Saudis take to social media to spread awareness

Several Saudi social activists, doctors, artists and others have taken to online campaigns to support and highlight different causes, using social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Keek.
These online social campaigns have become popular in the Kingdom, thanks to their quick reach and effectiveness, with likes, comments, retweets and shares, helping creation of awareness on a particular social issue.
Many campaigns have spread all over Saudi social media accounts that serve a certain need and where people have the opportunity to talk about it and try finding a solution for it. A recent hashtag that is still trending on Twitter is in Arabic that translates into “My salary does not meet my needs.” Many used this hashtag to speak up about their money problems, and in the process, trying to reach the authorities to help them. It has indeed reached the print and visual media with many journalists and editors writing about it.
Another awareness campaign on abuse against women that started last month had hundreds of Jeddawis from different age groups posting inspirational messages supporting the cause. The Arabic campaign was named Adrobha, Arabic for ‘hit her,’ got great feedback from people who shared it on their social media accounts and helped spread the word on different platforms.
In October 2011, photographer Mokhtar Chahine started an online campaign called the Pink campaign to help spread awareness about breast cancer. The photographer took 30 professional photos of Jeddawi men and women in different occupations using pink background and had them write inspirational quotes to help women examine themselves and spread the word.
Saudi women had started an online campaign #women2drive in 2010, where they demanded of Saudi authorities to end the driving ban on women in the Kingdom.
In 2013, Saudi women re-launched the campaign, flooding different social media platforms with photos and videos of them driving in Saudi Arabia. The 2013 campaign had set a date, October 26, for all women to sit behind the wheel and drive to make a point.