Democracy's Fourth Wave?: Digital Media and the Arab Spring

ISBN-13: 9780199936977 / Angielski / Miękka / 2013 / 160 str.

Assoc Philip N. Howard; MR Muzammil M. Hussain

Opis

Did digital media really "cause" the Arab Spring, or is it an important factor of the story behind what might become democracy's fourth wave? An unlikely network of citizens used digital media to start a cascade of social protest that ultimately toppled four of the world's most entrenched dictators. Howard and Hussain find that the complex causal recipe includes several economic, political and cultural factors, but that digital media is consistently one of the most important sufficient and necessary conditions for explaining both the fragility of regimes and the success of social movements. This book looks at not only the unexpected evolution of events during the Arab Spring, but the deeper history of creative digital activism throughout the region.

Recenzje

Philip N. Howard and Muzammil M. Hussain's study implies that... digital media played a much longer term role in creating favorable conditions for uprisings, helped to publicize key igniting events, and then facilitated those uprisings and their diffusion; but digital media did not do this alone or as suddenly as some observers have claimed... There are a number of other unique contributions, but there is insufficient space to review them all. Overall, I predict that future research will look kindly to the authors' key findings, particularly the book's central claim that digital media were one essential ingredient in larger casual recipes for revolution and democratization.

O autorze

Philip N. Howard is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington, with adjunct appointments at the Jackson School of International Studies and the Information School. Muzammil M. Hussain is a Ph.D. candidate in Communication at the University of Washington and Visiting Scientist at the Center for Comparative and International Studies, ETH Zurich.