The Role of the Internet in the
Arab Spring
To what extent has the availability of internet had an effect on civil resistance in
the Arab Spring?
Arthur Muller
6382843
MA Thesis International Relations
Instructor: Andrea Ruggeri
21 August 2012
2
"Protest ist, wenn ich sage, das und das paßt mir nicht. Widerstand ist, wenn ich dafür sorge,
daß das, was mir nicht paßt, nicht länger geschieht."
– Ulrike Meinhof, 1968.
3
Introduction
4
The Path of Media and Collective Action
5
Arab Spring Beginnings and Development
11
Theory and Research Design
19
Findings
25
Conclusion
44
References
46
4
Introduction
Large parts of the North African and Middle Eastern region, also known as the Arab world,
have long been able to withstand the advance of democracy. Not only have autocracies
remained the norm in this part of the world, more striking is that for long it also lacked large
protest movements demanding change. Despite the lack of political freedom, however, there
appeared to be a relative stability in the area. This radically shifted when by the end of 2010
popular protests broke out in Tunisia, sparking a movement that spread like wildfire to the
other countries in the region. People that for decades had lived under autocratic rule, in states
such as Egypt and Libya, suddenly demanded political, economic and social reform. Whether
it was democracy that was on the minds of all that revolted is difficult to say, but it became
very clear that grievances about the existing situation had been brooding throughout the Arab
states, culminating in what became known as the Arab Spring.
The scale of protests as well as the pace by which they grew and spread caught many
by surprise, not the least of which the leaders of states in which they took place. In addition,
protests were often well-organized, which was reflected by the exceptionally large numbers of
civilians that gathered at apparently pre-determined locations and times. Digital, and
especially online media were soon widely acclaimed for supposedly offering dissidents the
possibility to unite and mobilize masses, thereby inspiring collective action efforts. Social
networking services such as Facebook and Twitter have often been credited with being their
main communicational tools, while blogs and uploaded video footage were said to help
increase insight into states’ domestic situations.
This paper explores the question to what extent the availability of internet has had an
effect on civil resistance in the Arab Spring. Due to the recent nature of events in the Arab
world, little research has been done so far into the cause-and-effect mechanisms that allowed
them to happen. In this respect, this study discusses a relatively new phenomenon, namely the
5
role of online media in the organization of civil collective action. As we will see in the
following chapters, media in general have a history of being used in mobilization efforts and
more recently digital media specifically have found their way into the endeavors of, for
instance, those involved in insurgent warfare. However, the fact that the communicational
functions of online features such as social media were said to have been of paramount
significance to the Arab Spring seems to indicate a new age in collective action, as both the
reach and speed of information have increased unprecedentedly.
First, this paper will discuss the function of media in previous cases of collective
action and conflict, in order to provide a perspective of its development and to bridge the gap
between past and present events. Second, the beginnings and further progression of the Arab
Spring will be systematically recounted, so as to have an overview of what exactly transpired
in this tumultuous period. After this, the theory behind the research will be explained, as well
as the hypotheses following from it and the design by which they are examined. Finally, this
will lead to the testing of hypotheses, the presentation of relevant data and ultimately the
findings that can be deduced from them.
The Path of Media and Collective Action
The relationship between collective action and media has long been one of mutual influence.
While it might seem obvious that collective action efforts would be reflected by media, for
instance in the manner that they are reported and communicated, there is also very much a
converse relationship between the two. After all, media can have a function of creating the
world as we see it, as well as reporting on that very same world. Much of what we observe
around us as well as the criteria we judge anything by – everything we know or what we deem
to be ‘true’ – is arguably a product of our upbringing, our surroundings, the society in which
6
we live and the information we are provided with. This is perhaps not a new or revolutionary
concept, but it is important to the goal of this chapter and therefore explicitly mentioned.
With this in mind, the purpose of this paper is to consider the extent to which media
have been of importance in the events associated with the Arab Spring, looking at digital
media specifically. The purpose of this chapter, however, is to observe this trend in a longer
tradition of collective action, in relation to media in general. Long before the rise of digital
and – even more so – social media, which brought about the possibility for any individual to
make his voice be heard by an increasingly large audience, media have been employed in the
service of influencing or manipulating people into behaving in accordance with a certain
mode of conduct or thought. Thus, it might happen that an individual is influenced or inspired
into following a certain path of action by a message spread through media for any number of
possible reasons. Although a single individual might not make much of a difference, if it
happens that many individuals are affected in a similar way, and are moved to pursue a
specific purpose, it is a matter of collective action influenced by media. This, rather than the
ways in which the two can affect each other conversely, is the focal point of this chapter. The
term ‘media’ here is used to signify any method of communication that is employed to reach a
number of people widely. By ‘collective action’ is meant the behavior and/or actions
undertaken by a group of individuals in order to reach a commonly shared goal.
Such was the influence of the news media in Rwanda in the 1990s, that they
contributed to creating a national situation of mass killings and genocide. What might be most
striking of all is that these murders were largely committed by ordinary civilians and took
place between people who for a long time had lived together peacefully, as neighbors in the
same community. According to the article “The Role of Radio in the Rwandan Genocide” by
Christine Kellow and H. Leslie Steeves (1998, p.107), “Rwandan media have been accused of
inciting the hatred that led to violence by using an ethnic framework to report what was
7
essentially a political struggle. They also have been accused of spreading fear, rumor, and
panic by using a kill-or-be-killed frame, and of relaying directives about the necessity of
killing the Tutsi people as well as instructions on how to do it.” Although several Rwandan
media were involved in spreading the hate that caused the Hutu and Tutsi people to turn
against each other, one radio station in particular is widely held responsible for encouraging
one of the most gruesome civil conflicts in history. As part of the Hutu government-controlled
Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), the radio broadcasting station Radio des
Mille Collines was used to spread anti-Tutsi propaganda, contributing to the 1994 Rwandan
genocide (Kellow and Steeves, 1998, p.107).
Yet it is hard to believe that the mere spreading of propaganda or hate-inciting
information can provide ordinary people with sufficient incentive to violently attack and
murder their neighbors. Kellow and Steeves (1998, p.108) aptly make the observation that
“[t]he role and influence of media cannot be divorced from the historical, cultural, and
political-economic environments in which they function. In general, mass communication
emerged alongside industrialization, urbanization, and modernization … Communication
systems became (…) depersonalized and were observed to wield increasing power as
information disseminators.” In other words, combined with a certain state of mind, or zeitgeist
perhaps, that a sufficient amount of people share, any form of mass media that is used
effectively to anyone’s advantage may have an extremely powerful influence on a population.
In the case of the Rwandan civil war this meant that a situation of widespread uncertainty and
anxiety about the political situation in combination with encouragements of mob formation
were utilized by the government in order to inflame an ethnic struggle. By 1993, Rwanda was
so extremely politically polarized that every citizen did not have a choice other than to choose
sides between but two camps. On one side was the Hutu government that wanted to stay in
power by any means necessary, consisting of the president, his political staff and the army.
8
The other side involved people wanting social and political change, featuring the
predominantly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). As neutrality became an increasingly
impossible stance for anyone, including the media, churches and NGO’s, there came a point
when eventually everyone was lined up against each other. In a situation so delicate, only a
small push was necessary to cause a complete societal disruption. After years of hateful
propaganda being spread by national media, setting up the perfect conditions for the genocide
to take place, that push eventually came in the form of the 1994 crash of the airplane carrying
Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana (Kellow and Steeves, 1998, pp.115-17).
Although the Rwandan conflict was largely driven by relatively more ‘traditional’
media, much has changed on that level between the 1990s and now, and information
communication technologies have undergone significant developments in recent years. In this
respect, traditional media such as radio and television seem to belong to the past whereas
digital media are very much up and coming. That said, data gathered by The World Bank
(2010a) for usage of mobile-cellular and internet networks worldwide show a trend of drastic
growth over the past 15 years. Between 1995 and 2000 for instance, the percentage of people
worldwide with mobile-cellular subscriptions quickly went from 1.6% to 12.1%. By 2010,
this number had already reached a staggering 78.2%, showing an increase of almost 6.5 times
in only 10 years. The amount of internet users worldwide also experienced a booming growth,
albeit a somewhat less steady one, climbing fast from 0.8% to 6.7% between 1995 and 2000,
and reaching an impressive 30.2% by 2010 (The World Bank, 2010b). These numbers, along
with research of the past years investigating the relationship between media and collective
action, show how digital media specifically have become increasingly important in matters of
popular mobilization. Neither has this fact been lost on authorities who were confronted with
its power as an organizational tool.
9
As reports came in of orders given by Egyptian president Mubarak to sabotage the
country’s communication networks in 2011 (which will be discussed more elaborately in the
following chapter), Mozambique’s authorities were faced with similar accusations the year
before. While protests over rising food prices were taking place in Mozambique in 2010, the
country’s government took uncommon measures in an effort to stop civilians from rioting.
