Introduction
Middle East Revolutions have been waves of mass demonstrations in the Middle East and other Arab nations, calling for the resignation of regimes in power. These could also be called popular coups and in the contemporary society they have been referred to as Twitter Revolutions. The first successful revolution was carried out in Tunisia, Africa, after more than a month of demonstrations that forced the downfall of the government of the then president Ben Ali on January 14, 2011.
The revolution in Tunisia ignited the Egyptian Revolution, which was also successful and led to the resignation of the then president Hosni Mubarak on February 11, 2011, after withstanding eighteen days of mass protests. Since then, revolutionary uprising are being held in Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq, Algeria, Libya, Jordan and Oman. Libya has been hard hit as what started as a peaceful demonstration has turned out to be a bloody fight between government troops and rebel forces.
The spectacle in Libya of the fierce fighting between government troops and rebel forces has received worldwide condemnation as the combatants are said to be committing crimes against humanity. This has led to the invasion of the country by NATO forces led by France in an effort to protect civilian and ensure human rights are observed and maintained.
A humanitarian crisis is thus building up Libya. The fierce opposition of the demonstrations by Gadhaffi forces has served to remind the protestors and the whole world that revolutions are not always peaceful and could be at times be bloody, and uncertain of when they will be concluded and whether they will be successful or abortive.
The Middle East governments have been urged to listen to the plea of the people and change their tactics of ruling the people to serving the people. The various leaders involved have started to change tactics for example instituting reforms rather than resign. In Morocco, the monarchy in power has doubled the staple foods and cooking gas subsidies while the Saudi Arabia counterpart has announced the allocation of 36 billion dollars to benefit the poor.
Globally, the prices of crude oil have been rising each day making it hard for many nations’ economies to cope with the cost of production. The revolutions have been termed to be facilitated by the improved information and technology with social networking playing the biggest role in organizing successful revolts. That is why some of the revolts have been termed as Twitter Revolutions. Discussed below is the role of information technology in the revolts.
Social networks in facilitating the revolutions
With improvement in technology in the 21st century, social networks and digital media have overtaken any other form of communication in the world. Technology has speeded up globalization process and in turn witnessed cultural sharing around the globe (Castells 67). The digital media has become one of the most important tools in influencing political and economic affairs. People around the world have become more enlightened about world affairs and their rights.
Social networks are free, easy and convenient for people of all lifestyles to open and own an account as long as internet is available. Facebook and Twitter are innovations of the 21st century, which have heavily affected the system of governance. In the Middle East, through the social networks, people started staging mass demonstrations in protest against various regimes like that of Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, pressurizing him to resign, in what could be termed as Twitter Revolution.
Technological advancement especially in the media industry has been the major factor in influencing and speeding the process of globalization. Globalization and the digital media have facilitated more knowledge sharing and collaborations. The social networks are entertaining and at times addictive.
This guarantees the sites millions of followers and in the process of socializing, information is shared and dispersed. In the recent past, the sites have become more business and political oriented. People have started to question the system of government in their respective countries after comparing it with other models of governments elsewhere.
Reactions by the governments
Overwhelmed by the uprisings, the Middle East governments have resulted in banning Twitter and other social networks. For instance, though not directly, Egyptian government had been using Chomsky’s propaganda model to justify themselves. The governments argued that the social networks were only interested in tapping the large Egyptian population as a resource and not in providing the crucial information. The government further refuted its image as portrayed on Twitter arguing that the information was biased and not objective.
The information, to the regime, was structured in a way to set up the masses against their own government. To the government, Twitter, being a foreign owned corporation, was only interested in advertising itself and had no interest in the affairs of the Egyptian people. It was also argued that exiled personalities and anti-government movements were using the site to fund the protesters creating chaos and anarchy (Castells 34).
Causes of the Revolutions
In Egypt, the former President had ruled for over thirty years of which is common in Middle East to rule for a long time. Egypt has remained a third world country with high levels of unemployment yet it was among the first countries of the world to experience civilization. The government was accused of being dictatorial, corrupt and failed to guarantee press freedom.
