,

The Role of Social Media in the Egyptian Uprising January 2011

Hytham Taha

This dissertation is submitted in part requirement for the Degree of M.A. (Media ,Culture and Identity ) at the University of Roehampton UK

Abstract
The start of 2011 in The Arab world heralded an era of unprecedented popular uprisings and waves of demonstrations against the governing regimes. This phenomenon has become well known as the "Arab Spring". Hosni Mubaraks thirty years rule in Egypt was the s econd to fall as a result of the popular protests that have become the hallmark of the Arab spring. The longlasting driving forces behind these uprisings were grievances against high unemployment, rampant political corruption and widespread social injustice. Although these grievances were there for decades, the new emerging social media was the turning point in the mobilization and empowerment of the Egyptian people to organize themselves and take action to affect change. This dissertation examined the extent to which Egyptian activists employed social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and weblogs as tools for organization and coordination in the uprisings that took place in Egypt in January and February 2011. Social media platforms provided a virtual space for the ordinary citizens from different backgrounds to meet up and discuss their issues and concerns freely, and without the states censorship. Through the lens of Habermass concept of public spheres, this dissertation approximate s that this virtual space served as a new alternative public sphere. The discussion focused on the uprisings in Egypt aiming to distinguish between the role of social media as a tool for political mobilization, and the demand for basic political, economic and social rights as reasons for the uprising.

Table of Contents Abstract2 I. Introduction.........4 A. Background and context of the study ........4 B. Structure .......5 C. Social Media definition ........6 II. Literature Review .8 A. The role of the new cyberspace in participatory democracy....8 B. The importance of context and digital divide........................................11 C. The role of social media in the Egyptian uprising 2011 ........12 Research methodology .....13 III. Historical background of the uprising ...............................16 A. State of Affairs in Egypt and Arab countries ....16 B. The internet infrastructure in Egypt ....17 C. History of the protests..17 IV. Case analysis ..................20 The role of social media in the Egyptian uprising 2011 ..20 A. Social media as an organizational and coordinating tool.............................................20 B. Shaping Narrative ........ 23 C. The new cyberspace as a new public sphere....24 i. Transnational public sphere ...28 ii.The efficiency of a virtual public sphere ....29 iii. Structural transformation of the virtual public sphere ...29

V. Conclusion...............................31 Bibliography .32

Introduction
Background and context
The ongoing Arab Spring revolutions of 2011 have sparked a long debate among communication theorist and media experts about the role of social media and networking as a tool for social and political change. Some media critics and academics have claimed that social media is a powerful tool in the hands of pro-democracy movements. Moreover, that the new communication technologies and the diverse social networking have given rise to a reservoir of political energy that posits a new relationship between the new media technologies, politics, and public life (Giroux 2009). In the words of or as the prominent Egyptian activist and Google executive Wael Ghonim, If you want to liberate a society, just give them the Internet (MacKinnon 2011). The internet and its surrounding technologies such as social media has been heralded as effective weapons for the weak and disenfranchised against their authoritarian regimes. Before the world experienced the Arab Spring, the political unrests in Iran and Moldova were labeled Twitter revolutions, a phrase that is now widely accepted and used in the international media. The uprisings that swept across the Middle East and North Africa in early 2011 was a new experience for international and local audiences in the sense that through social media activists were capable of eliminating the boundaries and censorship imposed by authorities on media . The events were recorded on mobile phones and personal video cameras and then uploaded in the social media outlets. Through this the world was witnessing the unfolding events of the uprisings literally in real time. The uprisings have since been discussed widely and in much depth, nonetheless a thorough conceptualization and theorization of the role of social media in the uprisings is still developing. So far media experts and scholars have disagreed in opposing camps regarding the evaluation of the part played by the social media in the uprisings. Egyptian activists Wael Ghonim, the creator of the famous Facebook page We are all Khaled Said, and who was imprisoned by the Egyptian government for his roles in the uprising, credits social media platforms as a main mobilizing tool for the Egyptian people . Ghonim told CNN, I want to meet Mark Zuckerberg one day and thank him. Im talking on behalf of Egypt. This revolution started online. This revolution started on Facebook. This revolution started in June 2010 when hundreds of thousands of Egyptians started collaborating content. We would post a video on Facebook that would be shared by 60,000 people on their walls within a few hours. I always said that if you want to liberate a society just give them the Internet( Adnan 2011).
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Many scholars believe that the advent of the new mass technologies can change the way people communicate, and consequently to create social change, as was the case of the Egyptian uprising. The first three months of 2011 saw what can only be termed a substantial shift in the Arab worlds usage of social media towards online social and civil mobilization(Chebib & Sohail 2011: 151).Then there are others claimed that the effects of social media are minimal and social change can happen with or without social media. This opinion most presented by the famous media critic ,Malcolm Gladwell who argued in his New Yorker article that online social networks create only weak ties, not the strong ties that are needed for actual action. He argues that we are giving too much credit to the social media, he stated that where activists were once defined by their causes, they are now defined by their tools (Gladwell 2010). Others situate the role of the new media in a middle place claiming that the modern society is highly related to the technology. This opinion best presented by Clay Shirky, who argues that gr oup action gives human society its particular character, and anything that changes the way groups get things done will affect society as a whole (Shirky, 2009: 23). In circumstances of such a heated debate about the relation of society and technology , this dissertation will analyze the role of social media in the Egyptian uprising avoiding oversimplified conclusions, that ignore the main driver behind the mediums; the human being. The significance of cultural and historical context of the uprising will be carefully considered which requires that we analyze both continuities and discontinuities with the past, specifying what is a continuation of past histories and what is new and original in the present moment ( Kellner 2002:300).

