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Social Media and the Spiral of Silence: the Case of Kuwaiti Female Students’ Political Discourse on Twitter Journal of International Women's Studies Volume 16 | Issue 3 Article 4 Jul-2015 Social Media and the Spiral of Silence: The aC se of Kuwaiti Female Students Political Discourse on Twitter Ali A. Dashti Hamed H. Al-Abdullah Hasan A. Johar Follow this and additional works at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws Part of the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Dashti, Ali A.; Al-Abdullah, Hamed H.; and Johar, Hasan A. (2015). Social Media and the Spiral of Silence: The asC e of Kuwaiti Female Students Political Discourse on Twitter. Journal of International Women's Studies, 16(3), 42-53. Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol16/iss3/4 This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. This journal and its contents may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. ©2015 Journal of International Women’s Studies. Social Media and the Spiral of Silence: The Case of Kuwaiti Female Students’ Political Discourse on Twitter By Ali A. Dashti1, Hamed H Al-Abdullah2 and Hasan A Johar3 Abstract The theory of the Spiral of Silence (Noelle-Neumann, 1984), explained why the view of a minority is not presented when the majority view dominates the public sphere. For years the theory of the spiral of silence was used to describe the isolation of minority opinions when seeking help from traditional media, which play a significant role in increasing the isolation. The fear of isolation makes many people afraid of exchanging their views face-to-face with others. The main fear comes from identifying the people who hold a minority opinion. However, with the proliferation of social networks people have moved online to exchange their views, whether they hold a minority or a majority opinion, as long as their identities are concealed. Although women are the majority population in many Arab societies, their voices are still considered a minority view. In addition to the effects described in the spiral of silence, there are other obstacles to self-expression. Religion, culture, tradition, and education may have a negative effect, preventing women’s voice being made public. Social networks have helped to promote women’s voices while removing offline obstacles. This paper uses the theory of the spiral of silence in relation to women’s online political participation in Twitter, even though they may not be willing to share their opinions offline (face-to-face), to learn whether the theory is still useful as an account of online relationships. The results show that the spiral of silence does not explain the behavior of women, either face-to-face or online. Key Words: Women, Spiral of Silence, Twitter, Kuwait, Political Participation and Social Media Introduction The theory first expounded in the Spiral of Silence by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (1984) suggests that people remain silent and do not exchange their views face-to-face against the majority view for fear of being isolated. Thus, when the majority view dominates the public sphere, the minority view becomes more difficult to encounter. However, with the proliferation of social networks and anonymous online spaces, millions of people moved to cyberspace to 1 Ali A Dashti, PhD is Assistant Professor in the Mass Communications Department at Gulf University for Science and Technology. His research interest includes political communication, online journalism, women studies, social network and public relations. He is the author of “Sergeant over One Week” and “How 0.10 Can Change Your Life”. Email: [email protected]. 2 Hamed H Al-Abdullah, PhD is Associate Professor in Political Science Department at Kuwait University. He is an Assistant Dean for Research Training & Consultation at the College of Social Sciences. He is specialized in political thoughts, human rights and political ideologies. Email: [email protected]. 3 Hasan A. Johar, PhD is Assistant Professor and head of the Political Science Department at Kuwait University. He served as a Member of Parliament (Kuwait National Assembly) from 1996-2012. He is specialized in international relations, political economy and political Islam. Email: [email protected]. 