Impact of social media on political change in Egypt Term Paper

Impact of social media on political change in Egypt - Term Paper Example Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have become the most famous sites of social media. These sites bring people on a single platform and give them information all around the world. These are good at interacting people and to stay connected round the clock. It gives updates about what is happening around the people. Moreover, these give freedom of expression to every person residing in any part of the world, which is important to maintain peace in the region (â€Å"The New Arab Revolt†) The role of Social Media in Arab spring (Middle East) The events that took place a year ago in the Middle East made an intense debate on the role played by the social media. The Arab countries are facing two big challenges, which are economic growth and job creation. Hisham Matar considered revolution a boring thing (Albanyadmin). In such situations what was the role of social media? According to Matar, internet was an exaggeration, which represents that the internet was accessible to the elite in the Middle East also; they knew only how to use it who were the ones that brought revolution (Albanyadmin). The second view was that the social media spike an online revolutionary talk after the events that took place in the Middle East. ... The protestors made wide use of these platforms in order to keep united, which gave fanning to the flames. Moreover, it proved that the revolutionary power could not be controlled or stopped by the government authorities. The government had almost failed in their attempt to stop these protests, which were being aided by the social media. When the Egypt government shut off the internet and mobile networks for 5 days from January 28, 2011, it brought out more protesters on the roads, which became a real big problem for the Egyptian government. Social media provided a platform to the Egyptians to raise their voices. It became a source of news and courage to the protestors (Albanyadmin). Matar said that the internet has created a new language (Albanyadmin). The protestors became more violent by this support of social media. Secondly, the outside world has uprisings, which created Arab spring in the past. The protests, disturbances and revolutions were not new. In 1990s, the green mountai n of the Libya had uprisings in the east of the country. Also the same things happened in the 2011 revolution in Libya. The helicopters were sent by Gadaffi to limit the protestors, which also made bombardments on its own citizens (Albanyadmin). There was no as such news about it around the world as there was no proof of it. Especially in Egypt’s revolution, social media played a crucial role. Merely in 18 days, Egyptians succeeded in stepping down President Hosni Mubarak from the power, which reigned almost 30 years. In Tunisia’s revolution, it took 28 days but the result was less peaceful than in Egypt. In Libya, it took 9 months for a revolution to take place with poor peace results (Richards). Reports show