Structure
This paper begins with an introduction providing some background of the study, shedding a light on the social media and social change in relation with the Arab Spring, as well as providing definitions of a wide variety of social media outlets, ranging from social sharing sites such as YouTube and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook . Chapter two will provide a literature review, focusing on three different issues: 1) the scholarly debate over the democratic nature of the internet; 2) the digital divide; 3)Real word examples about the employment of social media in political change. The examples focus more in the previous studies about the Egyptian uprising. This chapter ends with a brief introduction of the research methodology. Chapter three will then provide a contextual background for the uprising, political landscape in the country as well as in the Arab world and supply data about social media and the internet infrastructure in Egypt. Chapter four provides a detailed analysis of how social media was used for political mobilization to affect change in Egypt during the uprising. In this part of the dissertation, content analysis will be utilized to analyze how the Egyptian activists behind the uprising used social media tools. Finally a conclusion briefing the findings of the paper and suggesting further recommendations.
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Defining social media

The advent of internet and social media has created a new means of producing and distributing the media landscape. Citizens were enabled to produce and receive the media contents in unprecedented ways in contrast to one-to-many communication structure of traditional mass media, social media allows the emergence of many-to-many communication, and gives a rise to mass self-communication ( Castells 2009:54 ). This horizontal mechanism of media consumption changed the one to -many to many to-many communication and participatory culture , audiences, empowered by these new technologies, occupying a space at the intersection between old and new media, are demanding the right to participate within the culture( Jenkins 2005:24 ). Although commercialization, corporate interests and state censorship may hinder the free information flow, nonetheless the authoritarian regimes is no longer capable of shaping the public discourse or as before. In the following section, the paper provide social media definition.

Social Media
Social media can be defined as a group of Internetbased applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, which allows the creation and exchange of usergenerated content (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010:60). Social media is a product of the new emerging mass technologies and Information Communication Technology (ICTs) . ICT is defined by Manuel Castells as the converging set of technologies in microelectronics, computing (machines and software), telecommunications /broadcasting, and optoelectronics For t he purpose of this discussion, social media networks (SMNs)( Castells 1996:30 ) . For more details about social media tools that employed by the Egyptian activist , the following section will provides a brief introduction for the most widely and effectively used SMNs, , Twitter, YouTube , Facebook , internet forums and blogging.

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking website that was originally designed for Harvard students in 2004. Facebook now has over 700 million active users; Each Facebook profile has a "wall," where friends can post comments. Wall is viewable by all the user's friends, so wall postings are basically for public conversation or connection. Also Facebook users can create and
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customize their own profiles with photos, videos, and information about themselves. Users can create pages and groups (Rossides 2011:7).

YouTube

YouTube is the largest free video sharing website with 106.7 million unique visitors per month. About four billion views per day on YouTube (Rossides 2011:5)
Twitter

launched in 2006 , and As the Twitter website tells us, Twitter is a real-time information network that connects you to the latest stories, ideas, opinions and news about what you find in Twitter is a real-time information network that connects you to the latest stories, ideas, opinions and news about what you find interesting. Simply find the accounts you find most compelling and follow the conversations (Tweeter 2011). Each Tweet is 140 characters long. More than 160m users in the world and about 90 million tweets. Twitter users can follow or essentially subscribe to the updates of other users.
Weblogs Weblogs can be briefly defined as an easy-to-use content management tool. When you blog you are instantly adding new content to your site via a web interface. No technical or programming skills are necessary (Wyld 2007:47).

Chapter 1

LITRATURE REVIEW
In the following section of this chapter, the paper will review a relatively three different topics. The first section focuses on the scholarly debate about the democratizing potential of the internet. The second part will provide a review about the debate over the inequality concerns around internet access. The third section, will review some previous studies about the role of social media in the Egyptian uprising. The reason behind choosing three topics to be reviewed, was to cover the theories about the role of social media in the social change as well as choosing a real example from the world , specifically the Egyptian uprising . .

The role of the new cyberspace in participatory democracy

In recent years, with the emergence of new mass technologies, the debate over the way people communicate to affect social change has received heightened attention. In order to critically evaluate how the internet and particularly social media can be used for social change it is important to understand the ways that one can communicate in the newly emerging cyberspace. It is well accepted that one of the most enduring political concepts which articulates the relationship between society and democracy is Habermas concept of public sphere. Habermas in his investigation of the kind of publicity and political awareness that appeared during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, has developed a concept and model of what he called the bourgeois public sphere, which he also contended had declined and degenerated in the twentieth century with the rise of state and commercialized media. Habermas contended that in the bourgeois public sphere, press was for the first time established as a genuinely critical organ of a public engaged in critical political debate: as the fourth estate (Habermas, 1989:21). He argued that this helped in communicating political debates. By contrast, Habermas argued that todays media, while it plays a critical role in the establishing the public sphere, is nonetheless different from its seventieth century predecessor in that it has served more to commercialize and commodity the news and manipulate public opinion . Habermas argues that internet is similar to the conventional media in hindering public sphere. He commented that the rise of millions of fragmented chat rooms across the world tend instead to lead to the fragmentation of large but politically focused mass audiences into a huge number of isolated issue publics (Habermas, 2006:417 ) . In this sense, Habermas considers the new virtual space that has been created by the new mass technology as mere chat rooms not capable of focusing public opinion.

