The impact of social media on Arab spring Communications & Media Essay

The Impact of Social Media in the Arab Spring
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The Impact of Social Media in the Arab Spring
In the last decade, the world has been changed by many factors, among the factors is technological advancement which has influenced every aspect of our, social, economic and political life. From medicine to religion, technology has influenced the changes and developments we continue to see in our daily lives. The change has come with its effects and advantages as well as disadvantages. We can say the latter is surpassed by the first, but overall, it is a phenomenon that needs to be studied and analyzed. According to Della Porta et al. (2006) globalization and technology advancement have both transformed the world into an easily reachable global village making it easy for individuals to share cultures, politics and way of life. In politics, to the ways people used to engage with the government have changed as the new digital era takes over. Political and social movements in our communities have taken the trending strategy of amassing global support within minutes to use the power of number to enact the desired changed. This study is going to look at the effects of social media in social and political in our society based on the unpopular uprising of the Arab Spring.
Campaign Development
Social media was a key ingredient of the unpopular campaigns. Although it is observed that, the Arab Spring was in the making for a long time and was not solely based on social media, just that it needed that little trigger to blow up and the immediate cause can be said to hang with one Mohammed Bouazizi, a young Hawker from Tunisia. Bouazizi was told that he could not parade his items to sell in the streets unless he bribed the police and the bribe money mentioned to him was a little higher than he could afford. Taking his plea to his governor, he lit himself on fire after the governor failed him dying on the spot. It was this act of protest that triggered the unpopular Arab Spring in the Arab region. Civilians started to lament on the deplorable living conditions in states such as Libya, Syria, Egypt, and Tunisia. Protesting on issues such as corruption, poverty levels, low-quality education, and unemployment. The movement as observed was made up of mostly youth who used social media platforms mostly Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to call for and organize the protest at different regions at the same time. United by the common goal of obtaining the justice they used social media to spread their concerns to not only the protestors only but also the world where they gain support for their newly developed mission. Women were also involved in the protest and much can be attributed to social media where other younger females encouraged them to join the action for their future and rights.
Networked Social Movements
A decade before the Arab uprising, networked politics, and networked social movements were not common especially in the political protests or collective actions. One reason why this mode was not popular was that internet availability was still low and lack of the know-how of technology. However, with advancement of technology recent political protests are characterized with use of modern technology for example the Arab uprising and the black live matters actions. It is observed that the Arab Uprising managed to blow up quickly because of due to the access of internet through social media. The influence was so great that the government had to shut down the use of social media in the region.
Was the Campaign a Success?
The year 2010 was rocked by the rise of the West Asia Arab Spring phenomena. The matter was witnessed in eight states of the North and Middle Africa, and it saw the ousting of Hosni Mubarak government. What began as a man protest grew in a few hours to gunner world attention, causing devastating damages and changes that did rewrite history. It began with a young frustrated hawker from Tunisia setting himself on fire to his death. The event led hundreds of thousands to the street to protest the sentiments of the young man and others infringement that were occurring at the time. Youths and frustrated citizens took to the streets to demonstrate their dissatisfaction and anger that has for so long been kept in silence. The then economic and political instability in the region made it easy for the course to spread sporadically through the entire Arab region. If it were in the traditional days the spread of the protest would not have been that swift as it was in the Arab Springs were it not for the availability of the efficient media and social media channels.
The campaigners utilized a very clever tactic where they called upon the young, literate, educated, and vibrant Arab age group on social media to participate in the protest. The result was seen almost immediately as the protest took over major radio and television house as breaking news, for example, CNN and Al-Jazeera two of the major news broadcasters in the world even aired the protest live magnifying the protest some more. The effects of social media continued to ascend to appoint where the then regime had to apply censorship to the available social media to prevent more protesters from joining the already huge gathering. This means the uprising was a widespread viral protest that was scattered across the Arab world through the use of the cutting edge technology with the aid of social media and was bound by common reason that is dissatisfaction over various injustices that had been happening towards the people.
Role of Social Media
According to (Sandoval-Almazan, Rodrigo & Ramon, 2014) the popularity and emergence of the social media has actively transformed social activism through enabling individuals to disseminate information to a large crowd quickly. Today activist not only use networked technology to share and create information but also to shape public opinion and plan or call for action.
The act of receiving and giving the right information to the right people at the right time is what was referred to as dissemination of information. On the online platform, this works as a collaborative or personalized manner as the social networks create communities or networks of people who share a common interest and social media offers a way of these communities to interact with each other. Dissemination of information work so perfectly in the Arab Spring revolution. The swift spread of information that unfolded was because of both the public sphere and the new media. These two factors facilitated to reshape and shape the flow of information where information comm...