The Role of Social Media on Cultural Development for the GCC Countries: Twitter as an Exemple

Abstract

The current study examines the role of Twitter on the cultural development. The study focuses on Twitter as one of the most effective social media tools in the social life of the Gulf community as it is explained and discussed by numbers of local studies in the Gulf countries. The study analyzed the content of the tweets of the most Gulf Tweet followers on Twitter. The study relied on one of the websites that included the statistics of the most Arab Tweeters who has followers. The study examined five Gulf countries except Oman. No information was found about Oman in this site and others. The first ten Tweeters were chosen from the most followed in each GCC countries. The first ten recent tweets were analyzed. The total was (100) tweets for each GCC countries and a total of (500) tweets for all these countries. The tweets were classified into 12 items such as religious, literary, media, social, academic, etc. The tweets were the unit of analysis according to their topics. Information about the number of followers, followed, number of tweets, number of retweets, pending tweets, and retweets have been obtained. The descriptive statistical methods were used to analyze the results of the study. Results show that there are a limited effect on the cultural and educational contents on the tweets. Also, the role of females is limited in twitter in general. It showed that political and religious content are the major circulated content. Poetry tweets One of the most effected and interactive tweets. In addition, the media figures tweeters are considered to be the most persons who have been followed by others. Finally, results showed that there is a uniqueness for each GCC countries in the type of tweets