The Role of Social Media in Political Mobilization: A Case of Arab Spring - Research Proposal Example

Title: The Role of Social Media in Political Mobilization: A case of Arab Spring Uprising Name Institution Supervisor’s name Table of Content Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………….3 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………..4 Literature review……………………………………………………………………………..5 Theories of Communication………………………………………………………………..7 Main Research Question…………………………………………………………………...8 Sub-Research Questions…………………………………………………………………...8 Analysis focus………………………………………………………………………………..9 Study Methodology …………………………………………………………………………9 Data Collection Process…………………………………………………………………….9 Qualitative data collection process……………………………………………………….10 Interviews…………………………………………………………………………………...11 Ethnography ……………………………………………………………………………….11 Focus group………………………………………………………………………………...11 Observations………………………………………………………………………………..11 Public records………………………………………………………………………………12 Case studies………………………………………………………………………………..13 Ethnic scope………………………………………………………………………………..14 Target population…………………………………………………………………………..14 Analysis of findings………………………………………………………………………...15 Ethnic considerations……………………………………………………………………...15 Abstract With the events that took place during 2011 Arab Spring uprising, social media platform have been foreshowed as very instrumental in facilitating the revolutions. This research paper will focus on the extent to which activists in Libya, Egypt and Tunisia used social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, weblogs and YouTube) as the tools for orchestrating and creating awareness of political movements in the Arab Spring uprising. The discussion will focus on three uprisings (Libya, Egypt and Tunisia) and aim to demonstrate dialectical force of social media platforms. The paper will explain whether the hype on social media as an instrumental platform in organizing and coordinating these revolutions is true. Introduction The continuing Arabs Spring revolutions have raised a lot of sentiments on the role of social media when it comes to political communication. It is over a decade now that internet has played a prominent role particularly in diffusing interest of popular political activists in the Arab world. Some political analysts and academicians have embraced social media appealing that it is one way of bringing democracy into existence (Sheila, 2012). According to Nicholas Kristof on New York Times said that social media is an effective weapon of disseminating political common interest of the citizens that tend oppose authoritarian leaders in the 21st century where the game is, as government security fire bullets, the protesters on the other side fire ‘tweets,’ an interesting play (Daily News Egypt, 2012). Apparently, even before the happening of Arab Springs, uprising in Iran were also termed as ‘Twitter revolutions,’ implying that social played a prominent role in political communications. According to Daily Brief Service (2012), 21st century is a tech-savvy generation that take-over authoritarian leaders using digital movements. With the Arab Spring Uprising, it has defines a simplified conclusion on the role of social media when it comes to fostering revolutions. However, this conclusion will depend on some extensive assumptions about the liberal nature of the internet which calls for close scrutiny. The revolutions that were experienced across Arab countries and most part of North Africa in 2011 are still experienced (Ilhem and Kuebler, 2012, 1433). For instance, the death of Muammar Kaddafi was recorded in mobile phones as well as the video camera which was then conveyed through the internet. Anyone could access these events around the world through You Tube, and this symbolises the kind of pundits (journalists) that characterises social media coverage on the Arab Spring. For the first time in history, the nature of events surrounding Arab Uprising are sourced from ordinary citizens through Twitter, Facebook, You Tube and blogs, which is radicalizing information more than the mainstream (digital media) (Sheila, 2012). According to the Arab Social Media Report (2011), 90% of Tunisia citizens get news information from social media, as well as 89% of Egyptians. The state-sponsored media is underused (Tunisians users are 40% and the Egyptian users are 35%) since the rooting of the social media in the 21st century. There is an equal noteworthy in Arabs states where at the beginning of 2011, young Facebook users had increased by 75% and the subscribers to newspapers had reduced by 40%. Actually, social media tends to facilitate social movement events which have pronounced to different protest experience in Arabs uprising. Literature review Over the past years, the political role of social media platforms has become an interesting and pronounced topic of discussion especially concerning political communication and engagement issues (Foweraker, 1995). According to Ramtin (2012) social media role in connecting popular protest in the Arab World and removal of dictatorship regimes is quite evident in the political mobilization and patterns of diffusion in case of a particular interest within the Arab World which influence an individual when it comes to political engagement. Recent research in the context of western democracies focused basically on social media as a platform of supporting political agendas, i.e activities meant to influence the government directly and try to affect the decisions of the government officials elected or even the order of selection of these officials. There are two kinds of political events that are affected by social media and it includes conventional political participation (voting and campaign) and legal but unconventional forms of political engagement (signing of petitions, authorized demonstrations and political consumerism) (Florence and Guigni, 2001). The ‘big question’ for most of