Seeing as apparently many protesters were recruited and encouraged to join the action by
means of text message services, authorities reportedly ordered the blocking of text messages
to keep protesters from organizing themselves and riots from growing (BBC, 2010). The
importance that Mozambique’s government clearly ascribed to the use of cell phones in
civilians’ collective action efforts reflects the key role that digital methods of communication
increasingly have in these matters. What is in fact surprising is the extent to which common
tools of communication have become essential to dissident organizations of all forms and
calibers, ranging from individual civilian protesters to hardliner terrorist groups. Jacob
Shapiro and Nils Weidmann (2011, pp.4-5) provide some very interesting insights in their
article “Talking About Killing” into the various ways in which mobile phones have been used
in the recent conflict in Iraq. While Iraqi insurgents embraced the possibilities of the cell
phone for its usefulness in combat, ranging from communication to triggering improvised
explosive devices (IEDs), the US Army encouraged civilians to call or text a tip line
immediately should they encounter suspicious, possibly insurgent activities. So essential was
the use of mobile phones to rebel combatants even, that it was reported that terrorists
threatened mobile network companies for delays in setting up their network coverage masts.
With the ascendance of digital media, however, there came also, perhaps more
importantly, the internet. It seems that in many ways this truly ushered in a new age of
communication. First of all, the reach of information has grown exponentially because of the
internet, since any single message that is put up online has the possibility of reaching an
10
infinitely large audience (effectively anyone with access to the internet). A unique feature,
since it is something that a single newspaper company, television- or radio station could never
achieve. Second, because of online services such as social media and blogs, the possibility to
communicate information to the masses is no longer a privilege of the few who control the
means necessary, but rather a freely available utility for anyone with an opinion and an
internet connection. Thus, any individual with an influential rhetoric and a message that
speaks to a large enough number of people is theoretically able to mobilize a following. This
perhaps has never become clearer than in the events that took place in the Arab world over the
last 2 years or so. Through past research and studies on the role of media in situations of
collective action, civil war and so on, as discussed earlier in this chapter, we know that in
some cases they can be inseparably connected. It appears, however, that it was not until the
recent popular uprisings in Arab countries that the internet in particular was suddenly so
widely deemed to have been an element crucial for creating political change. Whereas we
have seen the influence of more traditional media as well as some digital media on areas in
turmoil, there is still relatively little that has been written on the effects of differences in
internet availability between similar countries. In part this is likely due to the idea that, as
mentioned before, until recently not much in the field of collective action was widely seen as
so closely linked to civilian internet activity. More important, however, is the fact that within
the wider subject of the internet it is largely (though not solely) the social media services that
have recently received much of the attention, while social media are a relatively novel
concept.
Although not yet having reached a consensus, the academic climate over the past few
years, it seems, has been somewhat warming up to the subject of online services such as
Facebook and Twitter as possible tools for mass-mobilization. Articles from scholar Philip
Howard and the Dubai School of Government, both discussed in this paper, have been among
11
the first to investigate relationships between the Arab Spring and digital media. Much of the
reporting world on the other hand, be it professional journalists or amateur bloggers, has been
quick to simply assume the essential role that digital, and specifically social media must have
had in the Arab uprisings. However, as we still do not know much about this subject, while at
the same time it appears to be gathering importance fast, a comparative study investigating the
effect of media on collective action seems due.
Arab Spring Beginnings and Development
When Mohamed Bouazizi publicly set himself on fire on 17 December 2010, no one could
have predicted the chain reaction that his self-immolation would spark. A 26-year old street
vendor of fruit and vegetables in the Tunisian city of Sidi Bouzid, Bouazizi’s desperate deed
was a consequence of Tunisian authorities confiscating his products some time before. This,
combined with soaring food prices, widespread corruption, massive unemployment rates and
limited political freedom, ignited local revolts almost instantly. By the time Bouazizi died in
the hospital from his injuries on 4 January 2011, protests had spread nationwide and were
growing larger still. The fact that a protest movement evolved with such speed and became as
widespread as it did is particularly striking since the Tunisian state-controlled media had not
reported on Bouazizi’s act or the unrest that it had caused in Sidi Bouzid (Howard and
Hussain, 2011, p.36). Apparently the news had different ways of reaching people all over the
country – ways that the government did not control, yet that were able to reach people far and
wide.
Although acknowledging the role of, among others, high food prices, corruption and
unemployment, there are also sources that ascribe the start of the Tunisian protests not so
much to Bouazizi’s radical move, but rather to a cable from the US embassy in Tunis that was
made public by whistle-blower website WikiLeaks (Dickinson, 2011). Notorious for its
12
advocacy of complete integration of freedom of information between politics and the public,
the report released by WikiLeaks was clearly not written with the intention of being openly
accessible. In the cable, Tunisian president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali’s government was
criticized heavily and portrayed as a corrupt, Mafia-like establishment that was increasingly
losing its rightful claim to power. US ambassador Robert Godec (2009) wrote: “President Ben
Ali is aging, his regime is sclerotic and there is no clear successor. Many Tunisians are
frustrated by the lack of political freedom and angered by First Family corruption, high
unemployment and regional inequities.” Perhaps this was not necessarily anything that the
Tunisians did not know already, but the fact that it was now black-on-white and out in the
open, along with other detailed information about the Tunisian presidential family, might
have been the last drop that had to be leaked into an otherwise already full bucket.
Whichever of the two occurrences it was that sparked the popular protests in Tunisia,
Bouazizi’s self-immolation or the leaked cable, is of no great importance. As is often the case,
the truth is likely to be somewhere in the middle, as both events simply piled up on years of
bad living standards and a growing feeling of dissatisfaction with the national situation. What
is, however, a point of interest is that obviously both the Bouazizi events and the WikiLeaks
report were not stories that were released by the Tunisian government-owned press. In fact,
Tunisia went as far as to block a Lebanese newspaper’s website because it had published the
previously mentioned US embassy cables (Black, 2010). The authorities’ efforts to control
what information reached the public seemed futile however, since in either case it was not the
traditional ‘analog’ media such as newspapers, television or radio that made people aware of
the news or that caused masses to organize themselves in protest. Rather, it appears, people
found their way to these news stories online and shared them that way or by mobile phone.
They received information through news websites, blogs, social media and online video
channels and in turn used these and text message services to spread it onwards and to organize
13
themselves. In any case, digital media offered people a loophole for being cut off from statecensored news reports (Howard and Hussain, 2011, p.36).
As the protest movement in Tunisia kept on and grew larger, similar signs of unrest
were beginning to show in other North African countries. In the course of January 2011, from
Algeria as well as Egypt there came reports of men who had sacrificed themselves in the
streets. Both in message and in method did these events resemble the case of Mohamed
Bouazizi: they set themselves on fire in front of government buildings, reportedly out of
desperation and protest against poor living conditions. These seemed to be the first signs of a
movement that transcended national borders and which found its roots in Tunisia’s so-called
“Jasmine Revolution”.
As president Ben Ali decided that he had little chance of mending the situation in his
country and turning the Tunisians’ hate for him and his wife around, he fled to Saudi Arabia
on 14 January, thereby resigning from his function and admitting victory to the protesters.
While the Tunisian protest movement had toppled its regime in only a matter of weeks,
moods were still very much rising in its surrounding countries, as dissidents seemed to
become even more determined after witnessing the Tunisian people’s victory. In a growing
number of North African countries demonstrations were becoming increasingly heated,
although what happened in Egypt about ten days later most of all confirmed the power of
digital media in the service of collective action efforts.
With Egypt and Tunisia being among the countries with the highest internet
penetration rate in the Arab region, it is interesting to see that these two countries were also
both among the first to see major civil disturbances in the wave of upheavals that is now
known as the Arab Spring. In these states, there already existed a steady internet culture in
which dissidents voiced their opinions online and tried to confront authorities with their
faults. One such dissident was Khaled Said, a 28-year old Egyptian blogger who had tried to
14
expose the corruption of the Egyptian police force through his website and as a result was
beaten to death by police on 6 June 2010. In return, Egyptian internet activist and Google
executive Wael Ghonim created the Facebook page “We are all Khaled Said”1 on 19 July
2010. The page, apart from commiserating the unlawful execution of Said, has served as a
platform for political dissent and criticism on the regional situation. The effect of this sort of
online activism shows similarities with the way news about Mohamed Bouazizi’s selfimmolation spread like wildfire. As Howard and Hussain (2011, p.36) put it: “Just as digital
images of Bouazizi in the hospital passed over networks of family and friends in Egypt, an
image of Said’s grotesquely battered face, taken by his brother as Khaled’s body lay in the
Alexandria city morgue, passed from one mobile-phone camera to thousands.”
When considering the increasing influence of digital media in the mobilization of
protest movements, all of this seemed to forebode the events in Cairo on 25 January 2011.
Through social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter, Egyptian dissidents organized
a large scale protest against president Hosni Mubarak’s reign. Officially a national holiday in
commemoration of Egyptian police forces, protesters gave 25 January an entirely new face,
calling instead for a national ‘day of rage’ and gathering in massive numbers in the centrally
located Tahrir Square in Cairo demanding Mubarak’s resignation. Whereas previous protests
in Egypt had been somewhat isolated efforts, this was the first time that it was actually an
event of coordinated collective action. As in Tunisia, Facebook, Twitter and mobile phones
were key tools in protesters’ communication and organization of the gatherings (BBC, 2011).
After 25 January had seen Cairo turn into a war zone with protesters and police forces
clashing violently, the Egyptian government also realized the power that the use of digital
media had given protesters. Their role in the dissident movement was in fact considered so
important, that in response president Mubarak decided the next day to nationally block the use
1
Available at: http://www.facebook.com/elshaheeed.co.uk
15
of parts of the internet. For instance, social networks Facebook and Twitter, video sharing
platform YouTube and search engine Google all experienced user access difficulties from
inside Egypt. However, there are even more people in Egypt in possession of a mobile phone
than there are people with access to the internet, which caused them to switch to organizing
protests by text messages. Consequently, there were also some reports that the government
had tried to sabotage this by disabling mobile phone towers (Arthur, 2011).
