Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship-by-any-other-name is under siege by grassroots activists buoyed by the recent events in Tunisia that saw their despotic leader forced to flee the country. The Egyptian people have taken to the streets in their millions and have been protesting since January 25th. Anyone following coverage of the events will know that social media has played an integral role in the protests, praised by demonstrators and persecuted by government, but many may question its true impact on events. The fact of the matter is that this is a true Facebook revolution.
What else can we call an uprising (that looks increasingly likely to topple a regime) that originated on Facebook? It’s true that “the internet doesn’t make the dissident” and resentment of Mubarak has been bubbling away for some time, but how else should a revolution organise itself and circumvent increasingly sophisticated methods of censorship in the 21st century? Nancy Scola argues against the idea of a Facebook revolution claiming that this is “just what revolution looks like these days,” and she’s right – social media and popular uprisings in this day and age often cannot be separated in the same way that Facebook and people cannot be separated - so in what way does this revolution offend Gladwell’s theory of slacktivism?
That’s simple; this current wave of unrest began on Facebook. The central rallying point for the uprising has been a Facebook Group called We Are All Khaled Said, administrated by a mysterious figure who goes only by the name ‘El Shaheed’ (the Arabic term for martyr). Their mission statement reads:
“Khaled Said, 28 years old, was tortured to death by 2 Egyptian policemen in the street. The incident has woken up Egyptians to work against the systematic torture in Egypt and the 30 years running emergency law. We need international supporters to help us stand against Police brutality in Egypt. We invite you to support our cause. Join our facebook page to see how you can help.”
Taking a dead man’s name and originating as a protest group against torture and police brutality, it has since become much more. On January 15th 2011, El Shaheed posted the date the protests would begin on the page’s wall; “Activists from all over Egypt have now agreed to make the 25th January the day to start Egyptians’ peaceful uprising against torture, poverty, corruption and unemployment in Egypt.” The rest is (unfolding) history.
It could be argued that the movement was only sparked by social media. Once the protests were already underway the government saw fit to block Facebook and Twitter. While this made the websites accessible only by proxy, Twitter’s open API allowed many users to continue updating through third-party applications such as Tweetdeck and Hootsuite.
This censorship failed to stop the flow of digital information leaking from Egypt’s borders and so at 6am on 28th January, internet access in Egypt was significantly cut, dropping to negligible levels. By this time, the mainstream media had become firmly entrenched in proceedings, with rolling coverage of the protests across the uncensored world, yet the Egyptian protestors were not satisfied with simple coverage; they wanted their individual voices to be heard. The government had effectively declared the internet as an enemy of the state yet still the protestors found novel ways to update the world about their struggle through social media.
Some turned back to dialup internet, calling upon foreign internet providers to help them claw back the freedom that their government denied them. On the 31st January Google unleashed a tool to help Egyptians continue to tweet, teaming up with engineers from Twitter and new acquisition SpeakNow to create a new service to help the voices of the Egyptian people bypass the censorship and tweet once more.
The use of social media has played a substantial part in this popular uprising; it has both been the rallying point of a dissatisfied people and representative of the freedom that they are fighting for. The events in Egypt have been undeniable proof that Facebook activism does not merely amount to weak-ties and inconsequential status updates. In the end there is only one conclusion to reach; social media gives a focus point and a voice to dissatisfied people, and those people will have their voices heard.
Quick Hits
Is Twitter keeping #Jan25 trending?
The power and limitations of the hashtag (#) were shown again on Twitter as #Jan25 became the go-to search term for immediate news, analysis and opinion from the protests. However, it lost some of its integrity when jumped on by a worldwide audience. It seemed to change from a breaking news feed into a guest book, filled with messages of support coming from a worldwide audience.
Notably, #Jan25 has been trending worldwide since January 25th, 2011. In May 2010 Twitter changed the Trending Topic algorithm to “focus on topics that are experiencing sudden spikes in popularity, rather than consistently talked-about subjects,” leading to most trending topics lasting a day or two before dropping off in popularity. So either #Jan25 is experiencing increasing popularity every day or Twitter have tinkered with the algorithm to keep it trending as a show of support.
Worldwide Ramifications
Learning a lesson from Mubarak’s “mistakes,” China has seen fit to block mentions of Egypt or Cairo on all microblogging services within their “Great Firewall.” The terms had already been blocked on search engines. It’s likely that other totalitarian regimes will look at Mubarak and see an ever increasing danger in allowing unfiltered access to social networking sites. Will the “Facebook revolution” lead to even stricter Internet censorship in these countries?
Anonymous
The recently politicised “hacktivist” group Anonymous showed their support of free speech in their own inimitable way on the 26th January; releasing a press release directed at the Egyptian government stating “Anonymous wants you to offer free access to uncensored media in your entire country,” then promptly DDOS attacking the websites of the Egyptian Ministry of Information and National Democratic Party.
Kenneth Cole
The obligatory social media faux pas that we have come to expect from brands jumping on Twitter Trending Topics came courtesy of fashion designer Kenneth Cole, who tweeted “Millions are in an uproar in Cairo. Rumour is they heard our new spring collection is now available …,” to much ridicule. The gaffe provoked the inception of a parody account in the vein of @BPGlobalPR; @KennethColePR.
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