Social media megaphone reaches to more people

"Facebook, Twitter, and other channels help spread the message more widely. They work as a megaphone allowing the efforts to reach more people and be louder," Ayman Itani, a social media entrepreneur, explained. Social media platforms are no longer limited to merely connecting people socially. In today's world, these platforms have acquired a far greater role. They are being used for purposes such as business, marketing, and entertainment. Another use of social media which has been growing rapidly in recent months is as a political tool. According to a recent study conducted by the Pew Research Center, 73 percent of Americans who surfed the Internet over the past month did so for political purposes. The recent Arab spring which included countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, and Bahrain, has proven the rapid increase of people in the Middle East using social media platforms for similar purposes. Social media have been playing an important role in current political processes in the Middle East and other parts of the world, and definitely deserve attention," said Anastasia Kononova, Assistant Professor of Journalism at the American University of Kuwait. Kuwait has not fallen far behind in this new and powerful trend. Young Kuwaitis have taken enthusiastically to social media in order to project their political views to large numbers of readers that they would not have reached otherwise. "When young people in Kuwait, impacted by social media messages, became more active on Twitter, it was a natural political reaction to the events happening in the region," Kononova said. Twitter has become the most popular platform used for political purposes, with its wide audience reach, instantaneous speed, and ability to send out short, straight-to-the-point messages helping it achieve this status. The fact that many people now use smartphones has also assisted in encouraging the use of social media. People can access platforms such as Facebook and Twitter straight from their mobile phones wherever they are, with internet connection now available for whoever wishes to register for it, there is no longer a need to be sitting behind a laptop to access such platforms. Kuwaiti technophile Mustapha Said points out another important and convenient aspect that may appeal to young people. "The feature of social media that allows you to become anonymous has encouraged many people to use them and become actively involved," he said. In Kuwait, the traditional social forum has always been the diwaniya, a public or private gathering place where people meet to debate many topics regarding current events, including political issues, in the country. The new generation has changed this by making social media platforms the new public forums for political discussion. Several political figures, such as MPs Dr. Aseel Al-Awadhi, Ahmed Al-Mulaifi, Ali Al-Deqbasi, and Faisal Al-Meslim have noted this shift of forums and boarded the Twitter train themselves. According to Kononova, this is a great opportunity for politicians as they can now read conversations between the people of Kuwait, as well as interact with them. What has happened in the past few months has restored the importance of the people-government dialogue. It is inevitable that the younger generation is becoming part of this dialogue, and social media can surely provide an excellent tool to participate in it," Kononova explained. The fact that the demonstrations in Kuwait cannot, as yet, be compared to those in Egypt and Bahrain should not be seen as a sign of failure on the part of these social networking platforms. The mere fact that these young people can finally make their voices heard is proof of the power of social media and the vast range of people they can reach.