However, for Habermas in the mass media era the public sphere is being corrupted, and the internet is playing a negative role in facilitating participatory democracy . The public opinion is manufactured and manipulated with fake discourse by capitalist and corporate elite ,consequently citizens no longer discussing matter of general interest(Habermas 2000: 92). Within the framework of the manufactured public sphere the mass media are usefully only as vehicles of advertising (Habermas 2000:217). For basic norms of deliberation in Habermas public sphere model the media should be free from state and capitalist market pressure. In line with Habermas, Crack argues that the the potential for the realization of borderless public spheres is circumscribed by key factors. Global communication is systematically distorted, global governance is democratically deficient, and the norms of critical publicity are difficult to sustain amongst highly differentiated virtual audiences (Crack 2007:12). Also Jones shares Habermas in his fears and skeptical view about the role of the internet in society and democracy , he argues that despite the enthusiasm regarding the innovative uses of the internet as a public medium, it is still a medium invented in a capitalist era. It is an essential part of a social and political world Globalization (Jones 1997:8). Also others believe in the manipulation of public opinion by the advertising industry, and the rise of a passive consumption mentality amongst the masses (Crack, 2007:3). Habermass model of public sphere and its preconditions remain the starting point for critical evaluation of democratizing potential of computer-mediated communication. However, with the new emerging mass technologies it could be argued that these developments necessitate a reassessment of the public sphere as a territorially delimited realm (crack 2007:1). Moreover, some studies show that the new cyberspace broke all boundaries and barriers that might exist in physical public sphere and lead to huge public participation that had never existed before. The new virtual cyberspace provided an idealistic alternative space for ordinary people to share, discus freely and create a public discourse. The new m edia channels afford online conversations a degree of reciprocity, which can truly help connect citizens of democracies, rather than reproduce fragmented spheres of conversation(Papacharissi 2002:10). The new space disrupts the conventional understandings of space, borders, and territory, and influences the institutional foundations of public sphere deliberation (khan, Igaz & Nawaz 2012:4). Furthermore, an analysis of a survey of participants fielded at the U.S.Social Forum (USSF), provides a comparison of social power and mobilization through online social networks with face-toface and mediated communication channels. This study concluded that mobilization to attend the USSF through online social networks significantly impacts organizational membership diversity and the number of offline protests attended. And the same study recommended that activists should use online social networks to supplement more traditional modes of mobilization (Schwarz 2012:3) .

Another criticism of the internet by Habermas is that online discussion does not facilitate public deliberation, and he describes Internet discourse and horizontal communication between citizens as a series of chat rooms.. The internet in Habermas notion of public sphere doesnt potentiate informal citizen deliberation , so no rational public opinion can be formed to prospect political and social change. However, many researches argue that internet is capable of providing hyperlinked communication networks which enable individuals to find multiple points of entry into varieties of political action and offers independence from the mass media and other conventional institution organizations (Castells 2004:3). Castells has conceptualized how new network configurations can lead to new political movements by allowing previously disconnected, undeveloped political identities to take shape and rise to a prominent position (Castells 2004:5). The internet and social media platforms, as a communication infrastructure, have inverted the vertical and few-to-many architecture of the convention media to many-to- much communication. Citizens could be promoted from only consumers and spectators to producers through user-generated contents platforms. The advent of many-to-many communication via the Internet decentralized communications within cyberspace are seen as offering the basis by which to facilitate rational-critical discourse and hence develop public opinion that can hold power accountable(Novak 2005:2). In addition, the internet has privileged any desktop to be a printing press, and broadcasting center and place of assembly ,and mass media will continue to exist and so will journalism, but these institutions will no longer monopolize attention and access to the attention of others (Rheingold 2011) . Moreover modern communication technologies easily merge into each other to enhance connectivity and raise accessibility (Kleinberg 2008:68) . Networks of communication that connect many-to-many in the sending and receiving of messages in a multimodal shape of communication that can bypass mass media and often escape government control (Castells 2007:38). It is the space where people come together as citizens and articulate their independent views to influence the political institutions of society. While Habermas argues that use of the Internet has both broadened and fragmented the contexts of communication. This is why the Internet can have a subversive effect on intellectual life in authoritarian regimes( Habermas 2006), others suggest that the Internet offers social movements the speed and range of communication that technologies, such as printing, the postal system, the telephone, and fax did in the past (Porta & Mosca 2005:173). Cyberspace is promoted social space because it made by people and thus as a new public space made by people and conjoining traditional mythic narratives of progress with strong modern impulses toward self-fulfillment and personal development (Jones, 1997:22 When public opinion has the power and freedom to influence policy and grows from the open, rational, critical debate among peers posited b and the role of media in the emancipatory social mobilization As the communications landscape gets denser, more complex, and participatory, the networked
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population is acquiring greater access to information, more opportunities and facilities to engage in public speech, and an enhanced ability to undertake collective action (Shirky 2011:1).

