What Arabs are saying about their governments on social media

States of the GCC are particularly active on social media.

Social media has become an important tool in gauging public opinion and is presenting Arab governments with numerous opportunities to form data-driven policy decisions, according to a new report from the Mohammed bin Rashid School of Government (MBRSG).
The seventh annual Arab Social Media Report - which this year is entitled "Social Media and the Internet of Things: Towards Data-Driven Policymaking in the Arab World: Potential, Limits and Concerns - seeks to explore how Arab societies and governments are using social media, as well as demographic, gender, and language usage trends and the impact social media is having on public engagement, participation and governance and public policy.
Importantly, the research found that social media is growing enormously throughout the region. Facebook, for example, now has 156 million active users in the region, up from 115 million the previous year. Twitter, for its part, has 11.1 million active users, up from just 5.8 million. Collectively, the Arab World's twitter users generate a total of 27.4 million tweets daily.
The report's author, Fadi Salem, noted that the states of the GCC are particularly active on social media.
"Around 39 percent of people in the Arab Region are users of social media. This has grown from around 28 percent almost two years ago," Salem said. "One of the key findings of the report is the Gulf Region continues to dominate the top five ranks on most social media platforms in terms of active users."
"This indicates that in the six GCC countries there is a maturity of usage and enabling factors such as infrastructure, and interest in using these platforms for many activities in life," he added, noting that the average age of social media users across is becoming older, as opposed to previous years in which almost two-thirds of users were below the age of 30.
Gender Gap
Despite the growing number of users, Salem noted that there is a "growing and persistent" gender gap in social media use.
"This has continued from almost six years ago when we started the report. There is (a ratio) of 1 to 2 people using social media that are female, compared to the rest of the world. Almost a third of users (in the region) are women, and in the rest of the world it's almost fifty-fifty."
According to the report, the gender gap data suggests "women in the Arab Region have not gained a representative voice online, nor managed to increase their share of the digital space in the region."
Moving forward, the report says that "digging deeper into the barriers and drivers of this critical matter should be viewed as a priority for governments and societies in the region."
"As decision-making and policy decisions by governments and businesses in the region are increasingly becoming digital and data-driven, the underrepresentation of women in the region in the data-driven economy will undermine the potential economic growth as well as the opportunities for better governance and development," the report concluded.
A tool for forming public policies?
Salem noted that users are increasingly turning to social media to voice their views on government policies.
"The most important (thing) is how (social media) is allowing for greater potential for data-driven policy making in the age of the fourth industrial revolution," he said. "Social media users across the region express their views on government policies. Around 58 percent said that they do."
"If the use of personal social media and IoT (Internet of Things) data can enable governments and policy makers take positions that are better representative of society, people said that they would allow that, if they see it leads to better policies," he added.
Despite the willingness to share data, Salem noted that a significant portion of people voiced concerns about government's using their social media data.
"Around 60 percent said they have concerns," he noted. "The public concerns are many, and these are related to how the usage of data is taking place.and how governments are using this in practice."
Among the concerns voiced by public in the report are the use of bots or paid social users to sway public opinion, geo-tracking of locations and movements, behavior and sentiment analysis, and profiling.
A shift from entertainment
Salem noted that MBRSG researchers have detected a move away from entertainment when it comes to social media usage over the last six years.
"There has been a shift in how people are using social media in general. It started as a social phenomenon for social interaction, entertainment and sharing information with people that you know, to more political uses and more interaction with the government," he said. "It's not maturing even further, in how social media is being used to enable better education, job market access, entrepreneurial opportunities, and more recently, social media usage being taken by government agencies and businesses."
- bernd@khaleejtimes.com

Data

Facebook	has 156 million active users, up from 115 a year earlier
Top Facebook Penetration (most to least):	Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan
Twitter	11.1 million users, up from 5.8 million three years ago
Twitter	Generates 27.4 million tweets daily in Arab Region
LinkedIn	16.6 million users, up 22 percent from previous year.
Instagram	7.1 million users

• MENA