The rise of social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter has allowed users worldwide to share original content with others instantaneously. While often criticized as celebrations of the mundane, a major function of social media services is to serve as forums for public discussion. By allowing users to share original content and respond to the content of other users in real-time, social media services have become increasingly important avenues for public discourse. Political figures and organizations have in recent years began to utilize social media to foster communication with the greater public, as well.

Recently, social media services have also been widely used by political activists in Arab nations as tools to organize protests and broadcast first-person accounts of events on a global scale. In nations with government-controlled news services, global media outlets such as the BBC and CNN have also relied on user-generated content to bypass state censorship efforts. For example, in the 2010 Arab Spring uprisings, protesters relied heavily on Facebook to organize protests and uploaded images, videos, and text updates of the events to Twitter as they unfolded. These uploads were utilized heavily in news coverage of the protests in order to cover events in areas unable to be covered by network journalists. In response, these uprisings also saw efforts by governments of several countries to block Internet access in order to quell activists’ attempts to organize. Government censorship of social media services has been a significant source of criticism as its use becomes more prevalent, with opponents of government censorship viewing it as an oppressive use of government power.