the research is whether, how and by what capacity do social media affect political progress particularly at the macro-level of behaviours of individuals. Shelley (2009) stated that there is a plausible relationship between individual’s exposure to and the use of social media in defining the capacity of engagement in political activities. Facebook, Twitter and You Tube have exponential possibilities of disseminating information of political activities thus making internet exposure a supplementary platform of mobilizing these activities with limited costs and efforts as well as short time used. Apparently, the use of digital media in the western democracies remains ‘underwhelming’ giving room the social media platforms (Copeland, 2011). Regarding the research by Breuer (2012), there is a broad consensus that social media has extended the collective actions of citizens with similar governance. The conceptual framework of researchers composed of the political actions performed outside the dominion of conventional political engagement. The citizens have been complemented by social media offer for mobilization (Krueger, 2006). According to Ron (2001), contentious politics draws out the difference between role of social media on the demonstrations carried out under democracy and the ones carried out under authoritarianism. As defined By Richard (1971) democracy is where there is a non-violent demonstrations in social movements that constitute to mainstreamed politics of voicing dissent opinions on the platform of political status quo. Under authoritarian is where a particular social movement is coordinated and orchestrated and it may be difficult to control the activities conducted by citizens (Bahgat, 2012). With respect to the above history, political mobilizations occur under a well-organized system of social movement. The role of social media has been realized from the on-going demonstrations in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) (Bahgat, 2012). Drawing different political activities in the Arab Uprising, this paper will examine whether the role of social media platform is exaggerated in mobilizing political movements in Arab World. This study will examine specifically whether those who participated in the Arab Spring uprising used social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, online personal blogs and YouTube) to orchestrate online activism. The study will link the relationship between social media platforms and political mobilization by creating a network society comprising of events in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt. The link will be supported by theories of communication. Theories of communication a) Lasswell’s Functionality theory: The theory was developed before the Arab Spring events based on sociology rather than international relations. The formula of analysis in this theory is based from ‘who says what in which media to whom in what effect?’ (Thompson, 1995, 57). This formula favours the context of analysis (is the role of media exaggerated?) by analysing how activists in Arab Spring used media to orchestrate uprisings. b) Manuel Castells’s network theory: The theory will be effectively used to explain how features of social networks are valuable when it comes to political issues especially with the egalitarian society. This theory examines how weak-ties provide information and open up opportunities at low cost. The combination of the amount of time and mutual confiding characterises weak ties. Therefore, social media networks are based on these weak ties and it is used to share the common interest with individuals (Monge and Contractor, 2003, p.g 154). Main research question of the study What role did social media play in nurturing information flows during Arab Spring movements of 2011? Sub research questions 1. What are the conditions that sustained the revolutionary protest during Arab Uprising in 2011? 2. How did social media network deployed as a resource in support of Arab Uprising? 3. How did social media generated awareness in orchestrating the events towards Arab Spring uprising? Analysis focus Using the above research questions, this study will focus on the strategies and consequences of social media platform during 2011 Arab Spring Uprising and the discourse about the dissemination of information. Study methodology This study will use qualitative case study method in order to develop a deep understanding in this case of Arabs Springs on the impacts and role of social media in political activities. This method will gather ‘rich’ data from three Asia Spring Uprising contexts (Egypt, Tunisia and Libya). According to Stake (2005) the three cases must represent a bounded integrated system. Therefore, in observance of these requirements, we categorized each study based on the three sub questions i.e what are the conditions that sustained Arab Spring Upraising, how did social media act during upraising and how did social media orchestrate the events in the three cases. The general areas of inquiry using this method will be modified by the Stake’s suggestion about research foci. The critical data will be collected on the basis of 1) Activities that happened in the case, 2) historical roles of media communications; and 3) The contemporary political movements with active paly of social media. Data collection process The data captured will tend to focus mainly on social media consumption rather than the production of information. Also, simply measuring social media consumption may not actually reveal the actual role it played in affecting political attitudes and behaviours especially for the protest participation. However, analysing consumption will expound the chain of influence. Therefore, a large data set from URL (archival repositories) will capture ways in which information was disseminated across national, regional and international borders during the period of Arab Spring. Tunisia uprising between 2010 and 