ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN POLITICAL EDUCATION AND MOBILIZATION: ANALYSIS OF ARAB SPRING IN THE PARADIGM OF YOUTH BULGE THEORY

Political education can be defined as the process of learning and obtaining knowledge and awareness regarding the political process and activities. Political mobilization and paricipation is natural outcome of this awareness. Arab uprising of 2011 onwards can very conveniently be described as finest and rare example in contemporary age, where role of social media and networks has played key role in political education and subsequent political mobilization. It successfully contributed towards regime change and pro-democracy/parliamentary movement. Youth population of any society always play pivotal and fundamental role in political uprising and revolution. Most of the political analystscosidered Arab Spring as the logical outcome of the Youth Bulge i.e. predominant youth population in the region coupled with frequent use of social media by them. Since the state-run media did not facilitate the flow of information of the uprisings, so youth successfully used the modern instruments of social media i.e., YouTube, Twitter and Facebook in transmitting, communicating, organizing, gathering, and coordinating information and subsequent political movement. In this study, an effort has been made to find out the causes of uprisings of 2011 in MENA in the context of Youth Bulge, focusing on the gigantic role played by social media and networks.