FE ATUR E A RT ICLE S
Ten years ago, when Arab youth gathered in the streets of Tunis, Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad and Amman, they had not only found their voices, but they had also stumbled upon the power of social media. It changed the game and the faces of the region and is still doing so a decade later. While the Arab Spring flourished on the shoulders of social media, namely Twitter and Facebook at the time, the significance it has today is multi-layered. The platforms with hundreds of millions of accounts in the Arab region have changed the patterns of communication and even the language used by younger generations. Moreover they have also exposed corruption, political misconduct, societal and legal injustices, and led to actual changes in the legal systems in many countries.
Windows into closed societies One significant role for social media in the last few years has been the opening of a room for women across the region to highlight their plights. Campaigns that started on social media led to changes in the legal systems on issues such as FGM (female genital mutilation), domestic violence, rapists marrying their victims, sexual harassment and child marriage. But it did not only give voices to the voiceless or “less fortunate,” but it has also been opening a debate in the most conservative Arab countries and communities about diversity, human rights, equality and freedoms.
Social media: A decade of leading change in the Arab world by Doaa Soliman, DW head of Online and Social Media, Arabic Service
26 Weltzeit 2 | 2021
Surprisingly enough, it also created a window into previously closed societies, such as some Arab Gulf countries. For years we witnessed Saudi Women raging one battle after the other against the Wilayah system (male guardianship), asking for equal rights and denouncing domestic violence. In 2019, the whole world watched as 18-year-old Saudi Rahaf al-Qunun mana ged to escape her home country, seeking asylum in Canada in fear for her life after renouncing Islam. Rahaf’s escape journey attracted worldwide attention with more than half a million tweets using the # SaveRahaf hashtag. Such attention was made possible thanks to the high penetration rate of Twitter in the Arab Gulf societies.
