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    Online Arab Spring: Social Media and Fundamental Change
    Online Arab Spring: Social Media and Fundamental Change
    Online Arab Spring: Social Media and Fundamental Change
    Ebook223 pages2 hours

    Online Arab Spring: Social Media and Fundamental Change

    By Reza Jamali

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    About this ebook

    What is the role of social media on fundamental change in Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa? Online Arab Spring responds to this question, considering five countries: Egypt, Libya, Jordan, Yemen, and Tunisia, along with additional examples. The book asks why the penetration rate for social media differs in different countries: are psychological and social factors at play? Each chapter considers national identity, the legitimacy crisis, social capital, information and media literacy, and socialization. Religious attitudes are introduced as a key factor in social media, with Arabic countries in the Middle East and North Africa being characterized by Islamic trends. The insight gained will be helpful for analysing online social media effects internationally, and predicting future movements in a social context.
    • provides innovative interdisciplinary research, incorporating media studies, cultural aspects, identity and psychology
    • presents a detailed study of factors such as national heritage, cultural homogeneity, belief system and consumer ethnocentrism
    • focuses on religious attitudes in the context of online media
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherElsevier Science
    Release dateDec 3, 2014
    ISBN9781780634388
    Online Arab Spring: Social Media and Fundamental Change
    Author

    Reza Jamali

    Reza Jamali is a PhD candidate in Strategic Management at Tarbiat Modares University (TMU) Iran, Visiting Researcher at Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands) and Selected Researcher at Yazd University (2009). He has published widely on issues of strategic management specifically focusing on science and technology ethics, social media and service excellence. His publications include articles in the Business Strategy Series, Performance Measurement and Metrics, Journal of Academic Ethics, Journal of Information Ethics and several international conferences. He is a reviewer of the Journal of Intellectual Capital, Gender in Management: An International Journal and Science & technology Policy. Now, he is conducting a research about How we can develop an ethical behavior index in social media and internet to rank websites based on ethical behavior, rather than number of visitors.

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      Book preview

      Online Arab Spring - Reza Jamali

      countries.

      1

      The origin of social media effects on countries' fundamental changes

      This chapter sets out to establish why the penetration rate of social media is not the same from one country to the next. Are there any psychological and social factors which give rise to the different penetration rates? The research available surrounding the impact of social media technologies in Arabic countries is at present limited. Any current evidence which presents analysis of this matter affords little coverage of its impact in recent revolutions; however, this book is based on the assumption that social media tools are effective at different rates at a variety of levels. Five countries – Egypt, Libya, Jordan, Yemen and Tunisia – will be taken into consideration, in addition to countries such as Iran. Factors such as national identity, legitimacy crises, social capital and soft war, which may affect the penetration of social media in a country, will be examined. To achieve results comparable with those from other countries where revolution is not expected, questionnaires were distributed in the home of online social media, the USA. This chapter tries to familiarise readers with the general process of the research and some of the important terms.

      Keywords

      cultural exchange; freedom; information literacy; social capital; soft war

      Factors promoting social media penetration

      What needs to be borne in mind when reading this chapter is that, rather than the rate of penetration, it is the pace of penetration of social media that is under examination here. For example, although the US has the highest rate of social media and Internet usage, this leading position was achieved not in a short time but over a period of years. However, rapid penetration by the Internet and social media has occurred in the Middle East – especially Arabic countries – between 2010 and 2013; so, all discussion here is centred on the pace of penetration. Moreover, while the role of the telecommunications infrastructure and even the mobile phone is undeniable, the social and psychological factors that can trigger a revolution are also dealt with in my analysis.

      Control of the popular media (radio, television and newsprint) by certain world powers is a common thread woven throughout history and countries such as the USA, the UK, etc. use it to induce deep changes in other countries for their benefit. However, this has made us forget the two-sided and twofold effects of social media. It is true that the term ‘media’ commonly refers to a special group of people, broadly speaking, media leaders; however, when the term ‘social’ is applied, we can claim that the beliefs, cultures and societal assumptions of certain groups guide these platforms.

      This is not be interpreted as saying that leaders of certain social media organisations do not have the power to steer the public – they do. The fact is that the power of the public

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