The Role of Twitter in Opening New Domains of Discourse in the Public Sphere: Social Media on Communications in the Gulf Countries

Introduction

Twitter users were invited to answer the question ‘What are you doing?’ in 140 characters or less, to follow the accounts of their friends, and little else (Burgess, 2014). In 2011, a new term started to be heard around the world as the international media captured images of mass protests in Tunisia and Egypt—The Arab Spring. The size and persistence of the demonstrations enabled citizens to bring down governments they believed were corrupt. The media began reporting that the success of the Arab Spring was due to the use of social media. The leaders of the protest corrected this and argued that while social media was a powerful tool that they used to organize protests and relay instant reports, it was the realities of social and economic conditions that caused people to take to the streets in protest.

Although staged protests did not take place in the very conservative countries of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the impact of social media on Saudi and Emirati society is revolutionary, nonetheless. That social media has changed the nature of public discourse in formerly closed societies is best exemplified by its impact on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As acknowledged by the Saudi Gazette, Twitter has ‘created a parallel world by engaging an entire population that was once isolated from debate and expressing opinion ‘ (Baashraheel, 2012: 1). Saudi Arabia and the UAE now have the fastest growing Twitter communities in Arab Gulf countries, making Arabic the most prominent language on Twitter in the Arab region (Abdul Jawad, 2014).

This paper investigates the impact of social media on public discourse in Arab nations, especially in the Gulf countries. It hones in on the role of Twitter in opening new domains of discourse in the public sphere and changing roles of censorship.

This paper aims to explore social media, particularly the Twitter phenomenon, and its impact on the relatively closed societies of the Gulf countries. Another goal is to study the role of social media, specifically Twitter, and how it has changed the nature of the public sphere. Therefore, the researcher used the content analysis of four GCC journalists’ online accounts to investigate the type of content and purpose behind using Twitter by Arab journalists in Gulf countries. The goal of this study is to find, by means of a discourse analysis through Twitter, how and with what purpose in mind is social media used by analyzing different journalists’ online Twitter accounts. This analysis reveals what is under- and overvalued, and what is left out, as well as the connection between the Twitter discourse, themes, and ideology. To achieve this aim, the content analysis approach was used to scan a set of selected media texts posted by well-known Arab journalists in their online Twitter accounts. In spite of having the highest numbers of Twitter users, there are limited studies in the UAE about social media in general and Twitter in particular. Many Arab studies were published about Arab Spring that focused on the revolution in Egypt, but this study focuses on the public sphere, users, and journalists. The study explores the type of journalist subjects and content posted online in their accounts.

The limitation of this study comes from the long observation time for journalists’ tweets and categorizing the tweets into themes for four months, but it can’t be generalized because the study focuses solely on the UAE and KSA, not the GCC in general. The results of this study clearly show that there were movement effects caused by social media. In defense of this study, there are no previous studies in the GCC about Twitter using a content analysis. This discursive research increases the recent thoughtful dialogue of the phenomenon of social networking tools like Twitter in relation to discourse change, although the findings may not be generalizable.