The new power of social media

Many governments in the Arab world are jittery. Egypt is boiling with protests calling for the removal of long term president Hosni Mubarak from office. Yemen is in the throes of anti-government rallies and Jordan is ticking. What makes these spontaneous protests unusual is that they are coordinated and sustained on social networking sites, Facebook […]

Many governments in the Arab world are jittery. Egypt is boiling with protests calling for the removal of long term president Hosni Mubarak from office. Yemen is in the throes of anti-government rallies and Jordan is ticking.

What makes these spontaneous protests unusual is that they are coordinated and sustained on social networking sites, Facebook and Twitter. And of course continued coverage and constant updates on Aljazeera has contributed in no small measure.

Threatened by the rising power of social media, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi described the internet as a “great vacuum” that “sucks everything in.” Ironically, his speech has been widely circulated on YouTube and Aljazeera has aired it several times.

And the Egyptian government, used to repressing protest in the past, realised the daunting task before it and decided to plug internet feed to the country on Friday in an effort to thwart the protest that is threatening to unseat it.

Professor Umar Pate, head of the Department of Mass Communication, University of Maiduguri says all this “shows that social media is persuasive and dictators are becoming jittery.”

How Facebook and Twitter helped oust Ben Ali

December 17 would have been a usual day in Tunisia but for Mohamed Bouazizi, a 27 year-old unemployed man who lived by selling produce on a pushcart in Sidi Bouzid. His wares were seized by municipal officers who publicly humiliated him for not having a licence and not having money to bribe them. He went to the governor’s office to complain but the governor refused to see him, so the young man set himself on fire in front of a local government office.

What followed was unprecedented. Images of him burning were quickly circulated on social media, in tweets, emails and Facebook posts and became an instant internet hit. It caused a lot of anger and mass protests followed. And still images of the protests were massively circulated, drawing more people out on the street. Following Bouazizi’s death, January 4th, the protests became relentless and eventually, Ben Ali’s government crumpled.

Several copycats have set themselves ablaze in several other countries and in Egypt, youths have been using social media to coordinate protests, uploading instant messages in real time about police actions and strategies.

Prof. Pate thinks the growth of social media is positive because “it puts the onus on our leaders to be honest and they need to be more open and transparent.”

Nigeria and social media

No figure is readily available for Nigerians who have access to the internet but the country has only 16 percent internet coverage at the moment and is only third in terms of internet penetration in Africa.

Compared to Saudi Arabia with a population of about 25 million, 10 million are on the internet, 3 million on Facebook and tweeter feeds have gone up some 400 percent keeping in touch with developments in other Arab states.

However, in Nigeria the numbers are increasing. More and more young people and the not so young are login in; many are having Facebook pages and followings on Twitter. And with telecom operators making access to the internet increasingly easy, more Nigerians are connecting and updating each other in real time.

And with conventional media like radio, television and newspapers subjected to censorship, (internal and external) and other forms of controls, more people are turning to social media for information.

“In a case where conventional media is censored or compromised, for instance the transmitter of radio Nigeria, Kaduna, has been sabotaged probably because of its stance on some socio-political issues, where do you want people to turn to? Social media may not be a threat to conventional media but it will compliment it.”

Dangers of the new power

The dangers of the new social media cannot be fully understood yet because the media itself has not been fully understood. Already, governments in the Arab states have felt the dangers the medium poses for them, but for those using them what is at stake?

Only last weekend, rumours of Nelson Mandela’s death made the rounds on Twitter and it was only later confirmed to be false. These sorts of unverified information have the capacity to induce large scale disorder, apprehension or hysteria.

Prof. Pate thinks this is not uncommon even in conventional media. “Even the NTA here has announced the death of Nnamdi Azikwe only to discover that the man was still alive and well,” he said.

Indeed this is true. Last year, the BBC announced the death of Queen Elizabeth II ( as a ridiculous hoax by a presenter), and the CNN announced the death of Fidel Castro, Dick Cheney, Nelson Mandela and Pope John Paul along with other leading world figures in 2003 in a series of mistakes.

For now, the immediate import of the new social media will not be known until the dust in the Arab world settles, assuming the unrests ends there.