MUHAMMAD HAMID

Nowadays, social media has such a significant impact on the world that virtually no one can live without benefitting from its usage. According to Oxford Dictionaries, social media is "Websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking" (Oxford dictionaries, N.D). Social media has benefited it us in many ways and has made it much easier for us to contact and keep in touch with each other. It has been used to spread information through the use of social networking sites to engage their users in the active participation and discussion of trending topics. Social media has also been a primary factor in influencing social and political change in countries such as Egypt, Tunisia and others, which led to the Arab spring. However, this media does not come without its benefits and drawbacks, and others argue that social media does not promote active participation in the busy life and furthers users away from the revolution. This essay will look at social media and the effect it had on advancing social and political change in Egypt and Tunisia.

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 "The media is a term, and it is a reference to institutions of communication which comprise of various forms of sound, vision, and print, but principally television, radio, and the press"(Dutton,1986, P1). Social media now includes platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat among the others where it enables people to communicate and share information and has influenced people greatly during the Arab spring. Moreover, "2011 was a year of protests, revolutions and political change. It was a year where people all over the world tried to make their dreams of a different social reality" (Fuchs,2014, P2). Additionally, many of the countries in which revolutions occurred suppressed mainstream media to an extent, censorship was a huge issue, and that is why so many people found social media as an unregulated influence and used it to publicize and organize demonstrations, which boosted the revolts around these countries and encouraged Arab dissidents to rise and voice their oppositions.

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The two countries which were significantly affected by social media were Tunisia and Egypt. These countries had oppressive governments, and their leaders tried in any way to limit free press and heavily censored state media from going against them. Amid the Arab Spring, four of the world's most refractory dictators—Zine EL Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen, and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt—fell after decades in power. Each lost control after unparalleled levels of social dissent—and occasionally required armed conflict to put an end to their intense administrations. The "Arab Spring" is the thing that numerous global observers are calling the falling popular democracy movements that started in Tunisia, enlivened Egypt, and subsequently invigorated other developments across the region (Howard and Hussain, 2013). "The internet, mobile phones, and social networking applications have transformed politics across North Africa and the Middle East" (Howard and Hussain,2013,). "Rapid internet interaction through Twitter and Facebook gave information to the protesters about how to counteract the security forces as they tried to disperse the protesters, maps showing locations for protest meetings and practical advice about such things as what to do when teargas is used against groups of protesters. All of these things increased the pressure that the protest movements were able to exert on their governments" (Newint.org, N.D.)

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Tunisia was a relatively quiet country where people just accepted the corrupted authoritarian rule of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali who has ruled the country for 24 years. Corruption was rampant everywhere, and it was especially visible in the police and government forces. The spark that ignited the revolution started in a small town, Sidi Bouzid in central Tunisia. A young street vendor by the name of Mohammed Bouazizi committed suicide by setting himself on fire in front of the governor's office. This happened because a corrupted policewoman confiscated his produce and humiliated him by slapping him, spitting at him and swearing at him, all because he didn't have enough money for the bribe she required so he can continue selling his produce. Angered by the harassment, he went to the governor's office to complain where he was met by further harassment by security officials and rejection by the governor where he proceeded to kill himself.

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This act which was caught on camera by several passers-by incited demonstrations and riots throughout Tunisia due to the social and political issues in the country. Following his death, public anger skyrocketed and violence intensified which prompted the president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to venture down on 14 January 2011 following 24 years in authority. However, all these events couldn't have been possible without the significant use of social media. Firstly, the internet was a massive boost and "it was through blogs and text messages that Tunisians experienced what McAdam has called a "cognitive liberation"; networks of family and friends, feeling sympathy for the dying man's plight, came to realize that they shared common grievances" McAdam (1982) (cited in Howard and Hussain,2013, P18).

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Furthermore, "The realisation grew as people watched and uploaded YouTube videos about the abusive state, read international news coverage of political corruption online, and shared jokes about their ageing dictators over the short messaging services (SMS) of mobile phone networks. Through communication networks beyond state control, people crafted strategies for action and a collective goal: to depose their despot" (Howard and Hussain, 2013, P19). This goes to show how people in Tunisia were fed up with their government and how they used the internet in creative ways, dominated virtual spaces and after Bouazizi's death, occupied public areas. Moreover, "the connection between Facebook, YouTube and Twitter and the occupation of urban space created a hybrid public space of freedom that became a major feature of the Tunisian rebellion" (Castells, 2012, P23). Overall, Tunisia got rid of its autocratic government through the use of social media, which was crucial in successfully deposing its leader. People shared photos and videos through Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, which resulted in worldwide attention and solidarity in protests. Although the government unsuccessfully tried to block social networking sites, many hacker groups infiltrated governments firewalls, and people used proxy servers to re-enter these sites to expose government corruption and show the protests happening there.

