[Air-L] Arab spring & social media evidence

[nativebuddha]

Thanks one and all for these suggestions.

In response to Alex H's comments below, I completely agree. Unfortunately,
there's a lot of policymaking going on right now that's picking up the
cause-effect model and runnin' with it. In fact, popular discourse pretty
much asserts that Twitter caused the revolution!

This simplification is why there needs to be many more empirical studies.

-robert





>  On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 11:27 AM, Alex Halavais <alex at halavais.net>wrote:
>
>> I think any "cause-effect model" for any large-scale social phenomenon
>> is sketchy, and I also think popular discourse loves such
>> simplification. That is to say, I don't think "This Caused That" is
>> something that evidence could directly demonstrate or refute (or even
>> "refudiate" ;).
>>
>> That said, I've been reading Philip Howard's new book, "The Digital
>> Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy," which is quite good, and
>> provides something of a discussion of this question in its
>> conclusions, and suggests that ICTs can play an important part in a
>> "causal recipe" for democratization of Muslim states.
>>
>> - Alex
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 1:52 PM, nativebuddha <nativebuddha at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > Does anyone have evidence (or links to studies) that show the impact, or
>> > lack thereof, of social media on the Arab spring? This cause-effect
>> model
>> > still circulates in the mediasphere, but what is the evidence show?
>> >
>> > Thanks.
>> >
>> > -Robert
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