Analysis of the Article on the Role of Information Communication Technologies in the Arab Spring

To begin with, globalization has furthered accessibility(SA1) to other groups and causes in many way. In Ariela Garvett essay “Tweets and Transitions: How the Arab Spring Reaffirms the Internet’s Democratizing Potential” Garvett argues that “as reflected in the recent political upheavals in North Africa and the Middle East, the internet is a potentially egalitarian and boundary-less structure...(174)

Gladwell sends a very strong message about how social media cannot cause a major revolution in society; likewise, Baron is sending across the same message. Revolutions continue even after the internet is shut down. As crowds gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, Baron describes how they “continued to grow during the five days that the Mubarak government shut down the internet” (330). The crowds increased in size without the help of social media. Somehow, word got out and people came to support the cause. Also, Baron brings into realization that Americans are too involved in the world of social media. Americans fail to realize all of the news that they are missing because they “can’t seem to survive without the constant stimulus of digital multitasking” (Baron 330). American citizens are too busy tweeting about what they ate for breakfast to worry about the hungry that is going on overseas. They depend on social networking to tell them the news rather that picking up a newspaper and reading about what is going on in their country or maybe even overseas in a different country.

In the aftermath of the Arab uprisings the role and influence of social media became a contentious issue among news media outlets and political analysts. In a study conducted by the Pew Research Center Project for Excellence in Journalism, “New research suggests that the primary role was in spreading news outside of the region, connecting a global audience to the events through tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube.” While the mainstream media focused heavily on young protesters mobilizing in the streets with smartphones in hand–much of the attention was on whether social media played a causal role in the uprisings.

During the 2011 Egypt uprising protesters gained support through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to help end poverty and unemployment in which they were experiencing at the time. This major flow of support from across the world helped strengthen the protesters cause and led to an eventual victory in Egypt (Brym 2014).

- “Arab spring,” Egypt, Libya – young people want what we have, to be able to speak about things: Facebook

The documentary #chicagoGirl shows the integral role the internet, particularly social networking sites, have played in mobilizing activists in the middle east. The film follows Alaa Basatneh and her role in coordinating protests and supporting the revolution from across the world via social media. Basatneh was born in Syria but her family moved to Chicago to escape the oppressive regime. She and her family got out far before many others could. She began living a normal teenage life; frequenting the mall, hanging out with friends, and casual social media usage. As news trickled out of Syria Basatneh new she needed to do something but felt too far away to make an impact. She soon realized her role in fighting the horrific conditions created in by President Assad was through social media.

December 10, 2010, a Tunisian produce seller sets himself on fire in protest of the government’s extreme repression while under the leadership of the country’s former President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. The prolonged frustrations lead Tunisia into revolution, provoking the already corrupt and violent security forces to counteract in bloodshed. Still, and utilizing the Internet and social media, the revolutionaries reached out to global communities to depict the horror, in hope for help. Consequently and with success, Tunisians’ gained the sympathy they were seeking, while also inspiring the Arab Spring to ignite, a mass of revolutions across Arab nations.

From inviting friends on Facebook to launching Hellfire missiles, the internet has quickly become an integral part of life and governance in first-world countries. Kilcullen (2013) provides that access to the internet is increasing daily, as a by-product of urbanization and the mass production of consumer electronic devices. The examples provided include an operation which allowed remote observers to instruct ground troops on the best method of removing a threat (Kilcullen 2013). This is provided as evidence that the ability for information to be processed and quickly sent across the globe has truly revolutionized the norms of warfare. When observed in the context of the other three mega-trends, the effects of globally connected urbanites on the future of conflict become strikingly obvious. The example which Kilcullen (2013) repeatedly draws from is the Arab Spring, particularly the conflicts in Libya and Egypt. Using cellular devices, revolutionaries in these counties were able to effectively organize their forces while simultaneously exposing the atrocities being committed by their governments (Kilcullen 2013). Unlike urbanization, it is unlikely that communities will be able to limit the effects of increasing connectivity in future conflicts. When attempted, as in Egypt, restrictions on global communication have only further alienated those they seek to control

The two articles I read for ThinkCERCA were about activism using social media. They highlighted one particular example, Wael Gonhim’s Facebook page, Kullena Khaled Said. Using social media, he was able to hear about a current event, and make a difference. The question was “Based on the evidence provided in these two articles and the visual sources, how did social media affect the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt?”

In his opening paragraph of “Reforming Egypt in 140 Characters,” Dennis Baron acknowledges the role of Twitter and other huge forms of social media in the impeachment of the the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak. However, Baron then points out that the protest continues in Cairo despite the government's shut down of the internet. He says, “that while the Iran protests may have been tweeted round the world, there were few Twitter users actually in-country; and that although Americans can't seem to survive without the constant

The Iranian Cyber Army hack of Twitter Signals Cyber-politics Era is a older article but is still relevant to the topic that the book covers. The article talks about how political activist hacked Twitter and used it to redirect people to an anti-American message on another website. One expert pointed out in the article that the use of the internet is now normal in the political world. The article also talks about

The 2011 uprising in Egypt was in many ways a traditional brick-and-mortar revolution, but with a cyber-twist to it: based on their statistical analysis of a large body of tweets related to the 2011 uprising in Egypt, Starbird and Palen (2012) observed that activists used Twitter as an important tool to share ideas and information with like-minded people, because Twitter allows a high number of activists interact using its retweet and other mechanisms. In this case, Twitter was used among participants and supporters of a traditional mass movement to bypass government controlled

How has the rise of social media technologies affected political stabilities in the Middle East?

Likewise, internet penetration in the Arab countries has expanded since 2000. In light of a survey conducted in 2009, there were between 40-45 million internet users in around 16 countries, (Abbassi, 2010: no page).

In this introduction, some of the reasons will be presented to justify the choice of Tunisia as the main subject of this paper. First of all, Tunisia is a great example for our as a model of countries that switched from a complete oppressing and Internet censorship to a country where freedom of Speech is preserved. Second, Tunisia gave birth to the Arab spring through its Tunisian Revolution in January 2011. It was fueled by the use of social medias where the protests were being organized and supported through online networks (The use was mainly on Twitter and Facebook since other social networks, video-sharing and blogs such as Youtube, Dailymotion, Amnesty International website..). The main reasons of these