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Iran Green Movement
The green movement began in 2009 during a presidential election, where protestors were trying to remove Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from office. Twitter and Facebook were used to form protest groups. -
Egypts Facebook Revoluton
In June of 2010 Wael Ghonim was on Facebook when he saw an image of a young boy, bloodied and beaten and killed by the Egyptian police. This prompted him to use Facebook to express feelings of in-just, and soon after it gain popularity and protests were organized over Facebook protesting unemployment (over 3 million young Egyptions were unemployed), poverty, and the government/police. Facebook was powerful in creating awareness about the in-just, and the mistreating of Egyptians. -
Arab Spring
The Arab Spring refers to the protests happening in Tunisia spreading to North Africa and the Middle East. These protests were in regards to overthrow the Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Social Media's role in this was very large. Activist groups were formed online in Egypt. Social Media was used to communicate and show the rest of the world everything that was going on in the uprisings. The issues of getting the stories out over other larger outlets was a difficulty for them though. -
Libya's 2011 Revolution
The Libyan Civil War began in 2011 which was fought between Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and his "team" and those against him wanting to overthrow the government. Social media played an important role in this war as videos of the protests and violence were displayed online to for everyone to see. Muammar's death was even filmed and posted. -
ISIS & 2014 World Cup
In 2014, the jihadist terrorist group ISIS hijacked the hashtag #worldcup2014 in english and arabic so that instead of it taking you to photos and posts of the World Cup, it would take you to pro ISIS content. ISIS uses twitter and facebook to promote their agenda, take credit for any attacks, and show photos of what they can do. It is a very scary thing that social media can allow terrorists to use it in that way.