Although, as previously mentioned, Egypt and Tunisia are perhaps among the
countries with the most internet users in the Arab region, other states with much less of an
online culture were nevertheless quick to join in on the tumult. Protests in Yemen, one of the
most impoverished and least technologically advanced countries in the region, began midJanuary 2011. By 27 January it was reported that at least 10,000 people gathered in the capital
of Sana’a, calling for president Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down after a 30-year run of
uninterrupted control over the country. Many protesters were wearing pink ribbons and
headbands, which indicated that much of the demonstration’s organization had been
communicated to the protesting masses beforehand. As the New York Times reported, “[t]he
color was both a unifying symbol and an indication of the level of planning underlying the
protests” (Bakri and Goodman, 2011). Only a week later the number of anti-government
protesters had already doubled as more than 20,000 people were seen demonstrating in Sana’a
alone (Reuters, 2011a). Similar to the situation in both Tunisia and Egypt, protests in Yemen
became more violent in a matter of days as anti-government protesters increasingly clashed
with government supporters and police forces. No different was the Yemeni situation either in
the respect that despite these physical confrontations protesters did not cease to continue
marching in the streets against president Saleh’s regime.
Whereas pan-Arabic sympathies and anti-governmental sentiments were quick to
spread throughout the region, two countries that have seen some of the most intense violence
16
and escalation of national civil unrest since the beginning of the Arab Spring were, in
contrast, relatively late to respond to the rising tensions in the Arab region. The first signs of
civil disorder in Libya for instance started no sooner than mid-February 2011. Apparently
triggered by the recent arrest of a human rights activist, hundreds of anti-government
protesters flowed into the streets of Benghazi in the night of 15 February. Although protesters
met with police violence almost instantly, and government troops had soon killed a number of
people in different areas, the next few days only saw an increase in civil disobedience. Many
people were showing support for protesters who had been killed by the authorities in rallies
some days before, and large crowds were chanting appeals for Libyan dictator Muammar alGaddafi to resign from the office he had been holding for 42 years (Black, 2011a). The
government in turn made their best efforts to cut people off from information about the
increasing unrest by maintaining a news blackout of the state-controlled media. In spite of
this, Libyan dissidents were creative in using social media like Facebook and Twitter to
spread news and images of the ongoing demonstrations around. In preparation of the protests
people sent each other text messages by mobile phone saying: “From the youth of Libya to all
those who are tempted to touch the four red lines: come and face us in any square or street in
Libya” (Black, 2011a). Once more, protesters hopped on the Arab Spring bandwagon by
finding a way to use ordinary digital media to surmount authorities’ information blockades
and use them as tools for collective action efforts.
As the protest movement in Libya grew larger, and soon reached the capital of Tripoli,
colonel Gaddafi’s responses fast became increasingly violent. As hundreds of Libyan civilians
had been killed by security forces in the first few weeks of protests, in televised speeches
Gaddafi showed himself prepared to take extreme measures in order to suppress the
opposition. This, combined with messages, pictures and video footage that Libyans were
constantly uploading, created a sense of international awareness of the fact that conditions
17
were becoming increasingly inhumane. By the end of February 2011, the international
community decided that the future of Libya had no place for Gaddafi in it. Uniquely, the
United Nations Security Council voted unanimously in favor of having colonel Gaddafi tried
at the International Criminal Court for war crimes, making him the first sitting head of state in
history to be referred to the ICC with no opposing votes (Black, 2011b). By this time, Libya
was already by many standards in a state of civil war. With the adoption of UN Security
Council Resolution 1973 on 17 March, which authorized a no-fly zone over Libya (Watt et
al., 2011), the international community became actively involved. When a series of air strikes
was executed over Libyan territory by Britain, France and the US two days later, the situation
had irrevocably become one of civil war with outside intervention, in which the international
community had chosen the rebels’ side (McGreal et al., 2011).
Like Libya, Syria was also relatively late to see its people rise up against their dictator,
president Bashar al-Assad. In imitation of their Egyptian counterparts, some critical Syrian
voices were calling for a ‘day of rage’ through Facebook and Twitter, to be held in Damascus
in early February 2011. Although some sources (MSNBC, 2011) reported that over 2,500
people on Facebook had indicated to support the rally, others (Aysor, 2011) pointed out that
most supporters were actually located outside of Syria. According to news agency Reuters
(Oweis, 2007), the Facebook website in its entirety had officially been blocked for use inside
the country’s borders since 2007. This crackdown on national internet use, part of a campaign
against critical bloggers, online opinion forums and independent news websites, illustrated the
government’s effort to halt virtual political activism. In this respect, Syrian dissidents might
have been at a disadvantage compared to some of their other Arab equivalents when it came
to organizing protests.
What truly came as a surprise was the Syrian government’s announcement to lift the
ban on Facebook and other social media websites in February 2011. Seeing as protest
18
movements were flourishing in both Tunisia and Egypt, and especially because of the rising
awareness of the role that social media played in these events, the easing rather than
intensifying of restrictions seemed an unlikely move within president Assad’s otherwise
oppressive reign. However, as The Economist (2011) reported, “[u]nblocking Facebook et al
will not make a huge difference in and of itself. Young Syrians have long traded proxy servers
allowing them to bypass the firewalls and access the sites.”
The first news about substantial protests taking place in Syria came from the city of
Daraa and reached the outside world by mid-March. Not unlike the other Arab countries that
had seen civil uprisings take place over the preceding months, Syrian protesters were also met
with violence by government security forces. After the first protests had begun, riots quickly
spread to other larger cities such as Homs, Hama and Damascus, with each day of protests
yielding more dead civilians. Within the first week of protests there came reports that already
55 people had been killed during the demonstrations (Marsh et al. , 2011). President Assad
was quick to show himself willing to go to extreme measures in order to suppress any
criticism from anti-government activists, his methods suggesting that he had learned from
previous events in Tunisia and Egypt. After all, these countries had seen protests develop into
situations where long-standing regimes had fairly quickly been toppled.
In addition to the lethal violence that security forces used on protesters in the streets, it
also became apparent that president Assad’s initial gesture of compromise – lifting the ban on
social media websites – had been little more than a façade. In reality the government appeared
to be scanning social media websites for signs of government criticism while continuing its
campaign of tracking down and eliminating dissidents. This mode of conduct, it seems, was
fairly effective in striking terror in the hearts of many activists, who were afraid to openly
share their criticism on the Assad regime online. Consequently, Syria showed much less
regime-unfriendly political activity on blogs, Twitter and Facebook in comparison to some
19
other Arab Spring countries, and the minority of Syrians that did express its discontent often
did so anonymously (Reuters, 2011b).
Theory and Research Design
As previously mentioned in this paper, responses to the relationship between digital
media and the events taking place in the Arab Spring have varied. While the news media were
eager to brand the quick spread of popular protests a ‘Facebook revolution’, praising social
media networks for their supposed key roles, the academic world has been slower to draw
conclusions. Not surprisingly, perhaps, seeing as the first noteworthy disruptions happened
not two years ago. Moreover, most countries involved, such as Egypt and Libya, despite
relatively having calmed down are still very much in the aftermath of events. In others, like
Syria, the situation if anything has gradually become worse as the government’s violence has
intensified and shows no sign of changing for the better in the near future. Although it is
difficult to gain full insight in the Arab Spring so soon after its beginnings and so clearly
before any real resolutions have taken place, there is already much in what has transpired that
merits academic examination.
On the one hand, the novelty of the matter brings about several difficulties, in that so
far little substantial research has been done on the subject and consequently much of the data
have been collected and put together using various alternative sources, some of which do not
always correspond with each other. As very little so far has been officially published by the
states involved, such as casualty figures, most of the data had to be collected from news
articles, NGO publications and the still limited amount of academic sources. Also, because
many of the states involved have only recently either come out of situations of conflict or are
still actually involved in them, in some cases data sets (e.g. death tolls) are likely not yet fully
available, while in others they are simply still growing because events have not yet run their
20
full course. On the other hand, however, the subject’s freshness increases its relevance as well
as the amount of what remains to be investigated. While taking into account useful insights
into media and collective action relationships from previous studies, this paper attempts to
offer an understanding of the link between a unique series of events and the relatively young,
yet arguably revolutionary, online technologies often associated with it. With this in mind, the
question is asked: to what extent has the availability of internet had an effect on civil
resistance in the Arab Spring?
Judging by reports covering the upheavals in the Arab region of the past two years or
so, whether professional news media or amateur blogs, one would be inclined to think that
civil protest these days is sponsored by social networking websites Facebook and Twitter. In a
similar fashion to the Occupy Wall Street movement of the same period, which started in New
York City but went global fast through internet exposure, social media received much of the
credit for the increasing civil empowerment in Arab countries.2 Supporters of the notion that
people who connected through online technologies were changing the world, occasionally
referred to as ‘cyberoptimists’, passionately called the phenomenon a ‘social media
revolution’. A study undertaken by the Dubai School of Government in 2011 noticed the
function of social media as a way to express societal concerns: “The past year has seen social
media being used in a wide variety of ways in the Arab region, whether to rally people around
social causes and political campaigns, boost citizen journalism and civic participation, create
a forum for debate and interaction between governments and their communities, or to enhance
innovation and collaboration within government.”3 Still there were others who were more
skeptical about the amount of credit given to online media in relation to the civil unrest, often
stating that if they had played a part in the first place, it had been a more limited one than
many supposed. According to critics, online media had more likely offered a mere platform
2
3
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18013662
Dubai School of Government. “Arab Social Media Report.” Vol. 1 No. 1. (p. 1).
