"Impact of social media on uprisings in the Muslim world is exaggerated"

"Of course social media played a role in the popular uprisings in Muslim countries," says American professor Charles Hirschkind. "But the Western countries have strongly overplayed that impact. Sermons on cassettes, mobile phones and word-of-mouth stories were and are much more important for understanding and framing the resistance." Charles Hirschkind was one of the speakers at the 'Being Muslim in the Age of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter' symposium organised by the Faculty of Social Sciences on 18 and 19 April.

Professor Charles Hirschkind: "This shows that social media have no real impact if they are not anchored in a broad movement." | © KU Leuven - Rob Stevens

Charles Hirschkind (University of California, Berkeley) has studied the impact of media on religion and politics in Islamiccountries for over 25 years, with a special focus on the Middle East.

"I'm interested in the ways media – social and other – influence political and religious life. When I visited Egypt for the first time in the early 90s, virtually no one read newspapers and internet access was unheard of. But what struck me? Everywhere I went – on the bus, in shops, taxis, hotels, in people's homes – I heard imams' sermons on cassette players. And recitations of the Koran. A funny anecdote that shows the popularity of these cassettes: after returning from that trip, I was riding in a cab in New York City. Sure enough, the driver was listening to the very same cassette I had heard dozens of times in Egypt."

"You must know that Islam has a long oral tradition. For centuries, people have been listening to Koranic texts and sermons because they believe doing so makes them wiser and more virtuous. And the cassette reinforced that movement thousandfold. Suddenly everyone could listen in all the time: while walking, driving, shopping, cleaning, ironing. Listeners rarely focus fully on what is being said, but the moral lessons eventually come across after many repetitions. The success of the cassettes, in turn, affected the contents of the sermons. The most popular sermons were the ones with a strong emotional impact – they evoke happiness, or they inspire fear those who follow a non-religious path. The supply of sermon cassettes increasingly played into that."