Over half of Arab Twitter users from KSA

Twitter has over 3.7 million active Arab users, with more than half of them from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, according to the fifth Arab Social Media Report by the Dubai School of Government (DSG).
The report on the growth and influence of social media in the region was launched yesterday by the DSG’s governance and innovation program.
The report entitled, “Transforming Education in the Arab World: Breaking Barriers in the Age of Social Learning,” analyzed the patterns, demographic breakdown and usage trends of social media platforms in the Arab region.
The report focused on the impact of social media on education and life-long learning in the region.
Analyzing demographics, the report revealed that the United Arab Emirates continued to score the highest among all Arab countries in terms of Facebook penetration at 41 percent, while Egypt claimed around 25 percent of Arab Facebook users and Saudi Arabia with over 50 percent of active Arab Twitter users.
Fadi Salem, director of the DSG's governance and innovation program and co-author of the report, said: “With more than 55 million active Arab users of Facebook and 3.7 million of Twitter, social media is already playing a growing role in formal and informal education, on-demand training and in capacity building. Education in the Arab world suffers from extensive challenges in terms of quality and access. However, education is one domain where social media has become widely institutionalized with a critical mass of Arab users.”
The governance and innovation program conducted a regional survey with around 4,000 participants, exploring perceptions about the quality of schooling in the region and the use of technology and social media in the classroom at different educational levels.
In terms of technology and social media use in the classroom, 55 percent of the teachers who responded to the survey said they use social media as a classroom resource, while 10 percent of the parents surveyed indicated that their children have access to social media platforms in the classroom, and more than half said their children’s classrooms do not incorporate technological tools. In contrast, nearly 56 percent of the parents were concerned with the distractions caused by social media.
The research also surveyed parents in Arab countries suffering from political instability, violence and civil strife. Around 68 percent of respondents in these countries said that online resources could help their children catch up after short and long interruptions in schooling.
The findings of the report reveal that Arabic continues to be the fastest growing language on different social media platforms globally. For example, the percentage of Arabic tweets generated reached 74 percent of total tweets in the region in March 2013, up from 62 percent a year ago.
Facebook registered an increase of 10 million users between June 2012 and May 2013. The number of active Twitter users in the Arab world has also grown exponentially from just over two million to 3.7 million in the past year. In March 2013, Arab Twitter users generated 336 million tweets — almost double the number of tweets generated in March 2012. The report additionally stated that the number of LinkedIn users in select Arab countries is close to five million.
For the first time, the report also analyzed the Twitter activity of selected official government accounts. In line with the rapid growth of Arabic on social media, the findings also reveal that Arabic is the preferred language for Twitter conversations among government entities and their respective Twitter followers in the Arab region.