Abstract
This study examines how social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, blogospheres, and YouTube are used for political purposes in order to circumvent severe press censorship and political restrictions imposed by the governments of the Middle East and North African region. The usage of social media for the purpose of political dissent is defined in this study as “cyber-dissent.” Examining the nature of “cyber-dissent” will show how it exposes a lack of freedom of speech and press, which is a direct result of authoritarianism, and how cyber-dissent can stimulate members of society to find other means to engage and communicate with each other. There are several underlying questions addressed: How has social media stimulated democratization in the Middle East? What are the characteristics of social media that enabled the “Arab Spring”? Lastly, how has blogging and social media empowered youth and minority voices in the region? We find that several key factors have had a significant impact on cyber-dissent which ultimately was a catalyst for the Arab Spring: legislation and restrictions that inhibit freedom of press, a high youth population between the ages of 15 and 29, greater access to technology, an increase in wealth (or gross domestic product, GDP per capita), and an increase in education.
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Notes
- 1.
Refer to Table 13.4 results in “The Results” section. p value significance level was found to be 0.035 for youth population, which means that a higher percentage of a country’s youth population between the ages of 15–29 increases the level of cyber-dissent, which ultimately leads to democratization.
- 2.
Refer to Appendix II for a chart of Internet usage for MENA countries for 2007.
- 3.
Panel data are also referred to as a crosssectional time series data test. Panel data (or crosssectional time series) are used to examine a dataset in which the behaviors of entities are observed across time.
In this study, these entities are countries (encoded as “states”). The panel variable identified in this test is “states.” “Countries” were encoded as “states” since “countries” was identified as a string variable, and could not be tested until encoded by STATA. “States” refers to the 39 countries tested in this model. The sample in this study includes MENA and non-MENA countries. Non-MENA countries were chosen by random selection. The time variable identified in this test was “year” and includes the time period of 2002–2007.
- 4.
Refer to Appendix III for a chart on world Internet usage statistics.
- 5.
The data for this variable are taken from Freedom House’s measurement of “Freedom in the World.” Each country and territory is assigned a numerical rating—on a scale of 1–7—for political rights and an analogous rating for civil liberties; a rating of 1 indicates the highest degree of freedom, and 7 indicates the lowest level of freedom.
- 6.
The Polity scale ranges from − 10, fully institutionalized autocracy, to + 10, fully institutionalized. According to the polity IV data description, an anocracy is characterized by institutions and political elites that are far less capable of performing fundamental tasks and ensuring their own continuity. Anocratic regimes very often reflect an inherent quality of instability or ineffectiveness and are especially vulnerable to the onset of new political instability events, such as outbreaks of armed conflict, unexpected changes in leadership, or adverse regime changes (e.g., a seizure of power by a personalistic or military leader).
- 7.
− 88 refers to a transitional government; − 77 refers to countries where central authority has collapsed or lost control over a majority of its territory; − 66 refers to countries where foreign authorities backed by the presence of foreign forces provide a support structure for maintaining local authority. Countries in this sample that were assessed a score of − 66, − 77, or − 88 were coded as 0.
- 8.
Control of corruption measures the extent to which public power is exercised for private gain, including petty and grand forms of corruption, as well as “capture” of the state by elites and private interests. The score is based on a percentile rating from 0 to 100, 0 being the lowest percentile rating and 100 being the best percentile.
- 9.
Coded as Youth pop 15–29.
- 10.
An average was taken because many countries did not list their literacy rates on a consistent basis, thus an average was taken for data management to remain consistent. The data on literacy rates were extracted from the World Bank Development Indicators database.
- 11.
Table 13.4 results show that press censorship is significant with a p-value of 0.025, followed by the other significant results of average education, p-value of 0.003; personal computers, p-value 0.000; gdp, p-value 0.026; and youth population (ages 15–29), p-value 0.035.
- 12.
The “Map of Freedom in the World” indicates the MENA region as being “not free.”
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Daud, A. (2015). The Role of “Cyber-Dissent” in Stimulating Democratization in the MENA Region and Empowering Youth Voices. In: Raddawi, R. (eds) Intercultural Communication with Arabs. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-254-8_13
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