ABSTRACT
The Arab Spring has become closely associated with social media; initial reports labeled the Arab uprisings as “Twitter” and “Facebook revolutions”. Yet, while social media have indeed played an important role in the Arab Spring, they were not the primary catalyst for the Arab uprisings in North Africa. Other communication tools like the mainstream media and mobile phones also played a central role during the uprisings. More importantly, all communication technologies played a supporting role to offline mobilization tools during the Arab Spring. Social media use during the Arab Spring did not emerge overnight; these technologies have their roots in communication processes dating back at least a decade, during which Arab activists honed and adapted their online mobilization strategies as well as ways of organizing and publicizing their efforts. In the context of transition in North African countries, the challenge of social media is to evolve from a tool for activism to a regime building tool. The demands of democratic transition and regime building require interactions, hierarchies, and activist networks that are very different from those used in challenging authoritarian leaders. Although social media have revealed themselves to occupy a much more marginal position in this context, they have already become so firmly connected with youth movements in the Arab world that they have begun to transform the way in which politics is performed by state actors, thereby planting the seed for new political dynamics in the region, albeit dynamics conditional upon changes in offline political activism.
