Retweeting a revolution?The Role of Social Media in Egyptian

Revolution

Nasser Saleh

Timeline of Events

• Population: 80 million

• Median Age: 24

• Literacy rate: 66%

• GDP per capita: $2758

• UN Human Development Index Ranking: 101 of 169

• Economist Democracy Index Ranking: 138 of 167

• Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index Ranking: 127 of 178

Middle East & North Africa

• Population: ~400 million

• Economist Democracy Index 2010:

– Full democracies: 0

– Flawed democracies: 1

– Hybrid regimes: 3

– Authoritarian regimes: 16

Middle East & North Africa

• Population: 84 million

• Median Age: 24

• Literacy rate: 66%

• Internet usage rate: 21%

• GDP per capita: $2900

• UN Human Development Index Ranking: 101 of 169

• Economist Democracy Index Ranking: 138 of 167

• Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index Ranking: 127 of 178

• Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index Ranking: 98 of 178

Egypt

Historical Overview (1981-2003)

1981 2003

Historical Overview (2004-2010)

2004 2010

2011 Revolution (January 14th till February 12)14

Jan

uary

Febr

uary

12

State-Run Media in Egypt

Al Ahram Sept. 2010Al Ahram Jan. 26, 2011

Chocolate and flowers from people to policemen in January 25th

State-Run TVTahrir Square Now

9:45 PM

Not only in Egypt

Asked if he would characterize Mubarak as a dictator Biden responded: “Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things. And he’s been very responsible on, relative to geopolitical interest in the region, the Middle East peace efforts; the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing relationship with – with Israel. … I would not refer to him as a dictator.”

A Facebook-Run revolution?

Kefaya

• Kefaya (means “enough”) is the unofficial moniker of the Egyptian Movement for Change, a grassroots coalition that started in 2004 and drew its support from across Egypt’s political spectrum to oppose Mubarak’s presidency and the possibility he might seek to transfer power directly to his son Gamal.

• The movement subsequently lost momentum, suffering from internal dissent, leadership change, and a more general frustration at the apparent inability of Egypt’s political opposition to force the pace of reform.

It started with bloggers in 2004A vanguard of techies and activists used blogs to change the face of politics and journalism in Egypt.

But once a small town, Egypt's blogosphere now resembles a sprawling metropolis with no clearly defined center. Courtney C. Radsch (2007)

National Front for Change: February 2010

Khaled Said

Media Response

The common response in Egyptian official media was that: Egypt is not Tunisia

On Jan. 24th • The revolution was created as a Facebook

event in Khalid Said group: 85,652 signed up as they will attend. 16,937 maybe attending

• A Google map has been linked to the group to shows the meeting places all over Egypt

• A Google Doc was created to include the needed logistics to bring with into the demonstrations that includes signage ideas.

Internet Shutdown

Speack2tweetOn January 31st, a weekend of brainstorming and programming later by Google, Twitter and SayNow (which Google acquired the week before).Speak2Tweet was born as a service that lets people call a phone number and leave a message, then posts a link to the message to Twitter.

Alive in Egypt

• Alive in Egypt is a project of Small World News, in collaboration with a number of individuals and organizations, including Meedan.

• The latest iteration of “Alive in” projects were started to add further functionality to Speak2Tweet

Alive in Egypt – How it worked

• First advertised on Twitter on February 2nd as most tweets were in Arabic.

• Collected Tweets from Speak2tweet and collected in a Google Doc

• Volunteers were requested through Twitter to help in translation into English. French, Spanish and German were added later.

• Skype has been used to communicate among translators and administrators.

Example

Use of Twitter

First tweets started with: #Jan25 and #Egypt .. Then they started to include: #Tahrir, and #Mubarak

Tweet Trends

YouTube

SocialEyezhttp://www.socialeyez.ae/

• This website published a report detailing the results of a search on the social media coverage resulting from Hosni Mubarak’s speech, and its aftermath. The social media monitoring time frame is from February 1, 2010 to February 3, 2011.

• The research generated a total of 53,577 comments/posts during this time, related to the reactions to Mubarak’s speech. Below is the chart of the daily volume that we captured:

Comments trends

Where were people talking? (Feb. 1-3)

Demographics of users

On February 12th Google Moderator

• A Google-based forum was created to discuss the future of Egypt on Khalid Said group

• 50,703 ideas were contributed and 1,367,848 votes are there (by March 1st)

February 20, 2011

Man Names His Newborn Girl Facebook

A young man in his twenties wanted to express his gratitude about the victories the youth of 25th of January have achieved and chose to express it in the form of naming his firstborn girl “Facebook” Jamal Ibrahim (his name.)

The girl’s family, friends, and neighbors in the Ibrahimya region gathered around the new born to express their continuing support for the revolution that started on Facebook. “Facebook” received many gifts from the youth who were overjoyed by her arrival and the new name. A name [Facebook] that shocked the entire world.

• Population: 80 million

• Median Age: 24

• Literacy rate: 66%

• GDP per capita: $2758

• UN Human Development Index Ranking: 101 of 169

• Economist Democracy Index Ranking: 138 of 167

• Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index Ranking: 127 of 178

The Revolution Spreads

Facebook Pages

Alive in …

Social Media and Social Change

• Malcolm Gladwell argued that Social media can’t provide what social change has always required. (The New Yorker, Oct. 4, 2011)

• The article argued that social media tools are built around weak ties.

• The question remains: Do social media increase activism or they are only good for networking?

Open Source Revolution?• Open source is basically a model for innovation driven

not by intellectual protectionism but by cooperative competition toward a common, continuously expanding goal.

• Each participant is a change agent unto him or herself, whose power was amplified by the distributed networks of peaceful civil protest.

• No central leader or platform has emerged during the revolution; the revolt's decentralized nature may have actually contributed to its non-violent success.

• Another way, Tahrir Square has given a whole new meaning to the idea of crowdsourcing.

Final Thought

The analysis of the use of social media can not be generalized and it should include the unique

social characteristics of each society.

Can be retweeted?

Get Out!!, my arm hurts me

Get Out !!, I need a hair cut

With All Due Respect to Who Traded Their Breath of Life For Freedom