The importance of context and digital divide

The new mass media infrastructure has changed the way people communicate in terms of temporal and spatial dimensions. The reach and intensity of communication in real time is unprecedented. It is worth mentioning that despite all these new prospects, the potential for social media to increase critical publicity and establish democratic society depends highly on the context and the related social movements . The use of social media tools text messaging, e-mail, photo-sharing, social network, and the like does not have a single preordained outcome. Therefore attempts to outline their effects on political action are too often reduced to dueling anecdotes (Shirky 2011:2) . The main thing to keep in mind, though, is that different contexts give rise to different problems and thus are in need of custom-made solutions and strategies( Morozov 2011:111). In the context of the Egyptian and Tunisian uprisings, social media is widely believed to have played a significant role in the organization of the protests and bringing the regimes down, while in the context of Sudan and Bahrain when the social media was used , it did not lead to regime fall; at least not yet. Moreover, Morozov argues that it doesn't make sense to treat the Internet as a deterministic one -directional force for either global liberation or oppression, for cosmopolitanism or xenophobia(Morozov 2011:29) In exploring the role of Internet and social media as an effective agent of democratization and social change, the question of who has access to the Internet and the freedom to access information remains a major one. The empowerment of people and dissidents, who are otherwise marginalized by the controlled and state-run media , through free access to information and freedom of expression remains one of the main cornerstones in the analysis of social media role in social change. As adoption of digital communication technologies becomes a more integral part of society the question of whether patterns of inequality continue to exist remains a critical question (AHN 2011 :149). In addition to the gap in access to the internet, the environment in the authoritarian countries is marked by censorship and repression (Kuebler 2011:1 ). Digital divide, refers primarily to inequalities in access to the Internet(Novak 2005:10) , and describes the potential for a divide between those connected to the Internet and those not connected, sometimes worded as the divide between the information have's and have's not (Steyaert, 2002:200). As researchers begin to investigate how the way people use social media to pursue their interests in a networked environment, questions about access become ever more critical
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(Norris 2001). Studies show varying results about the gap in internet access. Emerging evidence from researchers of social network sites suggest that demographic background is not a significant predictor of access to these online communities (AHN 2011: 150). Some believe that as digital technologies continue to improve, get less expensive and grow more widespread, those gaps are closing or becoming less relevant (Hunt 2012). On the other hand, June AHN suggests ethnic minority groups were less likely to use technology and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds also had fewer opportunities to use media tools (AHN 2011:149). This is thought to be because technology does not create a new social divide but replicates the existing social stratification (Kellner 2004). As the integration of mass media information into a social system increases, classes of the population with higher socioeconomic status tend to acquire this information at a faster rate than the lower status segments, so that the gap in knowledge between these segments tends to increase rather than decrease (Tichenor, Donohue, & Olien, 1970 : 159). Some studies suggest that digital divide should not be conceptualized only around the binary classification of physical access . One of the factors that appears to be important is the differential possession of digital skills (Deursen & van Dijk 2010: 897).When these skills are unequally divided among the population, the consequences of this skills inequality may even exacerbate existing societal inequalities among people (Van Dijk 2005). This is to say that technology and information-illiteracy may make a difference in addition to physical gap in that not all citizens have the same level of information -literacy and the ability and attitude to search for relevant formation (Steyaert 2002:205). We can therefore conclude, that in some place at least, there is a likely a digital divide along already existing social indicators such as ethnicity and class. This leads to unequal access to the internet, and furthermore renders this new cyberspace less likely to be democratic and less likely to lead to social change. However, if socioeconomic factors creating digital divide mark new cyberspace as undemocratic then Habermas public sphere, the pinnacle of democracy was also rather undemocratic in its structure throughout the centuries, by not including women or people from lower social classes(Zubair , Gilani & Nawaz 2012:48). Nonetheless some argue, as I believe is the case with this new cyberspace, that Habermas public sphere, despite being not equally powerful, articulate, or privileged was still able to exist to give voice to collective identities and interests (Papacharissi 2006:8).

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The role of social media in the Egyptian uprising 2011

Whilst the previous two sections of this chapter were reviewing theories about the democratic quality of the online discourse and inclusion and exclusion challenges from this online discourse. In the following section, lots of previous researches in the same topic of the dissertation will be reviewed . The main purpose of reviewing previous studies about the role of social media in the Egyptian uprising is to situate and justify this paper among the researches in the discovered gabs . There has been much debate and different opposing camps describing the role of social media in the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. Christensen Christian describes the scholarly debate about the of role of social media in creating social change , he argued that techno -utopians overstate the affordances of new technologies and understate the material conditions of their use, while techno-dystopian do the reverse, misinterpreting a lack of results with the impotence of technology (Christensen 2011:244). Some of the technologically deterministic approach proponents privilege the role of social media with the all credit dubbing the uprising the Facebook Revolution, however some argue that calling the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt Twitter or Facebook revolutions overlooks information and communications technology (ICT) access in these countries (Comninos 2011). Although studies vary regarding the evaluation of the actual role of social media in the revolution nonetheless most tend to agree that the revolution was characterized by the instrumental use of social media, especially Facebook, Twitter, YouTube(Khamis ,Katherine & Vaughn 2011:4)). Some studies shows that social media have played a key role in instigating, accelerating and even organizing some of the uprisings and revolutions that have been taking place all over the M iddle East ( Khamis & El-Nawawy 2012:1 ). This is thought to have been by the way that social media was a major trigger for street activism; encouraging civic engagement, through aiding the mobilization and organization of protests and other forms of political expression (Khamis 2011: 1164). On the other hand some contend that social media may be necessary, but are not sufficient tools for pursuing and achieving sociopolitical transformation (Khamis & Gold &Vaughn 2011:1). These platforms have played a crucial role as a mobilizing tool in the pre-revolutionary phase and used for coordination and organization in the revolutionary phase (Khamis , Gold &Vaughn 2011). Boyed suggests that social media channels did speed up the protests, he also argues that it didnt send people out into the streets ( Boyd 2012 ). Either way, each type of the user-generated content platforms played a specific role in the political mobilization that led to the overthrow of the regime. Twitter was used simultaneously for citizen journalism and mobilization during the revolution (Khamis & Vaughn 2011). Twitter and Facebook were used to coordinate and spread the word about the demonstrations that were scheduled for January 25( Boyd 2011). Moreover, Facebook drove protests forward as people used it to organize and schedule these revolutions. Twitter and YouTube were
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employed to reflect what was happening at the ground level in the real time (Kelly 2011) . Finally these social networks collectively led to a more organized action against the ruling political system in Egypt ( Serag 2011). In these ways social networks were able to inform, mobilize, entertain, create communities, increase transparency, and seek to hold governments accountable (Ghannam 2011:4). Some studies suggested a transnational role for these platforms, beside their role in the speeding up the process, by helping to organize the revolutionaries they also transmit their message to the world and galvanize international support(Gustin 2011 ). The novelty in the use of the new technology is that for the first time in history a social movement could be observed in real-time as it spread, coalesced around ideas, and grew exponentially in size and scale across the Internet (GRIFFIN 2011). Social media was a key driver and game changer in Egypt primarily because it bridged the gap between social classes thus for the first time creating a much larger united anti-government front that included rich , poor and different social and educational backgrounds (Serag 2011). Social media outlets beside being coordinating and organizing means were also a tool for liberation, which empowered Egyptians by giving a voice to the voiceless )Sarah 2011). In a context of state control media the wide spread usage of the new media ultimately led to the democratization of the media by redirecting the power of media back to the people as well as use of it as a strategic tactic for political and social change (Sarah.2011). The use of online activism in Egypt and the wider Arab world has led to the growth of a new kind of political movement and awareness that reflects the plural nature of social media. This has enabled a new flat leadership model that is new and difficult for autocratic regimes to combat . Also these unprecedented and affordable media avenues enabled an effective form of citizen journalism, through providing forums for ordinary citizens to document the protests (Khamis, Katherine & Vaughn 2011). Here, some argue, the new media in the Arab world started to become a more effective and accessible tools for public will mobilization (Salmon, Fernandez & Post, 2010:163). Moreover, a research argues that the revolution started first in the virtual community then transferred to the offline world, sparked through the virtual activities of activist groups that later were transformed Into physical actions, Social networking was the driving force for the Egyptian revolution (Serag 2011). From the above detail review of the different studies about the role of social media in the Egyptian uprising, it can be concluded that most of the researches confines the role of social media in the coordination and organization role. In other word, there is no clear concepluzation about the role of the cyberspace as a new public sphere in the Egyptian activist

