Social Media and Social Mobilisation in the Middle East: A Survey of Research on the Arab Spring

Abstract

The role of the media, and especially the social media, in the Arab Spring has been extensively debated in academia. This study presents a survey of studies published in scholarly journals on the subject since 2011. We find that the bulk of the research contends that social media enabled or facilitated the protests by providing voice to people in societies with mostly government-controlled legacy media; helping people connect, mobilise and organise demonstrations; and broadcasting protests to the world at large and gaining global support. Some scholars, however, argue that social media played only a limited or secondary role, which ought to be viewed alongside other social, political, economic and historical factors. We also identify the spatial and temporal focus of the research and preferred theoretical and methodological approaches and draw attention to several blind spots that require further investigation.

The Lebanese Uprising in the Digital Age

“…Following the outbreak of the Arab uprisings in 2011, a wide trove of scholarly research emerged on this particular issue. In a review of numerous scholarly publications which followed the Arab uprisings, adopting both qualitative and quantitative methods, Smidi and Shahin (2017) showcase that scholars, in general, agree that social media platforms played, at the very least, an enabling role, facilitating the protests as they were used by individuals to connect with one another and jointly organize demonstrations. However, yber K arim Merhej, Elina Q ureshi C y b e r O r i e n t , Vo l .…”

“…As Smidi and Shahin (2017) have highlighted, it would be wrong to focus solely on digital initiatives to explain the growth of protests during the uprising. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that alternative media outlets and social media platforms such as Akhbar Al Saha and Daleel Thawra, among many others, did play a role in mobilizing citizens during the uprising.…”

Civil Unrest on Twitter (CUT): A Dataset of Tweets to Support Research on Civil Unrest

“…Twitter has played a central role in several recent civil unrest related activities, with the most noted being the Arab Spring, a series of pro-democratic uprisings, protests, and armed rebellions from 2010 to 2012 in Tunisia, Morocco, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Bahrain, that led to regime changes 3 . Some sociologists believe that the distrust in official country press due to censorship led to civilians turning to each other on social media for independent news (Smidi and Shahin, 2017;Soengas-Pérez, 2013). In addition to spreading news, civilians also use social media to share opinions on new policies or recent events (e.g.…”

Networked Identities: Exploring the Role of Social Networking to Optimize Event Marketing by Higher Education Institutions in the Middle East

“…The usage and significance of social media and networking are well documented in the Middle East with respect to politics, entertainment and community relations (Hänska-Ahy, 2016; Nalloor & Scott, 2016; Shirazi, 2013; Smidi & Shahin, 2017). However, the impact of online social networking is less explored in the field of education in this part of the world (Elsayed, 2016).…”