Social Media in Political Transition: A Literature Review

Social networks caused tremendous changes in the way people interact in private and public matters. An apparent and often-cited example is the so-called “Arab Spring”, where social media is assumed to be the ignition spark for civic uprising. Since the impact of social media on political transition, as the path, in which a political system turns from autocracy to democracy, is a “hot issue”, it is being researched in a wide range of scientific disciplines. To identify research streams, we offer a comprehensive and systematic literature review in the disciplines of Information Systems, Social Science and Humanities. Altogether, we identified 177 papers as relevant to the topic based on keywords. A considerable amount deals with the revolutions in Middle East and North Africa region. However, Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong and Russia are also mentioned. The results of our study reveal a huge diversity of social media users and purposes of social media usage in various countries’ stages of political transition. They provide a contribution to the interdisciplinary research on social media in political transition.     «

Social networks caused tremendous changes in the way people interact in private and public matters. An apparent and often-cited example is the so-called “Arab Spring”, where social media is assumed to be the ignition spark for civic uprising. Since the impact of social media on political transition, as the path, in which a political system turns from autocracy to democracy, is a “hot issue”, it is being researched in a wide range of scientific disciplines. To identify research streams, we offer...     »