21
for verbalizing already existing tensions rather than causing them or mobilizing masses to act
upon them.4
While none of the countries in which ongoing, large-scale protests took place remain
with a clean conscience – protesters were killed in all of them5 – each country certainly saw
civilian collective action efforts evolve into different directions in terms of government
response. As mentioned before, many of the news media and other enthusiasts of the Arab
revolutions were fast to claim that internet and particularly social media helped protesters
pursue their objectives. Presumably it helped them to mobilize masses domestically, as well
as creating awareness of events and support regionally and globally, which empowered them
to overthrow governments. From this follows, logically, that in states in which these online
communications devices were to a lesser extent available, protesters would have had more
trouble in achieving collective action success. In order to test these popular assumptions, this
paper discusses the hypothesis that Arab Spring protest movements were stronger and more
successful in countries that showed a higher amount of internet penetration.
Seeing as most Arab states have a long history of largely autocratic regimes, public
political dissent in these countries is usually not tolerated by their authorities. One of the
valuable features of the internet that may have aided some protest movements in opposing
their governments is that everything on it is immediately accessible to people all over the
world. The effective use of online technologies can consequently result in publicizing events
that would previously perhaps have been hushed up by authorities. In relation to the previous
hypothesis, the assumption is that states with higher internet penetration will have had
stronger domestic civil opposition to, for instance, government violence. Conversely, states in
which citizens had less overall internet access are expected to have seen less domestic
mobilization and more oppression by authorities. This combined with the fact that domestic
4
5
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428596.400-was-the-arab-spring-really-a-facebook-revolution.html
http://www.usnews.com/news/slideshows/death-toll-of-arab-spring
22
atrocities became open to public scrutiny on the internet leads to the hypothesis that Arab
countries with lower internet penetration showed more difficulties in containing the escalation
of protests without outside intervention, as opposed to those with higher internet penetration.
Similarly, whereas previously people relied primarily on professional news media to
report through television, radio or newspapers, today’s technologies give anyone with a cell
phone and an internet connection the ability to report to the world from the scene right away.
Thomas Zeitzoff observed this trend when studying insurgent warfare in the Gaza conflict,
noting that “social networking and new media sources (…) vastly increased the speed and
dissemination of information from the battlefield.”6 In the context of the Arab Spring protests,
which took place in city streets, it is expected that states in which new media technologies
were more widely available to civilians, authorities will have had less incentive to crack down
violently on protests because of the international consequences it might have for them. In
addition, it might discourage police and military to use excessive force, because they were
more personally exposed when being filmed or photographed and knew that these images
could end up online. In Howard and Hussain’s article “The Role of Digital Media,” they note
that “[s]ome Egyptians speculated that the army did not act systematically against protesters
because soldiers were made suddenly aware of their socially proximate connection to the
square’s occupants, and also because the troops knew that they were constantly on camera.”7
The above produces the hypothesis that Arab countries with higher internet penetration tended
to produce fewer casualties in protester-government clashes.
In order to test the hypotheses presented above, the research section consists of a
sample of the Arab countries that were involved in the upheavals taking place in the Arab
Spring. Each of the countries saw some amount of civil resistance, although the extent to
which they evolved into more serious conflict varied greatly between states. Despite the fact
6
7
Zeitzoff, Thomas. “Using Social Media to Measure Conflict Dynamics.” (p. 942)
Howard and Hussain. “The Role of Digital Media.” (p. 44)
23
that it is far from certain in all states included what the future looks like and whether
protesters’ efforts will yield the results they aimed for, some seem to have left the period of
the worst disruptions behind them while others appear to become increasingly unstable still.
Seeing as the focus of the research is on the relationship between the differences in progress
between states, and the extent to which the availability of internet – or lack thereof – might
have influenced this, it is a case study comparing states that show variations in these respects.
The Arab nations included are, in no particular order, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and
Syria.
For each of the hypotheses the amount of internet penetration per country is
consistently used as one of the main variables to indicate variations in conflict progression. In
addition, percentages of Facebook users are presented per country, as well as Twitter trends in
some of them. Also included are differences in the amount of states’ press and internet
freedom to control for online monitoring done by state authorities.
While mobile phone usage as a mobilization tool has been discussed in previous
chapters, states’ individual figures of mobile-cellular penetration per country have
consciously been left out, since they tend to give an unrealistically favorable portrayal of
digital media availability, disproportionate to mobile phones’ value as communicational
instruments.8 This is the case for two reasons: first, the mobile phone count in some countries
is higher than their total population. Since this does not mean that every single person in that
country owns at least one mobile telephone, rather it indicates that many people who do, own
more than one. A single person being in possession of more than one telephone does not,
however, further increase their communicating possibilities. The second reason is that internet
availability gives people vastly more access to information than mobile phones do. Through
8
Libya for instance has a staggering amount of mobile-cellular penetration, as high as 172%. Unfortunately this
does not represent the number of individuals who have access to a mobile phone at all. Source: http://data.un.org
24
news websites, blogs and social media, people are able to send and receive information to and
from a much wider variety of people.
Taking the above into account, each hypothesis is tested using a specific set of factors
that requires examination. To put them into order systematically, they are as follows;
Hypothesis H1: Arab Spring protest movements were stronger and more successful in
countries that showed a higher amount of internet penetration. In order to test the first
hypothesis, we look at the amount of success that various protest movements had in their
particular country. Special attention is given to the Egyptian case, which offers an in-depth
perspective into one of the most internationally debated civil conflicts of the Arab Spring.
Hypothesis H2: Arab countries with lower internet penetration showed more
difficulties in containing the escalation of protests without outside intervention, as opposed to
those with higher internet penetration. For the second hypothesis, the extent to which, as well
as how and why conflicts in each country were or were not resolved is examined. The
question is asked whether particular conflicts generated more attention domestically or
internationally, and how this affected its development. Countries that managed to contain the
domestic situation independently are compared to countries in which outside intervention
contributed to their current state of affairs.
Hypothesis H3: Arab countries with higher internet penetration tended to produce
fewer casualties in protester-government clashes. The last hypothesis focuses explicitly on
the amount of casualties that Arab protests have brought forth, mainly from clashes between
civilian protesters and government authorities. Since the duration of protests is different for
each country, the most recent figures of casualties available are used and divided by the
number of months that protests have lasted up until that particular count. In doing so, a
monthly average is calculated per country by which conflict intensity can be measured and
compared between countries.
25
Findings
Table 1 displays the 2010 data for internet penetration, Facebook usage and levels of press
freedom per country, from around the period when the first protests began. The Freedom of
the Press rating is based on an annual report published by Freedom House, which
Country
Internet
Penetration
Percentage
(2010)9
Facebook User
Percentage
(2010)10
Freedom House
Freedom of the
Press Rating
(2010)11
Tunisia
36.80
17.55
85
Egypt
26.74
5.49
65
Syria
20.70
1.07
84
Libya
14.00
3.98
94
Yemen
10.85
0.74
83
Table 1
measures degrees of print, broadcast and internet freedom. These numbers come from its 2011
index, concerning the year of 2010. In this report, each state is rated on a scale from 0 (the
most free) to 100 (the least free). These scores offer an arrangement of states into one of three
categories: 0-30 (free), 31-60 (partly free) and 61-100 (not free).
In Tunisia, popular protests booked successes fast, as the first upheavals started late in
December 2010, and managed to have president Ben Ali flee the country in January 2011. In
a matter of days, the civil resistance movement grew significantly with the result of toppling
9
United Nations Statistics Division, 2010b.
Dubai School of Government, 2011, p.5.
11
Freedom House, 2011, p. 14
10
26
the country’s regime only a month later. So far, it seems, Tunisia has made the most
successful transition and remains the most promising to see actual improvement take place.
Egypt, after seeing the success of the Tunisian people, was fast to follow. Late January
2011 massive protests started in Cairo, demanding the resignation of president Mubarak.
Similar to Tunisia, the Mubarak regime fell in a matter of weeks, handing over power to the
military in February, which installed the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) to
function as the new, temporary, leadership. As was the case in Tunisia, Egypt’s government
was driven out only through the Egyptians’ collective action efforts, with no interference from
outside.
Syria, Libya and Yemen have each gone down very different roads altogether over the
past two years. None of the protest movements that came into existence in these countries,
however, have made the sort of progress that was witnessed in Tunisia and Egypt, and each
state has seen a certain amount of outside intervention take place. Of the three, Syria is
perhaps in the most desperate of situations as protests, since breaking out in March 2011, have
since been met with excessive government violence and well over a year later president
Assad’s regime shows no intention of either stepping down or easing its crackdown. Despite
several initial government concessions, such as repealing the Emergency Law and allowing
formation of other political parties, an ongoing state of civil resistance has brought forth no
significant change so far. Arab League economic sanctions and monitoring missions have
proved fruitless. In early 2012, ex-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was appointed the joint
US/Arab League representative to Syria in order to mediate a cease-fire and withdrawal of
government troops from Syrian populated areas. Although fighting stopped briefly, it
recommenced soon after and even intensified in some locations (CIA, 2012b).