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Research methodology
This dissertation favors a content analysis approach, a research technique that aimed to achieve an objective, systematic and quantitative description of the manifest content of communications (Mattelart and M. Mattelart 1997:29). Content analysis will be utilized in the following chapter to evaluate the role of social media in the Egyptian uprising 2011. The analysis will take sources of social media materials as primary data, as well as examining a cross-section of secondary source, from the mainstream media, scholarly Journals , activist thoughts and academic articles as a secondary sources. Due to the complex nature of the subject, the paper will consider carefully the word of Morozov, who stated that : the challenge of anyone analyzing how the Internet may affect the overall effectiveness of political activism, is first, to determine the kind of qualities and activities that are essential to the success of the democratic struggle in a particular country or context and second, to understand how a particular medium of campaigning or facilitating collective action affects those qualities and activities.( Morozov 2011:198)

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Chapter 2

Historical background of the uprising

State of Affairs in Egypt and Arab countries
An investigation of any aspect of the Egyptian uprising without consideration for historical background and context of the uprising would lead to a blurred conclusion. Moreover, any attempt to evaluate the role of a new phenomenon such as social media with placing it within a wider cultural ,societal and economical context can lead to an overestimation of the role of social media and technological determinism. This section of the dissertation aims to situate the role of social media within a wider context that led to the buildup of the 2011 uprising. This is so as to emphasize the multitude of factors and driving forces that contributed to the eventual political mobilization of the masses in Egypt. Though the uprising, which was the first protests on such a large scale in Egypt since the 1970s(Kanalley 2011), lasted only eighteen days before Mubarak was overthrown, the struggle and oppositional movement that forced him to step down was an accumulation of a much longer process of planning and buildup, a product of years of repression and grievances that triggered the political mobilization. For better understanding of how the events unfolded and the uprising occurred, it is important to assess all players that were involved as well as what factors contributed to the political, economic, and social situations in the modern history of the country . In this way, it is then plausible to understand the role that social networks played in the uprising. Hosni Mubarak, the ousted president, had been president of Egypt since 1981, after his predecessor, Anwar Sadat was assassinated (Bhuiyan 2011:15). His regime banned the creation of political parties, and limited the right to associate or create civil rights groups (Naim 2011). Thus, he created a closed system of political regime. Furthermore, when he took office he extended the countrys Emergency Law, which gave the government the right to imprison individuals for any period of time, and for virtually no reason, thus keeping them in prisons without trials for any period( Kanalley 2011). The traditional media in most of the Arab world, as in Egypt, was controlled by the state both directly and indirectly. Moreover, the physical public sphere, for example newspapers and public meeting places, was heavily controlled, some might say strangulated and suffocated, by the regime. Due to the emergency law there was strong censorship heavily controlling what could be presented in the private and commercial media. This type of state-run media, as Habermas argued, aimed to manipulate the public opinion and cover up the regimes mistakes and shortcomings. Mubaraks ruling period was characterized by a Lack of respect for human rights ,stifling freedoms , election fraud , the
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systematic looting and poor distribution of wealth in the country , the collapse of health and education services( Abdu Alrhman 2011) . For example, in 2005 Egyptian blogger Abdolkarim Nabil Seliman was arrested and imprisoned for four years after criticizing President Hosni Mubarak and the states religious institutions(Howard 2011:7) .The consequences of an oppressive and corrupted regime were largely reflected in the main demands of the protestors in the call for the end of Hosni Mubaraks regime, the end of emergency law, and a call for freedom, justice, a responsive nonmilitary government, and management of Egypt's resources (Alexis Madrigal 2011). Here, it is important in the context of such a complicated situation to distinguish social media as a tool for communication and organizing, but not as the reasons such as poverty, rampant unemployment, corruption and autocratic governance of Pre sident
Hosni Mubarak during 30 years of ruling of the country.

