The Role of Social Media In the Arab Spring

By Eric Newman

Map of the arab spring

www.wikipedia.com

Timeline in Tunisia- December 17, 2010: Mohammed Bouazizi, a produce vendor, douses himself in paint thinner and sets himself on fire in front of a local police station.

- December 20, 2010: The Tunisian Development Minister travels to Sidi Bouzid to announce a new $10 million employment plan.

- December 27, 2010: Over 1,000 demonstrators hold a rally in Tunis callingfor jobs in a show of solidarity with the poorer regions.

- December 28, 2010: Three Tunisian governors and three Tunisian ministers are fired for reasons related to the protests.

- January 3, 2011: The Tunisian government starts a systematically organized“phishing” operation to wipe out dissident websites.

- January 7, 2011: Tunisian authorities arrest a group of bloggers and websiteactivists in a major crackdown on dissidents.

- January 8-12, 2011: Government snipers carry out a series of massacres by opening fire on peaceful protestors.

- January 13, 2011: Ben Ali makes a televised address vowing not to seek re-election in 2014 and pledges to introduce more freedoms into society.

- January 14, 2011: Ben Ali declares a state of emergency and fires the country’s government. Ben Ali then flees the country for Saudi Arabia.

www.aljazeera.com

Timeline in Egypt- January 20, 2011: Wael Ghonim, among others, calls for a mass protest on his Facebook page We Are All Khaled Said.

- January 25, 2011: The “Day of Rage” protests being in Tahrir Square with thousands of protestors taking to the streets.

- January 28, 2011: The Egyptian government shuts down the Internetand mobile phone service in an effort to disrupt protestors plans.

- January 29, 2011: Mubarek fires the cabinet, but refuses to step downhimself. He elects a Vice President for the first time in his 30 year reign.

- January 31, 2011: The “March of the Millions” takes place as over amillion protestors march to Tahrir Square and surrounding areas.

- February 1, 2011: Mubarek announces in a televised address that he will not run for re-election and promises to amend the constitution.

- February 3, 2011: Burst of heavy gunfire are aimed at the anti-governmentprotestors in Tahrir Square.

- February 7, 2011: Egypt’s government approves a 15% raises in salaries and pensions to try and appease protestors.

- February 11, 2011: Mubarek resigns as President of Egypt and hands overcontrol of the country to the army.

www.aljazeera.com

The tunisian RevolutioN- The official number for unemployment in Tunisia is 13%, but international analysts say that it is far higher.

- Tunisia has 3.6 million Internet users, a third of the population, which is one of the highest penetration rates in Africa. 3

- Throughout the uprising, Tunisian protestors relied on Facebook to communicate as it was one of the only video sharing sites not censored by the government.

- In Tunisia, 20% of blogs were analyzing Ben Ali’s rule on the day leading up to his resignation, where as just 5% of blogs were analyzing his rule themonth before. 4

- After Ben Ali’s resignation, there were 2,200 tweets a day about it from neighboring countries. 4

Thank you facebook

The egyptian revolution- Over 50% of the population in Egypt are aged 30 or under. The median age in Egypt is 24. 4

- Facebook has over 5 million users in Egypt, which is the most in the Arab world. 5

- Over 90,000 people signed up on the Facebook page for the January 25,2011 protests in Tahrir Square. 6

- The top 23 Youtube videos featuring raw protest footage from Tunisia and Egypt received 5.5 million views. 4

- In the week leading up to Mubarek’s resignation, the number of tweets about the political landscape in Egypt went from 2,300 to 230,000. 4

- After Mubarek’s resignation, there were 2,400 tweets a day about it fromneighboring countries. 4

We are all khaled said

The syrian revolution- Unfortunately, Twitter and Google have now decided to censor tweets and blog posts in repressive regimes, such as Syria if they run afoul of the law. 7

- Iran has given Syria the technology and the knowhow to control and monitor the social media that was so successful in Tunisia and Egypt. 8

- Facebook has only 500,000 users in Syria, so activists and protestors are mucheasier to track down with their profiles. 9

-After Egypt, the Syrian government has started tweeting and posting false rally locations on Facebook and arrests whoever shows up. 8

- Since using Twitter and Facebook is now unsafe, Syrian protestors now take video footage of protests on their cell phones and upload them on Youtube. 9

- About 60% of activist communication in Syria takes place over Skype, since Skype is naturally encrypted and can’t be tapped. 10

Dissenting opinion

Malcolm gladwell- “There are a thousand important things that can be said about [the protests] origins and implications… But surely the least interesting fact about them is that some of the protesters may (or may not) have at one point or another employed some of the tools of the new media to communicate with one another.”- “People protested and brought down governments before Facebook was invented. They did it before the Internet came along. Barely anyone in East Germany in the nineteen-eighties had a phone… and they brought down a regime that we all thought would last another hundred years.”

- “People with a grievance will always find ways to communicate with each other. How they choose to do it is less interesting, in the end, than why they were driven to do it in the first place.” 11, 12

Rebuttal- When he says that the “least interesting” fact about the protests is that some of the protestors might have communicated with social media, he couldn’t be more wrong. The fact that thousands of protestors showed up the very first day of protests on January 25, 2011 after just weeks of activity shows that there was serious coordination and effort involved.- Wael Ghonim has said that Facebook and Twitter didn’t inspire revolution in the protestors, but once the protestors were inspired to revolution, Facebook and Twitter were valuable tools for them to use to communicate with each other and to coordinate the protests. 13

- It’s actually one of the most interesting facts that the protestors used social media to rally together, because it shows what defines the new, young generation. Older generations protested in different ways, because that’s all they had available but who’s to say that the East Germans wouldn’t have used social networking to organize if they had the chance?

references1.http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/spotlight/tunisia/2011/01/201114142223827361.html2.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/01/201112515334871490.html

3. http://www.internetworldstats.com/af/tn.htm4. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12947477/publications/2011_Howard-Duffy-Freelon-Hussain-Mari-Mazaid_pITPI.pdf 5. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/02/AR2011020206107.html6. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/world/middleeast/26egypt.html7. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2095328/Google-joins-Twitter-censorship-storm-Site-block-blog-posts-line-requests-repressive-governments.html8. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/13/us-syria-social-media-idUSTRE76C3DB201107139. http://www.themarknews.com/articles/6104-the-double-edged-sword-of-social-media10. http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/2012/1/15/syria-interview-activist-leshaque-on-social-media-and-the-sy.html11. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/02/does-egypt-need-twitter.html12. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell

References (cont.)13. http://www.npr.org/2012/02/09/146636605/wael-ghonim-creating-a-revolution-2-0-in-egypt 14. http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cellphones_twitter_facebook_can_make_history.html15. http://technosociology.org/?p=102116. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGF6qpv9PwM