Published Paper Details:

The paper tries to link the gap existing in between the role of social media and democratization in the Arab world through the theory of social constructivism. It reveals why various scholars have perceived democracy to be incompatible with the Arab world, which eventually made it difficult to understand the sudden emergence of pro-democracy protests, particularly in countries like Tunisia and Egypt. It further explains what social media is, primarily taking into account the social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. It gives instances of how social media defied the earlier notions of being marginal or elitist and rather endowed a platform for the Arabs to voice their opinions and dissent, which they were unable to do so with the traditional Arab media. The paper scrutinizes democratic institutions in the Arab world as a structure and the emergence of social media as a process rather than a platform. The question of identities and interests of the Arabs are explained on the lines of family, clan, tribes, and ethnicities, religious and non-religious contexts. The impact of identity and interest in the process of transforming structures is further analysed