Writing in the M/C Journal, Zahera Harb offers an incisive analysis of the role of social media in political change in the Arab world:
....Is this, then, the age of new media? Could the Internet be a free space for Arab citizens to express their opinion and fulfil their democratic aspirations in bringing about freedom of speech and political freedom generally? Is it able to form the new Arab public sphere?
Recent events show that the potential is there. What happened in Tunisia and Egypt was effectively the seizure of power by the people as part of a collective will to overthrow dictators and autocratic regimes and to effect democratic change from within(i.e. not having it imposed by foreign powers). The political moment in Tunisia was right and the people receptive; the army refused to respond violently to the protests and members of bin Ali’s government rose up against him. The political and social scene in Egypt became receptive after the people felt empowered by events in Tunis.
Will this transnational empowerment now spread to other Arab countries open to change notwithstanding the tribal and sectarian alliances that characterise their populations? Further, since new media have proven to be “dangerous tools” in the hands of the citizens of Tunisia and Egypt, will other Arab regimes clamp down on them or hijack them for their own interests as they did the satellite channels previously?
Maybe, but new media technology is arguably ahead of the game and I am sure that those regimes stand to be taken by surprise by another wave of revolutions facilitated by a new online tool. So far, Arab leaders have been of one voice in blaming the mediafor the protests (uprisings) their countries are witnessing—from Tunisia to Syria via Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Libya. As [Lina] Khatib puts it: “It is as if the social, economic, and political problems the people are protesting against would disappear if only the media would stop talking about them.” Yet what is evident so far is that they won’t.
The media, and social networks in particular, do not of themselves generate revolutions but they can facilitate them in ways that we are only just beginning to understand.