SOCIAL MEDIA FOSTERING THE REVOLUTIONS: CASE STUDY OF THE ARAB SPRING

Abstract

Globalization converted the world into a global village which is closely interconnected through Social Media. 2010 and 2011, were the years of large scale political uprisings in Middle East. The uprisings were mainly the result of the political mobilization that was generated by the Social Networking sites such as Face book, Twitter and YouTube Social media played an important role in awakening the people and mobilizing them to protest for their rights, and against the authoritarian regimes they were living under The research discusses the role of social media in bringing up the Arab spring.. The aim of research paper is to articulate how the revolution has been fostered by the Social Media and the role social media play in political mobilization. The research is both qualitative and quantitative in methodology in which the primary sources for qualitative data are the newspaper archives and books on empowerment of the social media while the secondary sources are the academic research papers. Quantitative analysis will be based on the survey conducted by the author himself. This paper concludes that social media has made an unequivocal contribution in fostering the revolutions and bringing up the revolution in Middle East during Arab Spring.