The internet infrastructure in Egypt

In attempting to understand the effect of the new mass technologies in a complicated phenomenon such as uprising this section aims to provide detailed statistical profile of the internet landscape in Egypt. This is in order to assess the level of usage of social media in the uprising. According to a 2009 report titled The Future of the Internet Economy in Egypt, since 2000 the country adopted many strategies to increase availability and use of the Internet. This is reflected in the significant increase in Internet users from 0.65 million in 2000 to 12.57 million in 2008. The general Internet penetration in Egypt rose from 1.01% in 2000 to 16.68% in 2008 with growth rate of 15.7% during the period. The number of mobile subscribers reached 41.27 million in December 2008 ,which indicate that more than half of the population were using cellphones. Mobile penetration in Egypt increased from 3.45% in December 2000 to 54.77% in December 2008. 73.72% of Egyptian households connecting to the Internet use an ADSL connection, compared to 60.58% in 2008 and 56.15% in 2007. (The Future of the Internet Economy in Egypt 2009) . It can be concluded from this statistical profile that the communication landscape in Egypt makes social media capable of mobilizing and reaching a large portion of the Egyptian people and more recently, despite barriers such as illiteracy, poverty, and infrastructural constraints, Internet penetration in Egypt has been increasing rapidly, especially among young people between 20 and 30 (Khamis , Gold &Vaughn 2011:2) .

History of the protests

The uprising was not started by social media and It is important to keep in mind is that this is a revolution decades in the making, not months or weeks or days (Meguid 2011). There was a growing significance of the economic motives of the demanded social and political change before 25th January 2011 and the seeds of this spectacular mobilization had been sown as far back as the early 2000s and had been carefully cultivated by activist (Hirschkind 2011:2) . Middle East scholar Joel Beinin has calculated that there have been approximately three thousand worker-led protests in Egypt over the last decade, indicative of the latent discontent
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with Mubaraks regime(Masoud 2011:16). With persistent governmental corruption accompanied with the failure of the regime to meet demands of a growing youth-bulge society, this disenfranchised group began to mobilize. Both digital activism and the protest wave in Egypt actually stretch back to 2004, when a group called Kefaya (The Egyptian Movement For Change) appeared suddenly on Egypts political scene (Faris2011:7). The movement was founded by intellectuals demanding political reform and had limited success mobilizing a critical mass of protesters, but found it especially difficult to reach workers(Ottaway & Hamzawy2011). Given the accumulation and mix of socio-economic factors , associated with advent of new mass technologies , people became increasingly more willing and determined to confront the regime. . In a country with a median age of 24 years(Kenna 2011), where young people ,who were often more accepting the new technologies ,it was not a surprise for youth digital revolt to become one of a new fact of a suffocated political sphere. The youth revolution in Egypt had its roots in many youth movements that have evolved over the previous three years. Specific notable events were on April 6, 2008 (April 6 Movement), (Abdu Rahman 2011). The initial spark of the social media actually started in 2008, with a Facebook group that called for a general strike on April 6th 2008 to protest on corruption Abdel Rahman (2011).April 6th was the day when organizing tool met political reality to create elements that were strong enough to form storm clouds on the regimes horizon.(Faris ,D 2011). The result was the formation of a new movement: the April 6 Youth Movement, which then played a key organizational role in the 2011 protests. It was only two years later, in June 2010, when Facebook made another appearance on the scene of the Egyptian political activism through another Facebook page called "We are All Khaled Said," the Facebook group originally created to commemorate the brutal death of a young businessman at the hands of the Egyptian policy, in June 2010 (Sam 2011) . The page was a turning point in the involvement of social media in the political mobilization in Egypt and quickly attracted 500,000 members (Crovit 2011), and soon became a platform for online discussion and dialogue of shared grievances against the Mubarak regime. . The call for the revolution mainly started from this page, by calling for mass mo bilization to a day of anger on January 25th, which later transformed into a revolution (DeLong-Bas 2011). In this way, social media networks allowed the new activists to bypass older modes of organization, which had long been controlled by the regime, such as physical meetings or old media outlets such as printing press. According to Abdel Rahman (2011), about 50000 members of the mentioned Facebook page, met the call and went for the day of anger, (Abdel Rahman 2011). Beside Facebook, Twitter saw 129,000 Egyptian users in 2011, a 65 per cent increase on the previous year(Ahram 2011) . During the protests, Twitter was an effective tool as a source of news . The most popular hashtags included the country itself (#Egypt), important dates (#Jan25), cities where protests were planned (#Cairo, #Tahrir) (Keif 2011). Lastly, the other main driving force for the uprising, other than government corruption and the advent of social
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media as a tool for mobilization, the Egyptian people were heavily inspired by the Tunisian uprising when they saw the overthrowing of the long time Tunisian President on January 14 . The proximate trigger for the January 25 revolution was of course the success of Tunisian Revolutionaries (Ghanim 2011:16)

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Chapter 3

Case analysis
The role of social media in the Egyptian uprising 2011
Content analysis of primary sources of social media contents was conducted in order to evaluate the role of social media tools in the political mobilization of protests during the Egyptian uprising 2011. Additionally, a cross-section of secondary sources, namely journalistic articles and academic journals, were examined. The following sections outline the roles of social media within the Egyptian uprising. The paper distinguishes between the different roles of the social media platforms focusing on three major identifiable categories: 1) a coordinating and organizational tool; 2) a tool for shaping narratives; and 3) a kind of public sphere that in light of Habermas concept of public sphere could be used to generate public discourse for political change.

