Social Media and Reporting - Case Study Example

Social Media and Reporting The development of social media has ensured that news or reports are made available as they happen and this has allowed for an increase in the participation of individuals other than journalists in the making of stories all over the world. Social media has in recent years become a tool through which individuals in society are able to get a lot of information concerning the events that are taking place around them without necessarily having to view traditional media such as newspapers and television. Furthermore, the ability of individuals to record diverse events across the planet has allowed for reports to be made even in those places where it is essentially impossible for journalists to operate safely (Deuze 2003, p.203). Among the most significant contributors to social media becoming a means of ensuring the development of reports were the so-called Arab Spring revolutions that took place in the Middle East. The revolutions of the Arab Spring were essentially developed through social media platforms and it these events that led to the realization of the potential of social media as a tool for reporting. The events that have taken place in Tunisia, Syria, and Egypt have brought about a situation where the role of social media in news reporting has been given recognition all over the world. This is because a large number of individuals have access to social media on their mobile devices and it is through the latter that they are able to transmit or share videos of events as they are taking place (Harcup 2011, p.15). The Arab Spring can be considered to be among the most significant events to have taken place in the twenty first century and this is mainly because of the role of social media. Through social media, the individuals who organized the protests that engulfed the Arab world were able to maintain constant communication and ensure that the news of these protests was posted for everyone in the world to see (Howard and Hussain 2013, p.17). Even in those events where traditional media was restricted, such as in Syria, individuals using social media were able to get word out concerning the events that were taking place and this allowed for the development of a basis upon which news about the Arab Spring was transmitted. Social media for the first time gave power over information to the people on the ground rather than the autocratic regimes which ruled them and controlled most traditional media within their countries. It is through social media that the Arab Spring can be considered to have achieved what it did because information was disseminated to those who participated in these revolutions and this allowed them to know what was happening in their countries on a firsthand basis. It is through social media and digital technologies that participants in the Arab Spring were able to ensure that they took part in the collective activism which allowed for the development of the uprisings. It is a fact that most governments in the Middle East prior to the Arab Spring held a tight control over media and this was done through state-owned channels. However, the advent of social media in these countries allowed for the development of activism which helped in the provision of information as they took place. State-owned media tended to be extremely biased towards the official government narrative of events and were not objective when it came to the events that took place in their respective countries (Mallen n.d., p.3). The power of social media as a tool for reporting became evident with the self-immolation of Bouazizi, the Tunisian activist in protest over police corruption. The significant number of people who witnessed this event and recorded it in their cell phones, eventually posting it to social media can be considered to have been what prompted the uprisings that spread all over the Arab world. If not for social media, this event would never have received the coverage that it did and would have become just another event that took place in Tunisia that was not considered important. It should be noted that social media from this time onwards became a critical means of receiving information within the Arab world, especially in countries affected by the uprisings, because governments kept all negative news concerning them at bay through their control of state media. Social media was used during the Arab Spring as a means of organizing protests and spreading awareness of events that were taking place in the countries affected. It is through this media that the uprisings were so successful, especially in the beginning, as individuals provided information and videos of events as they were happening (Howard and Hussain 2013, p.35). The ability of social media to influence events became a turning point for many countries as the news that originated from these sources became the inspiration behind the development of uprisings that led to the toppling of long entrenched governments. It is through the use of social media that most participants in the uprisings, especially in Egypt and Tunisia, were able to spread awareness of the events that were taking place as well as encourage others to take part in these events so that they could achieve the changes that they desired. While social media might have been successful in the beginning, it is essential to note that the recognition of social media’s influence made some of these autocratic governments block social networks such as Facebook. It has been reported that this blocking made it difficult for protestors to communicate and that this had a disruptive effect on the manner through which they conducted their operations. Social media had become an essential means of communication between protestors because it provided them with the information necessary about how and where to meet as well as the agenda of their protests. In this way, the disruption of such sites as Facebook made it difficult for these individuals to communicate and this can be considered to have been a significant setback to the uprisings in some countries. It has been argued that the role of social media in the Arab Spring has been quite important because it has ensured that the concept of digital democracy came into being. The ability of social media to influence political activism is a revolution in itself because it has