A new study has reported what many have been suspecting for a while - that social networking sites have played pivotal roles in the anti-government protests sweeping throughout parts of the Middle East and North Africa.
"From China to Yemen to Tunisia to Egypt, social media has given ordinary citizens extraordinary ways to organize themselves and be heard. This has destabilized 'politics as usual' bringing volatility to an already unstable world," stated Philip Seib, director for the Center on Public Diplomacy.
Social media, including Twitter, Facebook, Diggit, live video, texting, bloggers, websites, My Space, and other networking sites have allowed messages to be spread without government interference and mass protests to be organised seamlessly. Social media has also allowed those involved in the civil unrest to tell their stories to the rest of the world.
A new study by media experts has found that social media is now being used to drive political protests more than traditional media methods, which are often controlled by the government.
“Using social networking and its importance in recent uprisings shouldn’t be underplayed,” said Susannah Vila, the director of content and outreach at Movements.org.
“But these same events have also shown that one of social media’s strengths, being leaderless, can also prove one of its weaknesses.”
Syria is the latest country where Facebook is being used to create a political unrest. Since the unrest began in mid-March, many Syrians are using the site to express their views. The Syrian government has even lifted a ban on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter in an attempt to create a "new era.”
The long term effects of these strategies remains to be seen, but the revolutionary aspect of social media has created enough interest for a Strategic Communications Conference to be scheduled for June 23 in Los Angeles. The conference will be hosted by the University of Southern California; and academics, media experts and government panelists will join together to discuss how social media is affecting policy in the Middle East.
One media expert has warned that the role of social media should not be overemphasised, saying that these revolutions would have happened anyway, and all social media did was speed up the political process.
“Many people cannot understand why all these uprisings happened so they turn to the aspect they can understand, social media,” said Philip Seib, a professor of journalism and public diplomacy and professor of international relations at the University of Southern California.
“However, there is a very important piece to remember, for those people that call this the Twitter revolution or the Facebook revolution, I think that is a misnomer that is unfair to the people who went out into the streets and risked, and sometimes lost their lives in the cause of these revolutions."