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eing produced and exposed all around the world from Tunisia and Egypt to
the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
And what about language What about its usage during the uprising in
MENA countries Studying language and revolution is a very large domain
which could be tackled from different perspectives. I had the opportunity to
witness the revolution in Egypt and I was particularly interested by the role
of language in that event. I studied the role of social media in Egypt mainly,
and tried to explain how users/protestors and political movements used the
Internet and the social media to communicate, mobilize the demonstrators,
organize activities, and document and share the revolution events, repression,
success and celebration. I came to ask the question about the impact of the
revolution time on the presence of Arabic language on the net and in social
media. Based on that experience, I am making the hypothesis that since the
revolution started in Arab countries, more content in Arabic language is being
produced and shared on the Internet and social media. This content is created
by individuals, organisations and media, and is contributing to enhancing the
rank of Arabic language on the Internet. Some research is corroborating my
observations, but a lot is still to be done on that matter.
Usage of Social Media in Arab Countries
Social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are among the most used
tools of the Internet in Arab countries. Facebook was blocked and unblocked
several times in different countries from Tunisia to Syria during the last 3 to 4
years for political and social reasons.
The 1 st issue of the Arab Social Media Report 63 showed that over 21 million
Facebook users are in the Arab world, as of January 5, 2011. This number jumped
up to 27,711,503 users in the first quarter of 2011 (April 5 th , 2011) as reported
by the 2 nd issue of the Arab Social Media Report published in May 2011 64 , with
a high 30% of increase in the same period. Countries of the Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC) dominate the top five Arab Facebook users as percentage of
population. Egypt constitutes about a quarter of total Facebook users in the
Arab region, and has added more users in the first quarter of 2011 than any Arab
country, at close to 2 million new users between January 5 and April 5 65 .
Governments are seizing the opportunity offered by this huge concentration
of their citizens on Facebook and are becoming more present at that social
media. Egypt and Tunisia constitute good examples, where immediately after
the success of the revolts in ousting the presidents, the new government
63
http://www.dsg.ae/NEWSANDEVENTS/UpcomingEvents/ASMRHome.aspx.
64
http://www.dsg.ae/NEWSANDEVENTS/UpcomingEvents/ASMROverview2.aspx.
65
http://www.dsg.ae/portals/0/ASMR2.pdf, page 9.
159