Most of the over eighty million people remain unemployed and the few employed have poor working conditions and poor salaries. Egypt’s problems are shared by other nations in the Middle East and the Arab world. Most of the Middle East countries have a similar pattern of government; either dictatorial or monarchical. Democracy is never exercised.
The political leaders have been in power for decades, dictatorial and oppressive. Economic developments are minimal and the masses languish in poverty. However, the leaders of these regions are the richest among the political class of the world raising an alarm among the people.
Some are known to lead flamboyant lifestyles owning property in other parts of the world like Europe and America. There are also monarchies in this region which do not allow democratic elections. Leaders in power are not competent since they are in power not because of their capability but because of their family lineage.
Comparing their form of government with democracies like the US, the people of the region have sought to change the status quo. The Egyptian Revolution was inspired by the Tunisian Revolution, which had just ousted the then incumbent president, Ben Ali. The participants of the revolutions were ordinary people and not militias or guerrilla fighters and thus were unarmed.
The effectiveness of the uprising primarily relied on the number of people protesting, thus a medium to communicate with the people, urging them to turn up in large numbers was very necessary. Twitter and Face Book thus became the perfect platform for mass interaction.
External support for the revolutions
The Egyptian media corporations and those of other Middle East nations are mainly state owned or government friendly and thus could not show or portray any anti government sentiments. The influence of the government on media created suspicion from the people and hence these local media could not be trusted. People turned to internationally credible media corporations like CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera. The social networks also become very famous.
Where television broadcasts had been cut off, people could follow CNN, Al Jazeera, BBC and other television cables on the internet. Twitter allows users to view the tweets and messages if they have an account. To follow the proceedings, people registered on Twitter in large numbers and further uniting the masses.
This led to the government’s use of propaganda model to claim Twitter was using the chaos to reap hefty profits and thus was manufacturing and structuring news to suit what they felt would attract more viewers and followers instead of remaining objective. Leaders like El- Baradei, a Nobel Prize winner, were able to directly link with the people.
The rise of use of Twitter, Facebook and online news channels led the government of Egypt to block internet access especially. This brought about international condemnation as was against the rights of people to acquisition of information, against press freedom and freedom of association.
The government did not own up rather blamed the internet failures on the demonstrators. The masses were already educated and sensitized enough, so demonstrations could not be deterred or stopped. International community was very vocal in condemning this act and the internet-oriented companies like Google tried to help in solving the situation by sending direct IP port for use by the people on their handsets.
Smart mobs perspective
Revolutions in the Middle East could also be analyzed from the smart mob perspective propagated by Rheingold. The notion holds that there is emergence of popular revolts by the masses once there is technological advancement. The masses in context (smart mob) are not related nor acquainted with one another (Rheingold & Raatma 76). However, they are faced with common problems like poverty and unemployment.
The smart mobs use the technologically manufactured gadgets to relate with one another. They act intelligently and efficiently; as technology advances the cost of microprocessors that link people decrease. The technological advances highlighted by Rheingold include blogs, wireless gadgets like mobile phones, chats and computing technology.
In the Middle East and many other third world countries, wireless gadgets like mobile phones have become the most used tools for accessing the internet to the ordinary person. Prior to the 21st Century, mobile phones were not common in Africa. However the past decades has witnessed radical changes in telecommunication industries around the world.
Telecommunication industries have become the highest revenue generators all over Africa with the richest persons in Africans according to Forbes falling in the line of telecommunication industry. Of the Egyptians listed in the 2010 Forbes list of richest Africans, the leading pack were in the telecommunication sector.
Internet access through the phones and the development of smart phones is a new phenomenon in Africa and many other third world countries. Phone manufacturing companies like Nokia have spent much of their resources advertising their brand in the new markets in third world countries which in turn made massive sales of phones. On the course of the revolutions, many people have been using phones to access Twitter and Facebook pages.
