Social networks, social media, social change

Social Media has been touted as the way in which social networks form and can be mobilized to effect social change. In particular, the Arab Spring 2011 has been heralded as a social media based social transformation. On the other hand, scientists and journalists concede social media a less important role in the spate of revolutions and uprisings. In this article we make a contribution to this discussion by analyzing structural change in Arabic written Twitter data and by comparing the results with data collected from traditional English written news sources. We orient this discussion by pointing out, using a simulation example, the socio-demographics internet penetration and literacy are critical to the impact of any media. Then, to illustrate our cross-cultural analysis approach we use news articles and tweets discussing Syria in December 2011. We are able to show that online and offline data is significantly correlated but the change can be measured earlier in online networks. If we assume that social media can react immediately to forerunners of social change and if we have the ability to identify structural change in social media networks in real-time, we get a step closer to predicting social change.