Protests first erupted in Libya early on in 2011, to which head of state Muammar
Gaddafi responded with a harsh military crackdown. This resulted in the national situation
27
spiraling down into a state of full-blown civil war. The UN Security Council adopted
Resolution 1973 soon after, implementing a no-fly zone over Libya and supporting the
militant popular resistance in the country. After anti-Gaddafi forces took over the country’s
capital, Tripoli, in August and executed Gaddafi himself in October, the UN-recognized
interim government, the Transitional National Council (TNC), declared the country officially
liberated on 23 October 2011. Following this, the TNC began making plans to work toward
elections, a new government, and writing a constitution (CIA, 2012c).
Although the protest movements finally succeeded in overthrowing the Gaddafi
government, this did not happen until after the country had experienced months of intense
turmoil, with a destructive civil war killing tens of thousands of people. In addition, the
question will remain whether civilians’ collective action efforts would have been able to
topple the regime had the UN not intervened. Add to that the fact that Libyan society has
become increasingly unstable through the chaos created by the removal of the old
government, as the risk of regional and tribal conflicts tearing the country apart increases.
Moreover, “[t]he fact that foreign intervention played a critical role in regime change in Libya
also detracts from the legitimacy of the successor government and makes it more susceptible
to domestic challenges” (Ayoob, 2012).
Although Yemen has not had to endure a situation of conflict the scale of those in
Syria and Libya, it has nevertheless been going through a very rough period ever since
protests began in January 2011. With civil resistance movements demanding that president
Saleh retire from office, and being answered with refusal, demonstrations quickly became
more violent. Intense fighting between protesters and authorities broke out, and an attempt to
kill Saleh by explosives saw him injured in June 2011. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)
finally brokered a deal that Saleh signed in late 2011, having him agree to step down and
transfer part of his powers to vice-president Hadi in return for amnesty from prosecution.
28
When Hadi won elections in 2012, Saleh’s full powers were officially transferred to him
(CIA, 2012d).
Despite the implementation of a new government, and thus protests’ apparent success,
perspectives for the future are, however, not singularly positive. Instead, Yemen seems to
have merely entered a new, yet not any less hopeless, stage of the political stalemate it has
been in for decades. The agreement pushed forward by the GCC and backed by the United
States and the UN offered Saleh immunity, and allows both him and his relatives to still take
part in politics in the future. Worst of all, his family is still in charge of the military and
security (Schmitz, 2011). In addition, no actual democratic change seems to result from the
agreement, as the GCC deal has no influence on the role of armed forces or any other state
institutions. Many Yemeni’s are outraged by the situation, as it “has provided neither justice
nor a political transition. Instead it has rewarded a culture of impunity and given Saleh a blank
check to kill” (Lynch, 2012).
When considering whether protest movements were in fact stronger and more
successful in the Arab states that had a higher amount of internet penetration at the time, on
the face of it both Tunisia and Egypt seem to stand out positively in terms of duration and
outcome. Tufekci and Wilson (2012) offer some of the first hard data on the role of different
forms of media on the Egyptian protests. By means of research conducted in Cairo among a
total of 1,050 Egyptian protesters during the early months of 2011, they tried to decide what
the influence of media use had been on their collective action efforts. Table 2 offers a global
overview of what the sample consisted of. What is noteworthy is that a significant majority of
people had internet access in some form or other, as 80% had an online connection at home
and another 52% had one on their mobile phone. Also interesting is that only about a third of
people had previously attended protests. Since that leaves a very significant part of protesters
with no previous history of activism, it suggests that many of them were not experienced
29
political dissidents, but rather that a good number of them were mobilized this time around in
one way or another.
Male
(n = 792)
Female
(n = 258)
Total
(N = 1,050)
Percent with
internet at home
77
90
80
Percent with
internet on phone
50
57
52
Percent present on
first day of protests
38
33
36
33
34
Percent who had
previously attended 34
protests
Table 212
Percent of Protesters Using Different Media for General Purposes
Medium
Male
(n = 792)
Female
(n = 258)
Total
(N = 1,050)
Blog
14
18
15
E-mail
83
85
83
Facebook
49
60
52
Phone
92
93
92
Print
64
59
63
Satellite TV
93
94
94
Text message
61
67
62
Twitter
15
20
16
Table 313
Table 3 provides an overview of a broad range of different media that protesters used
for general purposes in everyday life. Overall, satellite television and phones were the most
12
13
Tufekci and Wilson, 2012, p. 369.
Idem.
30
popular means of general communication among respondents, while Twitter and blogs were
used the least. When this is compared to activists’ media preferences for communicating
Percent of Protesters Using Different Media for Communicating About Protests
Medium
Male
(n = 792)
Female
(n = 258)
Total
(N = 1,050)
Blog
10
16
12
E-mail
25
33
27
Facebook
48
60
51
Phone
80
87
82
Print
59
52
58
Satellite TV
92
93
92
Text message
46
49
46
Twitter
11
19
13
Table 414
about the protests, however, a number of things stand out. First, as table
4 shows, satellite TV and phones were overall also the two most popular choices of media
that Egyptian protesters relied on for communication about protests. However, face-to-face
communication was the primary way in which most respondents first heard about the protests,
with Facebook as a dominant second. More traditional forms of media were much less
important in this manner, as for instance text messages were only in 0.8% of instances the
initial medium of information, although later on it was widely used (46%) to communicate
about protests (Tufekci and Wilson, 2012, p. 370). The research shows (p. 373) that protesters
who joined in on the first days of protests relied primarily on, among others, blogs, Twitter
and Facebook for information about protests, and that these were key communication devices
for the protests that erupted on January 25.
14
Tufekci and Wilson, 2012, p. 370.
31
This is important, because there is good reason to believe that participation in the early
stages of a protest movement is paramount to its further success. Arguably, if the first days
fail to generate a sufficient amount of support or attention, less people will be inclined to join
in. This has much to do with a concept that Henry Farrell (2012, p. 40) calls “preference
falsification”, which he says the internet may make less likely: “individuals will have
incentives to conceal their true preferences in a wide variety of social situations. For example,
even in mildly authoritarian regimes, people may conceal their preferences for a different
social order so as to avoid punishment. This means that people will lack information about
others’ true preferences and may in turn be reluctant to display their own true preferences.”
That said, the internet can function as a platform that is not easily controlled by authorities
and by which they may relatively safely communicate with other dissidents, without having to
conceal their true preferences. Critics, on the other hand, might advise to be cautious of
overestimating the real-life effects of online communications, emphasizing that internet-based
communication is more likely to build “weak ties”, rather than the strong ties that according
to social movement theorists are necessary to support expensive or risky forms of political
action (Gladwell, 2010, p. 49).
Another indication of the extent to which the internet offered Egyptian protesters with
additional means of communication is the fact that an estimated 52% had a Facebook account
(table 3). Of these people, nearly all (51%) used it to communicate about protests (table 4).
When this is compared to the total Egyptian population’s percentage of Facebook users from
table 1, namely 5.49%, this indicates that protesters were a relatively very active online group.
Many of the Egyptian respondents also indicated being functional as ‘citizen journalists’, a
term that refers to people “who may or may not have a history of activism, but suddenly
[appear] to convey critical information to the public at a crucial moment” (Tufekci and
Wilson, 2012, p.373). The means by which they did this was producing video footage or
32
pictures of public protests and disseminating these online. A staggering 48.2% of the
respondents had been active in this process, noting that the primary platform for publication
was Facebook.
Considering the ways in which collective action efforts in these five countries evolved,
there appears to be a significant difference between Tunisia and Egypt on the one hand, and
Syria, Libya and Yemen on the other. Tunisia and Egypt have so far been the more fortunate
of the lot, with periods of national turmoil both lasting considerably shorter and yielding more
results in the form of either relative stability or perspectives of change. Tunisia, even more so
than Egypt, was technologically relatively well-developed at the time when the first protests
began. Table 1 shows that internet was quite a widespread commodity in Tunisia and its
number of Facebook users was almost triple that of Egypt. Keeping in mind the additional
means of communication that online technologies offered dissidents in Egypt, the similarities
between these two states’ conflict outcomes are perhaps not so surprising. As some scholars
have noted, however, there are also reasons to be skeptical of claims that the internet and
social media were singularly responsible for the successes of these protest movements. As
Marc Lynch (2011, p. 303) puts it, “[t]he revolutions which have unfolded in Tunis and Cairo
and beyond might seem to tip the balance decisively towards the optimists, but in fact they do
not offer complete validation to either side. Facebook seems to have mattered quite a bit in
Tunisia, but that did not drive revolution before December 2010. Facebook was crucial for
coordinating Egyptian protestors to emulate Tunisians starting January 25, but as an alreadyestablished national holiday, this date was an obvious focal point; also, the organizers used
mosques as the hubs for most of the protests, again an obvious (and off-line) choice.”
Although these are justified points of criticism, it needs to be noted that Facebook did not
become available in Arabic until 2009 (Tufekci and Wilson, 2012, p. 374), which might
33
provide some validation for the fact that it had not been used as a tool of protest in the MENA
region before that time.
