—Recent events in North Africa and the Gulf States have
highlighted both the fragility of states worldwide and the ability
of coordinated dissidents to challenge or topple regimes. The
common processes of ‘loads’ generated by dissident activities and
the core features of state resilience and its ‘capacity’ to withstand
these ‘loads’ have been explored in the traditional “real world”
view. More recently, however, there has been increased attention
to the “cyber world”—the role of cyber technologies in
coordinating and amplifying dissident messages, as well as in
aiding regimes in suppressing anti-regime dissidents. As of yet,
these two views (real and cyber) have not been integrated into a
common framework that seeks to explain overall changes in
regime stability over time. Further, emerging uses of social media
technologies, such as Twitter have not fully been examined within
an overall framework of state stability that represents the nature
and dynamics of ‘loads’ generated by dissident activities in the
real (i.e. protests) and cyber (i.e. planning and coordination via
cyber venues) domains.