On the 17th December 2010 Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26 year old Tunisian street vendor set fire to himself in protest to his wares being confiscated. This single act of self immolation sparked protest in Tunisia and set alight the Arab springs.
The Arab springs have also been referred to as the ‘Twitter revolutions’ (Comninos, 2011) After Ben Ali’s resignation in Tunisia there were over 2,200 tweets a day and in Egypt there were 2,400 tweets a day in the two weeks after Mubarak’s resignation from neighbouring countries discussing the political situation. Philip Howards (University communication professor) says “ In other words. People throughout the region were drawn into an extended conversation about social uprising”.(Taylor, 2011).
@AliTweel, Tweeted “ My name is freedom, Born in Tunisia raised in Egypt, studied in Yemen, fought in Libya and I’ll grow up in the Arab World”.
Instead of whispers or only what the mainstream news channels and media outlets deemed to let you know, social networking, during the Arab spring played a major role with Facebook and Twitter giving you minute-by-minute accounts and distributing videos and pictures for everyone to see for themselves. Omar Amer, head of the UK’s Libyan youth movement, stated that social media has played a hugely important role, “I can call Benghazi or Tripoli and obtain accurate information from people on the ground, accurate information is spreading real-time.” (Channel 4, 2011)
Howard says “ Our evidence suggest that social media carried a cascade of messages about freedom and democracy across North Africa and the Middle East, and helped raise expectations for the success of political uprising” (Taylor, 2011)
“Digital media is clearly used for catching dictators off guard,” Howard said in a conversation with TPM’s Idea Lab. “Most dictators don’t have social media strategies.” (Casey, 2011)
‘Lessons learned from the Arab spring and related events in 2011 about social networking and user-generated content include issues of privacy and surveillance, issues regarding the reliability and veracity of user-generated content, the strengths and weaknesses of Twitter and Facebook for advocacy, as well as the implications of their terms of service and the increasingly worrying practice of sockpuppetry and astro-turfing (the use of fake online personas for propaganda) on content platforms’. (Cominos, 2011)
TUNISIA
After decades of struggling, Tunisian citizens came together and organized themselves with the aim of attaining a democratic government and freedom of speech. Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter were utilized by protesters and enabled them to demonstrate their thoughts and feeling online and illustrate with videos how passionately they wanted to effect change and show the world what lengths they were willing to go to in order to achieve their aims.
The “first Twitter revolution” (Socialnext, 18/02/2011), Tunisians’ own testimonies, photographs and videos sent via social networks was the primary source that enabled the ‘western media’ to cover this event.
It’s clear that Twitter, You Tube, and other social media were utilized a great deal as a means of protest by Tunisian citizens (Socialnext, 18/02/2011)
Khaled Koubaa, president of the Internet Society in Tunisia, said “the Tunisian authorities attempted to harass those posting on Facebook. "If they became aware of you on Facebook they would try to divert your account to a fake login page to steal your password." ( Beaumant )
EGYPT
After Egyptians watched Tunisians successfully depose their government Egyptian protesters turned to social networks specifically Facebook to spread awareness and organize and co-ordinate coalition across the country in order to bring to an end 30 years of the dictatorship of President Hosni Mubarak.
Mubarak first attempt to stop the uprising was to shut down the countries internet on 28th January which lead to the scene of a battlefield in Cairo between revolutionaries and pro-regime supporters. However it wasn’t enough to stop people who had access to the internet tweeting.
We can also take a look at the specifics of when people were tweeting. In the below diagram Kovas Boguta plots every single tweet from this network from 24th January for the 3rd of February. Each node in the network corresponds to a row of tweets, places in time. Bogutas indicates a dramatic cliff on the 28th as services are suddenly interrupted. However in a very short time many of the nodes are finding a way to tweet at least a little, Cutting the flow of information out of Egypt just wasn’t going to happen. (Boguta 21/02/2011)
President Barack Obama this afternoon noted the role of technology in the uprising, praising Egyptians who used "their creativity, talent and technology to call for a government that represented their hopes and not their fears. (Gaudin, 11/02/2011)
Many of the Egyptian protestors believe Mubarak would still be in charge if not for the power of social networking.
LIBYA
After watching the power and success in Tunisia and Egypt, Libyans set up Facebook pages to call for political and economic reforms in Libya, to instigate peaceful demonstrations to bring to an end the dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi after 60 years in power.
We got the most graphic potage from Libya, with broadcasting messages asking for blood, asking Egyptians for sim cards so they could communicate without being bugged. However Gaddafi blocked access to all the social networks and Aljazeera.net throws up an error within Libya.
Libyans had a much more difficult and prolonged task in removing Gaddaffi as he quite simply refused to resign and what followed was months of fighting. During this time the ‘Libyan rebels’ used social networks to organize themselves and provide accounts to the outside world.
On the 20th October 2011 Gaddafi was captured near his hometown of Sirte and his actual death was recorded on video phones which was then transmitted around the world on social network’s and then onto the mainstream news. Mobile phone cameras and social media have made it impossible for governments to control news of political deaths. (Addley, 21/02/2011) The US government refused to release images in the media of Osama bin Laden death but Twitter and mobile phones made it possible for Gadhafi’s death to be seen by everyone.
The ‘Arab Springs’ continues to spread across the Arab countries Algeria, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, United Arabia, Syria, UAE and Yemen a phenomena known as ‘The Domino effect’.
Currently as of 4th December, (Sky News) the Syrian government has banned iPhones to prevent protesters using Apps like Souria Wa Bas which translate into “Syria and That’s All”. Contain uploaded News from protesters releasing the violent potage of security opening fire on unarmed protesters and fighting with defectors that has left over 4,000 dead over the last eight months. Who knows when this will end and what all these countries will become with Egypt already having a second uprising and Tunisia with a new government.
