Egyptian Uprising - a 'social media revolution'?

Arab Spring: Civil Unrest Across North Africa

The 'Arab Spring'  pro-democracy uprisings and  their outcomes varied wildly, yet they had one defining characteristic in common: social media.

On 25 January 2011 hundreds of thousands of protesters started to gather in Tahrir Square and planted the seeds of unrest which, days later, finally unseated the incumbent president, Hosni Mubarak, after 30 years of power.

Almost a year after Tunisia had erupted in mass demonstrations, the central Cairo protests triggered further waves of change across the Middle East and North Africa, in what became known as the Arab Spring.

But while the nature of each pro-democracy uprising, and their ultimate success, varied wildly from country to country, they had one defining characteristic in common: social media.

At times during 2011, the term Arab Spring became interchangeable with “Twitter uprising” or “Facebook revolution”, as global media tried to make sense of what was going on.

But despite western media’s love affair with the idea, the uprisings didn’t happen because of social media. Instead, the platforms provided opportunities for organisation and protest that traditional methods couldn’t.
In the words of one protester, Fawaz Rashed: “We use Facebook to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world.”

Nowhere was this clearer than in Egypt, where social media was well embedded in the culture of the country’s overwhelmingly young population – 60% under the age of 30.

Their online revolutionary spirit was infectious for those watching from afar. According to the Project on Information Technology and Political Islam the number of tweets posted about Egypt – many using #Jan25 in homage – jumped from 2,300 to 230,000 per day the week before Mubarak stepped down on the 11 February. Foreign Policy magazine declared the Egyptian revolution the Twitter “news moment” of the year.

But feelings of revolutionary success were short lived as Mubarak’s government was replaced by the equally repressive Muslim Brotherhood, before he was ousted by a military coup in July 2013. Eventually, the party was replaced by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, under whom state repression, intimidation and attacks on press freedom has gone from bad to worse.

A conflicted tool

The same tool that united people to topple dictators eventually tore things  apart - Wael Ghonmin

Wael Ghonmin is one of those credited with kickstarting the Egyptian revolution with a “simple, anonymous” Facebook page: We are all Khaled Said, set up in homage to a 29-year-old man who had been tortured to death by the police.

It gathered 100,000 followers in three days and quickly became the most followed page in the Arab world.

But then “the euphoria faded, we failed to build consensus and the political struggle led to intense polarisation,” said Ghonmin at a recent Ted talk. Social media quickly became a battlefield of misinformation, rumours and trolls – “the same tool that united us to topple dictators eventually tore us apart,” he said.

Guardian: http://bit.ly/1QSuTSO