And while it is unclear how the story came to be so widely believed, what is certain is that some people have planted material they believe is helpful, even if it is not true. For instance, a friend got some footage of a sniper on Avenue de Carthage. In the past year, the number of users has nearly doubled from 14.8m. All of which left a peculiar loophole that persisted until December, when the regime finally launched a full-scale attack against Facebook. The WikiLeaks pages on Tunisian corruption, says Koubaa, who with his friends attempted to set up sites where his countrymen could view them, were blocked as soon as they appeared – and anyway, the information was hardly news to Tunisians. Or it is a Libyan in Benghazi running with his phone switched to a jerky video mode, surprised when the youth in front of him is shot through the head. Just over a quarter of those polled (28 per cent in Egypt and 29 per cent in Tunisia) said the blocking of Facebook disrupted their efforts to organise and communicate. However, "Facebook was huge," he says. Facebook usage swelled in the Arab region between January and April and sometimes more than doubled, the report found. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. For neither the notion of the "Twitter Revolutions" or their un-Twitterness, accurately reflects the reality. It’s no longer enough for social media platforms to claim to be neutral disseminators of information. As commentators have tried to imagine the nature of the uprisings, they have attempted to cast them as many things: as an Arab version of the eastern European revolutions of 1989 or something akin to the Iranian revolution that toppled the Shah in 1979. Then, the Mubarak regime – like Ben Ali's before it – pulled the plug on the country's internet services and 3G network. "Social media was critical at a time when everything else was censored.". Twitter allowed people to reach a large audience, in real time, about what was happening where they were. Twitter was one of the dominate ways that information about the Arab Spring was relayed from person to person. Egypt was disconnected from the outside world for days and yet the movement never stopped. By Saleem Kassim. But what I witnessed on the ground in Tunisia and Egypt challenged my preconceptions, as did the evidence that has emerged from both Libya and Bahrain. Sultan Al Qassemi, a columnist based in the United Arab Emirates who has tweeted non-stop on the uprisings, passing on information and English translations of key speeches, believes that some claims about the impact of social media need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Neither one tells us much about our world.". In many of the countries involved, communication can be difficult, particularly in times of civil unrest. In part by using the social networking sites, activists organised and publicised the unprecedented protests that gave rise to the so-called Arab Spring, which has so far seen longtime governments in Egypt and Tunisia fall, regimes in Syria, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain clash with the opposition, and leaders in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE offer more benefits to their populace. Its role has been shaped too by how well organised the groups using social media have been. The debate is still raging over how instrumental Twitter and Facebook really were in that era. One possible reason is that many there have fled amidst fierce fighting between the regime and rebels. Other hashtags – which are essentially search terms – “Jan25” had 1.2m mentions; “Libya” had 990,000; “Bahrain” had 640,000; and “protest” had 620,000. A far more mature and extensive social media environment played a crucial role in organising the uprising against Mubarak, whose government responded by ordering mobile service providers to send text messages rallying his supporters – a trick that has been replicated in the past week by Muammar Gaddafi. He is one of the top voices in the online Arab world, and has been published at The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Foreign Policy. Which is not to say that everything broadcast over social media sites has been either accurate or reliable. In addition to broadcasting tweets to others, users can choose to follow other users, so that they are constantly updated with new information when those they follow "tweet." Facebook, she went on to say, was a valuable organizational tool for Egyptian demonstrators. In many of the countries involved, communication can be difficult, particularly in times of civil unrest. “We should not assume that what we're seeing on our social media feed is an objective reflection of what's happening on the ground. Social media isn’t particularly good for political organising, but it is good for political aggregation. After a decade of misinformation scandals and allegations of radicalising and endangering users, some see the latest civil unrest as a return to the grassroots movements that saw social media firms praised for their roles in the Arab Spring. This is a form of propaganda at this point that is influencing public opinion, the narratives around police and police work. The most recent example of this is the protests in Chile (see page 26). “It’s unclear if people of colour and minorities have equal verification status and the ability to tap into the algorithm. "If they became aware of you on Facebook they would try to divert your account to a fake login page to steal your password.". Once, the term was gushingly applied to uprisings against regimes in Iran (2009), Egypt (2011) and Tunisia (2011). If Twitter had negligible influence on events in Tunisia, ... "Social media has certainly played a part in the Arab Spring Revolutions but its impact is often exaggerated on the inside. These stories are not simply sceptical about the contribution of social media, but determined to deny it has played any part. This is what happens when the logic of aggregation forms the basis of political action. During the protests in Egypt and Tunisia, the vast majority of 200-plus people surveyed over three weeks in March said they were getting their information from social media sites (88 per cent in Egypt and 94 per cent in Tunisia).
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