Media and Arab Spring - Research Paper Example

Media and Arab Spring In early days of December the Arab revolution, commonly referred to as the ‘Arab Spring’ began. It is a wave of violence, demonstrations, and protest happening in North African, the Arab world and Middle Eastern regions. These revolutions started in Tunisia after one of their citizens was harassed by local authorities and bitten in the public. To protest this action, the man had torched himself alive, and this suicide led to eruptions of protests (Khondker, p. 7). Following many events, the president had to step down. They replaced him, and peace prevailed. The media had a great role in spreading the word and the president then had shut down the internet in the country, which had only aggravated the situation. Inspired by the bold move of Tunisia, other Arab went into the streets to protest against their governments. Egypt followed closely, and the then president attempted the same trick of shutting down the internet to prevent media from spreading the news and just as Tunisia, this infuriated the citizens even more (Aouragh and Alexander, p. 12). In all these protests and demonstrations, media has played a major role in spreading the word. Any attempt to cripple the media has always led to aggravation of the situation of these countries. Role of the Media The role of media in Arab Spring remains controversial. Media is intended to enlighten the people and present them with the news. However, the contribution of media to the Arab Spring is undeniable in all aspects (Khondker, p. 19). It is through media, especially the social media that word of protest spreads and encourages even peaceful regions to hit the streets. Any attempt to shut down media in these countries has always met hostile response from the citizens. A discussion on the sociological potential of media in causing a change in the society started early in 1996 with Manuel Castells’ work, “The Rise of the Network Society” and recently by “Communication Power” in 2009. Many writers in the past twentieth century decade have identified the internet potential as a means of reinforcing democracy. More recent scholars have pin pointed the capabilities and limitations of the political role of the new media (Khondker, p. 12). There is a divide in the discussion of this topic. Some see the media as a control tool, one of the dictator’s arsenal of repression. Others view the media in its potential to shape politics and initiating a public sphere in a community that already lacks one. Another group of writers has presented a rather balanced dimension of the potential and pitfalls, emancipatory as well as controlling role of the media (Wolfsfeld, Segev & Sheafer, pg. 120). In Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, Mohammed Bouaziz torched himself in the public to protest the mistreatment he had received from the authorities. The event was soon spread reaching both the national and international platforms, which was a combination of both new media and conventional media effects (Harb, p. 5). Facebook and television stations played a crucial role of spreading the information and mobilizing protestors in Tunisia. Both real and virtual revolutionaries emerged to protest. The magnitude of the contribution made by new media can be realized from Mr. Khaled Kouba’s report, the Tunisian Internet Society president. He reported that only two hundred users of twitter out of two thousand registered users were active, but Facebook had already two million users prior the revolution (Harb, p. 7). He explains that three months before Bouazizi torched himself, a similar case had occurred in Monastir. It was never filmed so many people did not get to know about it. The difference in the two events was that Bouazizis images posted on Facebook, and this expanded the audience (Beaumont, p. 9). In 2008, protestors’ movements in Tunisia were dissolved without a major ado partly because only twenty eight thousand citizens were on Facebook at that time. There was low media penetration compared to December 2010 where Bouazizi’s self-immolation news was spread through the new media, initiating a mass protest. Egypt took after the Tunisian revolution. In both incidences, the media had a key role. The revolution in Egypt was branded ‘The Jasmin’ revolution partly because it did not turn out to be as violent as it happened in Libya a few moths latter (Eltantawy and Wiest, p. 12). Due to the new media’s prominent role, the Egyptian ant Tunisian revolutions have been referred to as Twitter or Facebook revolutions. The contribution of social networking in publicizing and organizing social protest is out of the question. There was great relevance of the new media when the conventional media was controlled. An Egyptian activist succinctly stated that they used Facebook for scheduling the protests, twitter for coordination and YouTube for telling the world what was happening. However, it is not expedient to overemphasize on the new media’s role. Internet and social networks were useful means of certain, but the conventional media also played a critical role in bringing to the attention the uprisings to the global community at large who consequently supported the upcoming transformations (Harb, p. 13). The revolution in Egypt was coordinated, civil and well organized (Abaza, p. 11) and the new media performed its function in every step. In Alexandria, a blogger, Khaled Said was beaten to death. The police had dragged him from a cybercafé. The owner of the café, Mr. Hassan Mosbah gave a filmed interview on the details of Khaled’s murder. This interview was made available online together with images of Khaled’s shattered face. A few days later, Issandr El Amrami wrote the details of this event on Global Voices Advocacy blog site. Wael Ghonim, a Google executive, came up with a page, which he named “We Are All Khaled Said,” which six months latter enlisted three hundred and fifty members. Thirty-nine years old Maha al-Qahtani was arrested on 17 June 2011 for driving a car in one of Saudi’s conservative cities, Riyadh. She was soon released, but her relenting protest captured massive media attention and support from the new media (Harb, p. 7). This probed Ms. Manal al-Sharif who was an IT consultant to put up a campaign on Facebook called women2drive, which led to her arrest. However, her Facebook campaign