Social networks and Arab spring

Abstract

Previous year has been everything but peaceful considering the Arab world. Some of the Middle Eastern and North African countries had a year full of political and military problems followed usually with people's demonstrations and regime fallings in the end. The thing that in a way had a very tight connection with these instabilities were social networks. This paper is mostly focused on the idea of social networks as a leading engine for making these revolutions possible. If we look at the social network characteristics and all of the things that make them suitable for this kind of tool for a society democratization, it is obvious why the story about Facebook and Twitter in the Arab spring had that kind of a world impact. Even though these stories made these social platforms inevitable when talking about last year's revolutions, it is necessary to make a distance in analysing them. It is important to underline their impact in making revolution as big as it was specially its impact on the western public. On the other hand bigger part of western media made these networks something much bigger than they could be - the revolution itself, or the mean for regime fighting without which Arab spring wouldn't even be this important. The biggest and most important role of Facebook, Twitter and all the others was to change minds and power perception, to inform people about the things that were happening on the streets in countries of Arab world and to make possible massive mobilization of people and their attention. This is why social networks are just starting to open their way towards some new roles and functions that we probably could not even dreamt about.