2011 provides an excellent platform to test the theoretical perception of the research question. To examine the role of social media in orchestrating Tunisia protest and the effects on the behaviour of the users, the study will employ two design methods of data collection; Qualitative data collection phase-Interview: This involves close examination of events during Arab Spring revolution in Libya, Egypt and Tunisia. The researcher will develop online semi-structured questions for interview based on subjects to be examined. The interview questions will be administered to 200 participants from the three distinct places (Tunisia, Egypt and Libya) through online Facebook chat and twitter. The questions will target the following areas; Online and offline demonstration activities prior and after the uprising, Examination of the ICT contribution to the demonstration movement, Identify contents in the social media that are presumed to be influential. There will be also a quantitative phase where survey is developed in order to understand the pattern of internet use and how it affects individuals when it comes to political movements during the uprising. The reason as to why the research employs a quantitative measure is because there is some important information that cannot be retrieved by qualitative methods alone (for example attitudes that lead to certain behaviour). Generally, it provides additional important information for the research. Ethnography The study will focus on several occasions during the Arab Spring Uprising. Therefore, Facebook groups for the three cases are created (Libya Facebook forum, Egypt Facebook forum and Tunisia Facebook forum). The main reason of using this method of data collection is that, the study needs to understand how citizens in Arab Spring acted in the social setting in terms of how they live their lives based upon long term observations when they are subjected to a particular social issue. (In this case political movement). The limitation of using this method is that in needs participative observation therefore the researcher will spend much of their time in the field. Focus group The main research question and research design will guide how the focus group will be constructed and conducted. The focus group of this study will consist of 8 participants. The rationale of using 8 individuals is that participants will have enough time and space for the discussion. Two of the members of the groups will have specialized knowledge of observation and extracting additional information from the target individuals during the discussion. Also, the method can do well with limited manpower and finance. However, moderators are expected to have good knowledge of observation and note taking in order to capture comprehensive data on circumstances, attitudes and opinions. Observation Observation method will be useful in collecting nonverbal information which is very useful for the research. Observational data creates a holistic understanding of a phenomenon especially when given limitations. It will also support the survey process that will be conducted by field participants. It is for this reason that the study recommends observational method of collecting data: Helps the researcher to be more inclusive in the research particularly in facilitating research activities. Arabs have a unique culture therefore anyone conducting tis study will feel comfortable since the knowledge of observation helps in judging taboos and social interaction aspects of the Arabs. It is only recommended for individual study since the second party will only rely on the information not as primary but as secondary sources. Limitations to observation method of collecting data include: people may change their attitude when they realize they are being investigated, the real events that happened during the Arab Spring uprising may be missed out especially with only watching and taking notes and misjudgement of observation information. As a result, the study will ‘employ’ the mentioned data collection methods in order to capture data in different situations of the study. Public records Affluent information that explains human behaviour is normally available in the public domain. The research will use crime statistics, voting patterns and crime statistics. This data will enable the researcher to describe attitudes created by social media usage and examine the possible relationship between the variables. For example, public data can answer the question, ‘is there any relationship between social media and political mobilization?’ The limitation public record data collection process is that the researcher will need to investigate the methodology that the secondary method used to collect data. Therefore, a lot of questions may rise on the reliability of the secondary source. Case studies The data collected will be from Arab Spring case study, an umbrella case study of Tunisia Revolution, Egyptian revolution and Libya civil war. This is a case oriented research therefore the three cases are selected in advance with the degree of representing the general population at different grounds of research. The goal is to explain why these cases vary in terms of location but the events of investigation is of common interest. According to Huberman (1994), the commonality that may exist in the three cases is a subject of conditional generalization and the outcome will be enough to define instances of the same investigation. Therefore, the emphasis will be given to the case itself instead of using variable across the cases since they are alike. The main point here is if at all the common interest of citizens in the Arab Spring was dissatisfaction on the governance structure that led to inequality in resources, then there must be conditions and resources that coordinated the events at different cases. Sampling The researcher is to create a Facebook page where the membership will be enlarged through friendship