New Media and its Effects on Sovereignty in the Middle East - Research Paper Example

Name Lecturer Task Date Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 1.0 Introduction 3 2.0 Hypothesis and Null hypothesis 4 3.0 Rationale of the Study 4 4.0 Statement of the Problem 5 4.1 Yemen 6 4.2 Tunisia 6 4.3 Syria 7 5.0 Theoretical Framework 7 6.0 Significance of the Study 9 7.0 Literature Review 9 8.0 Major Concepts and Variables 10 9.0 Research Methodology 11 10.0 Research Findings Summary 12 10.1 Tunisia 12 10.2 Syria 13 10.3 Yemen 14 11.0 Conclusion 15 12.0 Bibliography 16 1.0 Introduction With the recent developments in internet and its accessibility, the use of social media tools has taken center stage in almost every aspect of life such as the public policy. Notably, many things have changed as a result of social media. Unlike in the past where access to other websites was restricted in offices, employers are currently encouraging the use of social media in the offices basically because it has replaced the old advertising modes. Similarly, the use of social media in administration has been adopted in many countries with the most overt example being the Obama administration. The social media have developed significant impacts around the world, more specifically in the Middle East. The authority of these Social Network technologies produces rapid communication throughout societies causing historical revelations, such as, the events of "Arab Spring" that happened on December 2010 in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria. Therefore, this research paper would demonstrate the factors that led to the outbreak of Arab Spring, highlighting the influence of Social Media throughout the Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter during that period. In account of the data provided throughout the research, social problems in those countries will be identified, and addressed, expressing the prevailing impacts of Social Media in facilitating the event of Arab Spring from both positive, and negative prospective. Also, this paper will highlight the magnitude social problems such as those in , education and health that were experienced as a result of these protests. Additionally, the paper will highlight the aftermath of the event and how these protests led to emergence of different social problems. 2.0 Hypothesis and Null hypothesis The main objective of this paper is to investigate the use and effects of social media on public policy in the Middle East. Most of the Middle East countries such Syria and Yemen have seen the emergence of uprisings in the recent past which correlates with the growth of social media users. However, it remains unclear as to why the current uprisings unlike in the past. This research will be guided by some questions; How did the activists use social media to reach other people? How did these governments use the social media tools as a response to these uprisings? What were the impacts of social media in the facilitation of Arab Spring event? What is the social movement theory's view about social media's role in accelerating these uprisings? There are many factors which are likely to have accelerated the social unrest. It is hypothesized that among other key factors, social media had a key role in accelerating this social unrest. This is based on the fact that social media promotes global attention to local issues and it allows uncontrolled communication between the residents and the rest of the world. In the current past, many governments have tried to control social media use but with no success. Notably, many of these uprisings have focused on the social media after government's intervention to close other traditional communication modes. 3.0 Rationale of the Study Social media has had significant impacts on every aspect of life today. The effects on public policy is no exception. As many scholars have perceived, the role of social media in these protests ought not to be downplayed1. Findings have shown that although social media did not have a direct impact on these uprisings, they contributed greatly to the widespread of these protests. Social media in itself has contributed immensely in these social unrests but not an adequate tool in their organizations and effectuation2. It is important to note that the social, economic and political factors remain key contributing factors towards protests in the Arab Spring3. Social unrests have been accompanied by several problems especially those related to human rights. Currently, the affected Middle East nations such as Syria are facing crucial socioeconomic problems that have led to serious humanitarian crises4. It is therefore crucial for the affected nations to address this problem. In order to address this problem, it is crucial to understand their root causes. This research study aims at finding the correlation between social media and the social unrests, and the magnitude of impact it had on these uprisings. This may help in finding a lasting solution to the current problem facing many Middle East nations. 4.0 Statement of the Problem Social unrests are becoming a major threat to stability and development of Middle East nations such as Yemen, Syria, Iran and Jordan. Yemen, Syria and Jordan are the most affected nations. Most of these revolutions began in 2011 and in fact, many commentators have nicknamed them Facebook, You Tube or Twitter revolutions for what they believe to be the period when these social media forms gained ground5. They tend to believe that these social media tools are the key roots to these social unrests. However, such generations should not be made without proper investigations because they take away the reality on the actual causes of these revolutions. As earlier stated, these revolutions emerged as a result of economic, political and social factors. These protests in Middle East nations emerged at different times and for different reasons. 