THE SOCIAL MEDIA REVOLUTION THAT FAILED: LESSONS FROM THE ARAB SPRING
THE SOCIAL MEDIA REVOLUTION THAT FAILED: LESSONS FROM THE ARAB SPRING

Summary/Abstract: In December 2010, when Tunisia set the tone for a wave of uprisings that shook the Middle East and overthrew two of its longest-standing and most entrenched rulers – Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Tunisia’s own president Ben Ali – many scholars, pundits, and media professionals hailed the events which would later be dubbed “the Arab Spring” as the unmistakable sign that the region, long considered a hotbed for authoritarianism and dictatorship, was inexorably moving towards democracy. And media, especially social media, but also Qatari TV channel Al Jazeera, were seen as the conduit through which western-style liberal democracy would spread throughout the region – to the extent that the events were widely regarded as a genuine “social media” revolution. Yet, less two years after the outbreak of the uprisings, it was gradually becoming clear that, by and large, the Arab Spring was failing to deliver the expected democratic outcomes, despite signs of progress in Tunisia and Egypt. So how and why did the social media revolution fail? How was it possible that, despite massive and exemplary social media mobilisation and television exposure, no meaningful and lasting change occurred in most of the countries affected, some of which (Syria or Yemen) descended into bloody civil wars? These are the main questions the present contribution aims at answering, starting from the premise that, in the case of the Arab Spring, the lesson to be learned is that, although social media may have been a necessary condition to achieve a certain level of mobilisation and spread the message, it was far from sufficient in bringing about democratic change or at least in sustaining the momentum needed for such change to come about and that, overall, in retrospect, it was credited with far too much potential and it certainly proved its limitations.

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