This paper offers a comprehensive approach towards analyzing and explaining the role of Twitter in shaping and facilitating social movements especially during protests. It presents automatic and manual analyses of the tweet themes, usage characteristics and major Twitter users during a public outcry against a gang rape incident in Delhi, the capital city of India. Our results identified Twitter as an important channel of diffusion of ideas with the ability to share news and ideas rapidly among a vast set of adopters defying geographical boundaries. Results of the content analyses highlight the prominent use of social media resources in disseminating information on Twitter, and the remarkable role of Twitter users as citizen journalists during the days of the protest. Results of the social network analysis suggest that major role players on Twitter were the offline protest leaders.

India shares historic ties with the Arab and Islamic world that cut across the spheres of culture, economy and politics. Described variously as our “extended” and “proximate” neighborhood in the diplomatic circles, the region is important for obvious strategic reasons in the fields of energy, trade, business, politics and security. The current upheaval in West Asia naturally has serious implications for India’s strategic interests in the region. The unfolding of events bear the ominous possibility of a re-enactment of the Cold War politics with a vicious sectarian twist rooted in religious fundamentalism. Syria has become the current epicenter of a geopolitical showdown in the region with USA and Russia having locked horns, and the UN content to sit on the side-lines. This article would take a close look at the factors affecting and influencing India’s role in Syria within the larger context of her West Asian foreign policy. It is recommended that India leads a collective diplomacy of the South to nurture and preserve a forward looking development agenda in West Asia.

The unrest in the Arab world that started at the end of 2010 and continues in many countries is unique not just in terms of what it means for the future of these countries but also its implications for other countries. In this paper, Orbis Economics takes a closer look at the events in these Unrest Economies (UEs). We try and unravel the potential political, economic and social reasons for the recent uprisings as well as implications of the uprisings for the rest of the region and explore the possible impact on India.