4.1 Yemen Social unrest started in January 2011 and the protestors were complaining about the changes in the constitution and state of economy which had deteriorated6. Towards the end of January, thousands of protestors were in the streets and they demanded for an overhaul of leadership. Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab World7 and this could be as a result of poor leadership from Ali Abdullah Saleh who has been on the throne for nearly three decades8. To date, rebels continue to fight with government troops demanding for secession from the Northern region. The fighting continue to worsen day by day and resulted to violation of human rights. Rebels aim at schools, hospitals and people's places of residence9. Findings from the United indicate that at least four hospitals, four schools, one college and an institution for the disabled were destroyed from mid January10. 4.2 Tunisia Protests erupted in Tunisia in December 2010. Like in other nations, the main reason for these protests was increased corruption in the government and increased unemployment of the youth. Protests intensified into violence and it propagated to other parts of the country. All these came after the killing of Mohammed Bouazizi who was a street vendor in Sidi Bouzid11. Violence escalated in the entire country to an extent that the president had to flee. 4.3 Syria It is the most affected nation in Middle East by antigovernment protests. Protests started in March 2011 after its initial failure. Protests materialized in Syria after the creation of Facebook page dubbed "The Syrian Revolution 2011"12. Since then, violence has escalated between the Al-Assad government forces and rebels. In a bid to quell these protests, the government has engaged in brutal ways posing serious humanitarian crisis. Since inception, more than 100, 000 people have been reported to have died while over two million others displaced. Syria residents have been forced to flee the war torn country in search of refuge in the neighboring countries. Considering these three Middle East nations that have been torn apart by social unrests, serious intervention measures are required to eliminate this catastrophe especially in a nation like Syria. The problem continue to exist up to date basically because little has been done in understanding the fuelling factors which have been mentioned by a number scholars. This research study aims at getting a clear understanding of the effects of social media in this violence. 5.0 Theoretical Framework People engage in political protest due to some reasons. The way in which individuals marshal themselves can be explained by social movement theory. A number of scholars have given their perceptions about social movements. Karl Marx who advocated for socialism rather than capitalism. Marx perceived that revolutions were a normal thing with capitalist societies13. According to Karl Marx, revolution is a stepwise process and it begins with few individuals. First, the revolutionary class will resist oppression by attacking their machinery and engaging in activities like setting factories on fire 14. This will be followed by formation of trade unions against the ruling class demanding for better wages15. At this stage they also engage in occasional rioting and violence in specific places. The third stage will be the formation of national and global networks linking them across their neighborhoods16. This stage is followed by organization into a revolutionary class and mostly at this level their interests are recognized by the ruling causing internal differences within the ruling class17. The last stage is that of victorious revolution and the revolutionary class gain control over everything. Inequality is a key factor to this theory. The current problem facing Middle East nations is a product of inequality which has undergone Marx's stages and to be specific, they are in the second last stage. Linking social movement theory and these revolutions may help in shedding light the effect of social media18. As noted by Lamer, Wiebke that revolutions may not always succeed, but to some extent help in behavioral change of a country19. Similarly, George Soros says “Revolutions are rarely successful. They often end in tragedy. But they change the behavior of that country afterwards. The 1956 Hungarian Revolution was repressed. But it carried with it the seeds of the successful revolution in 1989.”20 It is quite undeniable technological advancements and emergence of new media have aided in these mass protests and that the status of activism has changed completely because of these technological advancement21. With social media, information can now move freely from one individual to another. Moreover, the new media helps is documenting these events. It is for this reason the Syrian citizens got information on the Hama massacre of 1982 through media22.With media, oppressive governments are unable to bar its citizens from accessing the right information. With the current technological advancements, it is quite difficult for oppressive governments to control the flow of information and it is for this reason the problem continue to exist. The social movement theory 6.0 Significance of the Study The study of effects of social media on public policy in the Middle East can be a useful research study that can help in finding a lasting solution to the problems affecting the Middle East nations. As earlier observed, revolutions occur in steps therefore; the study will help in solutions to problems while it is at its earlier stages for instance at the community level. Therefore, the study will be helpful to the field of public administration. The question of whether media strengthens or weakens the state is yet to be answered by scholars23. This research study will provide some of the answers to this question. 