New Media and the Arab Spring of 2011
Journal: University of Derby Online Research Archive. (University of Derby)
Year: 2012

This paper examines the impact and interplay of news media and social media network sites on the contemporary political revolutions and crises that have been unfolding in North Africa and the Middle East. Known as the ‘Arab Spring’, these began in Tunisia, in February 2011, and spread to Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Syria. In spite of concerns expressed by professional journalists drawn from the conventional media at the rise of citizen journalism since the 1990s, the middle-cl