The quest to learn how and under what circumstances those in the Gulf use social media is elusive for several reasons. Historically, Gulf governments that controlled traditional print and broadcast media had little interest in learning specifics about their audiences. When Western international radio broadcasts were important, the BBC, Voice of America, and Radio Monte Carlo Middle East, for example, did surveys to help craft programming and to show their sponsoring governments the value of the broadcasts. For the most part, these radio services are a thing of the past, replaced by many of the same radio broadcasters with direct-to-home satellite services. With this there is increased interest in pan-Arab television advertising; audience research is essential to let advertisers know the size and demographics of those receiving paid messages. Thus, commercial research firms are active in determining more audience information. We believe this proposed workshop will attract research that reveals more about social media and Internet usage in the Gulf States. Students, academics, government media outlets, and commercial research firms will be attracted to present papers to this workshop as a means of disseminating their findings. Some researchers and analysts believe that social media usage has already had an impact on Gulf politics and society. In her 2012 book On Saudi Arabia Karen E. House notes that “…thanks to satellite television, the Internet, and social media, young people now are well aware of government ineffectiveness and wealth inequities.” She further quotes a young Saudi man in his mid-twenties who said, “Facebook opens the doors of our cages,” referring to social media as the primary way women and men meet in the kingdom. A Financial Times story about social media use in Saudi Arabia asserts that “Saudis are among the most active social media users in the Middle East.” A groundbreaking eight-country survey in late 2012 and early 2013 (that included Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia) sponsored by Northwestern University’s program in Qatar notes that “Facebook is by far the most popular social network in Arab countries surveyed, with 94 percent of social network users active on the network. More than half of social network users in the sample are active on Twitter, 46 percent employ Google+, and around one in seven use Instagram.” 3 Dr. Yousef Al-Failakwi gave a presentation entitled “Are Social Media in Kuwait Really Social?” at the 2012 meeting of the Broadcast Education Association. In his abstract he noted that Forbes magazine offered a list of cities where the most Arab tweets took place; thirty-eight percent of those were from Kuwaitis. Another research center indicated that there are about 900,000 Facebook users in Kuwait, meaning that one-third of all Kuwaitis are using Facebook. The Dubai School of Government’s July 2012 report entitled “Social Media in the Arab World: Influencing Societal and Cultural Change” provides a comprehensive review of social media use in the Middle East. The document includes several charts reflecting survey results. One chart notes that 75 percent of Saudis and 71 percent of Emiratis believe that their contribution to society has increased through using social networking tools.