The role of communications globalization in revolutions of the Middle East

Abstract

Protests in the Middle East and North Africa against dictatorial and hereditary regimes, started in Tunisia in late 2010 and spread to other countries, brought a major change in this area. This uprising began to protest against the lack of free elections and freedom of expression, widespread discrimination in political and economic levels, the accumulation of power and wealth in the hands of the ruling class and its relatives, repression of the opponents and the lack of development and finally resulted in overthrow of the rulers in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen. As yet it continues in some countries. Undoubtedly, the speed of these developments in the first few months followed by observers' wonder and there also were those who explored the reasons for the success of popular uprisings in the region and the Islamic world in order to identify hidden aspects of it.

The present research is going to explain the role of media and social networks with the aim of trying to explain the role of this factor in the Islamic world developments. Thus, after describing the background of Arab Spring formation and precipitating factors, the position of the media and its importance in the contemporary world and function of the three networks of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube was interpreted.

Passing these debates, political, economic and social conditions of Egypt, Libya and Tunisia before the revolution was described in detail. Then, the reasons for the protests onset process were investigated in the three countries and the Middle East. In the following, the media and social networks position in these developments were studied. To understand the issue more concrete, statistics and charts for the people’s social networks use were provided so that the audience to have a more concrete understanding of the impact they had.

Different views and explanations about the impact of protests in the region revealed that the media played the role of catalyst in the Arab Spring and ignoring or exaggerating the importance of its role in uprisings should be avoided. The experience of the region and the Islamic world uprising showed that to utilize the new tools in the field of media may help participating in and increasing the scope of the protests and succeeding as well as collapsing fences built by dictatorial regimes.