7.0 Literature Review Much has been done with regards to the social media and public policy. Scholars from communication and sociology disciplines have provided their contributions in the study of social media in many contexts such as politics24. The social media tools were originally meant for communication. The rise of social media tools such as Facebook has resulted to change of how things were initially done such as advertisement. These media tools get their revenue through advertisements that are placed alongside their web pages. Social media tools have also aided the government and citizen communication25. Social media has turned out to be the best way the government can reach its citizens. For example the U.S. government can communicate to its citizens via You Tube channels and Facebook pages26. Besides this, any citizen can question the accountability of the government via social media and voice their concerns. The impact of ICT development on social political movements has been covered widely in literature. There are three mechanisms under which social movements can be linked to social media technology are; reduction of costs of participation, enhancement of collective identity and the creation of a community27. In the recent past, many governments have formed opened web sites where the public can access government data and channel their concerns. It is therefore undeniable that these tools have turned out to be of great importance. Despite this, many problems have come along with the emergence of social media28. Scholars have given their perceptions about the 2011 uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa and according to many of them, social media is the main reason behind these uprisings29. With the emergence of social media, it has become a major challenge especially for the government to control the flow of information. On many cases, political activists have resorted to social media after government's initiative to block other traditional media forms. Besides the government's inability to control, social media is fast and it came along with initially impossible interactivity which the traditional forms lacked. 8.0 Major Concepts and Variables There are crucial concepts that deem crucial in building up this research study. A common term that will be used is social media. No consensus definition of this term has been given in academic discipline. It is for this reason that terms such as internet, information communication technology and new media are always used interchangeable with social media. The main reason for this could be because previous studies done were more general. Previous studies have focused on the effects if ICT on the politics. The study of effects of social media on politics is a new field and perhaps this could be the reason for the absence of consensus definition of the social media in the context of public policy. In a more general sense, "social media refers to a set of web-based applications broadcast technologies that enable the democratization of content, giving people the ability to emerge from consumers of content to publishers"30 31. Public policy on the other hand is defined as "a purposive and consistent course of action produced in response to a perceived problem of a constituency, formulated by a specific political process and adopted, implemented and enforced by a public agency"32. In simple terms, public policy is basically what the government undertakes to address some problems. These two basic concepts are the major variables that will be analyzed in this study. The study will involve analysis of how social media has developed and government control over social media in the affected countries. In this case, social media will be taken as an independent variable which will be depended upon by public policies. In my view, social media in a crucial factor to the development of public policies owing to the fact that it has aided in improving communication. Therefore, the current problem facing Middle East nations are accelerated by social media. 9.0 Research Methodology This study largely depended on secondary information basically because of the complexity of getting secondary data. Therefore, secondary analysis was a key research methodology that was employed. The choice of secondary analysis in this research study was pushed by the costs that could be incurred in a case of primary research and the time to be taken in collecting data. Getting secondary information was not be a major problem for this method owing to the fact that large amount of information is available because it is the present topic of interest. Most of this information is available online. Importantly, a cautious review of these resources was necessary to ascertain their credibility. 