The Social Media Boom

Use of Online Communication Technologies for people over 18
Source: Australian Government Information Management (AGIMO)

''This is bigger than the dotcom boom. I have never seen anything like social media … There is a massive social shift going on here."

Williams, SMH

While social media can be used as a weapon to fight against the government, it can also be used in a peaceful way to drive traffic to our blog. The chat above shows that there is a significant increase in the use of online communication technologies among internet users (aged 18 years and over), Social networking sites in particular.

Its popularity had grown from 26% in 2008 to 36% in 2009. This indicates that people are increasingly using social media to absorb varies of information and communicate effectively with the world.

The report published by AGIMO also found that younger people were more likely to engage in social networking than those in older age groups. The average age of social networker and non-social networker were 35 and 53 respectively. In order to promote our web feature, our group will take advantage of this trend and use popular social networking sites to communicate with the target audience.

International scope, local audience

A screen capture of SBS' online asylum seeker campaign.
Source: SBS

SBS online has a focus on international news, but it also launches campaigns now and then.

The most recent example is their asylum seeker campaign. SBS aired the series Go Back to Where You Came From on SBS television, and developed a (great) simulation, Asylum: Exit Australia. Along with this, their internet page has resources for schools and more general educational information such as fact sheets and FAQs.

This style of page and the way that it sits within SBS' main site while being separate at the same time would similarly work with our feature because it is not only relevant to SBS' educated and older audience but also explores the issue in an in-depth, interactive way which warrants its own dedicated section.

References
SBS (2011) “Go Back To Where You Came From,” SBS, June 2011 <http://www.sbs.com.au/shows/goback/> [Accessed: 20th August 2011]

Revolution 2.0? Are we getting ahead of ourselves?

The citizens of Egypt fight President Mubarak with social media.
Image: Bryant Arnold (Cartoon a day.com)

While some commentators like Phillip Howard deliver glowing reviews of social media's power as an effective revolutionary tool, Evgeny Morozov in this article tries to put things into perspective.

He says the Internet doesn't automatically equal democracy and "cyber utopians" have rose-coloured glasses on to shield themselves from the dormant threat of government regulation.

Morozov's discussion leads to some interesting questions I think we should explore in our feature: 

• What is the dynamic and interdependent relationship between social media and on the ground revolution?
• Is the Internet really a new public sphere? Work by John Downey (2007) on 'radical democracy' argues that through its openness, connectedness and global nature, social media provides a newer and more effective platform for facilitating democracy. I will be interviewing Peter Chen who teaches media politics at the University of Sydney about this issue.
• To what degree can regulation and governmental control ultimately usurp citizenry power through their access to vital infrastructure that keeps the web running? I'm particularly referring to the US' 'master switch' idea and when Mubarak 'disconnected' the Internet for a few days during the revolution.

A graph showing internet traffic to and from Eqypt during the pivotal moments of the revolution.
Image: Arbor Networks (SMH)

Because the revolutions happened in Egypt months ago the 'newness' of feature will come from an in-depth exploration of social media, its use and its place within the democratic framework of governments and its people.

To keep the feature fresh with new news angles, we can also explore how to chart Egypt’s movement from political uprisings to actually forming a democratic government. I will be interviewing Samina Yasmeen from the Centre of Muslim States and Societies at the University of Western Australia for her perspective on this issue.

References 

Bryson, Gary (2011) “Islam and the Arab Spring,” ABC Encounter, 12 June 2011 <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/encounter/stories/2011/3238008.htm> [Accessed: 20th August 2011]

Downey, John (2007) "Participant and/or deliberation? The Internet as a tool for achieving radical democratic aims", in Dahlberg and Siapera (eds) Radical Democracy and the Internet: Interrogating Theory and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan: Houndmils.

Howard, Phillip (2010) The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Howard, Phillip (2011) “Digital media and the Arab spring,” Reuters, 16 February 2011. <http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2011/02/16/digital-media-and-the-arab-spring/> [Accessed: 20th August 2011]

Morozov, Evgeny (2011) The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, Penguin Books, New York.