allowed for the development of a new avenue for the promotion of democracy and its ideals (Mallen n.d., p.3). Before the Arab Spring, most of the regimes in the Middle East were extremely corrupt and self-serving with the leaders often using authoritarian methods to secure themselves in their power. The result of such circumstances was that there developed high levels of unemployment; a situation that was made worse through the repressive nature of the regimes involved. Leaders used state power to ensure that they were able to stifle dissent within the populations through the arbitrary arrest and imprisonment of political activists as well as using brutal tactics to maintain their grip on power. These events came to be reported through social media because a significant majority of both state-owned and private media in these states often chose not to show the repression that was taking place against the population. Social media changed this situation as more individuals began recording the episodes of repression taking place and placing them on these platforms; ensuring that information about the repressive regimes’ tactics became well known not only in their home countries, but also in the rest of the world. It is through reporting these events through social media that activists came to have an audience wide enough to be inspired to take an active part in changing their countries. In previous years, there were several revolutions in the Middle East that were attempted through the use of social media, especially Facebook but these ended up becoming failures mainly because a significant number of them were quashed by the secret police. Such conditions created situations where many prominent activists could not promote their activities through social media because to do so would have meant being easily tracked down and undergo torture, imprisonment, or even being put to death. Furthermore, very few people in Middle Eastern countries had access to digital devices and most of those who did were not very enthusiastic users. Therefore, it was quite difficult for political activists to spread their message to the rest of the population, with the latter for the most part being either complacent or living in ignorance of the brutality of the regimes that governed them. The advent of the digital age in the Middle East and the increasing number of individuals, especially the youth, who were regular users, changed the dynamics of the situation as many of them became more aware of the conditions in which they were living (Pavlik 2000, p.229). Social media ceased to be technology that many people feared to indulge in and it instead became a means through which they could express themselves about their conditions of living and actively participate in the debate concerning democracy in their respective countries. Reporting on the atrocities committed by the regimes that ruled over them enabled the development of a movement that shook the foundations of post-colonial Middle East to the point of regime change as well as the achievement of more rights for individuals in some countries. Social media reporting received a significant boost during the Arab Spring because statistics show that there was a significant upsurge in social media usage in the Middle East during this period (Huang, 2011). This upsurge came about as a result of the massive interest that the revolutions taking place in different parts garnered within the Middle Eastern population. Social media usage more than doubled in the months when the Arab Spring began and this ended up becoming a platform upon which tangible changes could be achieved. The different peoples of the Middle East came to realize that social media was a means through which collective intelligence could be gathered and shared. This gathering and sharing of intelligence was essential for the development of the diverse movements that enabled regime change in the region. The power of social media came to be utilized as an essential tool for making possible actions which led to not only an end to oppressive regimes, but also to the inauguration of participatory systems in some Middle Eastern countries which are hoped will become democracies in the near future. Furthermore, social media became developed into a tool that was used to ensure the support of collective action among the Middle Eastern populace as they for the first time came to share their experiences under repressive regimes and to rebel against them in a bid to usher in a new age of democracy into their countries. In this way, the social media reports became a tool for Middle Easterners to bring about political change while at the same time share their views concerning the future that they had for their countries. While the above paragraph has dealt with the upsurge of social media usage in most of the Middle East as well as its effects, there were situations where social media usage actually reduced. An instance of this was in Libya where as a result of the rebellion that erupted against Muammar Gaddafi, a significant part of the population fled, leading to a disruption of their lives to such an extent that their use of social media was reduced (Huang, 2011). Social media in the Libyan revolution did not play such a crucial part as it did in other Middle Eastern countries such as Tunisia and Egypt because of the violent turn that the protests took. The result was that a number of those who would otherwise have used social media for the purpose of reporting the events that were taking place did not have an opportunity to do so. Moreover, most of the Libyan social media users who fled the violence tended to take their usage elsewhere and this significantly reduced the number of individuals who took an active part in reporting events as they happened on the ground. The power of social media in this case was drastically reduced and this created a scenario where it was difficult for reports concerning atrocities committed by both sides of the Libyan conflict to be efficiently reported; with the main narrative coming from the one-sided perspective of Western media. The reduction of social media usage can also be seen in the Syrian case and the same argument, that a large number of social media users have fled the conflict zones, can be made to account for this discrepancy considering that social media became very popular in other parts of the