Globalization, Social Media and the Arab Spring: 2010- 2015*

Abstract

Mass communication, especially its subset the social media, has played a very significant role in the process of globalization. Means of mass communication – print media, radio and television – have undergone revolutionary transformation in recent year. With the advent and subsequent proliferating usage of Internet for over a decade has virtually knit the world much more closely. Satellite cable and cellular mobile phone technologies, along with Facebook, twitter, blogs and You Tube as means of social media have turned the means of communication into global communications. There has occurred a twin process of globalization of the local and localization of the global. The tools of social media facilitated the dialogue amongst a network of activists who were then able to instigate calls for reform; social media also directly helped in protesters’ ability to organize and coordinate their activities. In quickly disseminating not only information but sensational pictures and video clips, social media played an important role in attracting both national and international attention to protesters’ plights and subsequently swaying international opinion and policy.