Morozov, Evgeny (2011) “How much did social media contribute to revolution in the Middle East?” Book Forum, Apr/May 2011 <http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/018_01/7222> [Accessed: 19th August 2011]

Why social media and why now?

Egypt's literacy rates are on the rise. The chart below and more stats here that shows an upward trend in Egypt's Human Development Index.
Source: UN Human Development Indicators

This CNN interactive shows the proliferation of the Internet, Facebook and phone use in Egypt and surrounding countries. The stats are two years old so one would imagine these figures have only risen.

Two thirds of Egypt's population is below the age of 30.

This combination of a rising literacy, increased proliferation of the Internet, and a mostly young population within the context of a corrupt government and stale leadership by president Mubarak, in short, meant that the internet-savvy youth (or what Flew (2008: 1) terms 'digital natives') could see a problem and this time they proposed a new solution-- a digital revolution.

My first post noted some of the key benefits of social media (SM), and to draw on media theorists, here are a few more key points:

• Protesters can become both producers and consumers, and hence, take control of communication platforms and disseminate their messages to a wide audience (not just Egypt's two state-controlled TV stations) (DiMaggio et al. 2001: 307)
• SM is easy to use and start-up, with a simple design so there are limited barriers to engagement (Nielson 2000). It should be noted that there remains a significant digital divide that should also be addressed in our feature.
• You can act cheaply and quickly, with high media visibility due to the removal of physical restraints (Miller 2004: 208-13).

Woolgar (2002) also makes some important points from his research into uses of new media in the UK, which can be found in the social media chapter of our Flew textbook. Particularly that:

• virtual interactions supplement rather than substitute 'real' activities
• more scope for virtual interaction often leads to greater stimulus for more face-to-face interaction.

In our feature, a key part of understanding why SM played an important role in the Egyptian revolution is to firstly understand the cultural practices that enable users to engage in the technology to begin with (Cranny-Francis 2005: 120). Therefore, the questions why social media and why now provide important links, and would make for good 'pages' in the feature.

References

Cranny-Francis, Anne (2005) Multimedia: Texts and Contexts, Sage: London.

DiMaggio, Paul et al. (2001) 'Social Implications of the Internet,' Annual Review of Sociology, 27: 307-36.

Flew, Terry (2008) New Media: an Introduction (3rd ed), Oxford University Press: South Melbourne.

Miller, Paul (2004) 'The Rise of Network Campaigning,' in H. McCarthy, et al. (eds), Network Logic: Who Governs in an Interconnected World? DEMOS: London, pp. 207-17.

Nielson, Jakob (2000) Designing Web Usability, New Riders: Indianapolis.

Woolgar, Steve (2002), 'Five Rules of Virtuality', in S. Woolgar (ed.), Virtual Society? Technology, Cyberbole, Reality. Oxford University Press: Oxford, pp. 1-22.

Faces of the revolution (warning: graphic image)

Khaled Said
Source: Arabist
This photo of this man, Khaled Said-- beaten to death at the hands of the Egyptian police for allegedly being in possession of a video showing police selling illegal drugs-- went viral online.

It lead to this Facebook page, We Are All Khaled Said, whose original page in Arabic has over 1,600,000 'likes' and is still updated hourly (there are almost 150,000 'likes' on its English page).

This Facebook page led to the coordination of this flash mob, a peaceful protest led by hundreds of Egyptians who were given these simple instructions on Facebook:

Stand 5 feet apart, so as not to break Egyptian laws against public demonstration; be absolutely silent; no signs; wear black, as determined in an online vote; stand on the banks of the river or sea for one hour only, then walk away.

Cue video to 0:52:


This YouTube vlog by this woman, Asmaa Mahfouz, was shared with her friends on Facebook on January 18th.



These Egyptians led in a significant way to this:

Government security forces with water cannons and tear gas confronted protesters to the Mubarak government in a battle that lasted hours on January 28th.
Image: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

And then this:

Egyptian anti-government protesters celebrate under fireworks at Cairo's Tahrir Square after president Hosni Mubarak stepped down on February 11.
Image: Marco Longari/AFP

These are the people that sparked the 18-day revolution that toppled a government who had been in power for as long as some of them had been alive. These are the people who used social media as a tool to spread their message and voice their dissatisfaction. They didn't do it with guns and clubs, they did it with words, images and videos.

