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Synopsis of Yamamoto's Essay Social Media and the Arab Spring: the Mobilization and Transparency Revolutions (Tatsuya Yamamoto）

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Synopsis of Yamamoto's Essay Social Media and the Arab Spring: the Mobilization and Transparency Revolutions (Tatsuya Yamamoto） Vol. Special Feature: Democracy for Better or Worse 77 2012 Synopsis of Yamamoto's Essay Social Media and the Arab Spring: The Mobilization and Transparency Revolutions (Tatsuya Yamamoto） Political scientist Samuel Huntington talked about "Third Wave Democracy" in the world more than twenty years ago. This wave had failed to reach Arab countries fully until last year, when authoritarian Middle Eastern regimes began to collapse under the influence of the Arab Spring, which started with the "Jasmine Revolution" in Tunisia. There is no doubt that social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, contributed significantly to this change. Tatsuya Yamamoto, who has been studying Internet censorship in the Arab world, examines the relationship between democratization/democracy and social media using Egypt as an example. While spring has definitely arrived, there is no guarantee that it will last. This is the cautious message we can derive from Yamamoto's argument. ＊ Wael Ghonim, an Egyptian computer engineer and an executive at Google in the United States, who personally participated in this movement toward democratization, details the relationship between the democratization of Egypt and social media in his book, Revolution 2.0 (Fourth Estate, 2012). Shocked by a photo that showed the body of Khaled Said, a youth who was mercilessly beaten to death by two police officers in Tunisia, Ghonim made the point that "we are all Khaled Said" to his fellow Facebook users. Ghonim's point struck a chord with many people, including angry youths in Egypt, and this recognition led the pro-democracy movement to move from the virtual world to the real world. Yamamoto calls this episode a perfect example of a "revolution in the digital age." However, Yamamoto also says that we should not overlook the unsuccessful anti-government campaigns that were launched several times in the past, or the "seething anger" that has been building in Arab society. These two factors were behind the Egyptian revolution, he argues. Social media, whose accessibility has improved dramatically in recent years, acted as a tool to spread this anger and connect people (in other words, to mobilize a large number of citizens to protest in the street). According to Yamamoto, this mobilization revolution could be called an "unspoken challenge to representative democracy" because it tends to encourage official objections from channels other than legitimate political ones. Citizens will more easily take to the streets if they start doubting whether politicians really represent their interests. Free and democratic countries, such as Japan, European nations, and the United States, are no exception to this process. Along with the mobilization revolution, social media has brought us the "transparency revolution" (a phrase coined by Taiyo Tsuchiya). Central governments have traditionally managed and controlled political information. However, citizens' tendency to seek information disclosure has strengthened in recent years as new media such as Facebook and WikiLeaks have evolved. The injustice and violence of governments has become plainly evident as a result. A role reversal has taken place. The position of the masses has changed from those being monitored to those monitoring the authorities. To provide a recent example, Japanese citizens who suspected that the government was intentionally keeping declared radiation levels low since the nuclear power plant accident on March 11, 2011, checked radiation levels using their own Geiger counters and announced their findings on social media. Naturally, central governments in free and democratic nations don't welcome these trends. However, the governments in these countries can no longer control information through their authority alone. According to Yamamoto, controlling information is as difficult as "steering a kayak," as an American writer on Internet technologies, Clay Shirky, argues. Those two revolutions promoted democratization. They will continue to play a big role once democratization is achieved. In other words, new governments born as a result of democratization will face the rigorous scrutiny of citizens, and citizens will more easily join in street demonstrations as their distrust of their government increases. In Egypt, the new government must address difficult challenges, such as creating jobs and taking steps to stimulate the economy, as the population continues to increase at the same time that crude oil production continues to decline. Also, there is no guarantee that social media will continue to support formerly pro-democratic movements after democratization. In recent years we have seen the ability of social media to threaten or effectively destroy the existing order. However, it is not clear what type of government will result from this aspect of social media. Both Egypt's government and the governments of the free and democratic nations of the world must find a way to deal with social media. One thing is for sure. No one welcomes a scenario of successive government overthrows or continued political instability as a result of the power and influence of social media. Reviewed by Seiichi Hayashi.
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