Kurdish Academicians Analyzed The Role of Social Media in Arab Spring

Nazakat Hamasaeed and Araz Ramazan are two Kurdish academic Journalists that both of them studied in Britain and The invited to turkey this week in order to attend an international conference on Media, Communication, technology and Design. Their paper is about ’’The role of social media in the recent Syrian Uprising’’

They answered Haberler.com's special questions about the role of social media in the recent Syrian uprising’’ and shared the general outview of their article about it. 

Who is Araz Ramazan and Nazakat Hamasaed, what are their proffessions? 

NAZAKAT HAMASAEED:

My main profession is about commercial media, my PhD is about commercial television. Now i'm a lecturer in a university of Suleymaniye. 

We made a paper and conducted research with my colleque , Araz Ramazan  about the role of social media in Syrian Uprising. In general about Arab Spring Uprising, but our paper is focused just on Syrian Uprising. How people use social media like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube during Syrian revolution. How this new technology, new media help and  impact and grows the revolution  in Syria and Arab Spring. So we conducted a survey  research, an online queastionares , and interviweed 30 people from Syria to present it at the conferacne which we came for it. 



We asked  some questions about how social media use by them , how it impacted their revolution,  Which type of social media did they use  to participate in the revolution, how they use it. Did they use  it just for only inform their friends to collect their friends, or did they use it for downloading videos, did they use it for writting  comments, did they use it for download a picture, most of our questions were about those .

ARAZ RAMAZAN: 

My profession is about International Journalism and I did my master in the UK about the Role of Social Media in the recent Arab Uprisings.



What do you think about the "Arab Spring/ Awakening" ? How was the Arab Spring started and taken form ? 

RAMAZAN:

May I say that the Arab Spring was started form 17th December 2010, from Tunusia. There are some points we found out that social media; especialy , Facebook, youtube and Twitter played a key role in the Arab Uprisings because in these countries that revolutions were happened the goverments runned the media So there wasn't free media,which is why especially young people used social media tools like Facebook and they decided to stand up against their regimes. Besides, Arab youths found some different tools like social media, as I said. For example, The key role of Facebook in Egyptian case, it played a significant role protesters created some pages such as (we are all Khaled said) they communicate via this kinds of pages and they spread information before the actions about the curroption and political and economic situation in Egypt to provoke people to join the street actions aganist mubarak regiems as they did on 25 January 2011, they called for the revolution and about million Egyptian joined the protests. Also, after the first day people found that social media is a good mediun for communication and it's safer than face to face because they can use facebook as a fake a ccount, Those people didnt know that social media will be the effective tool for their revolt which is why  in the beginning of revolution in Egypt they had another plan before creating facebook pages to spread their messages for gathering people in Tahrir Square in order to take an action against government But they scared that the government knew thir plan and the government will find those people who working for gathering protesters that is why they changed the plan, they made a Facebook page was just called "We are all Khalid Saeed" Khaled Saeed was young person from Egypt, the government killed him before. 

When the state knew that interent will engourage more and more people to stand up against the state they shut down the internet and all mobile networks. But they weren't successful, another point is that social media tools assist mainstream media such as BBC, Al Jazeera and CNN they all gain photos and videos from the social media tools and protesters as well because there was the only way even the quality of photos and videos not good.

On the other hand, some experts like Evgeny Morozov in his book (The net delusion) talked a lot about negative points of using social media on political actions as it has been used in the recent political changes in the Arab world as he believe that revolutions need another vital element which is human, and other reasons like as economic, poverty, unemployment and the political situation pushed people to stand up against the regimes.

HAMASAEED: 

The revolution wasn't started by social media, because these sort of system or regiem should change ,regarding world political,economic changes,   but social media made a revolution more grow and faster. 

ARAZ RAMAZAN: 

Social media made it (revolution) faster.

The social media has an extended effect on all of the world. Moreover, the social media has a great promotive mission for revolutionising and reforming. Under the light of these issues, what is the general position of North Iraq, do the Iraqis use social media?

HAMASAEED: 

Most of the Arabic countries had a state media that controlled by the governments. But a common social media, most of the governments lost their control. Because we have a network generation. This generetion uses events to revolution, war to express main activities. So, our results, we send a questionaire about people, all of them use social media, most of them used Facebook, and some of them used Twitter during the revolution and most of them shared videos, pictures,comments, and most of them used for publishing information about revolution. 

Arab spring started in Tunisia in 2010 because of poverty and unemployment and revolution was started from this point. So, after that is speak to winter Arab countries there is some reasons that kinds of revolution was happened in Arab countries. For example, dictatorship in these countries, absolute monarchy from aims and human right valueless government corruption and economic decreasing in these countries especially in Tunisia and Egypt because we said that this revolution is shaped by young people because they have skills, educated and they could use technology like smart phones, laptops or some media tools. 

You said, "Arab spring has no negative effects"

Social media has positive role more than negative roles. Arab spring as a process for the revolution in some countries there were good and made change in this countries but for them countries is worse and we can say it’s a real winter for them instead of spring.



Although the social media has become so influential, some social media platforms were banned by the government, such as Twitter and Youtube... What do you think about it?

HAMASAEED:

In some countries  government think about educate regulation to educate  people especially children  how to use social media because the controlling is difficult  by law regulation and they  planned to educate student through  schools, families and media.

There is a general view in some part of Turkish intellectualists, which is based on "The Arab Spring has became an early winter" , what do you think about this generalization?

RAMAZAN:

I think, social media should be limited because governments has more power than citizens it mean governments can get more benefits of using social media they can bring more professionals for technology to find anyone, because they can surveillance their people and some time they can control actions. 

I believe that social media has vital roles in Arab world revolutions such as social media was a good mediums of e- communication among protesters in those countries and social media has been useful for participants during the uprising to liberate their countries. Also, it was a vital medium for spreading information and Easy way to drawing the world's attention. Further, social media played a role for connecting with mainstream media and creating awareness among people. Also, it supports other protesters and protesters used Facebook to choose dates and locations of the uprising. However, there is another point of view that social media was just a tool of communication and some regimes used these tools just for ''spying” jobs. In addition, Arabian Facebook users had a fear of using Facebook since government forces used anonymous accounts to conduct surveillance on users during the revolt and The connection on social media is a 'weak tie', not a trustworthy one but we can say that social media played a vital role in all those revolutions and it made revolts faster.