10.0 Research Findings Summary 10.1 Tunisia Social unrest in Tunisia spread out in three phases. The first phase of social unrest was experienced after self execution of a youth in the interior part of the country in a protest against brutal treatment by those in authority. The police reacted brutally to those who were protesting and this provided a chance for the activists to take the images of shocking brutal treatment against the protestors33. The second phase of protests involved the spread of these images online through sites such as You Tube hence fuelling protests in other parts of the country34 35. As police tried to quell the escalating violence by use of brutal ways, political activists took videos of what was happening in those areas of protests and posted on a common twitter hash tag e.g. #Bouazizi and #sidibouzid36 formed after immolation37. The last stage involved the spread of information in a more popular and global social media tool; Facebook. Unlike Twitter, Facebook provided more information by allowing upload of photos and videos for the public reaching many people38. The use of both videos and photos resulted to protests going viral. A Tunisian youth protestor said "it was an online video that provoked a physical response that persuaded me to make the jump into open activism"39. At this last stage, the protest received much support from other people around the world. Effort by the government to close social media went futile. However, it was successful in detaining internet activists and bloggers. Despite this, protestors learnt about what the government was doing and this even escalated violence. 10.2 Syria As earlier stated, Syrian protests erupted in 2011. Initial call for a protest was unsuccessful even after the formation of common Facebook page in which more than sixteen thousand Syrians supported the idea of protest40. However, the call for protests took another turn after the creation of a Facebook page dubbed "The Syrian Revolution". Besides Facebook, other social media tools had a key role to play in these protests. This resulted to the government imposing restrictions to journalists engaging in independent reporting41. This effort by the government to block journalists from getting first hand information was of no help because bloggers and activists could still use twitter and other social media tools to get videos which still provided credible information about what was happening on the ground42. A perfect example of this was a case where a Al jazeera journalist who had been thrown out of Syria still could report on Twitter a freaking attack by the government forces he had witnessed. He said " I witnessed a funeral march. Cut down by gunfire. Directly into crowd. Horrible. Gunfire was so intense, cars hit nearby. Firing was on overpass that connects Deraa with Izraa. Road cut totally. Military zone. Was forced to turn around and flee to #Lebanon. 10km north of Izraa where we saw people shot, my taxi driver (from Deraa) started to cry. Military zone seems to be about 20km from Jordanian border. Just 10k from where people were killed, soldiers at checkpoint were laughing. It was one of the most horrible things I have ever seen. So many people must have been killed"43. It is quite clear that social media tools had a key role to play in these protests. 10.3 Yemen Social unrest started at the beginning of 2011. Just like in other nations social media played a key role in accelerating protests. This occurred despite few people Yemenis accessing the internet. A greater percentage of those who used social media in calling for these protests were university students44. Compared to other Middle East nations, Yemen had the lowest internet penetration rate with about 180,000 people having Facebook accounts by 201145. The few elite protestors and activists who had little knowledge of social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter used them to mobilize their supporters to combine their efforts in protests46. This came as an alternative after the government news organizations had been blocked from accessing the affected areas such as Sanaa. Despite the low internet accessibility in Yemen, social media played some role in ensuring that these protests were effective. 11.0 Conclusion As initially hypothesized, social media played a key role in accelerating social unrest. However, a simple generality should not be given on the relationship between the two variables. Yemen for example had the lowest internet penetration, yet protests were effective as they were in other Middle East nations. As noted by Moussa Mohamed Ben, internet connectivity has six basic roles in social movements and they include; promotion of interaction and a means of communication, serves as a creative vent of expression, helps in generation of resources, provides a gateway for information access and serves as a mobilization tool47. Therefore, social media tools aided in the organization and effectuation of protests in the Middle East. Notably, in spite of the fact that You tube, Facebook and Twitter are the only social media tools mentioned here, there are many other social media tools that have proven helpful in accelerating social unrests. 12.0 Bibliography Lamer, W. Twitter and Tyrants: New Media and its Effects on Sovereignty in the Middle East." Arab Media & Society (16). Accessed March, 1 (2014). Dewey, Taylor, Juliane Kaden, Miriam Marks, Shun Matsushima & Beijing Zhu. "The impact of social media on social unrest in the Arab Spring." International Policy Program (2012). Achy, Lahcen. 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