Arab Spring Reflection

Oppressive leaders are careful to try and provide there subjects with an illusion of freedom. They carefully try and balance restrictions and liberties to prevent uprisings and maintain power. The leaders of the countries affected by Arab Spring strongly underestimated the power that social media could give to their population. 

These countries use state ran media outlets which gives the government complete control over what is published in newspapers and broadcast online. The leaders are careful to control what news events are communicated with the people.The leaders of Tunisia Egypt, and other countries in the region, restrict internet access to political website that might insight or facilitate rebellion. Facebook and twitter were viewed as a way to kill al little time by catching up with old friends. Social media took on a new roll one day when a man set himself on fire to protest corruption in his cities markets. Since the state’s media didn’t broadcast this story to the people, the people spread the message themselves via facebook and twitter. 

Arab spring demonstrates the power that social media has. Social media has provided the world with a new for people to communicate and organize themselves. In the countries affected by Arab spring it was an uncensored source of information where people could stay informed on the governments actions,  an organize their response. 

I also think that it’s cool how the application market is responding to the needs of  people in the protesters position. While most of the platforms weren’t willing to delete content from protesters, during the conflict. Now twitter has changed there policies, and they will delete tweets that are considered illegal in certain countries. The threat of deleting tweets and a complete blockage of sites by governments posts a serious threat to future social media based revolutions. A new app called fire chat could take the place of Twitter and Facebook in these situations. Firechat isn’t dependent on existing networks to transmit messages. Fire chat uses the built in wifi and bluetooth within each phone to create its own network. Making the platform impossible to enforce on the digital level. It does have limitation that there needs to be enough people within range to make the network effective. 

The ability to use social media in this manner really excites me. While the protests were full of violence when the dust settled many of these countries are on there way to democracy. Some people think of Facebook and twitter as time wasters but the platforms have shown the ability to enhance the quality of life in an entire country.

Social media could potentially be an avenue, for government to take place. The rapid way the messages can be spread, would allow  a government based online could meet the continually and quickly changing needs of a population, within a democratic process. A democratic process that allows more direct democracy. It might sound crazy but if government can be overthrown through social media, social media could be used to build and effective government. A government that would values transparency and democracy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnPR90dJ3Gk

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/25/twitter-facebook-uprisings-arab-libya