"During 2010 Kyrgyzstan experienced two periods of conflict that took the country to the brink of civil war: the overthrow of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev in April and the ethnic violence in the south of the country in June. The use of blogs and social network sites as well as mobile and multimedia platforms during the upheaval has led some observers to link developments in Kyrgyzstan to other recent cases of social protest where new media has been prominent. However, these events offer no simple answer to the current social media debate. The complex and shifting role of new media as a factor in the events in Kyrgyzstan illustrates that the two conflicts were different in important ways and that new media was used differently in each. While new media made significant contributions to these events, it did not drive them and its importance has to be seen alongside the more conventional mobilization techniques and the role of traditional international media—which was often the source of social media reporting." (Abstract)