42 Journal of International Women’s Studies Vol. 16, No. 3 July 2015 became online users, and more and more men and women share their ideas online regardless of whether they are a minority, so long as their identities are concealed (Campbell & Howie, 2014). In many Arab states women are categorized as a minority and still fight to gain their social, economic and political rights. The constitution does recognize women’s rights in many Arab states, but due to other factors, such as tradition, culture and religion, those rights have not been fully recognized in practice. Kuwait is one of the Arab states that recognized women’s equality in the constitution and recently gave more political rights to women than other Arab countries. Women became more active in politics and have been appointed to posts that were not open years ago, such being a minister or a member of parliament. External factors including religion, culture, tradition and education were barriers for other women to take part in face-to- face political discourse. These factors may influence women to avoid face-to-face communication for fear of being isolated or negative outcomes from family, friends or society. Social networks have helped women raise their voices while reducing offline obstacles that prevent women from participating in political discussions. Kuwait is one of the Arab states where women were not given full political rights for years. Only in 2006 did they gain the right to run and vote for the National Assembly. Kuwait is a pioneering nation in providing a speedy Internet for the public, including women, and in the top four in the Arab states for Internet penetration after Bahrain, UAE and Oman (GO-Gulf.com, 2013a). In the Arab region, 88% of the Middle East use social networks (65% men and 35% women) and 68% of the users are between the age of 18 to 34 (GO-Gulf.com, 2013b). Facebook remains the most popular social network program used in the Arab world with 54,552,875 members, of whom 33.4% are female, in the Gulf region. Kuwait comes third after UAE and Qatar (Arab Social Media Report, 2013). In March 2013, the estimated number of active Twitter users in the Arab world reached 3,766,160, and Kuwait comes fourth after Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and UAE for the number of active Twitter users with 225,000. Kuwait leads with the highest number of tweets as of March 2013, sending 6.7% of tweets in the Arab region (Arab Social Media Report, 2013). New technology provides women with the tools to strengthen their political participation and positively position themselves in society, especially among young women’s political activities (Schuster, 2013). This paper tests the theory of the spiral of silence in relation to Twitter and women’s political participation. The main hypothesis of this research paper is that women may not be willing to share their views offline (face-to-face), but they do share them online through the use of social networks such as Twitter. Spiral of Silence In order to explain how public opinion is formed, Noelle-Neumann (1973; 1977, 1984) proposed the theory of the spiral of silence based on two assumptions: 1) people have the tendency to sense the majority view of public opinion “quasi-statistically” and 2) knowing that being in a minority may lead to behavior of isolation, they adjust their behavior with respect to public opinion. This adjustment behavior is either to share in the majority view openly, or to remain silent and appear to agree with the majority, when in reality they do not (Crandall & Ayres, 2002). The spiral of silence is based on the principle of fear of isolation due to social threats. Through personal relationship and media, individuals assess the climate of opinion, and based on this assessment the individual will decide whether to speak up or stay silent (Malaspina, 2014). Isolation, in Noelle-Neumann’s view, is a motivating factor to speak out or not (Moy, Domke, & Stamm, 2001). The nature of the relationship is another variable that affects the spiral 43 Journal of International Women’s Studies Vol. 16, No. 3 July 2015 of silence, where people are unwilling to express their opinions face-to-face with strangers (Crandall & Ayres, 2002). McDevitt et al. (2003, p 456) identify three assumptions of the theory: human action is motivated by the climate of opinion, people can accurately assess the opinion climate, and people believe that the majority will impose negative sanctions on those who hold a minority view. McDevitt et al. (2003) showed in an experimental study that there was a moderation tendency for both those who hold a majority and a minority view. Beside the willingness to express one’s opinion and opinion climate, attitude is also an important factor that influences whether individuals speak out or how strongly they feel about an issue (Krosnick, Boninger, Chuang, Berent, & Carnot, 1993; Krosnick & Petty, 2014; Krosnick & Schuman, 1988). For example, attitude certainty relating to the issue is an important factor in spiral of silence studies which “moderates the relationship between opinion climate and opinion expression” (Matthes, Morrison, & Schemer, 2010, p 776). Attitude certainty and holding attitudes with varying levels of conviction (being correct) help to determine when the opinion climate will affect the expression of opinion. Matthes, Morrison & Schemer (2010, p 777) listed several factors that can increase attitude certainty of individuals, such as direct experience with the attitude object, subjective recall of attitude information, online attitude formation, subjective impressions of successfully resisting persuasive messages, the amount of knowledge, the cognitive elaboration of knowledge, and the structural consistency of attitude-relevant knowledge.
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