site features a YouTube clip of another protest made earlier by a cross-section of 47 women from Saudi, who broke the taboo and drove cars to defy a November 1990 government ban of women driving (Matthiesen, p. 10). New contents and comments are constantly been added to this site from televised news almost daily. Whether these signs denote a new dawn or otherwise remain a vague question. The incipient internet activism may not hail an Arab spring in Saudi Arabia any time soon. The results of new media spread will high likely remain uneven in various MENA regions and despite these uneven outcomes; nothing seems to hold back cyber activism march in these regions. Cyber activism, the act of utilizing the internet to further a political cause that is otherwise hard to advance offline, is therefore a force to reckon with. In Egypt, the media did aid in the spread of stories about violence, blatant justice and police brutality. Ultimately, the new media aided the protestors to bulldoze specific outcomes in the political arena such as President Hosni Mubarak’s removal (Eltantawy and Wiest, p. 32). The internet protests symbolism a chance of change in the society of Saudi Arabia, all thanks to new media and its tools of interaction such as twitter and Facebook. Conservatists have also developed websites vilifying these women (Harb, p. 7). Thus, new media is now a confessed domain. It is therefore inevitable to concentrate on two major points about media. To begin with, the new media can be viewed as a tool. It does not represent social movement’s end, rather; it represents a means (Harb p. 8). In this respect, new media’s role on the street movements is contingent. It has however been a site for contention for the groups involved in this century. Nothing can be quantified of the debate about the role of competing two types of media, the new media and the conventional media, and it has been termed false. Even prior to the MENA uprising, it had been suggested that horizontal communication networks have a significant impact on population’s majority needed to relay a message by mass media (Arsenault and Castels, p. 303). The important function played by media in Egypt and Tunisia for their political movements is out of the question, but their roles should not be overstated. Conventional media’s role especially television was critical and cannot be overlooked. However, presence of revolutionary conventions was an important predisposing factor and the inadequacies of the governmental apparatus to diffuse the revolutionary fever (Harb, p.12). In this whole setup, social media became a lethal tool especially that the local convention media was muzzled. It is however not adequate on its own. Manuel Castel emphasized the role of BBC, Al Jazeera, Al Hiwar, France 24 and other television stations in presenting Arab Spring news. He states that Al Jazeera had conducted information collection disseminated in the cyber space, organized it and retransmitted it as free news to numerous mobile phones owners. Thus, a new system was born that incorporated an interactive mobile, television, internet and radio communication systems for mass communication. Obviously, the insurgery was not conceived by the communication communications. The rebellion came to be due to social exclusion and poverty that plagued a greater population in the pseudo-democracy governments (Harb, p. 12). The role of the new media can be compared with historic print media’s role in incubating nationalism through a phenomenon Benedict Anderson calls “print capitalism,” or literacy works role in raising awareness in France during the pre-revolutionary era illustrated by John Markoff and Robert Darnton’s works. Markoff illustrates that in areas where literacy levels were higher, more organized revolutionary activities emerged as opposed to those regions with low literacy levels. However, revolution had no patience for even literacy spread to take into feet. With the presence or absence of social networks, Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Bahrain, Libya, and Yemen were already set for revolutionary movements secondary to assortment of pre-existing political and economic factors (Harb, p. 14). Similarly, the extent of the success of these revolutions or their failure is determined by several interacting factors, some unknown while others are known. In all these, situations, the social networks at best plays a supportive function. In conclusion, close observation of the Arab Spring reveals the special purpose played by media in the whole process. In the case of Tunisia, social media played a very important function in the revolution since the government censored conventional media. Attempts to close down the internet worsened the situation in both Tunisia and Egypt (Anderson, pg. 6). Therefore, it can be demonstrated that some revolution would not have occurred, or not at least in such a magnitude, they did if social media was not present. Conventional media cannot be overlooked either in the revolutionary movements of the Arab Spring, with television stations such as Aljazeera playing crucial role of sensitizing the world and therefore calling for intervention of humanitarian groups for interventions in these countries. The power of media in the twenty-first century can never be overlooked in such historic occurrences. Works cited Anderson, Lisa. “Demystifying the Arab Spring.” Foreign Affairs 90 (2011): 2–7. Print. Aouragh, Miriyam, and Anne Alexander. “The Arab Spring| the Egyptian Experience: Sense and Nonsense of the Internet Revolution.” International Journal of communication 5 (2011): 15. Print. Eltantawy, Nahed, and Julie B. Wiest. “The Arab Spring| Social Media in the Egyptian Revolution: Reconsidering Resource Mobilization Theory.” International Journal of Communication 5 (2011): 18. Print. Harb, Zahera. “Arab Revolutions and the Social Media Effect.” M/C Journal 14.2 (2011): n. pag. Google Scholar. Web. 5 Aug. 2014. Khondker, Habibul Haque. “Role of the New Media in the Arab Spring.” Globalizations 8.5 (2011): 675–679. CrossRef. Web. 5 Aug. 2014. Matthiesen, Toby. Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn’t. Stanford University Press, 2013. Print. Wolfsfeld, G., E. Segev, and T. Sheafer. “Social Media and the Arab Spring: Politics Comes First.” The International Journal of Press/Politics 18 (2013): 115–137. Read More