In the end of 2010, there was a wave of demonstration revolution, protests, riots and civil wars occurred in West Asia, Middle East and North Africa. Those actions have been named as “Arab Spring”. Some new technologies have been using in organized and operating those activities. For example, FackBook, Twitter and Youtube played important roles in Egypt riots, Anti-government persons have used those social media to organize and disseminate their activities. BBC even made a documentary film to state their opinion: How social media change the world.
To be honesty, I can’t see any apparent developments in those areas since the revolutions; actually those regions are now in chaos. But let us look back to the very beginning of those riots, those actions were organized and launched by several organizer. In the video “The Egyptian revolution on Twitter” we can easily recognized some most linked Twitter account affect a majority of Twitter users. In another word several social media users push the revolutions in Egypt.
It is a very horrible phenomenon; few invisible people could trigger a large revolution in reality. We could say that is the power of social media, and because the users are invisible, it is very hard to locate and control that power.
Maybe we could explain those revolutions and riots by using the spiral of silence theory. The theory said: the closer a person believes the opinion held is similar to the prevailing public opinion, the more they are willing to share that opinion in public. Therefore, if major trend changes, the person will recognize that the opinion is less in favor and will be less willing to express that opinion to the public. As the distance between public opinion and a person’s personal opinion grows, the more unlikely the person is to express their opinion.
We could replay the process in the Twitter. At beginning, some opinions about Egypt appeared online, they may suggested to held some procession to protest the government, than some Twitter users, who have considerable numbers of followers, forwarded those opinions, therefore, those Twitter users’ followers may think those opinions about the Egypt were the dominate awareness, because some famous Twitter users have forwarded it. As consequence of that, increasing numbers of users agreed those opinions; meanwhile others who do not agreed have decreased or kept in silence. Finally, when the volume of approvers reached the critical value, the procession will be organized and implemented. And that was happened in Egypt during the “Arab Spring”.
In that process, we can easily figure out that, the whole process were affected by those Twitter users who have large number of followers. According to the spiral of silence theory I’ve mentioned before, we can define if those idol users changed their opinion, their followers may possibly changed. In some certain condition, that means the whole social media system were controlled by a small group of persons, and they can easily release the “monster” in social media users.
There is a case to proof my point. In the end of July, Orlando Bloom allegedly tried to punch Justin Bieber after a scuffle in a restaurant in Ibiza. After that both Orlando Bloom and Justin Bieber’s followers quarreled in Twitter, they actually create some meme for both of them, there are thousands replies under the each post. If two celebrities could trigger monster within the Twitter users, you could image how effective it could be during the “Arab Spring”.
The reason why social media could have such considerable power depends on the social media platform. There are several ways to control it; however they are double edged methods.
In China, the government blocks the access of some social media, such as Youtube, Twitter and FaceBook. In some certain condition, it jail the “monster” in the very basic level, however it also barrier the in formations for Chinese.
nerotyrant 
