The effect of social media in political life: The case of Egypt and Libya within the framework of the Arab Spring

Events that took place in Middle East and North Africa at the beginning of 2011, reveal that there is tremendous changes in the World. New communication tools and social media which are made interpersonal communication easier, have extremely different context than traditional communication tools which we are adapted before. As the events occurred, so called, the Arab Spring have been examining. Because the Arap Spring is about people and society; the term, the Arab Spring is also tremendously complex. Also, because of this reason, background of these events should be examined in detail. While using background, cultural, economic, political and social preferences of countries are intended to say. It is not possible to understand the events that took place in the region, without examining these preferences. However, there are also many argument that theArab Spring is a Facebook or Twitter Revolution. It is also impossible to name these events neither revolution nor Facebook/Twitter Revolution. Needless to say that these kind of social media tools help to organize publics and diffusion of information in authoritarian regimes. However, the thing that should be examine is whether social media tools shape thoughts of individuals or not. Also, another question is why these events took place in 2011.Because the Arab Spring term is so new and current, to say anything about certain result of these event is a wrong attitude. After examining these events, one can only propose assumption about results. Another issue which is core of the Arab Spring arguments is whether it will bring democracy or not. One should keep in mind that democracy arguments also differ from country to country because of background of a country. However, it can be said that there is obvious transformation in Arab states. It is hoped that regime type will be decided by majority of the people. In this thesis, although results of elections will be given, events that took place before 2011 and while 2011 will be the core theme. Argument of this thesis is that social media tools andinternet have changed minds of Egyptians and Libyans, selected as sample. For this reason, social media use in Libya and Egypt will be considered.To sum up, at the end of this thesis, I hope to prove that social media tools is not only tools on the road to revolution or social movements, but they are also reasons of these events because they have changed attitudes of people. To do this, social media tools made Arab people aware of others. By doing this, not only they saw the World outside of them, but also spiral of silence among Arabs has been broken. These events also have conclusions for political leaders. It is needless to say that if internet connection is given to a society, leaders must be aware of results of this action.