There are a large number of other contributing elements which helped in the uprising. For example:

• Facebook page, April 6 Youth movement
• The Facebook 'event' for January 25 called "The Day of the Revolution Against Torture, Poverty, Corruption and Unemployment"
• The #jan25 Twitter hashtag spearheaded by activist Wael Ghonim

A more comprehensive list can be found here and here. This Guardian rolling blog also includes good screengrabs of key tweets throughout the uprising.

Doing an online feature on the use of social media in the Egyptian revolution is complementary because we can link directly to web pages, embed videos, photos, and so on. In our feature we could document the revolution in a similar format to this one by Al Jazeera, but through images, videos and interactives. This is not only visually engaging for the audience but also makes full use of the online medium.

References

Adams, Richard, et al (2011)  “Egypt protests – Wednesday 2 February Live Blog,” The Guardian, 2 February 2011. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/feb/02/egypt-protests-live-updates> [Accessed: 20th August 2011]

Al Jazeera (2011) "Timeline: Egypt's revolution," Al Jazeera, 14 February 2011. <http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/01/201112515334871490.html>  [Accessed: 19th August 2011]

Beaumont, Peter (2011) “Can social networking overthrow a government?” Sydney Morning Herald (online), 25 February 2011 <http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/can-social-networking-overthrow-a-government-20110225-1b7u6.html#ixzz1XAC1qcA8> [Accessed: 19th August 2011]

Sutter, John (2011) “The faces of Egypt’s ‘revolution 2.0’,” CNN, 21 February 2011.
<http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/02/21/egypt.internet.revolution/index.html> [Accessed: 20th August 2011]

Carrying a club in our pockets around the world

Protesters gather at the statue of Alexander the Great in Cairo to demand the resignation of Hosni Mubarak. Source: SMH (AFP)

We've never created a club that's half a billion people strong and growing faster than ever, a club with room in it for literally any point of view. And we've certainly never carried that club in our pockets, around the world.

Taylor (CNN 2011)

In the above quote, Chris Taylor (a Mashable reporter) offers an interesting metaphor to describe the virtual power of Facebook, and more broadly, social media in the Egyptian revolution earlier this year. This club (be it a symbol of violence as a weapon of war or a casual reference to a community group) possesses powerful qualities that can be derived from Taylor's sentiments:

• it's popular and rapidly expanding
• it has a global reach
• it's non-discriminatory
• and it's incredibly portable.

With a list like this, social media and revolution seem to complement each other nicely. In fact, social media has been largely attributed as a crucial tool in the Arab Spring, which has seen the fall of dictators through a series of popular uprisings in the Middle East. Firstly Tunisia, then Egypt, Libya, and now Syria and Yemen. 

Where did you get your news/information on the events during the civil movements?

Source: Dubai School of Governance

This graph shows that Egyptians relied predominantly on social media sources for their news during the revolution.

The events that led to the downfall of President Hosni Mubarak's 30 year-long dictatorship tell an interesting tale-- war, power, corruption. They also tell an important story about the power of social media and its connection with democracy.

In our feature, we hope to chart through the murky waters of the Egyptian revolution that took place in January and February this year and examine not only how social media was used as a primary tool for driving protests, but also to what extent social media can be a crucial tool for democracy.

Here's a clip from CNN to get started. It covers a range of social media usage during the Egyptian uprising:



References
Salem, Fadi, et al (2011) “Arab Social Media Report Issue 2”, Dubai School of Governance, June 2011 <http://www.dsg.ae/NEWSANDEVENTS/UpcomingEvents/ASMROverview2.aspx> [Accessed:18th August 2011]

Taylor, Chris (2011) “Why not call it a Facebook revolution?” CNN, 24 February 2011 <http://articles.cnn.com/2011-02-24/tech/facebook.revolution_1_facebook-wael-ghonim-social-media?_s=PM:TECH> [Accessed: 19th August 2011]