Can you tweet a revolution?

How important is social media in the Arab Spring uprisings?
An upcoming book by Philip Howard and colleagues argues digital media was “consistently one of the most important sufficient and necessary conditions” for the Arab Spring movements. Howard says new media made a difference because it “has so fundamentally changed the way people think about their options.” Earlier research concluded new media “did not appear to play a significant role” during the 2011 uprisings. But the 2012 study says social media posts could have led to “a boomerang effect that brought international pressure to bear on autocratic regimes.”

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