The Effect of Social Media on the Egyptian Revolution- Managing in Social Change

Technology has become the excalibur of modern revolution. Ten years ago, protesters used text messaging to dismantle President Estrada in the Philippines following his acquittal of corruption charges. Protesters filled the streets, forcing Estrada to step down. Today The Twitter Revolution has been instrumental in the uprising in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and now the US, specifically the Occupy Wall Street movement.

 "In the case of Egypt it really played a critical factor in getting out the word on how to organize. There was one group in Egypt that was one of the key groups in getting people out on the street. " (Kravets, 2011). It is estimated that only 25 percent of the population in Egypt has internet access. Even with such a small number of people online, days before the initial occupation of Tahrir Square, 80,000 people said they would be in attendance on the Facebook group page. Coupled with social media, old fashion tools to get the word out through leaflets and word of mouth is how the movement grew as fast as it did. As important as online organizing was, social media was also responsible for “on the ground” reporting without being filtered through stated media outlets.

Mubarak’s decision to shut down the internet in Egypt was a futile attempt to silence protesters and only added fuel to the fire. Twitter and Facebook both proclaimed support to the protesters by setting up alternate means to tweet from the ground. “Speak-to-tweet” allowed people to publish updates by leaving a message on a voice mailbox. The service was free of charge, with Google offering users three international telephone numbers. The Egyptian regime tried its best to censor protesters, but with alternate technology in place, they realized their attempts were futile and restored the countries internet access.

André Panisson collected date using graph streaming software to tract tweets and hashtag # at February 11 2011, before and after the announcement of Egyptian president Mubarak's resignation. The software tracks retweets and graphs them. Watching the progression of animated tweets is one of the most compelling things I have seen in a long time. It is visual empirical data to something unseen to the eye.  It is very convincing just how powerful technology is. What is even more amazing is this data represented is only 10 percent of the total.

Data collected with Gephi Graph Streaming.
This is a preliminary result of the network of retweets with the hashtag #jan25 at February 11 2011, at the time of the announcement of Mubarak's resignation. If you retweeted someone, or has been retweeted, it is possible that your username is in this network.

The data were collected through the Twitter streaming and search APIs by André Panisson, and is part of a research project involving the Computer Science Department of the University of Turin (www.di.unito.it), the Complex Networks and Systems Group of the ISI Foundation (www.isi.it), and the Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research of Indiana University (cnets.indiana.edu).

References

Kravets, D. (2011) What’s Fueling Mideast Protests? It’s More Than Twitter. Retrieved on November 16, 2011, from http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/01/social-media-oppression/

Panisson, A. (2011) The Egyptian Revolution on Twitter Retrieved on November 16, 2011. from https://gephi.org/2011/the-egyptian-revolution-on-twitter/