The Impact of Social Media on Political Awareness in Azerbaijan - Research Paper Example

 The Impact of Social Media on Political Awareness in Azerbaijan Abstract The social media has become an important tool to advance various causes. One of these causes is political awareness in various places as witnessed in the recent Arab Spring. Consequently, governments have realized the threat posed by the social media to their authority and have fronted various ways to emasculate the role of media. In Azerbaijan, a recent demonstration held in the country tried to replicate the success of the social media in creating political awareness. Consequently, this paper researched on the impact of social media on political awareness in Azerbaijan. Using an online survey, the study found out that the role if social media was little although it still played an influential and important role towards political awareness that the respondents highlighted as effective in informing the public. Social media, Arab Spring, Azerbaijan Contents Abstract 1 Introduction 3 Background 3 Research Problem 4 Methods 5 Results 6 Age 6 Social Media Use 7 Engagement of People in Political Causes via Social Media 9 Engagement in Political Discussion 11 Level of Engagement 11 Engagement in Demonstration found on Social Media 11 Effective of Social Media in Informing People about Political Demonstrations 12 Discussion 12 Conclusion 13 References 14 The Impact of Social Media on Political Awareness in Azerbaijan Introduction There are various ways to educate the public about various political issues in a region. In convention practice, the media has been the most vocal tool that has contributed to political awareness in various parts of the world. Throughout history, people have used the media to advance political ideologies and create political awareness. Nonetheless, the advent of the internet has witnessed growth in the approaches that people propagate political ideologies and causes. With the growth of the internet, the world has witnessed a growth in social media tools such as blogs; social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, among others; and other social media platforms that have been instrumental in advancing political ideologies and causes, which create political awareness (Haas, 2011). As a result, the assumption has been that the exposure of people to information technology contributes to political activism in totalitarian countries (Pierce & Kendzior, 2012). In former Soviet Union States such as Azerbaijan, which practice a form of “patron presidentialism” that is characterized by formal and informal being a preserve of the president, it is crucial to investigate the impact of social media in political awareness. Background The Arab Spring that took place across the Middle East from Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, and beyond, highlighted the role of the social media in the revolutionaries that took place at the time. Importantly, the young and the old took to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other forms of media to plan, organize, mobilize and inform demonstrators about the role that each should play in the revolutions (Allagui & Kuebler, 2011). The coordination and mobilization of political activity on social media is usually a result of a regime’s emasculation of the mainstream media such as newspapers, magazines, television, radio, and other forms of mainstream media (Lewis, 2011). Consequently, citizens in such countries have adopted the use of social media in order to advance their causes and create political awareness in their countries. Despite the adoption of social media as a way of promoting political awareness, the Azerbaijan government has realized the potential threat posed by these tools towards their governance and they have resulted to intimidation tactics to control the media (Gahramanova, 2009). For a country whose a third of its population had adopted the use of social media by 2011, the government has used various approaches to monitor the use of social media with users’ Facebook, Yahoo!, and Gmail accounts being compromised frequently. In addition, the government has arrested bloggers and activities for using these sites (Pierce & Kendzior, 2012). Research Problem In a study by Pierce and Kendzior (2012), the young people in Azerbaijan were increasingly using social media for various reasons with a majority participating in the 2011 protests. These protests were called by the head of opposition to call for the resignation of President Ilham Aliyev (Barry, 2011). However, the study did not focus on the role that the social media played to organize and mobilize people to protest. Consequently, this study seeks to access the impact of social media on political awareness in Azerbaijan. In order to achieve this, the study hypothesizes that: Social media users in Azerbaijan use these tools to follow and engage in political awareness. Social media users in Azerbaijan are interested in participating in political causes due to their interaction with other social media users. The use of social media to mobilize public participation in political activities and causes was effective. Methods An online survey was the main method that was used to generate data for the research study. Using the Survey Monkey website found at https://www.surveymonkey.com/, the researcher set the sample to consist 67 respondents from Azerbaijan who were to complete a set of ten questions that focused on the use of social media in the country. It is important to point out that the researcher designed the survey questionnaire, picked the custom audience based on the website’s options, with the results provided by the website appearing in form of percentages as commanded by the researcher. In this case, the tool in the website randomly sampled the respondents in order to answer the questionnaire from the researcher. The respondents were free to answer the questions based on their level of understanding. On the other hand, the rationale of using this method to collect data was that the researcher thought that the anonymous nature of the questionnaire would promote honesty among the respondents. In addition, the Azerbaijan government’s approach of clamping down social media users advancing political causes formed a basis for the use of this methodology. The researcher used a combination of descriptive and simple statistics, such as percentages, and figures such as charts and graphs in order to analyze the data from the survey. Importantly, the findings were analyzed according to common themes based on the research hypothesis in order to present the data Results From the process of data collection, the researcher used simple statistics such as percentages, means, and figures such as graphs and findings to analyze the data collected from the survey results. Based on the survey, 67 respondents completed the survey questions although not all respondents answered all the questions provided by the researcher in the questionnaire. Based on the findings, 41 respondents, which represented 62.1% of the research sample, were male while 25 respondents, which represented 37.9% of the sample research, were female. Only one respondent opted not to provide their gender. Age The graph below provides the age distribution of the respondents from the survey sample. Figure 1: The age of respondents in years The median age of the respondents was 19.2 years old. In this case, the data captured the youthful population of Azerbaijan. Importantly, this was the official adult age in Azerbaijan. To highlight the extent of adoption of social media amongst the youthful population in Azerbaijan, majority of the respondents were between the age of 16 and 20 years. Social Media Use Regarding the use of social media, 63 respondents indicated that they used social media for various reasons. This number represents 96.9% of the