[FoME] Twitter in the Arab spring: more likely to spread information outside the region than inside

[Christoph Dietz]

New media and conflict after the Arab spring
Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace (USIP), 2012

Download: http://www.usip.org/files/resources/PW80.pdf

Summary:

An extraordinary wave of popular protest swept the Arab world in 2011.
Massive popular mobilization brought down long-ruling leaders in Tunisia
and Egypt, helped spark bloody struggles in Bahrain, Libya, Syria, and
Yemen, and fundamentally reshaped the nature of politics in the region.

■ New media - at least that which uses bit.ly linkages - did not appear
to play a significant role in either in-country collective action or
regional diffusion during this period.

■ This lack of impact does not mean that social media - or digital
media generally - were unimportant. Nor does it preclude the possibility
that other new media technologies were significant in these contexts, or
even that different Twitter or link data would show different results.
But it does mean that at least in terms of media that use bit.ly links
(especially Twitter), data do not provide strong support for claims of
significant new media impact on Arab Spring political protests.

■ New media outlets that use bit.ly are more likely to spread
information outside the region than inside it, acting like a megaphone
more than a rallying cry. This dissemination could be significant if it
led to a boomerang effect that brought international pressure to bear on
autocratic regimes, or helped reduce a regimes tendency to crack down
violently on protests.

■ It is increasingly difficult to separate new media from old media. In
the Arab Spring, the two reinforced each other. New media must be
understood as part of a wider information arena in which new and old
media form complex interrelationships.

■ Of the four major Arab Spring protests analyzed - Tunisia, Egypt,
Libya, and Bahrain - large differences were found across the four in the
amount of information consumed via social media. The events in Egypt and
in Libya (#jan25 and #feb17, respectively) garnered many more clicks on
a much larger number of URLs than those in Tunisia and Bahrain.

■ The protests in Egypt and Libya attracted more attention than those
in other countries and also focused that attention on a more delimited
set of content. Particular hashtags, such as #jan25, received a
disproportionate proportion of attention.

■ The trends also suggest very sharp peaks of attention pegged to
dramatic events, such as the departure of Ben Ali in Tunisia, the Pearl
Roundabout raid in Bahrain, and several key days during the protest in
Egypt - especially the Friday of departure, when Mubarak resigned.


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Christoph Dietz
CAMECO
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D-52021 Aachen, Germany
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christoph.dietz at cameco.org 
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