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Scholars of technology studies and political science started to hypothesize the causal relationship between the Internet and democracy as early as in 1990s. Nowadays most commentators agree that the Internet plays a positive role in democratization. Their claims, however, tend to be more intuitive and speculative rather than evidence-based. In fact, very little amount of empirical research is available on the topic.

The goal of the present research is to contribute to the mitigation of this gap in the literature. This thesis analyzes the impact and significance of the Internet on the 2011 Middle East and North African uprisings, also known as the Arab Spring. The study derives its main arguments from two sets of theories. The first set is related to the Internet’s democratizing potential and the second to transition to democracy in general. After building up a theoretical framework, multivariate regression analysis is carried out …