From Tribe to Facebook: The Transformational Role of Social Networks

The effects of online social networking have been transformed at a global level - and nowhere more so than in the Arab world. Influencing politics, economics, society, security and the media, these online networks have become a means for people to voice their opinion, meet others with similar views and often organize themselves into coherent groups (whether activist or not). Jamal Al-Suwaidi argues that social networks have led to a societal shift from a tribal mentality to that of a Facebook group mentality. Within the architecture of social networks, each group of users had its own common orientation and outlook - effectively forming an allegiance of its own. These 'virtual' allegiances combine with 'real' ones in order to characterize the new social structures of the twenty-first century. From Tribe to Facebook charts the impact of this trend in order to explore and analyze the potential outcomes of the accelerated development of social networks.