This enables people to organize the venues and time of the demonstrations enabling them to counter the imposed curfews by the government. Most of these phones have a camera device, which enabled people to capture the events on the ground uploading the pictures on Facebook and Twitter for all to see. To counter this, the governments have been blocking the internet (Hudson 1).
Failure of governments to prevent the revolutions
In Egypt, through uploading pictures and videos of the events on the ground, there was no way the government could have been able to prevent the world from assessing the situation. This led to many nations sending airplanes for their people trapped in Egypt and the country lost millions of dollars in the tourism industry and other sectors. Leaders of the revolution were also able to communicate with other world leaders through webcam.
Debates and negotiations could be initiated and held via the internet something that has never been witnessed. The government was overwhelmed by the mass demonstrations and all efforts to thwart the revolts became futile. Military deployment led to more condemnation. US President Barrack Obama together with other world leaders pressurized the Egyptian administration to heed to the will of the people and resign.
Without the international support, the president had no option but to resign. The successive Egyptian Revolution inspired many more revolts in the world. The Arab nations of Middle East and North Africa are plugged into chaos. From Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen to Libya.
Yemen has totally blocked Twitter in an attempt to thwart the uprising. However, IP port and addresses from Twitter in collaboration with Google are being circulated by television networks especially Al Jazeera in an attempt by the rest of the world to assist the oppressed mob agitating for their rights.
Muammar Gadhaffi, the Libyan dictator who has ruled for over forty-two years, has remained adamant. Libyan forces have been using excessive force in suppressing the demonstrators. Though Twitter and Facebook are partially blocked, pictures posted on those two sites show horrible scenes of human rights violation (Hudson 2).
The international community led by France has consequently invaded Libya (Perry Link 1). There has been established a no-fly zone to deter Libyan fighter jets from further killing innocent civilians. No matter the efforts by these dictatorial regimes, the masses have the unifying bond in the internet, which they have enjoyed for a couple of years (Raatma 54).
The dictatorial regimes have a tendency of filtering the content in local media. The powerful regimes control production, distribution and influence in the consumption of the information. The Middle East countries have remained relatively behind in the information dispensation sector and freedom of the press (The Daily Bell 1). Globalization has changed the status quo by enabling connectivity and intermingling of people in different countries. Those countries that block the worldwide links and networks are heavily condemned.
Possible solutions
However, the internet-engineered revolutions have had a major impact on global peace and economy. In Egypt, there were rowdy mobs whose aim was looting. Egypt has one of the richest cultural heritage and artifacts. Historical artifacts were targeted by the looters, of which some of the artifacts are thousands of years old.
Economy of Egypt has been greatly destabilized and the country might never recover. It is not guaranteed the next government will be better than that of Hosni Mubarak or the Ben Ali’s regimes (Steavenson 1). Instead of violent revolution, it would be better if people used other channels and the general media to tackle their problems together. It would be better to engage in diplomatic negotiation and other non-violent forms as violence results to more violence.
The constitutions of these countries should have clauses preventing leaders from holding office for more than ten years and leaders must be vetted and authorized to declare their wealth. However, oppressive governments must be removed from power to ensure human rights are not violated and development initiatives are encouraged and supported.
Works Cited
Castells, Manuel. Communication Power. London: Oxford University Press. 2009.
Castells, Manuel. End of Millennium: The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture. Sussex: John Wiley and Sons, 2010.
Hudson John. The ‘Twitter Revolution’ Debate: The Egyptian Test Case. The Atlantic Wire. 2011.
Perry Link. ‘‘Middle East Revolution: the view from China’’nybooks, 2011. Web.
Raatma, Lucia. Social Networks. New York: Cherry Lake Publishers, 2010.
Rheingold Howard & Raatma, Lucia Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. New York: Basic Books, 2003.
Steavenson, Wendell. ‘‘Pessoptimism’’ The New Yorker. 2011. Web.
The Daily Bell. ‘‘Middle East Revolutions Force West to Knees?’’ The daily bell, 2011. Web.