Effects of New Communication Networks on the Emergence of Political Movements (Case Studies on Tunisia, Egypt and Libya)

Recent socio-political crises in some Arab countries find new dimensions day by day which lead to new outlooks and analyses on the causes and quality of these events as contrasted to the revolutions and movements which occurred in the past. Some of the salient questionswhich interest the political and social theoreticians include: What is the main cause of the appearance of such unrests? What role do new social media networks play in them? In this relation, the main question in this research is what impact new social networks have had on the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. The hypothesis of the research indicates that democratic demands existed as an independent variable in thosecountries which, through the intermediary variable (social networks),have resulted in the culmination of recent political uprisings (the dependent variable). This paper seeks to offer a realistic and fair understanding of the nature of current developments in the Arab countries from a sociological perspective and to explain the role played by social networks.