The BBC-production, How Facebook Changed the World: The Arab Spring, revealing
how the revolutions across the Arab world were started and sustained by the power of
the internet, airs on 27 October and 3 November at 20h30 on SABC3.
A very modern kind of revolution has swept the Middle East from Tunisia to Egypt,
Bahrain to Libya, which was started by young people and powered by them, planned
and engineered online.
As two thirds of the population in the Arab world is under the age of 25 and a quarter
is unemployed, the internet gave them the opportunity to become consumers of
western media, which led to them growing up longing for the freedom, prosperity and
human rights they saw in other countries.
The programme, featuring interviews with both rebels and representatives of the
fallen regimes, uses video and stills shot by thousands of people on mobile phone
cameras.
How Facebook Changed the World reveals how social and political change is being
driven by the blogging, Facebooking and tweeting generation of the 21st century, told
by the young people prepared to take a stand and the footage they shot.
The programme is presented by Mishal Hussein and Darren Kemp is the executive
producer.
