Social Media Usage in Bahrain. Social media on trial: what are the real boundaries? A Kuwaiti court sentenced a local writer on Tuesday to seven years in jail after he had insulted the Gulf state’s religious minority on Twitter. The public messaging site had already put several users in trouble with Kuwaiti authorities. Only last month, police had arrested another Kuwaiti citizen for insulting Prophet Mohammed on his Twitter account. Similar incidents were witnessed in Tunisia where two young men were sentenced to seven years in prison last week for committing “blasphemy” in online posts deemed controversial. In Palestine, security forces arrested on April 4, Ismat Abdul-Khaleq, a West Bank university lecturer for posting on her Facebook page a demand that President Mahmoud Abbas resign, and calling him a traitor.
A few months ago, young activists in Lebanon were detained (then released) for allegedly insulting the president of the republic on Facebook. Sometimes it is both. This begs the question: what are the true limits of free speech on the Internet? Thanks to social media, Arabs become more tolerant. The use of social media websites, such as Twitter and Facebook, has made internet users in the Arab world “more open and tolerant of other people’s points of view,” a recent study has revealed. The latest series of the Arab Social Media Report, released by the Dubai School of Government, covered eight Arab countries (Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Kuwait and the UAE). Info-graphic: Arab Tolerance and Social Media. (Design by Farwa Rizwan/Al Arabiya English) According to the report, 65 percent of people surveyed in Bahrain said they were “more open to tolerating different points of view” as a result of using social media. In Jordan, the figure was 59 percent, in Egypt and Oman 58 percent, in Kuwait 52 percent, in Lebanon 49 percent and in Saudi Arabia and in the UAE the figure was 47 percent.
“On an even more personal level, social media usage is not just perceived to bring about change within communities, but within people themselves,” according to the report. Ismaʻili Modern: Globalization and Identity in a Muslim Community - Jonah Steinberg. IMuslims: Rewiring the House of Islam - Gary R. Bunt. The New Arab Media: Technology, Image and Perception - Emma Murphy. Muslim Networks and Transnational Communities in and Across Europe. Middle East Journal, Vol. 54, No. 3 (Summer, 2000), pp. 378-394.
How the Arab World Uses Facebook and Twitter [INFOGRAPHICS] Social media has been often touted for the role it played in the popular uprisings that have spread across the Arab world since December 2010.
![How the Arab World Uses Facebook and Twitter [INFOGRAPHICS]](http://cdn.pearltrees.com/s/pic/th/facebook-twitter-infographics-121668468)
Despite the buzz, you may be surprised that only 0.26% of the Egyptian population, 0.1% of the Tunisian population and 0.04% of the Syrian population are active on Twitter. Of all the countries in North Africa and the Middle East, Twitter is most popular in Kuwait, where 8.6% of the population is active users, defined as those who tweet at least once per month. Facebook's more popular throughout the region.
In its most popular country, the U.A.E., some 36.18% of the population is on Facebook. Amazing maps show Twitter and Flickr activity around the world. Twitter Active Users in Arab countries [Infographic] Facebook users in Arab countries [Infographic] New Media in the Muslim World: The Emerging Public Sphere - Dale F. Eickelman, Jon W. Anderson. Culturally Sensitive Social work Practice With Arab Clients in Mental Health Settings.