Social Media and the Arab World- Reading Response - Essay Example

Digital technologies and social media have in a way opened up issues in a system that was otherwise closed, making way for the influx of many new things, including democracy.
The internet will speed up the onset of Western-style democracy in the Arab world. The Internet has created an outlet where young people can interact and even organize themselves around a specific cause (Ghannam 14). Besides, it is easier for dissenting groups and organizations to target young people via the internet (Ghannam 15). The Internet has broadened the horizons of the Arab youth that was now methodically managed and constrained by the more co-opted traditional media. The Internet has created a space where dissent can get registered without invoking a direct threat.
The US indeed supports Arab social media in the sense that it extensively politicizes digital activism in the Arab world, thereby bolstering the zeal of the political activists, without making way for commensurate safety measures and provisions (Ghannam 18). Though the US professes that internet freedom is central to its foreign policy, the entire initiative appears to be a sham and double-faced in the sense that the US in no way intends to destabilize the political status quo in the friendly Arab dictatorships and monarchies (Ghannam 18).
Social media is still at a very nascent stage in the Arab world. However, in a long-term context, social media could be positively expected to have a significant and discernible impact on the masses in the Arab world. Social media has not only increased the magnitude and frequency of people’s access to divergent viewpoints and possibilities, but it has also changed the form and manner in which people engage with these viewpoints (Ghannam 23). Though social media on its own could not be expected to bring out immediate political change, it will certainly make way for the emergence of a popular mindset and the requisite institutions, which will facilitate political change in the long run.
The internet in the Arab world is indeed acting as a catalyst of change in the sense that it has extended space to the voices and agents of change, where they can express and disseminate their views. The opportunity to express dissent is in itself a change. The internet can certainly be used as a mouthpiece by Muslim fundamentalists and Jihadist ideologies and movements. However, the internet differs from the other media in the sense that here radical ideologies are not allowed to flourish in an insulated and closed environment, but are rather required to compete for space and attention with more benign and liberal ideologies and movements, which act as a potent antidote.