Social Media’s Very Arab Future
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The future of Twitter, YouTube and a variety of other social networks is going to look and sound a lot more Arabic in the years ahead, at least according to data on Twitter usage across the Arabic-speaking world. And if current trends continue, the emerging Arabic social media landscape will also be a lot more anti-American and pro ISIS as well as other fundamental Islamic groups
It’s an issue as old as Twitter, one that most of Washington, D.C., lost track of after the Arab Spring movement lost momentum in 2011. The rise of the Islamic State has put the issue back in the spotlight. For a bunch of medieval-minded murderers, IS has proven to be as savvy at social media recruitment as any group of Silicon Valley programmers. Part of their success stems from their unique ability to persuade Arab Twitter users in their own language.
Today, there are more than 135 million Internet users across 22 Arab world countries, communicating across 400 million mobile devices. These numbers represent only 0.5% of the world’s nearly 3 billion Internet users, yet roughly 36% of the Arab world is online, and this number has been growing at a rapid 20% per year. About 71 million of them have at least one social network account.
Saudis account for a surprisingly high share of social media users. Saudi Arabia has the highest percentage of its citizens on Twitter compared to any other country, a milestone first reached at the end of 2013. About 41% of the Saudis who are on the Internet have Twitter accounts. They rank seventh in terms of the total number, with 4.1% of all Twitter users or approximately 2.4 million.
On a per capita basis, Saudi Arabia boasts the biggest YouTube audience, with 90 million YouTube views a day. Nevertheless, the YouTube of Saudi Arabia resembles less and less what you’re watching on your laptop, and trend is intensifying. In April, the Saudi government announced plans to “regulate” the country’s YouTube content according to what they called “moral” guidelines. It’s unclear whether that extends to footage of beheadings.
About 45% of the conversation on Twitter in Arabic mention the United States – and not always positively. Even when the subject was American civilians killed in a terrorist attack, such as the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, Twitter responses from the Arab World ranged from the unsympathetic to the paranoid delusional.
