E-ISSN 2281-4612 ISSN 2281-3993 Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Vol 6 No 1 March 2017 61 Research Article © 2017 Emmanuel Ufuophu-Biri and Lucky Ojoboh. This is an open access article licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). Social Media as a Tool for Political Resistance: Lessons from the Arab Spring and the Nigerian Protests Emmanuel Ufuophu-Biri, PhD Senior Lecturer and Head of Department, Mass Communication, Delta State University, Abraka, Nigeria Lucky Ojoboh, PhD Lecturer, Mass Communication, Delta State University, Abraka, Nigeria Doi:10.5901/ajis.2017.v6n1p61 Abstract The popular revolutions that swept across North Africa and the Middle East (NAME) countries, popularly called the “Arab Spring”, removed several sit-tight regimes and threatened to remove some others. Until those revolutions, nobody in the region had the audacity to question the actions of the governments. The mass media in the region had no freedom of operation and could not be used to express opinions or ideas that contradicted government wish or stand. However, the self-immolation of Tarek al-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi on 17 December, 2010 in Tunisia and his subsequent death led to an unstoppable torrent of protests across the region. The social media became the tool of communication, organization and coordination during the protests. The social media thus provided the protesters with an alternative voice of expression, which they used to mobilize and organize the protests. This study therefore, examined the role of the social media in the the Arab Spring. The study which is theoretical concludes that the use of the social media was very effective in success of the revolution.The study showed that without the social media, the revolution might not have been successful or might not have taken place at all. The study thus recommends that people should continue to use the social media to protest against oppressive regimes and all forms of oppression. Keywords: Arab Spring, Social Media, Mainstream media, Revolution, North Africa and Middle East 1. Background The social media are basically Internet social networking sites that connect people together for different purposes. The social media came on board in 1995 with the establishment of Asian Avenue and Classroom.com as social networks. Social media became very popular following the establishment of Facebook in 2004. Social media connects community of friends together (Ufuophu-Biri, 2013). They are intended to facilitate easier, cheaper and faster communication and relationship. They bring together people in different continents. The participants become virtual friends and actually behave and act as if they are physically present (Joinson, 2008). Members of social media community do not necessarily have to travel across spatial distance to meet themselves. By connecting to the Internet, they kill the distance and they meet and discuss virtually thus according to Caincross (2001), distance is killed in the process. The social media are used for different purposes including friendship, business, education, advertising, politics and expression of dissent voices, mass mobilization and journalism. However, unlike the conventional media, there are no control, no code of ethics and no gate-keeping (Belicove, 2012). The use of the social media has also caused revolutions in some parts of the world as witnessed in the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, Occupy London and Occupy Nigeria and the Iranian post-election result (Yousef, 2012). The