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Egypt was the second country to get inspired by the recent revolution in neighbouring Tunisia. "Hosni Mubarak became the President of Egypt's semi-presidential republic following the 1981 assassination of Anwar El Sadat and stayed in power until February 2011. Mubarak's three-decade rule made him the longest-serving president in the country's history. Although the Mubarak government carried out economic reforms and received considerable foreign aid, one of the key factors leading to widespread protests was the continued economic hardship faced by the Egyptians. Police brutality and continued human rights violations were also widely reported by international and Egyptian human rights organisations" (Sedra,2013). Due to the hardships suffered by the population, most Egyptians were angry and ready to go out and protest against the Mubarak administration. Almost everyone had a mobile phone and internet access in Egypt. Therefore, "it has long had a large and active online public sphere. It is here that illegal political parties, radical fundamentalists, investigative journalists, and disaffected citizens interacted" (Howard and Hussain, 2013, P21).

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The main reason why the Egyptian public got angered was when coincidentally, a young man named Khaled Saeed was beaten to death while in police custody and when the pictures of his corpse appeared many people shared it on social media where many people were outraged and started to mobilise to protest police brutality and human rights. Wael Ghonim, a territorial official at Google, began the Facebook group, "We are all Khaled Said," to keep alive the memory of a youthful blogger who had the life beaten out of him by police for uncovering their corruption (Howard and Hussain, 2013). Furthermore, it all started on the 25th of January 2011, where protests erupted all over Egypt known as the "Day of Revolt". Protesters gathered in Cairo and other cities, and they used Twitter to document the unrest and coordinate demonstrations. However, The Egyptian government's choice to cut all communication frameworks, including the web and cell phones, on the night of 27 January was broadly seen to be a watershed moment in the toppling of the Mubarak government. The choice was quickly denounced by human rights associations all over the world and numerous different governments. Egyptian dissent sympathisers were not able to watch the events on their PCs and TVs and joined the demonstrators in Tahrir Square. Therefore, with no other choice, the Mubarak government ventured down on 12 February and was supplanted by a military committee indicating to bolster democratic change (Newint.org, N.D).

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On the other hand, Other areas including Libya, Yemen, Algeria, Bahrain, and Syria appeared to benefit less from web-based social networking whose functions backfired because of high government intervention. The governments of the following countries looked at what happened in Tunisia and Egypt and took preventive measures in terms of social media and its effect. This worked as when some governments switched off the internet; it hindered the dissident's coordination and movement. It just goes to show how crucial the internet was and how the preventive measures taken against social media convey how it was a powerful weapon of communication. Governments monitored and spied on individuals who seemed suspicious and arrested any person who was actively criticising their regimes. Nevertheless, administrations around the "Arab World" realised how effective social media was in influencing social change through the examples of Tunisia and Egypt and how they could help to overthrow their long-established political systems in a matter of days, months or years.

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In conclusion, social media was not the only cause for revolt. However, it had a vital role in mobilising people and allowing them to express their anger. These populations were already angry due to a lack of democracy, oppression, human rights abuses, justice and rampant corruption.

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Social media has proved to be more efficient in the cases of Tunisia and Egypt. However, it seemed less effective and rather more exposing in countries such as Bahrain where security forces monitored social media sites, knew of any upcoming protests and arrested or killed many dissidents or where the uprising in Libya led to the people taking up arms in an eight-month civil war against their tenacious dictator.

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The utilisation of online networking by activists is not one of a kind to the Arab Spring. Most resistance gatherings and activists kept up Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, sites, online journals, and YouTube channels to spread their thoughts, furthermore the individual political and human rights activists who have been using new media for as long as five years before the transformation. Along these lines, most civil society groups, small movements and grassroots associations that had worked in the roads before the Arab Spring were prepared to bolster the upheaval and to assemble their supporters through their presence in the web-based social networking and the Web (Sedra, N.D).

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Nevertheless, it is difficult to say whether the demonstrations and uprisings would have happened with or without the use of social media. Many governments in the regions learned a valuable lesson which is never to underestimate the power of social media and the effect it has on influencing or even changing the social and political structures of a country.

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