The Role of Modern Media in the Course of Revolutions A Case Study of the Wave of Islamic Awakening in Arabic Countries

Since the late 2010, some movements have arisen in North Africa and the Arab world. In some counties such as Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya, these movements have led to revolutions and in some others like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia they are still going on. This issue has drawn the attention of many experts and analysts inside and outside the region. Specialists have mentioned various causal factors for these domino-like developments including the role of modern media, nations’ movement towards the globalization process,; the existing social and class gaps in Arabic countries, dictatorship and authoritarianism ruling over the Arab world, the beginning of Arabs’ seeking democracy, the rise of the wave of Islamic awakening due to people’s dissatisfaction with the marginalization of religion, violation of their religious rights by the rulers and dysfunctional political systems. What these movements have in common is the role that modern electronic media, i.e. satellites and electronic virtual environments such as social networks, cell phone messages,. .. , have played in their inception. Though the media may not be considered the main cause of a revolution, they have been mentioned as one of the important factors affecting the occurrence of these revolutions. The role these media played in informing and organizing people was so influential that titles such as media revolution, laptop revolution, Facebook revolution and Twitter revolution,. .. are used to refer to some of these revolutions. Surveying some of these revolutions, this paper attempts to examine the role modern media played in their inception.