Social media as an organizational and coordinating tool

It is widely recognized in international media that one of the remarkable features of the Egyptian uprising is the relative speed, compared to other uprisings in the Arab Spring, with which it succeeded in overthrowing the regime in the shortest time period [Naim 2011]. It took only 18 days for the uprising to accomplish its final mission, while the uprisings in Tunisia and Libya took 28 days and 9 months respectively. In addition to the acceleration of events, the connection and technology convergence between the different kinds of social media platforms enabled the activist to efficiently use social media networks as a form of organizational and coordination infrastructure . Each type of social media platform, i.e. Facebook , YouTube , Twitter and personal blogs, was employed with relatively different aspects and features. A Cairo activist described the different usages of each platform we use Facebook to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world (Howard 2011 :30). The most influential Facebook page which played a pivotal role in the revolution was the page called We are all Khalid Said . The page was created initially by the well-known activist Wael Ghonim, to commemorate Khalid Said, a young man who had been brutally beaten and killed by the police. The page quickly became a forceful campaign against police brutality in Egypt, with a constant stream of photos, videos, and news (Giglio 2011). Later, the page served as an organizational tool that attracted like-minded individuals to prepare for the protest. The call for the revolution mainly started from this page, by calling for mass mobilization to a Day of Anger on January 25th, which later
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transformed into a revolution (Abdu alrhman 2011) and the page attracted some 500,000 members ( Crovit 2011 ). It allowed would be protestors to take to circumvent the regimes regulation in the physical world. They were able to discuss and debate freely online and then agreed collectively on a specific date to start the revolution. This page played a significant role in organizing the initial protests and in planning for the offline mobilization). In this sense, Facebook had been the prime tool used to connect the progressive events of the protests and updating followers with real time news. Regardless of how the role of Facebook or this page contributed to the Egyptian uprising , it can be fully argued that setting a date for uprising , and holding a meeting and discussion a would have been impossible . Other Facebook pages also played critical roles in the political mobilization during the uprising. This included the 2008 April 6 Youth Movement , which was Facebook group formed in Spring 2008 in support of the workers in the industrial town of Almahal al-kubra to strike on the April of that year(Gumbiner 2012 :66). The founder of this page was Aasma Mahfouz, a 26 yearold Egyptian woman who recorded a video and posted a week prior to January 18th in which she urged the Egyptian people to join the protest at Tahrir Square on January 25th . The video went viral and her words reverberated throughout the Egypt (Gumbiner 2012:67) . One of the prominent effects of such a video was breaking the fear barrier and engaging directly with people with uncovered face, Asmaa Mahfouz speaks directly to the camera and identifies herself. The boldness of this act, speaking out so forcefully as a woman, inspired many others to start posting their images online (Goodman, 2011), and in the words of some observers to incite a mass revolutionary protest movement against dictator Hosni Mubarak and his brutal regime(fjwhite 2011). As the revolution gained momentum, other social media platforms such as YouTube, twitter, and personal blogs also contributed as important communication channels. Twitter provides further content to be analyzed in order to further explore how social media contributed to spreading information , organizing the protests and to the acceleration of the Egyptian uprising. Whilst Facebook was a main tool for preparation and for transposing the virtual protests to offline protests , Twitter has played a major role in the uprising by providing a real time news source and an events updating tool for the protesters and activists . An activist said that Facebook and Twitter helped us foresee in advance, when and where future manifestations might happen(Minty2011) .The data collected from the period of uprising showed that the average number of Twitter users in Egypt between January and 30 March, 2011 was 1,131,204(Seksek 2011). Also the most popular trending hashtags across the Arab region in the first quarter of 2011 were #Egypt (with 1.4 million mentions in the tweets generated during this period) #jan25 (with 1.2. million mentions (Seksek2011). This striking statistic indicates how vastly Twitter was used by the activist and protesters during the uprising. The average number of Twitter users in Egypt between January and 30 March, 2011 was 1,131,204(Chebib & Sohail 2011:3) . During the week before Egyptian president Hosni
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Mubaraks resignation the total rate of tweets from Egypt and around the world about political change in that country ballooned from 2,300 a day to 230,000 a day( O'Donnell 2011). In this way , Twitter and other social media outlets ,in addition to connecting people inside the country, was helping the uprising in transcending the border to international audiences or members of the diaspora residing outside the country YouTube as a video sharing platform was a tool for spreading and documenting the events . Videos featuring protest and political commentary went viral and the amount of content produced online by opposition groups, in Facebook and political blogs, increased dramatically.( O'Donnell 2011). User-generated videos were uploaded by the pro-democracy activists and ordinary citizens to provide firsthand accounts of events. People were the producers of the news and during the first week of the Egyptian Revolution 2011, Egyptian users viewed 8.7 million pages on YouTube(Mansour 2012:133) . According to a survey conducted to explore the way Egypti ans used internet during the revolution 28% of internet users relied on the Internet to stay tuned with the demonstrations [Abd Alrhman 2011]. In this way, every stage of the revolution was documented and spread throughout the country and the world. The coordination and organization of the protests planned through online communication. The organization and scheduling started online then with offline tactics social media were important as a tool for accelerating and facilitating. For example the activists Campaigning strategy for the #Jan25 protest, planned through online communication, was for multiple fast moving demonstrations in twenty locations around the city, designed to try to mobilize the people in poorer areas (who could not afford the luxury of computers and the Internet) and avoid the usual police tactic of cordoning off protesters and preventing them from rallying (Nunns & Idle2011: 31). One of the offline tactics was spreading the word and information via taxi drivers who are infamous in Egyptian society for their talkative nature. Activist Waleed Rashid, co-founders of the April 6 Youth Movement, in an interview in BBC 2 on 5 September, 2011, explained such tactics stating that here in Cairo, taxi drivers love to talk to people, so we said to ourselves, how can take advantage of that and the idea was that if we spoke directly, face to face with the taxi driver, he might start arguing and debating with us and this would not be very useful? But if I speak with someone from my movement, using the phone, in front of the taxi driver, he will feel he has overheard a secret, and that will create some intrigue, and then the taxi driver is bound to pass on what Ive said to others. In such a way, activists, in order to publicize their plans and campaigns, turned to a word of mouth as a mix of communication dynamics to reach people in a country with relatively low internet penetration. In the beginning of the uprising there were clearly demonstrated linkages between mobilizing demonstrators by social media and the mobilization of demonstrators on the streets (Comninos 2011). However, when the regime cut off the internet after two days of the uprising, this became more difficult. However, this cyber-crackdown was not an effective way to quench the uprising ,and the protest continues for the reason that the protest or activity becomes self reinforcing, and increases without further direct organization or action by the leadership(Duncombe 2011 .In fact the fact that Hosni Mubaraks regime took the step of
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blocking the Internet, despite the millions of dollars lost to the economy, is a testament to the fear it provoked among the rulers (Nunns & Idle 2011 :21). here it can be argued that the tactics of the regime is a the clear indictor that social media was a powerful tool in the hands of activist . It can be concluded that social networking platforms like Facebook , Twitter and YouTube were used to announce , publicize the initial protests of 25 January 2011,coordination and communication in real time. The relative accessibility and affordability of the Social media enabled pro-democracy activists in breaking the communication barriers and circumventing the state- run media control that would have hindered the transmission of their message. Information was spread through social media platforms and the uprising represented some of the most remarkable real-time reporting ever. In the same way that pamphlets didnt cause the American Revolution, social media didnt cause the Egyptian revolution said Sascha Meinrath, director of the New America Foundations Open Technology Initiative. Social media have become the pamphlets of the 21st century, a way that people who are frustrated with the status quo can organize themselves and coordinate protest, as in the case of Egypt revolution(Meinrath 2011).

