UAE | Media
Report throws light on social-media usage in Arab world
Egypt is on the lower end of facebook penetration in the Arab world at 7.66 per cent, whereas the UAE, at the highest, is at 50 per cent
- By Abbas Al Lawati, Staff Reporter
- Published: 19:42 June 7, 2011
- The total number of facebook users in the Arab world in April 2010: 14,791,972
- The total number of facebook users in the Arab world in January 2011: 21,377,282
- The total number of facebook users in the Arab world as of April 1, 2011: 27,711,503
- Estimated number of active Twitter users in the Arab region as of March 2011: 1,150,292
- Number of tweets generated by active users in Arab region: 22,750,000
Dubai: There have been a number of debates about how big a role social media played in the Arab uprisings against their ruling regimes that have been dubbed as the Arab Spring.
Some have almost entirely credited the uprisings to facebook and twitter while others have said that the two platforms only served to mobilise people to an extent and disseminate information to the outside world as regimes tightened the noose on the flow of information.
For the first time, however, statistics have been made available to paint a clearer picture of how important a role these platforms played during the first three to four months of this year.
The second issue of the Dubai School of Government’s Arab Social Media Report lays out the facts of social media usage in the region.
Egypt, the report found, constitutes about a quarter of total facebook users in the Arab region, and has added close to 2 million new users between January and April.
Egypt is nonetheless on the lower end of facebook penetration in the Arab world, at 7.66 per cent, whereas the UAE, at the highest, is at 50 per cent.
Perhaps surprisingly, Egypt was also found to have one of the lowest twitter penetration rates in the region. Despite its 18 million internet users, seven million facebook users, Egypt only has 131,204 tweeps.
Even Qatar, with a population of 1.7 million, has more twitter users (133,209) than Egypt, leading the twitter penetration rate in the region, followed by Bahrain.
Gulf countries have taken the lead in terms of social media penetration as well as the total number of social media users. Qatar and Bahrain have the highest twitter penetration in the MENA region, while the UAE was found to have the second highest number of twitter users, and Kuwait generated the highest number of tweets despite having half the number of tweeps as the UAE.
The UAE and Kuwait also saw the highest increases in facebook users between January and April of this year, as percentage of population.
Oman comes last in the Gulf for both facebook and twitter penetration.
The youth of the region have been leading the use of social networks, with over 70 per cent of facebook users in the region being youths.
It has also shown that English takes the lead as the language of choice among facebook users, in 7 countries, followed by French in five countries, then Arabic in three countries, while the rest of the states’ users were split between English and Arabic.
Between January and March, tweets from countries facing unrest peaked on or close to landmark events. In Egypt, tweets peaked on February 11, when former president Hosni Mubarak stepped down, and in Bahrain, on February 17, three days after the uprising started. In Saudi Arabia, it peaked on March 18, in the lead up to the March 20 protest.
The top trends from the entire region highlighted the unrest in Arab states, with top hash tags being #egypt, #jan25, #libya, #bahrain, and protest respectively.
A comparison between daily tweet volume and the use of the hash tags shows that most of those tweeting from their respective countries were discussing the unrest there. This was particularly true for Egypt.
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