Overall, it appears that assumptions about the effects of internet on the strength and
success of Arab Spring protest movements should be sought somewhere between the claims
of both optimists and skeptics. As the Egyptian case shows, online communications were in
fact widely used in the earliest stages of protests, in order to send and receive information and
in a manner kick-start the protest movement. Although face-to-face communications were of
at least equal importance to protesters, in having to overcome problems of preference
falsification it seems that dissidents discovered the internet as an effective means for doing so.
This may in turn have also positively affected the further strength of the movement, as people
will be more likely to join in when it is clear that there are multitudes of others with similar
preferences. That is not to say, however, that internet services receive all the credit. When the
movement was finally underway, many Egyptian activists relied mostly on satellite television
and telephone for protest communications, and in all stages of the protests face-to-face
interactions were of great importance as well. In short, it is not a question of either the
importance of new media or that of older forms of communication, but rather a combination
of both. A higher amount of internet penetration is likely to have helped some Arab protest
movements in successfully accomplishing their endeavors , but mostly as a prerequisite to a
successful start and only within a complex relationship with other forms of communication.
Although in none of the states here studied the path of protest was entirely peaceful,
the Egyptian and Tunisian cases differed from the others in that they did not descend into a
situation of prolonged violent conflict. As noted by Aday et al. (2012, p. 19) “[t]his lack of
violent conflict led many early enthusiasts to celebrate the uniquely peaceful implications of
new media.” However, they say, this is “difficult to reconcile with the course of events in (…)
Yemen, Syria, or Libya … Yemen has witnessed episodic outbursts of extreme violence.
34
Libya and Syria devolved into full-scale internal war.” What the authors mean to imply is that
online media were put to effective use also in states with lower amounts of internet
penetration and that have seen the most violence take place. What was it then that caused the
international community to intervene in some cases, while not in others? Tunisia and Egypt,
namely, despite their uprisings being extensively covered in the media and discussed
internationally, were left to their own devices, whereas Syria, Libya and Yemen’s domestic
upheavals apparently did merit international involvement.
Syrian president Bashar al Assad showed himself to be of an exceptionally unyielding
disposition, as he immediately vowed to meet the civil resistance with an “iron hand” (CBC,
2012). Sure enough, what began as peaceful protests soon turned into violent conflict as
Syrian authorities forcefully tried to break the resistance. Syria’s domestic situation has
significantly worsened ever since, with one of the more recent examples of Assad’s
disproportionate response being a massacre of 108 civilians, many of whom were children, in
the town of Houla (BBC, 2012). Despite steps undertaken by the Arab League (Al Jazeera,
2011) and the UN in attempts to instigate a peace-building process, president Assad has time
and again proven to be unreceptive of international aid or advice, nor does he seem willing to
make concessions independently. Gradually it has become more apparent how closed Syria’s
borders are, as both Arab League and UN missions have failed so far and the information that
reaches the outside world is often questionable. This is also illustrated by Assad’s response to
the Houla massacre, for which he blamed “terrorists and extremists” (Karam, 2012).
Both the UN military intervention in Libya and the previously mentioned peace
agreement that was brokered by the GCC in Yemen are other examples of the international
community’s attempts to stabilize Arab conflicts. While perhaps the situation in Libya
escalated further than it did in Yemen, both states experienced long-lasting conflicts. The
gravity of Yemen’s conflict is illustrated by the fact that although until recently NGOs
35
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch had both estimated its number of casualties
between 200 and 250, Yemen’s Human Rights Ministry published its official death toll on 18
March 2012, stating that over 2000 people had been killed in the country’s 14-month uprising
(Al Jazeera, 2012).
It appears that the reason why in some of these conflicts the international community
did become actively involved is because online activism increased the amount of insight that
the outside world had in the nature of events taking place. Interestingly, instead of arguing
that the role of the internet might have been exaggerated in the – relatively more peaceful –
Tunisian and Egyptian cases, Aday et al. (2012, p. 20) point out that it should not be
undervalued in the more violent ones. They emphasize that this “variation is not explained by
the absence of ICT [information and communication technology] in the violent cases. Social
media was used extensively by movements that quickly became deeply involved in violence
even if they were not the initiators of violence … In Libya, a small but visible group of online
activists engaged heavily with other Arab social media to draw attention to their struggle. And
in Syria, activists outside of the country played a disproportionate role early on in the conflict
in distributing videos of regime violence and accounts of protest.” In other words, it seems
that even for states with relatively low levels of internet penetration, small numbers of
activists were nonetheless able to put the limited amount of available ICTs to effective use
and leak information about domestic events onto the internet. This once more confirms the
value of these citizen journalists, who “record events and distribute multimedia content
through Facebook and Twitter, content which is then rebroadcast through Al-Jazeera and
distributed to other media. This emerging communication system has profoundly transformed
the Arab public sphere by increasing citizens’ ability to document and share, by greatly
36
37
38
39
increasing the odds that misconduct by authorities will become widely known …” (Tufekci
and Wilson, 2012, p. 367). In this respect, rather than functioning as a means to mobilize
dissidents domestically, the internet seems to have primarily served activists in states with
lower internet penetration to communicate to the outside world. This is perhaps not surprising,
as there were very few people to receive and spread online information inside these states, but
very many outside of them.
The Arab Spring events were reported, followed and discussed by multitudes on
online microblog service Twitter. However, the vast majority of tweets (each specifying its
subject matter with an individually ascribed ‘hashtag’) did not actually come from the MENA
region, but from the international community. Many of the Arab states in which civil unrest
was taking place received the lion’s share of its attention on Twitter not from domestic or
even regional Twitter users, but from those located outside the immediate vicinity of the state
concerned. For example, this is illustrated in a number of graphs made up by Deen Freelon
(2011), here portrayed in figures 1, 2 and 3, which show this trend in light of the Egyptian,
Tunisian and Yemeni case. Figure 1 shows the total number of tweets between 23 January
2011 and 18 March 2011 with the hashtag #egypt, concerning messages about the Egyptian
revolution. Figure 2 displays those between 14 January 2011 and 15 March 2011 with the
hashtag #sidibouzid, which refers to the Tunisian uprising. Figure 3 shows all tweets between
2 February 2011 and 19 March 2011 that carried the hashtag #yemen, about the protests in
Yemen. Each graph shows that overall the vast majority of messages on Twitter discussing
any of these subjects came from outside of both the country concerned, as well as outside the
MENA region.
In this specific context, this means that the reason why some states were met with
various forms of external intervention and others were not is because the gross atrocities of
the Syrian, Libyan and Yemeni regimes were suddenly exposed to the international
40
community. As each state sheltered a number of activists who were able to make domestic
events internationally public, this improved the international community’s ability to evaluate
individual countries’ domestic situation and discern which states needed to be intervened in.
According to Aday et al. (2012, p. 9) “there is evidence that foreign governments directly
monitored these new media sites to supplement their limited knowledge of the actors on the
ground.” The information that reached the outside world was perhaps by no means complete,
but sufficient to trigger external party involvement by giving “citizens and policymakers
elsewhere … an important — if partial — window into events on the ground.”
Although lower internet penetration in some Arab states did not necessarily mean that
activists had no way of effectively using ICTs, it did yield vastly different outcomes between
countries. Internet-based communications existed and were exploited in each of the five states
discussed. The different degrees in overall penetration, however, resulted in the fact that in
some states it mobilized people domestically, whereas in others it helped provoke
international intervention. This is partly due to the fact that in states with higher internet
penetration simply more people domestically were able to disseminate and retrieve
information that concerned them online. Conversely, information distributed onto the net out
of states with less internet penetration received the vast majority of its attention from foreign
audiences and (Western) governments, whom it helped better to judge the actual extent of
atrocities in these states. The result of this is that Arab states with lower internet penetration
had more difficulties in containing the escalation of protests without outside intervention.
While each of the states here included saw domestic conflict take violent forms for
different lengths of time, they nevertheless all produced significant amounts of casualties. As
did states’ degrees of transparency with regard to information and conflict escalation, as
discussed above, death tolls produced by the Arab protests varied considerably per country.
41
Country
Total Death Toll15
Tunisia
Egypt
Syria
Libya
Yemen
Table 5
300
846
8,00016
30,000
2,00017
Average Deaths per
Month
60
282
667
4,286
143
When studying the data as shown in table 5, it is clear that there are vast differences
between states in the number of deaths that the Arab Spring uprisings have produced. Most
notable is the difference between Tunisia and Egypt on the one hand, and Syria, Libya and
Yemen on the other. Although the former have already seen casualties rise into the hundreds,
the latter have each produced many thousands of victims. The average number of deaths per
month, as laid out in the far right column of table 5, provides an indication of the brutality of
conflicts as it portrays how many people were killed at the height of their intensity. Although
both Tunisia and Egypt’s total amount of casualties are far lower than those of Syria, Libya
and Yemen, the monthly average seems to make Egypt the odd one out as its number lies
between those of Yemen and Syria. This might be an indication that, although conflict was
relatively shorter, the nature of clashes between protesters and authorities was at times harsher
in states with higher amounts of internet penetration.
However, the total death toll is the most indicative of the overall intensity of conflict.
