EAN: 9783954892372

SOCIAL MEDIA DURING THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION A S...

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.

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