular due to their ability to control journalists when it comes to positively interpreting the comments of politicians. This clearly symbolizes media’s influence as well as its ability to make the public think and act in a certain manner. In the same way the social media has been employed to spread social and political messages, evidence indicates that the Arab spring managed to spread rapidly due to increased access to the internet. Scholars holds the opinion that the internet enabled the Arab Spring to spread from Tunisia to other parts of the Arab world. It should also be noted that Tunisia has a prolonged history of oppressing the media through censorship and persecution of journalists and bloggers who attempted to criticize the government (Badoura, n.d, p.3). The government in fact, blocked access to Facebook during the emergence of the Arab Spring. However, WikiLeaks emerged and they spread information about how the then President, Ben Ali, and his family lived a lavish life at the expense of the poor people in the country. Although WikiLeaks would eventually be blocked by the government, most people had already seen the information and this sparked the widespread rage and revolts. The mainstream media had become the greatest casualty of the dictatorial regime and most people used to rely on other media to access the information that was affecting the country. Evidence also showed that before the revolution, traditional media was under the government influence of and everything that was broadcasted was strictly censored by the government. The Arab Spring therefore started to spread across the country, people turned to their mobile phones and social networking sites to spread information. Videos of people clashing with the police in the streets were continually uploaded on the social media and YouTube while users updated regularly the number of casualties. The government blocked all the social networking sites since they were filled with the images of injured people who collided with the police (Mhajne & Whetstone, 2...