Hend S. Al-Khalifa
ABSTRACT
With the rapid growth of social networks, Twitter provides a dynamic and powerful social tool for discussing political issues. In fact, in Saudi Arabia, discussing political issues over Twitter has become a popular phenomenon among young Saudi citizens. The purpose of this paper is to conduct a pilot study to understand the underlying social structure of youth Saudi citizens' interaction and discussion of political issues over Twitter using the theory of Social Network Analysis (SNA). The result of SNA reveals relevant differences in the patterns of interconnection among different political topics. It also provides an insight into sociological characteristics of modern political issues in Saudi Arabia.
- Arab Social Media Report. UAE: Dubai School of Government, 2011, pages no. 30.Google Scholar
- N. Savage, "Twitter as medium and message," Communications of the ACM, vol. 54, p. 18--20, Mar-2011. Google ScholarDigital Library
- D. Hansen, B. Shneiderman, and M. A. Smith, Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL: Insights from a Connected World. Morgan Kaufmann, 2010. Google ScholarDigital Library
- D. Hansen, M. A. Smith, and B. Shneiderman, "EventGraphs: Charting collections of conference connections," in System Sciences (HICSS), 2011 44th Hawaii International Conference on, 2011, p. 1--10. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Wikipedia, "Social Network Analysis," 08-Aug-2011. {Online}. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Network_Analysis.Google Scholar
- E. Mustafaraj and P. Metaxas, "From Obscurity to Prominence in Minutes: Political Speech and Real-Time Search," in Proceedings of the WebSci10: Extending the Frontiers of Society On-Line, Raleigh, NC: US., 2010.Google Scholar
- K. K. Khonsari, Z. A. Nayeri, A. Fathalian, and L. Fathalian, "Social Network Analysis of Iran's Green Movement Opposition Groups Using Twitter," in Social Network Analysis and Mining, International Conference on Advances in, Los Alamitos, CA, USA, 2010, vol. 0, pp. 414--415. Google ScholarDigital Library
- A. Tumasjan, T. O. Sprenger, P. G. Sandner, and I. M. Welpe, "Predicting elections with twitter: What 140 characters reveal about political sentiment," in Proceedings of the Fourth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, 2010, p. 178--185.Google Scholar
- N. Jackson and D. Lilleker, "Microblogging, Constituency Service and Impression Management: UK MPs and the Use of Twitter," The Journal of Legislative Studies, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 86--105, 2011.Google ScholarCross Ref
Index Terms
- Exploring political activities in the Saudi Twitterverse
Recommendations
Exploring social media usage in Saudi e-government websites
ICEGOV '12: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic GovernanceMany governments worldwide have employed social media services to increase their openness and transparency. These services have played an important role in bridging the gap between governments and citizens and increase the interaction with each other. ...
Understanding the Use of Twitter for Teaching Purposes in Saudi Arabian Universities
The increased use of Twitter in Saudi Arabia has opened new opportunities in higher education teaching. However, there exists a lack of studies which examine academics' thoughts on Twitter use for teaching purposes. For this study, a questionnaire was ...
Direct online political communication effects on civil participation in Spain: an experimental study
TEEM'18: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing MulticulturalityThis study aims at updating our previous knowledge in reference with direct online political communication on social media. We focused on analyzing social media users' attitudes toward civil participation in national politics in Spain. It is ...
Comments