suggestions. This is done by allowing members of the group recommend new friends to join the group. Survey will be launched when the number of members will be more than 600. The study will target medium to high frequency users of social media as the majority respondents to the sample created. Those reporting to social media sites 3 to 4 hours and those who spent more than 5 hours in the social site. Ethnic scope The main focus of this research is on the protest that is uniquely an Arab phenomenon since amny protests and uprisings is wide spreading in the majority of Arab nations, with a popular moniker of Arab Spring. The history points that the revolutions and uprisings had common platforms-one event lead to another. In Tunisia, the protest was against Ben Alin’s governance structure. The uprising that took place in Tunisia is presumed to be an agent of criticizing Mubarak government in Egypt. Revolutions and uprisings broke out first in North Africa before spreading out to Arab countries in the East as well as to Libya. The revolution of Libya termed as Berber Spring was reincarnated by the events in Egypt (Daily News Egypt, 2012). Though Arab Spring uprisings and revolutions are perceived to be along ethnic lines, there are some conditions and resources that orchestrated the prompt one protest after the other. This study is inclined to examine whether social media platform played a major role in coordinating events or just an exaggeration as some could say. Target population The research targets series of protests and demonstrations that happened across Middle East and North America from 2010, well known as Arabs Spring. The study will focus on three population groups geographically placed: Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. The geographical implication of the events in this population has drawn global attention both through social and digital media. The main interesting part is, there are suggestions that some of the protesters are likely to be nominated for the Nobel Pease Prize-social media impacts being the main agent for revolutions. Analysis of the Findings The findings of this research support other research and maintain that social media network users belong to an integrated society with increased membership in terms of level of diversity (Van Laer, 2010). The users of online social networks have more flexible relationships which mean they are capable of learning more events and link to those supporting the offline events. This implies that political mobilization through social media platform increase cohesion among individuals perusing similar events more than those on the offline platform. Overall, the findings will reveal the importance the social media played in social movement activities especially during Arab Spring uprising and they it influence social movements. At this point, the research will be in a position to conclude whether social media role was exaggerated or not. Ethical considerations Alongside the discussion on the role of social media in political mobilization, the research will consider the application and ethics in contemporary platform of data collection process (Facebook and Twitter interview), analysis and dissemination of information. This research will use Nicholas Hookway methodology in protecting the participants which involves two stages. First, the researcher will need to examine online diaries and blogs, and secondly, conduct face-to-face interviews with 20 bloggers privately. It will be important to ask permission from the participants to undertake the study by explaining how the project will be conducted. Also, early explanation of the project will be involved. Application for entry to internet-based research is also important. Gatekeepers of various online conversation platforms will be informed early for the purposes of scheduling. To promote reliability and validity of data, strata will have 50-100 individuals in a group. This will enhance the analysis of both the majority and minority. References "Social Media Creating Social Awareness in the Arab World." Daily News Egypt: n/a. ProQuest.May 19 2011. Web. 22 Feb. 2012. “ MIDDLE EAST: Social media outwit authoritarianism .” Oxford Analytica Daily Brief Service 9 Feb. 2011. ProQuest. Web. 16 Feb. 2012. Bahgat, K 2012, Arab spring in Egypt: revolution and beyond. An AUC Forum for International Affairs ed. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press Florence, P and Guigni, M 2001, Social Networks and Individual Perceptions: Explaining Differential Participation in Social Movements. Sociological Forum Vol. 16(1): 123-154. Foweraker, J 1995, Theorizing Social Movements. London: Pluto. Ilhem, A and Kuebler, J 2011, The Arab Spring and the Role of ICTs.” International Journal of Communication 5 (2011): 1435-1442. James, G 2012, The Arab uprisings: what everyone needs to know. New York: Oxford University Press. Monge, P. R., & Contractor, N. S 2003, Theories of communication networks. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ramtin, A 2002, The Empire Strikes Back: Social Media Uprisings and the Future of Cyber Activism. Kennedy School Review 10.15350215 (2009): 64 -6. Richard, B 1971, Family Status, Socialization, and Student Politics: A Multivariate Analysis. American Journal of Sociology 77: 108-129. Ron, A 2001, Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sheila, R 2012, Social Media One Key to the Arab Spring IT-Savvy Population it Played Bigger Role in Tunisia, Egypt than in Libya, Yemen, some Say." Investor’s Business Daily: A06. ProQuest Shelley, B 2009, Does Internet use affect engagement? A meta–analysis of research. Political Communication 26 (2): 193-211. Thompson, J. B 1995, The media and modernity: a social theory of the media. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Van Laer, J 2010, Activists online and offline: The Internet as an Information Channel for Protest Demonstrations. Mobilization 15(3): 347-366. Read More