Media Revolution And Politics In Egypt

For too long Egypt's system of government was beholden to the interests of the elite in power, aided by the massive apparatus of the security state. Breaking point came on 25 January 2011. But several years after popular revolt enthralled a global audience, the struggle for democracy and basic freedoms are far from being won. Media, Revolution, and Politics in Egypt: The Story of an Uprising examines the political and media dynamic in pre-and post-revolution Egypt and what it could mean for the country's democratic transition. We follow events through the period leading up to the 2011 revolution, eighteen days of uprising, military rule, an elected president's year in office, and his ouster by the military. Activism has expanded freedoms of expression only to see those spaces contract with the resurrection of the police state. And with sharpening political divisions, the facts have become amorphous as ideological trends cling to their own narratives of truth.

During the Arab uprisings of early 2011, which saw the overthrow of Zine el-Abadine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, the role of digital media and social networking tools was widely reported. With tens of thousands publicly committed to public protest through their online social networks, and with calls to protest circulating through email networks, Facebook groups, and street organizing, the activists had set in motion a staged confrontation with the Egyptian regime, of the sort that had previously been unthinkable. The potentially subversive nature of social networks was also recognized by the very authorities fighting against popular pressure for change, and the Egyptian government's attempt to block internet and mobile phone access in January 2011 demonstrated this. What is yet to be examined is the local context that allowed digital media to play this role: in Egypt, for example, a history of online activism has laid important ground work. Here, David Faris argues that it was circumstances particular to Egypt, more than the 'spark' from Tunisia, that allowed the revolution to take off: namely blogging and digital activism stretching back into the 1990s, combined with sustained and numerous protest movements and an independent press. During the Mubarak era, where voicing a political opinion was - to say the least - risky, and registering as a political party was onerous and precarious undertaking, it was online avenues of discussion and debate that flourished. Over the course of those years, digital activists - bloggers and later, users of other forms of social media like Twitter, Facebook and Youtube - scored a number of important victories over the regime, over issues largely revolving around human rights. Faris analyses these activists and their online activities and campaigns, examining how the internet was used as a space in which to create identities and spur action. Dissent and Revolution in a Digital Age tracks the rocky path taken by Egyptian bloggers operating in Mubarak's authoritarian regime to illustrate how the state monopoly on information was eroded, making space for dissent and for those previously without a voice.

This book sheds light on the growing phenomenon of cyberactivism in the Arab world, with a special focus on the Egyptian political blogosphere and its role in paving the way to democratization and socio-political change in Egypt, which culminated in Egypt's historical popular revolution.

This compelling book explores how Egyptian bloggers used citizen journalism and cyberactivism to chip away at the state’s monopoly on information and recalibrate the power dynamics between an authoritarian regime and its citizens. When the Arab uprisings broke out in early 2011 and ousted entrenched leaders across the region, social media and the Internet were widely credited with playing a role, particularly when the Egyptian government shut down the Internet and mobile phone networks in an attempt to stave off the unrest there. But what these reports missed were the years of grassroots organizing, digital activism, and political awareness-raising that laid the groundwork for this revolutionary change. Radsch argues that Egyptian bloggers created new social movements using blogging and social media, often at significant personal risk, so that less than a decade after the information revolution came to Egypt they successfully mobilized the overthrow of the state and its president.

Egypt's January 25 revolution was triggered by a Facebook page and played out both in virtual spaces and the streets. Social media serves as a space of liberation, but it also functions as an arena where competing forces vie over the minds of the young as they battle over ideas as important as the nature of freedom and the place of the rising generation in the political order. This book provides piercing insights into the ongoing struggles between people and power in the digital age.

With the fall of the regimes in Tunisia and Egypt the term ‘Facebook Revolution’ was coined depicting the world’s most popular social media platform as a condition sine qua non for the Arab revolutions. Moving on from the extreme positions of cyber-utopians and pessimists, this study identifies and analyses mechanisms of use and potential intermediary effects of social media in connection with other driving factors of mass demonstrations that led to the fall of the Mubarak regime in early 2011. Semi-structured focus interviews were carried out with social media activists in Cairo between November 20th and 24th, 2011. The qualitative content analysis of eight interviews allowed for the identification of relevant categories and sub-categories as well as possible connections between them. Additionally, a thorough analysis of the Egyptian socio-economic, political and media system in the years leading up to the revolution provides the basis for valuable and contextual conclusions. Among the key findings is the accelerating effect of social media in mobilizing the Egyptian population to take part in mass demonstrations. Whereas the organizational function is limited to online network effects rather than facilitating the coordination of protesters on the ground, a significant impact of social media on the perception of a collective identity and threshold levels relevant for individual protest behavior was identified through this research. Moreover, the findings implicate a mutual dependency between new social media and traditional mass media.

Social media and authoritarian politics in Egypt -- A theory of the networked revolt : social media networks, media events and collective action -- Agenda-setters : torture, rights and social media networks in Egypt -- New tools, old rules : social media networks and collective action in Egypt -- (Amplified) voices for the voiceless : social media networks, minorities, and virtual counter-publics -- We are all revolutionaries now : social media networks and the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 -- Cascades, colours, and contingencies : social media networks and authoritarianism in global perspective.

This book sheds light on the growing phenomenon of cyberactivism in the Arab world, with a special focus on the Egyptian political blogosphere and its role in paving the way to democratization and socio-political change in Egypt, which culminated in Egypt's historical popular revolution.