monitored the flow of information and communication (1) . The survey conducted by the Arab Social Media Report concluded the total num- ber of Facebook users in the Arab World increased from 21,377,282 in January 2011 to 27,711,502 April 2011 (2) . These figures indicate that, in 2011 Facebook and Twitter became platforms for the creation and support of social and political activism across the Arab world. With the emergence of this social network- ing-based activism, we started to see the real manifestation of the Fifth Estate in the new Arab political context. For the first time, ordinary citizens managed to use open means of communication and other forms of media to convey information and report news from the field. Con- sidering the role played by social media in facilitating and coordinating many mass protests that brought the demise of a number of Arab lead- ers, it may well be said that social media has become an integral part of the general political context across the Arab World. Those platforms have grown even more important as a result of their engagement with TV news channels, primarily Al Jazeera. Other TV services have also benefited from social media content and their swift communication and rapid distribution among citizens and activists in most Arab Spring rev- olutions. Al Jazeera’s coverage of the Egyptian Revolution, in particular, provides a clear case illustrating the affiliation and change equation. In this context, it’s important to examine Al Jazeera’s al-Hasad news bulletin throughout 2011, for example, to understand how this equation works, given the interrelation between Al Jazeera’s editorial policy and the preferences of Arab audiences. On 31 st January 2011, al-Hasad pro- vided an extended live coverage of the anti-government protests in Cai- ro’s “Tahrir Square”, allowing its viewers to follow the seventh day of the revolution. It was the day the Egyptian Army released its first state- ment, conceding “the legitimacy of the demonstrators’’ demands and stressing it would never use force against the revolutionaries and the revolution. Al Jazeera’s continuous live coverage of the demonstrations in various squares across the Egyptian capital and several other cities,
(1) Ibid, pp. 2-3.
(2) Ibid, p. 9.
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