Social media was seen as playing an integral part to bringing about political change during the Arab Spring. However, many of the studies conducted tend to exaggerate the effectiveness of social media tools in bringing about change in Authoritarian states. The very nature of social media and the anonymity it provides hinders any attempt to draw convincing conclusions correlating the use of social media tools leading to political change.

While social media is effective at disseminating information on a wide scale and connecting otherwise disinterested groups of people to rally; it is not in and of itself responsible for the political upheaval that toppled Authoritarian regimes during the Arab Spring. The fact that the Internet, and by extension social media were shut down by various leaders in their respective countries and the lack of impact it had  on preventing  people gathering or voicing their concerns, raises doubt as to the importance of social media in bringing about change.

If anything, it was the unavailability of social media tools that propelled many onto the streets in Protest. For example, it was only following President Mubarak’s decision to shut down Internet access in Egypt, that middle-class Egyptians who could no longer follow events from the comfort of their homes, joined the protests. Moreover, the general perception in Western media sources of political mobilisation within Egypt and other countries in the Arab Spring is that the vast majority of people are reliant upon the Internet to stay connected. Whereas, the reality is that within those countries, markets and tea- shops as well as traditional media tools were far more potent tools for political engagement and activism, allowing those who were isolated from social media to join the protests.

Consequently, the various studies that highlight the importance of social media in the revolutions that took place in the Arab Spring are working, not only from a Western perception of what social media is, but from sources outside of the country or region in question. A study by the University of Washington determined that during the week before Mubarak resigned, for example, the total rate of tweets, both from Egypt and around the world regarding political change in that country increased from 2,300 a day to 230,000 a day. Now given the fact the Internet was shut down, and that tweets from outside the country were included in the total, begs the question, how many of those tweets were written by actual Egyptians?

While the anonymity that social media tools provides limits the accuracy of a full quantitative study of the effect of social media during the Arab Spring, with many protestors choosing not to provide location details for obvious reasons, the study proved that in the case of Egypt, tweets originating from outside the country outnumbered those originating from within the country, by an average ratio of 10:1.Therefore, the fact that even more tweets regarding the events in Egypt were logged by those who did not provide location details, does not allow for a convincing argument to be made correlating the use of social media tools by the citizens of a particular country leading to political change in their given country.

Undoubtedly, social media played a part in facilitating political upheaval during the Arab Spring, but not to the extent we have been led to believe, nor by protestors or citizens of those countries, but rather from casual observers far from the actual events taking place.