Driven by the strong need for up-to-the-second updates in the political situation of their country, Bahrainis have been largely resorting to the new media and social channels on the Internet and have shunned away from the conventional media, a report by www.eHulool.com has shown.
In a statement, eHulool.com said the political situation in Bahrain over the few past days were ignited by establishing electronic pages on Facebook, by people promoting both side of the political developments. Seeing that most of the news was exchanged via Facebook and Twitter, society’s awareness of the new social media and the rapid endorsement for these electronic tools cannot be denied.
There are numerous underlying reasons behind this desire to exchange information through the new media, according to eHulool.com; beginning with the rapid developments in the news and their real-time sensitivity which the traditional media seems no longer capable to cope with. Furthermore, the absence of any immediate official coverage to the political upheaval tends to propel people to being more in favour to quick news, it added.
eHulool.com gathered and analysed the important statistics on usage of Bahrainis to Twitter that are provided by Trendistic.com (as detailed in the attached table). The data shows that in the past week, there has been an extreme hike in usage of the service by Bahrainis.
If we study the table, it reveals that the traffic on Twitter was average on both Thursday and Friday (10th and 11th February 2011) with Bahrainis following the news in Egypt and the stepping down of Hosni Mubarak from presidency. On Saturday there was a gradual increase in activity for Bahrainis on Twitter with focus turning towards the political situation in Bahrain, coupled with the news of the King’s gesture to grant BD 1,000 to every Bahraini family. However on the following day, Sunday, there was a steady average of activity in the afternoon due to a lack of any information on public demonstrations in some villages. This was also helped by the launch of the Ministry of Interior’s Twitter page the same day.
On Monday, 14th of February, the demonstrations continued in Bahrain, which also coincided with the 10th anniversary of the National Charter and Valentine’s Day. There was a steady increase of the information flying back and forth on twitter as rumours and speculations were running strife, with this peaking at 9 pm with news of an activist being shot.
On Tuesday, 15th of February, there was a very noticeable and substantial increase in the number of Bahrainis creating Twitter accounts. The number of Bahraini Twitter users had increased up to 80% by evening time, fuelled by a number of incidents: the funeral of the shot demonstrator along with the speech by his Majesty the King in which he promised to deliver justice for the dead activist. This flock, however, dropped down in the evening when the demonstrators gathered in the Lulu roundabout and Bahrain TV started a live broadcasting for the event.
Wednesday, 16th of February, saw another upward trend from Midday as Tweets focused their attention on the happenings in the roundabout and other incidents like those in the National Stadium and Muharraq, but gradually decreased with the live coverage by the Bahrain TV.
On Thursday, 17th of February, Twitter saw its largest increase in subscription from Bahrain to date. This started at approximately 3 a.m., when news about the authority’s evacuation of the Pearl roundabout filtered in, reaching 200% against average usage. This was propelled by the lack of any live coverage encouraging people to exchange news, and even rumours on the political unrest that was unfolding in the Kingdom.
The following Friday and Saturday saw similar increases by Midday as further activities took place on the ground, including the pro-government demonstration, as well as the funerals of the victims. In late hours of that Friday the activity went down to coincide with the initiative of HRH Crown Prince to dialogue. It continued the downward trend, only to resume activity on Saturday with the withdrawal of the military forces from the Lulu roundabout and the prompt retaking of the roundabout by the demonstrators.
eHulool was launched by the e-Commerce Projects Company which was established six years ago. It is a comprehensive electronic one-stop shop for more than 30 Online Portals & Organizations inside and outside Bahrain.