Saudi Arabia despises bad publicity, she explained, and social media was the perfect tool for creating it. Reportedly, Hillary Clinton heard about the arrest and put in a call to the Saudi foreign ministry to apply pressure.Īccording to al-Sharif, social media was instrumental not just in raising awareness of the issue, but also in securing her eventual release.
Before the arrest was made, al-Sharif was able to warn a friend that police had gathered outside he live-tweeted the arrest, creating a storm on social media.ĭuring the nine days al-Sharif was kept in custody, women’s right to drive in Saudi Arabia became a global story. The official charge: driving while female. Later, Saudi authorities arrested al-Sharif at her house in the early hours of the morning. And the Facebook and Twitter accounts al-Sharif later created became the basis for a community of hundreds of thousands under the banner: “Women2Drive”. On YouTube, the video amassed 700,000 views in a matter of days, and many more since. In a bid to break the taboo (for there was no real law against the act), al-Sharif took to the streets in her car, capturing the moment using her iPhone. Instead, they had to rely on male companions for transport, which placed significant limits on the freedoms of a divorcee like al-Sharif. In Saudi Arabia at the time, women were not allowed to drive a motor vehicle. Issues that were very local, were made international by social media, which swung the power balance in favor of the collective.īuoyed by this experience and hungry for ways to bring about change in her own country, al-Sharif identified an opportunity. Most importantly, the world was paying attention, she says. Twitter was our virtual civil society, the parliament we never had.” “I could connect with activists all around the world to exchange ideas and have discussions that could never have taken place otherwise. “In a country where your opinions are unwelcome, online anonymity gave me space to question my belief system.” “It was interesting to see how social media gave us a voice,” said al-Sharif. (Image credit: Shutterstock / akramalrasny) Protests in Yemen during the Arab Spring.
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