Libya clearly stands out in all respects as it experienced a nationwide civil war, which cost
tens of thousands of lives. Syria’s 8,000 deaths are only a provisional estimate as the violence
rages on and is likely to produce many more victims. Yemen, as previously mentioned, has
15
Since few official figures have so far been made available of the amounts of casualties in each country,
sources vary. With the exception of Syria, casualty figures are all from after states’ most intense conflict had
passed. The Syrian figures are the most recent available. Source, unless noted otherwise: Rettig, 2011.
16
CBS, 2012.
17
Al Jazeera, 2012.
42
produced ten times more casualties than was known for a long time since even renowned
human rights organizations apparently could not provide an accurate estimate. Tunisia and
Egypt, while still responsible for the deaths of multiple hundreds of people, have on the other
hand experienced relatively less brutality, as Egypt’s total does not even amount to half that
of Yemen.
These findings to some extent support cyberoptimist claims that the availability of
online media was beneficial to protesters in decreasing amounts of authority violence during
government crackdowns. Some consider the possibility that the use of new media directly
affected the behavior of government troops in that it discouraged them from using excessive
violence against political dissidents (Howard and Hussain, 2011, p. 44). Ritter and Trechsel
(2011, p. 3) in fact specifically claim that “the successful use of ICTs seems to be correlated
with nonviolent revolutions in particular, not their violent counterparts.” In other words, this
suggests that the successful use of online media promotes the course of revolutions to take
place in a nonviolent manner, rather than in a violent one. The casualty numbers from table 5,
however, suggest something else altogether. Ritter and Trechsel’s notion of the Tunisian and
Egyptian revolutions as being nonviolent ones is simply incorrect. They were, however,
overall less violent than the uprisings in Syria, Libya and Yemen. Either way, the authors
state that it is becoming increasingly “difficult, if not impossible, for observers to ignore the
role of information and communication in revolutionary processes” (Ritter and Trechsel,
2011, p. 3). This may be true, but perhaps this role does not manifest itself in a complete lack
of violence in revolutions, but rather in a significant decrease thereof.
In short, Ritter and Trechsel (2011, p. 19) may be right in that the increased
availability of ICTs and, specifically, online media multiplied and amplified protesters’ voices
and increased the speed by which revolutions progressed. Comparing the Tunisian and
Egyptian cases to the Syrian, Libyan and Yemeni ones, this may have resulted in fewer
43
casualties, both by the creation of increased international awareness and a shortening of the
conflict’s length. However, there is no evidence that it is correlated with nonviolent
revolutions, instead of violent ones. So far, the most that can be said is that perhaps a higher
availability of internet-driven communications promoted a decrease both in violence and,
consequently, casualties in some Arab Spring revolutions.
Overall, the truth about what role the internet has exactly played in the Arab Spring is
likely to be somewhere in between the claims that both cyberoptimists and cyberskeptics
make. The relationship between internet and politics is a complex one that is still very much
developing. In this light, Henry Farrell (2012, p. 44) states that we are increasingly moving
towards a situation where the internet can no longer be studied in isolation, but should all the
more be studied in its relationship to politics. The existing differences between scholars
illustrate the complexity of this relationship. Diamond (2010, p. 70) has argued that through
the internet, civilians can “report news, expose wrongdoing, express opinions, mobilize
protest, monitor elections, scrutinize government, deepen participation, and expand the
horizons of freedom,” which may empower them to overthrow governments. At the same
time, those more skeptical of the internet’s singularly positive influence note that Arab
governments were just as clever in using it as a means to their end, by monitoring and
controlling internet use (Aday, et al., 2012, p. 8). As do some others, Marc Lynch (2011, p.
303) advocates a hybrid theory that sees the internet in a broader perspective: “[s]ocial media
played an important role at key moments in the unfolding of those revolutionary events, but
they did so within a context shaped by older media such as al-Jazeera, by political anger over
heavily manipulated elections, and by material changes such as a rapidly deteriorating
economic situation.” This may be a more constructive way to study the relationship between
media and politics, rather than ones that force scholars to choose exclusively between the
camps of either the optimists or the skeptics.
44
Conclusion
At the time of this writing in June 2012 it is still far from certain what the long-term effects
will be of the events that have transpired and are still largely unresolved in the Arab world.
While current domestic situations vary greatly even between countries that relatively have the
most positive future prospects, others are still wrapped up in a state of affairs of which there is
no telling where it will lead. Although it is difficult to deny the fact that internet and new
media were actively present in the events taking place in the Arab Spring, there is no simple
way of determining the extent to which they might have influenced or shaped – directly or
indirectly – the protest movements that came into being in the MENA region. Conversely, it
would be asinine to assume that without the existence of the internet the Arab Spring
uprisings could not have taken place.
This is not to say that the internet was unimportant to the development of events in the
Arab Spring, but rather that contemporary studies have not yet been able to show a causal
relationship between the two. For one, the availability of data at this point is still too limited,
and further research will be necessary for any decisive conclusions to be drawn. In addition, at
the moment it seems more likely that the role of the internet and of new media in general
should be seen in a wider context and especially in relation to the role of older forms of media
and communication. Citizen journalism, the uploading of videos to the internet, Twitter
messages and Facebook status updates all influenced news reports that were spread through
print or broadcast on domestic, regional and international levels. Moreover, simply because
nowadays people have the option to convene and communicate on the internet, this does not
mean that the importance of physical, face-to-face conversation and public meeting places
should entirely be forgotten or denied. After all, revolutions did happen long before the
internet existed.
45
In addition, relevant questions that remain are for instance why in some Arab states
(e.g. Saudi Arabia, Morocco) no significant protests erupted as well as how and why in some
states in which they did (e.g. Bahrain) governments were able to gain control over them by
swift and effective crackdowns. Although this paper has focused exclusively on variations
between states in which noteworthy civil uprisings did take place, it might not explain similar
cases in which they did not or that had different outcomes altogether. Moreover, the temporal
limitations of this research should be taken into consideration, since the Arab Spring is not
even two years old. Even states that have seen the most progress so far are still caught up in a
struggle for power between different parts of the community. Others are in such desperate
situations that there is no telling where they will lead. It will take some time before the full
effects of what has transpired in the MENA region so far can be observed.
Many of the claims made both by optimists and skeptics about how exactly the
internet has affected the Arab Spring at this time are at best premature. It is quite possible that
both views are equally right, in that both new media and more traditional forms of
communication have significantly contributed to events. That said, increased internet
penetration is likely to have aided the strength and success of Arab Spring protest movements
to some extent, but it should be appreciated only within a larger context that includes other
means of communication. It is also questionable whether lower amounts of internet
penetration resulted in dissidents’ inability to effectively use new ICTs. Rather, because each
of these states to some extent made use of new ICTs, the international community gained
more insight into the situation on the ground and the exposed domestic atrocities facilitated
the notion that in some cases intervention was necessary. Similarly, there is no hard evidence
to show that new media use correlates with nonviolent revolutions rather than with violent
ones, like some have argued. Violence and casualties were a part of each of the cases here
studied. Amounts of casualties, however, did differ significantly. Possibly this was an indirect
46
result of the use of online communications devices, in that it helped decrease government
violence by increasing international awareness and a shortening of conflict duration.
While there is value in the research of both optimists and skeptics of the influence that
the internet may have had on the Arab Spring uprisings, the existing literature offers
insufficient evidence to make any definitive assertions. In part this is due to the fact that these
conflicts have not yet run their full course and its long-term effects are as of yet thus largely
unobservable. Another important reason is that, as a consequence of this, there are not enough
hard data available at the moment to support most theoretical claims. This implicates the need
for caution towards making unsubstantiated claims about how the successful uprisings were,
for instance, ‘Twitter revolutions’. At the same time, however, it would not be wise to dismiss
the importance of new media ahead of time either. As there are empirical findings to support
both sides, a combination of the two seems most likely to be closest to the truth. It is
imperative that more research be done into the relationship between the internet and politics
and that more data is gathered as it becomes available. In the meantime, researchers will have
to be careful not to draw any hasty conclusions as many of the news media have done. The
relationship between the internet and politics is complex and very much in its developing
stages still, and must therefore be approached with due patience and precision.
References
Aday et al. , 2012. Blogs and Bullets II: New Media and Conflict After the Arab Spring.
[pdf] Available at: <http://www.usip.org/files/resources/PW80.pdf> [Accessed 21
August 2012].
Al Jazeera, 2011. Arab League monitors arrive in Syria. Al Jazeera Middle East, [online], 23
December. Available at:
<http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/12/20111222133059241628.html>
[Accessed 28 June 2012].
Al Jazeera, 2012. Al Jazeera Blogs, [blog] 18 March. Available at:
<http://blogs.aljazeera.net/topic/yemen/yemen-mar-18-2012-2123> [Accessed 28 June
2012].
47
Arthur, C., 2011. Egypt blocks social media websites in attempted clampdown on unrest. The
Guardian, [online] 26 January. Available at:
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/26/egypt-blocks-social-media-websites>
[Accessed 28 June 2012].
Ayoob, M., 2012. Assessing the Arab Spring in its second year, Foreign Policy, [online]
Available at:
<http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/04/06/assessing_the_arab_spring_in_its
_second_year> [Accessed 28 June 2012].
Aysor, 2011. “Day of Rage” planned for Syria; protests scheduled for Feb 4-5. Aysor
Politics/World, [online] 3 February. Available at:
<http://www.aysor.am/en/news/2011/02/03/syrian-facebook-twitter/> [Accessed 28
June 2012].