sample in the study. On the other hand, 3.1% of those who answered this question indicated that they did not use social media. These were only two respondents, with two other respondents decline to comment on this question. There were various reasons that the respondents used social media. For the purpose of this research, the researcher provided the respondents with four choices for answers on the question asking the respondents to indicate the reasons they used social media as shown in the chart below. Figure 2: The various reasons for social media use among the Azerbaijan Only two people skipped this question with a majority indicating that they used social media to communicate with their family and friends. In fact, 62 people indicated that they used social media in order to communicate with their family. On the other hand, only 14 respondents indicated that they used social media to follow political causes. Consequently, this led to another question whereby the respondents were asked about their interest in political causes with the results shown below. Figure 3: The level of Respondents Interest in Political Causes Following the questions on the respondents’ interest on political causes, it was important to ask the respondents about the social media sites that they used to follow political causes with the results indicated in the graph below: Figure 5: Social Media sites that people used Fifty-eight respondents answered this question with the researcher giving the respondents the opportunity to provide as many answers in order to investigate the likely social media tools that people use. On the other hand, it was important to investigate the social level that the respondents engaged in political causes via their interaction with the social media tools. Thus, the following findings were obtained. Engagement of People in Political Causes via Social Media Based on the research questionnaire, the respondents indicated their frequency of exposure to political sites. First, it was important to investigate the level of frequency that the respondents visited social media sites and identified political messages without initiating debate. In effect, the findings are shown in figure 5 below: Figure 5: The frequency of coming across political messages and failing to initiate Conversations Based on the findings, the level of frequency of coming across these messages suggests that a majority of people, more than 70% of the respondents, came across political messages. On the other hand, only 15.4% of the respondents never came across these messages. Consequently, it was crucial to investigate the level of the people’s involvement in political discussions on social media sites. However, it is evident that the level of involvement is not as high as the researcher had projected. Engagement in Political Discussion Level of Engagement According to the findings, 45% of the respondents never involved themselves in political discussion on social media. This is a high number of people who failed to engage in political discussion. Almost half of the sample respondents, which when applied to the entire public might translate to half of the population. Nonetheless, the chart below represents the findings of the level of engagement in political discussion. Figure 6: Level of engagement of people in political discussions Engagement in Demonstration found on Social Media Based on the findings, it is apparent that a majority of Azerbaijan did not involve in demonstrations for political discussions that they found on social media. In this case, 79% of the respondents engaged in demonstrations that they found on social media as shown in the picture below: Figure 7: Participation of respondents in political demonstrations they found on social media Effective of Social Media in Informing People about Political Demonstrations Despite the failure by a majority to engage in political demonstrations from social media, the respondents agreed that there was some level of effectiveness in the use of social media in planning political demonstrations. Although only 50 people answered this question, more than half of the respondents agreed that social media achieved some level of effectiveness in informing people about political demonstrations. Discussion Based on the findings, it is important to point out that the youth were the major consumers of social media in Azerbaijan. In line with this, the youthful population does not engage in political demonstrations with the main reason of using social media among the adopters being communication with their family and friends. One reason for failure to participate in political demonstrations was due to the government’s control of the use of social media and the approaches that the government used to deal with demonstrators (Kendzior, 2011). Nonetheless, it is fulfilling that the social media has played an important role in informing people about political activities in the country. However, a majority of the population did not participate in political demonstrations that they came across in social media. Consequently, the failure to participate in political demonstrations might be a result of the fear of the government’s clamp down on dissent in the country (March, 2003). Important though, the respondents identified the important role that the social media played in informing people about political demonstrations and creating awareness. However, the social media played a role in informing people about political issues and demonstrations although its impact was not highly effective. Conclusion Although not conclusive, it is evident that social media influence people’s participation in political demonstrations in Azerbaijan. However, the level of influence it plays in influencing political awareness was low and not highly significant when compared with other countries such as Egypt and Tunisia. Nonetheless, political activists can design approaches that they can use to tap into the potential role of social media in creating political awareness in the country. In terms of improving this research, a more rigorous approach would have involved designing the methodology in such a way that it considered the demonstrations held in 2011. In this case, the methodology would identify participants who took part in the demonstration and use them as respondents to investigate their level of participating in the demonstration and the role, or no role, which the social media played in influencing their participation. On the other hand, future research should also focus on the level of education and the participation in political demonstration as a result of the influence of social awareness. References Allagui, I., & Kuebler. J. (2011). The Arab Spring and the Role of ICTs. International Journal of Communication, 5, 1435-1442. Barry, E. (2011). Police in Azerbaijan Arrest Antigovernment Protesters. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/world/asia/13azerbaijan.html?_r=0 Gahramanova, A. (2009). Internal and external factors in the democratization of Azerbaijan. Democratization, 16, 777–803. doi: 10.1080/13510340903083919. Haas, R. N. (2011). Reflections on the Revolutions in Egypt: The New Arab Revolt. New York, NY: The Council on Foreign Relations. Lewis, B. (2011). Freedom and Justice in the Modern Middle East: The New Arab Revolt. New York, NY: The Council on Foreign Relations, 2011. Kendzior, S. (2011). Digital distrust: Uzbek cynicism and solidarity in the Internet age. American Ethnologist, 38, 559–575. doi: 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2011.01323.x. March, A. F. (2003). State ideology and the legitimation of authoritarianism: The case of post- Soviet Uzbekistan. Journal of Political Ideologies, 8, 209–232. doi:10.1080/13569310306088 Pearce, S, & Kendzior, S. (2012). Networked Authoritarianism and Social Media in Azerbaijan. Journal of Communication, 22(9916), 1-16. Read More