The revolution will be tweeted
(2012) UTVK01 20112Department of Human Geography
- Abstract
- Social medias have changed the way we obtain information about current events in the world. Regular people have the opportunity now more than ever to voice their opinions and tell their stories over the net. Direct democracy proponents are calling for a paradigm change using the Internet to spread direct democracy. The recent revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa have been called Twitter and Facebook revolutions in media because of the heavy use of social medias throughout the riots. The question is: can social medias simplify the spread of direct democracy?
Using democracy theories and postcolonial theories I have analyzed the consequences and problems associated with social medias when it comes to democratizing information... (More) - Social medias have changed the way we obtain information about current events in the world. Regular people have the opportunity now more than ever to voice their opinions and tell their stories over the net. Direct democracy proponents are calling for a paradigm change using the Internet to spread direct democracy. The recent revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa have been called Twitter and Facebook revolutions in media because of the heavy use of social medias throughout the riots. The question is: can social medias simplify the spread of direct democracy?
Using democracy theories and postcolonial theories I have analyzed the consequences and problems associated with social medias when it comes to democratizing information online. Focusing on the social media Twitter and the Arab revolutions I have conducted a critical discourse analysis to investigate the types of ideas about democracy that are present in the platform as well as a supplementary analysis to find out which democratic actions that have been taken. The final results showed that Twitter is an effective tool for spreading information as well as a secure environment where the risk for propaganda issues is quite minimal. Also the democratic actions that were taken by the tweeters fit well into the theoretical framework of direct democracy. Hence, I concluded that Twitter enables the spread of direct democracy. However, it is difficult to understand the extent of the democratic changes using the method in this essay. Further studies need to be done on the subject. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/3045976
- author
- Mohammed, Hanas LU
- supervisor
- organization
- alternative title
- An investigation of the role of Twitter in spreading direct democracy during the Arab spring
- course
- UTVK01 20112
- year
- 2012
- type
- M2 - Bachelor Degree
- subject
- keywords
- Social Media, Arabic Spring, Critical Discourse Analysis, Twitter
- language
- English
- id
- 3045976
- date added to LUP
- 2012-09-21 11:26:15
- date last changed
- 2012-09-21 11:26:15
@misc{3045976,
abstract = {{Social medias have changed the way we obtain information about current events in the world. Regular people have the opportunity now more than ever to voice their opinions and tell their stories over the net. Direct democracy proponents are calling for a paradigm change using the Internet to spread direct democracy. The recent revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa have been called Twitter and Facebook revolutions in media because of the heavy use of social medias throughout the riots. The question is: can social medias simplify the spread of direct democracy?
Using democracy theories and postcolonial theories I have analyzed the consequences and problems associated with social medias when it comes to democratizing information online. Focusing on the social media Twitter and the Arab revolutions I have conducted a critical discourse analysis to investigate the types of ideas about democracy that are present in the platform as well as a supplementary analysis to find out which democratic actions that have been taken. The final results showed that Twitter is an effective tool for spreading information as well as a secure environment where the risk for propaganda issues is quite minimal. Also the democratic actions that were taken by the tweeters fit well into the theoretical framework of direct democracy. Hence, I concluded that Twitter enables the spread of direct democracy. However, it is difficult to understand the extent of the democratic changes using the method in this essay. Further studies need to be done on the subject.}},
author = {{Mohammed, Hanas}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{The revolution will be tweeted}},
year = {{2012}},
}