Studio Session 1 Arab Spring Reflection - Joseph Coppola

Although Arab Spring is known worldwide, prior to the first studio session, I had not known much about it; however, I do recall hearing about it a few years ago when it primarily emerged. Starting in 2009, a wave of protests and revolutions emerged and used Twitter, a renowned social networking site, to plan protests and share their ideas around the world. For example, in 2011, there was a revolt in Egypt against the regime of Hosni Mubarak. Under this dictatorship, citizens were outraged with the treatment of people and the ruling of the country; therefore, there was need for a change, need for a revolution. This revolution emerged and became Arab Spring. During this time, these revolts in Egypt, and others in other countries, were referred to as “The Twitter Revolution.” Protestors in these nations used social media mediums such as Facebook and Twitter to disperse their opinions. With the use of these powerful social media outlets, the revolutions were able to gain power and create international awareness. In our group, we looked at articles that explained how Arab Spring used social media to mobilize its movement.

In studio session, “time-lining” emergence, movements and continuation of Arab Spring was a must in order to understand how they came about and what they have accomplished. That being, they made President Hosni Mubarak step down from office, which shows a rather strong revolution. However, now it is essential to figure out how social media, such as Twitter, had such an impact on making this occur so effectively?

In the beginning of this movement there was no figurehead, rather it was a group of people using the Internet and social media networks like Twitter to battle the Mubarak regime. “Rapid internet interaction through Twitter and Facebook gave information to the protesters about how to counteract the security forces as they tried to disperse the protesters, maps showing locations for protest meetings and practical advice about such things as what to do when teargas is used against groups of protesters.” This quote was in an article that was explaining how these revolutions were able to exert such great power and pressure on the standing government at the time through the use of Twitter. With social media and Internet, it made it so much easier for members of Arab Spring to contact one another, make plans and even executive massive protests at ease.

One article I found extremely interesting was an article that was talking about how Arab Spring may be losing fight against ISIS. ISIS is huge right now, and I believe it would be very interesting to compare and contrast the two of these groups through their use of social media as a medium, their impact and their accomplishments to date.