Jan. 30, 2013 by Darius
I read a very amusing article in this week’s Economist. It was about the Twitter reaction to Saudi religious police removing a dinosaur display from a shopping mall—for what, it’s not clear. However, the incident is a wonderful example of how the internet has changed the way people around the world interact with and question their governments.
Saudi religious police, known as Hayaa and tasked with maintaining public morality, stormed into an educational exhibition in a shopping mall and ordered everyone out. Within minutes, the incident had appeared on Saudi Twitter feeds. Soon, dozens of people were tweeting about the dinosaur incident. Many made jokes about the religious police (needing to separate the male and female dinosaurs) or the “dinosaurs” running the Saudi government. (Source: “Who’s a Dinosaur,” The Economist, January 26, 2013, p.44, http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21570748-making-mockery-saudi-morality-police-whos-dinosaur)
What this incident demonstrates is the extent to which even governments like Saudi Arabia are being held somewhat accountable to the people, thanks to the internet. The Saudis tweeting their disapproval might not be willing to take to the streets or put their names on a letter to the editor, but they are able to use Twitter to comment on government actions.
A great deal has been made about the role of “social media” during the Arab Spring as an organizing tool for protests. According to Emory University professor Sam Cherribi, though, in Tunisia, where the Arab Spring began, Facebook was indeed vital for starting and continuing the protests—but simply because it was a video-sharing platform that the government couldn’t crack down on. YouTube was blocked, but on Facebook ordinary people got to see videos of peaceful protesters being shot by snipers; they then reacted, and the government came toppling down.
It’s not just social media. The internet, broadly, has shined light on government activities. The disclosures about government improprieties made by Wikileaks (in English and translated) also played an important role in telling the people of Tunisia about their leaders’ nepotism, corruption, and lives of luxury. (See http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/01/wikileaks-reveal-what-made-tunisians-revolt.html.)
In fact, the emergence of the internet as a great force of leveling the playing field between people and their governments also ties in directly to what Frank Vogl, a founder of Transparency International, was talking about in terms of corruption. (See last night’s post: https://notwhatyoumightthink.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/thinking-aloud-waging-war-on-corruption/)
Not What You Might Think 