In January 2011, the streets of Cairo trembled with millions of Egyptian voices protesting at the behest of countless Twitter users in the African country, calling for the end of President Hosni Mubarak’s regime.
After months of hostility in the capital, Mubarak stepped down, giving control of the nation to the military.
The Egyptian cry for change spread through social media and onto streets throughout the Middle East. Social scientists called it the Twitter revolution, attributing social media’s power to mobilize dissent into mass protests as the movement’s catalyst.
Four years later, and Egypt has gone through multiple regimes. Syria is in a civil war ushering a mass exodus of its people into the Western world and Libya and Yemen remain politically unstable.
Twitter and Facebook provided an instantaneous method for repressed individuals to express government discontent, spark conversation and receive support from thousands around the globe, but failed to see the revolutions to their ends.
While Twitter may have sparked the 2011 protests, today’s Middle East environments prove social media’s development had not matured enough to create lasting democratic changes.
The difference between social movements of the late 20th century and early 21st century, as argued by Malcolm Gladwell in his New Yorker article, “Small Change,” lies within the transformation of human relationships created by social media.
Strong-tie relationships, connections based off powerful personal and communal friendships fortified by physical proximity, were the common denominator among social movements across the globe.
Efforts of African-Americans willing to bus through the South during the Civil Rights Movement forced desegregation in the U.S. — persistence accompanied by a fraternal bond of hope for a better life steamrolled the movement.
When social media dominated the social interactions of millennials and their parents, strong-tie relationships shifted to weak-tie relationships. People could maintain more relationships than ever before, and what was once a small group of close-knit friendships expanded to a larger network.
The Arab Spring was bound to fail with thousands of protesters brought together by words on a mobile device, but not connected by personal relationships and strong ideological motives steeped in a communal history.
Twitter, Facebook and Instagram could not spread social change throughout the world, but Snapchat can.
Previous media connections depended on text, impersonal pictures and hyperlinks — fostering weak, but large relationship networks. Snapchat has the ability and soon will have the financial capital to transform social media’s currently weak social bonds to strong-tie systems.
The medium’s photo and video messaging system allows users to feel strong, personal relationships with friends barely seen or hundreds of miles away. “Out of sight, out of mind” is becoming an old and untrue adage.
The benefit of Snapchat for social change is the possibility of creating networks of relationships both large in size and strong in connection.
Bloomberg News reported Snapchat, Inc. is currently valued at $16 billion. Nearing entry into the stock market, the company released a new feature allowing users to pay 99 cents to replay three separate snaps. Advertisements fill local stories, and businesses pay for a place in the application’s discovery section.
If Snapchat, Inc. CEO Evan Spiegel keeps the company’s unique messaging and financial growth, the once perceived sexting app will one day create a social revolution. It may not ignite protests sending thousands to the streets of Egypt, but it will create the relationships needed to foster a lasting movement capable of cementing social change.
Justin DiCharia is a 21-year-old mass communication senior from Slidell, Louisiana. You can reach him on Twitter @JDiCharia.