"An extraordinary wave of popular protest swept the Arab world in 2011. Massive popular mobilization brought down long-ruling leaders in Tunisia and Egypt, helped spark bloody struggles in Bahrain, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, and fundamentally reshaped the nature of politics in the region. New media -
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at least that which uses bit.ly linkages - did not appear to play a significant role in either in-country collective action or regional diffusion during this period. This lack of impact does not mean that social media - or digital media generally - were unimportant. Nor does it preclude the possibility that other new media technologies were significant in these contexts, or even that different Twitter or link data would show different results. But it does mean that at least in terms of media that use bit.ly links (especially Twitter), data do not provide strong support for claims of significant new media impact on Arab Spring political protests. New media outlets that use bit.ly are more likely to spread information outside the region than inside it, acting like a megaphone more than a rallying cry. This dissemination could be significant if it led to a boomerang effect that brought international pressure to bear on autocratic regimes, or helped reduce a regimefs tendency to crack down violently on protests. It is increasingly difficult to separate new media from old media. In the Arab Spring, the two reinforced each other. New media must be understood as part of a wider information arena in which new and old media form complex interrelationships. Of the four major Arab Spring protests analyzed - Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Bahrain - large differences were found across the four in the amount of information consumed via social media. The events in Egypt and in Libya (#jan25 and #feb17, respectively) garnered many more clicks on a much larger number of URLs than those in Tunisia and Bahrain." (Summary, page 3)
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"The impact of new media can be better understood through a framework that considers five levels of analysis: individual transformation, intergroup relations, collective action, regime policies, and external attention. New media have the potential to change how citizens think or act, mitigate or exa
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cerbate group conflict, facilitate collective action, spur a backlash among regimes, and garner international attention toward a given country. Evidence from the protests after the Iranian presidential election in June 2009 suggests the utility of examining the role of new media at each of these five levels. Although there is reason to believe the Iranian case exposes the potential benefits of new media, other evidence - such as the Iranian regime's use of the same social network tools to harass, identify, and imprison protesters - suggests that, like any media, the Internet is not a "magic bullet." At best, it may be a "rusty bullet." Indeed it is plausible that traditional media sources were equally if not more important." (Summary)
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"New media are powerful but have mixed effects on political organizations. To identify these consequences, we need to continue devising new frameworks of analysis. Knowing more about how new media relate to each other and to traditional media is critical. Being sensitive to the differences between,
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and relationships among, the various kinds of new media is also important. Blogs are different from text messages, and both are different from social networking sites. Categorizing these media in terms of their form and likely consequences would help advance research and policy. The consequences of new media for political polarization are especially important. Understanding when new media can have the one or the other consequence is key to future research and policy. Better research tools are urgently needed. Although some highly promising tools exist, they need to be developed so that they can parse languages other than English. New tools that can identify the tone of communication would help greatly but would also require major technological advances. The disparity between publicly available data on new media and those held by private companies (or, in some cases, publicly owned companies in other countries) is considerable. Public-private partnerships, or initiatives sponsored by well-respected nongovernmental bodies, are needed to create frameworks that would allow research on the consequences of new media." (Summary)
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