Middle East. Social media is an essentially new development in terms of being a means of reporting events across the world and this has created a situation where its main users are young people (Goode 2009, p.1287). During the Arab Spring, through the use of social media, young people were the main drivers of the revolutions that were taking place. They used this technology as a means of ensuring that their frustrations and aspirations became well known across their own countries and in the rest of the world. Social media was used by young Arabs to express their desire for change as well as to garner support for their actions among the rest of their countries’ populations as well as the international community. The increase in the number of social media users, especially those of Facebook, among the young people of the Middle East made sure that a greater audience for political activism was achieved. Social media became the new means of communication among the young generation who felt that traditional forms of media were not sufficient enough to provide an in depth analysis and view of the actual situation in their countries. In this way, social media became a valuable asset in the organization and spreading awareness of the protests and revolutions that were taking place in some of the most important Middle Eastern countries. It is through this asset that people in other countries came to realize what was going on and support the aspirations of the younger generation of Middle Easterners who felt betrayed by their own governments. During the events of the Arab Spring, social media supplemented the live coverage that international media such as Al Jazeera and BBC News had initiated (Howard and Hussain 2013, p.89). This was done through the delivery of videos and other content online that allowed for greater information than what was occurring in the streets to be revealed. It is through the influence of social media that international media came to concentrate their attention on live coverage and the constant presence of cameras prevented the authorities under siege in the Middle East from taking actions that would have led to a large number of deaths. The spreading influence of social media ensured that traditional media increased their efforts to cover the events more efficiently than they would have otherwise done; making possible almost continuous coverage of the events as they unfolded. Through both social media and live coverage of events on television, mass violence against protestors was prevented and it brought about a situation where the people in the streets were able to gain more courage to do what they had to do to bring authoritarian regimes to an end. Such was not the case in those countries where social media presence was limited, especially in Bahrain, where the government chose to defy the wishes of a majority of its people and use violence as a means of maintaining its grip on power. The mass violence that was meted out on the people of Bahrain by its security forces with support from Saudi Arabia would not have been possible had there been serious social media and traditional media live coverage in the country. It should be noted that it is through the images and videos of events taking place using social media that the world came to have a better view of what was happening in the Middle East (Himelfarb, 2011). This is especially the case in situations where international media was blocked from covering events, as seen through the ban on international journalists from some areas of the conflict. Social media in this case became more efficient in the provision of reports as they happened in the field than journalists because the individuals who recorded videos and took images of events were neither trained nor professionals. Instead, the recorded events out of a sense of duty because they wanted the world to witness firsthand the events taking place in their home countries and gain its support. It is through the effort of these individuals, who often put their lives at risk, that it became possible for them to record the necessary information and report it through social media; essentially helping the world realize and understand the events that had taken most Middle Eastern regimes by surprise. In this way, social media played a crucial role in the development and increase in momentum of the movement that became known as the Arab Spring. In conclusion, the discussion above has shown that the revolutions of the Arab Spring were essentially developed through social media platforms and it these events that led to the realization of the potential of social media as a tool for reporting. The events that took place in Tunisia, Syria, and Egypt have brought about a situation where the role of social media in news reporting has been given recognition all over the world. Moreover, social media was used during the Arab Spring as a means of organizing protests and spreading awareness of events that were taking place in the countries affected. This is because social media reporting received a significant boost because statistics show that there was a significant upsurge in social media usage in the Middle East during this period. In addition, during the Arab Spring, through the use of social media, young people were the main drivers of the revolutions that were taking place. Furthermore, it supplemented the live coverage that international media such as Al Jazeera and BBC News had initiated. Finally, it should be noted that it is through the images and videos of events taking place using social media that the world came to have a better view of what was happening in the Middle East. References Deuze, M., 2003. “The web and its journalisms considering the consequences of different types of news media online.” New Media and Society, vol.5, no.2, pp. 203-230. Goode, L., 2009. “Social news, citizen journalism and democracy. New Media & Society, vol.11, no. 8, pp.1287-1305. Harcup, T., 2011. “Alternative journalism as active citizenship.” Journalism, vol.12, no.1, pp.15-31. Himelfarb, S., 2011 "Social Media in the Middle East." United States Institute of Peace. http://www.usip.org/publications/social-media-in-the-middle-east Howard, P.N. & Hussain, M.M. 2013. Democracys Fourth Wave?: Digital Media and the Arab Spring. Oxford, Oxford University Press. 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