The Real Net Effect: Social Media and the Changing Middle East (Murphy)

Dedicated users of social media are a small vanguard in the Arab world, where access to the Internet and digital literacy levels are still low. But the number of people flocking to social media in the region is rising rapidly. This trend accelerated in the first quarter of this year, most notably in countries where protests occurred, according to the ASMR.

Facebook is the most popular social networking tool in Arab countries, with 27,711,503 users as of April 2011. That is almost double the 14,791,972 on Facebook in April 2010, the ASMR found. In the first four months of 2011, Facebook users in the Arab world grew by 30 percent, with Egypt accounting for most newcomers in this time period (2 million). Egypt’s 6.5 million Facebook users comprise about a quarter of all users in the region.

As for Twitter, the ASMR estimates there are about 6.5 million users in the Arab world, of whom 1.5 million are frequent tweeters. The countries with the most users and tweets are United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. In Saudi Arabia, tweets went up 400 percent in one year (the average increase in the same time period in the rest of the world was 90 per cent).

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Bahrain Feature: An Opposition Leader, Sheikh Ali Salman, Spreads His Message on Twitter

Sheikh Ali Salman the head of the Al Wefaq Political and Islamic Society, the leading "opposition party" in Bahrain, He is not only spreading the message through appearances in the country but through Twitter. A selection of his recent messages:

The Arab Spring revolutions including Bahrain are dignity revolutions, and people demand that they not be marginalised in their country, where one leader decides how they should live.

Because the transformation to a democracy didn't happen, Bahraini political and human rights crises will continue to be present.

People will not be convinced by talks and promises, they will not go back to their homes empty-handed, the movement will continue..., and we will witness more arrests and unfair trials.

I said it before, and will repeat it now, we do not want the bad effect on the economy to continue, but the negative impact will continue because of the absence of a political solution.

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Syria Special: Syria’s Sons of No One (Shadid)

Abdullah (left) and Ahmed in a safe house in Homs, Syria.Abdullah, a 26-year-old computer engineer and pious Muslim, is a wanted man. He joined the first protest in Homs in March, and since then he has emerged as one of the dozen or so leaders of the youth resistance. His savvy with technology has made him a target for the police, and this was the fifth place he had slept in in less than a week. He hadn’t been to his family’s home in two months. Around his neck he wore a tiny toy penguin that was actually a thumb drive, which he treated like a talisman, occasionally squeezing it to make sure it was still there. I sat next to him on the mattress and watched as he traded messages with other activists on Skype, then updated a Facebook page that serves as an underground newspaper, then marked a Google Earth map of Homs with the spots of the latest unrest. “If there’s no Internet,” Abdullah said, “there’s no life.”

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Social Media Revolution (Qualman)

Erik Qualman and the folks over at Socialnomics created this piece with a simple, yet bold, question: Is Social media a fad, or is it the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution?

The question is loaded, and I don't believe that it is designed to make a "Technology is responsible for all good change in the world" type of argument. What it firmly establishes, through a series of simple facts, is a rapidly changing world, a world in which youth + technology = a change in the power structure, for good and for bad, that has existed for generations, or in some cases millenia.

Plus, with a soundtrack by Fatboy Slim, how can one go wrong? So turn it up, and learn some facts.

Kuwait Snapshot: Imprisoned for Tweeting (Motaparthy)

Armed security officers wearing balaclavas led Nasser Abul, blindfolded and shackled, into a courtroom in downtown Kuwait City on July 19.  Accused of crimes against the state, he answered the judge's questions from a wood-and-metal cage in the courtroom. His mother, watching the proceedings, hoped her 26-year-old eldest son would finally be released after nearly two months in detention. The judiciary has refused to grant her wish.

Abul found himself in jail because of a few Tweets.

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Belarus Update: Getting to the Truth on Repression and Social Media (Belarus Digest)

Western media often spread myths about the extent of Internet censorship in Belarus.  Many have the impression that all or many social media sites have been shut down or blocked by Belarusian KGB. The truth is that unlike television or FM radio, Internet access remains largely unrestricted in Belarus. 

Because only a small fraction of Belarusians use Internet to get political information, authorities are rather relaxed about Internet censorship. They usually intervene to temporarily block certain Internet web sites around the dates of scheduled protests. In addition, they effectively use traditional methods against pro-democracy activists such as arrests and pressure on protestors' universities and employers.

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EA Cyber-Special: Hijacked Fox News Twitter Feed "The President is Dead"

At around 0630 GMT, as we were setting up the Iran and North Africa/Middle East LiveBlogs, we noticed a series of disturbing updates from the Twitter account of Fox News Politics:

Just regained full access to our Twitter and email. Happy 4th

@BarackObama has just passed. The President is dead. A sad 4th of July, indeed. President Barack Obama is dead

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Iran Feature: A Blogging Competition (Within Limits)

Weblognews.irElizabeth Flock of The Washington Post follows up on a story first reported by Deutsche Welle, which is holding its own competition for Best Persian Blog.

Of course, we will be watching to see how EA fares in the Iranian contest:

Iran, a country that holds the “grim distinction” of having arrested and jailed the most bloggers, according to journalist watchdog group Reporters Without Borders, has organized a blogging competition.

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Sock-Puppet Alert: US Military's Plan to Manipulate Facebook and Twitter (Fielding/Cobain)

The US military;is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.

A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an "online persona management service" that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world.

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Egypt Special: A Lesson Learned About Twitter From Al Jazeera

Twitter is just another communication tool, there to be leveraged by anyone with the will and the ambition. Yet just as Al Jazeera’s coverage of Egypt would sound ridiculous if described as "Television Revolution", so do straw=man notions of a "Twitter Revolution" in Iran, or indeed anywhere else. The Twitter of 2011 looks like it will become a mature, integrated part of the media landscape: if protesters in Tahrir Square did not have access, it still had a role to play in bringing the story to the outside world.

The jury’s still out on what Al Jazeera’s rise in prominence meant for the people of Egypt. As with Iran in 2009, we may never know just how many people inside the country were getting their information from these sources. But the jury is definitely in on how the channel has benefited greatly from positioning itself as the source of information from Egypt among mainstream news outlets, and it can thank social media for a pivotal influence in this rise.

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