Bakri, N., and Goodman, J., 2011. Thousands in Yemen protest against the government. The
New York Times, [online] 27 January. Available at:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/world/middleeast/28yemen.html> [Accessed 28
June 2012].
BBC, 2010. Mozambique ‘blocked texts’ during food riots. BBC News, [online] 14
September. Available at: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11300211>
[Accessed 28 June 2012].
BBC, 2011. Confusion over Egyptian blocks on web protest tools. BBC News, [online] 26
January. Available at: <http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-12291982> [Accessed
28 June 2012].
BBC, 2012. Syria Houla massacre: Survivors recount horror. BBC News, [online], 28 May.
Available at: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18245225> [Accessed
28 June 2012].
Benioff, M., 2012. Welcome to the social media revolution. BBC Business, [online] 10 May.
Available at: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18013662> [Accessed 28 June
2012].
Black, I., 2010. WikiLeaks cables: Tunisia blocks site reporting 'hatred' of first lady. The
Guardian, [online] 7 December. Available at:
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/07/wikileaks-tunisia-first-lady>
[Accessed 28 June 2012].
Black, I., 2011a. Libya’s day of rage met by bullets and loyalists. The Guardian, [online] 17
February. Available at: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/17/libya-day-ofrage-unrest> [Accessed 28 June 2012].
Black, I., 2011b. World’s message to Libyan leader Gaddafi: time to end your regime. The
Guardian, [online] 28 February. Available at:
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/27/libya-gaddafi-pressure-russia-china>
[Accessed 28 June 2012].
48
CBC, 2012. Where the Arab Spring protests still rage. CBC News, [online] Available at:
<http://www.cbc.ca/news/interactives/mideast-2012/index.html#> [Accessed 28 June
2012].
CBS, 2012. UN: Syrian uprising death toll passes 8,000. CBS News, [online], 15 March.
Available at: <http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57398243/un-syrian-uprisingdeath-toll-passes-8000/> [Accessed 28 June 2012].
CIA, 2012a. The World Factbook. [Online] Available at:
<https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ts.html> [Accessed
28 June 2012].
CIA, 2012b. The World Factbook. [Online] Available at:
<https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sy.html>
[Accessed 28 June 2012].
CIA, 2012c. The World Factbook. [Online] Available at:
<https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ly.html>
[Accessed 28 June 2012].
CIA, 2012d. The World Factbook. [Online] Available at:
<https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ym.html>
[Accessed 28 June 2012].
Diamond L. 2010. Liberation technology. Journal of Democracy, 21, pp. 69-83.
Dickinson, E., 2011. The First WikiLeaks Revolution?, Foreign Policy, [online] Available at:
<http://wikileaks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/13/wikileaks_and_the_tunisia_prot
ests> [Accessed 28 June 2012].
Dubai School of Government, 2011. Arab Social Media Report. [pdf] Available at:
<http://www.dsg.ae/en/ASMR1/Images/report.pdf> [Accessed 28 June 2012].
Farrell, H. 2012. The Consequences of the Internet for Politics. Annual Review of Political
Science, 15, pp. 35-52.
Freedom House, 2011. Freedom of the Press 2011. [pdf] Available at:
<http://www.freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/FOTP%202011%20Tables%20and
%20Graphs_0.pdf> [Accessed 21 August 2012].
Freelon, D., 2011. The MENA protests on Twitter: Some empirical data, dfreelon.org,
[blog] 19 May. Available at: < http://dfreelon.org/2011/05/19/the-mena-protests-ontwitter-some-empirical-data/> [Accessed 21 August 2012].
Gladwell, M. 2010. Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted. [pdf]
Available at: <http://www.gladwell.com/pdf/twitter.pdf> [Accessed 21 August 2012].
Godec, R., 2009. Troubled Tunisia: What Should We Do?, [online] Tunis: American
Embassy. Available at: <http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2009/07/09TUNIS492.html#>
[Accessed 28 June 2012].
49
Howard, Philip N., and Muzammil M. Hussain, 2011. The Role of Digital Media. Journal of
Democracy, 22(3), pp.35-48.
Karam, Z., 2012. Assad blames ‘terrorists’ for ‘ugly’ Houla massacre. Arab News, [online], 2
June. Available at: <http://www.arabnews.com/assad-blames-terrorists-ugly-houlamassacre> [Accessed 28 June 2012].
Kellow, Christine L., and H. Leslie Steeves, 1998. The Role of Radio in the Rwandan
Genocide. Journal of Communication, 48(3), pp.107-28.
Lynch, M., 2011. After Egypt: The Limits and Promise of Online Challenges to the
Authoritarian Arab State. [pdf] Available at: <http://www.marclynch.com/wpcontent/uploads/2011/06/download-Lynch-article.pdf> [Accessed 21 August 2012].
Lynch, M., 2012. Yemen’s Stalemate, Foreign Policy, [online] Available at:
<http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/01/18/yemens_stalemate> [Accessed 28
June 2012].
Marsh et al., 2011. Syria protests continue amid increased
international condemnation of regime. The Guardian, [online] 26 March. Available at:
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/26/syria-protests-continue-internationalcondemnation> [Accessed 28 June 2012].
McGreal et al., 2011. Allied strikes sweep Libya as west
intervenes in conflict. The Guardian, [online] 20 March. Available at:
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/19/libya-air-strikes-gaddafi-france>
[Accessed 28 June 2012].
MSNBC, 2011. ‘Day of rage’ protest urged in Syria. MSNBC World News, [online] 3
February. Available at: <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41400687/ns/world_newsmideastn_africa/#.T8IrmrDYJEI> [Accessed 28 June 2012].
Oweis, K., 2007. Syria blocks Facebook in Internet crackdown. Reuters, [online] 23
November. Available at: <http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/11/23/us-syriafacebook-idUSOWE37285020071123> [Accessed 28 June 2012].
Reardon, S., 2012. Was the Arab Spring really a Facebook revolution?, New Scientist,
[online] Available at: <http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428596.400-wasthe-arab-spring-really-a-facebook-revolution.html> [Accessed 28 June 2012].
Reporters Without Borders, 2010a. Press Freedom Index 2010. [Online] Available at:
<http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2010,1034.html> [Accessed 28 June 2012].
Reporters Without Borders, 2010b. Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2010: How the index
was compiled. [pdf] Available at: <http://en.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/methodology.pdf>
[Accessed 28 June 2012].
Rettig, J., 2011. Death Toll of ‘Arab Spring’. US News, [online] Available at:
<http://www.usnews.com/news/slideshows/death-toll-of-arab-spring> [Accessed 28
June 2012].
50
Reuters, 2011a. Yemeni protesters turn out for ‘day of rage’. The Guardian, [online] 3
February. Available at: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/03/yemenprotesters-day-rage> [Accessed 28 June 2012].
Reuters, 2011b. Social Media: a double-edged sword in Syria. Reuters, [online] 13 July.
Available at: <http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/13/us-syria-social-mediaidUSTRE76C3DB20110713> [Accessed 28 June 2012].
Ritter DP, Trechsel AH. 2011. Revolutionary Cells: On the Role of Texts, Tweets and
Status Updates in Nonviolent Revolutions. Florence, Italy: Eur. Univ. Inst.
Schmitz, C., 2011. Saleh Wins Again, Foreign Policy, [online] Available at:
<http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/12/05/saleh_wins_again> [Accessed 28
June 2012].
Shapiro, J., and Weidmann, N., 2011. Talking About Killing: Cell Phones, Collective Action,
and Insurgent Violence in Iraq. [pdf] Available at:
<http://www.princeton.edu/~jns/papers/SW_2011_Cell_Phones_Insurgency_31MAY1
1.pdf> [Accessed 28 June 2012].
The Economist, 2011. A show of strength or a sign of weakness?, The Economist Newsbook,
[blog] 9 February. Available at:
<http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2011/02/media_freedom_syria>
[Accessed 28 June 2012].
The World Bank, 2010a. World Development Indicators. [Online] Available at:
<http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?q=cellular&d=WDI&f=Indicator_Code%3aIT.CEL.SET
S.P2> [Accessed 28 June 2012].
The World Bank, 2010b. World Development Indicators. [Online] Available at:
<http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?q=internet&d=WDI&f=Indicator_Code%3aIT.NET.US
ER.P2> [Accessed 28 June 2012].
Tufekci, Zeynep, and Christopher Wilson. 2012. Social Media and the Decision to
Participate in Political Protest: Observations From Tahrir Square. [pdf] Available at:
<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2012.01629.x/pdf>
[Accessed 21 August 2012].
United Nations Statistics Division, 2010a. Millennium Development Goals Database.
[Online] Available at:
<http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?q=percentage+poverty&d=MDG&f=seriesRowID%3a5
81> [Accessed 28 June 2012].
United Nations Statistics Division, 2010b. Millennium Development Goals Database.
[Online] Available at:
<http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?q=internet&d=MDG&f=seriesRowID%3a605>
[Accessed 28 June 2012].
51
Watt et al., 2011. Libya: UN security council backs
no-fly zone and air strikes. The Guardian, [online] 18 March. Available at:
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/17/libya-un-security-council-air>
[Accessed 28 June 2012].
Zeitzoff, Thomas, 2011. Using Social Media to Measure Conflict Dynamics. Journal of
Conflict Resolution, 55(6), pp.938-69.