Shaping Narrative
For decades before the advent of the internet and the surrounding technologies such as social media, the upper hand went to the authoritarian regime in shaping the narrative about the country affairs. Egyptian state-run media have a long tradition of deceiving citizens about the true nature of news events and social and political developments(David Faris 2011:113) .After the internet came in to the reality ,it was allowing voices other than the Government or state-media to be heard in the public through social networkers reshaping the narratives . A major example of the shift in the narrative power was the Khalid Said story, who was brutally killed by the police. The official narrative about this event said that the cause of death was asphyxiation from swallowing a concealed packet of narcotics (Elfattah 2011). We Are all Khalid Said page was created to commemorate the brutal murder of the young Egypti an man, and spreads the graphic photographs of Saids disfigured corpse around the Internet. Thus the page blew away the government narrative regarding his death. There was outrage over the beating death of the 28-year-old man and the page rapidly attracted some 500,000 members(Crovitz 2011) . The counter-narrative of the death captured the attention of millions in Egypt and helped spark the 18-day uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak in February (Deep2011).

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Social media in the Egyptian revolution, besides being used as a communication and coordination tool during the uprising, was used as a source of news and events. Videos documenting the regimes abuses and the group public demonstrations were uploaded in YouTube and spread worldwide serving as a counter source of information to the state-run media. News and events of the protests from across Egypt regions encouraged other people to take action and join those already protesting. In this way, ordinary people were the producers and source of the news, and there was no way for the state-run media to manipulate public opinion or to fabricate news, as was the case before the emergence of social media. The online forums enabled the general public to challenge the monopolies of power in the country (Chebib & Sohail 2011:151). With its low entry barriers, social media tools provide an accessible platform for citizen journalism, defined as the use of digital media tools to report on events on the ground, uploading text and videos directly to the Internet or feeding the information and videos to media outlets (Khamis & Vaughn 2011). The value of the new media is that they allowed for individual voices to be heard among local and international audiences, and facilitated the creation of a counter-public sphere to that of the state-discourse. In doing so, these voices had the potential to penetrate mainstream media. Al-Jazeera, the well know Arabic satellite, in particular relied on reputed bloggers and Twitter users during the uprisings for real-time coverage of events ,and the strategy for the channel worked by trying to identify key bloggers in countries before protests broke out, informed by the situation in other areas, to act as citizen reporters and then be able to verify information later on( McAthy 2011). Social media allowed the narrative to be shaped and circulated by those closest to the action. It helped the activist and protester to provide live coverage without any reporters on the ground, by simply newsgathering user-generated content available online (Bruno 2011 :5). For instance ,On 29 January, Gigi Ibrahim, one of the prominent activists , tweeted from Tahrir Square ,where protester are rallied , Egyptian State-owned media is showing nothing from whats really happening and trying to minimize it. This kind of live reporting from the place of the uprising demonstrated the ways in which Twitter and other social networks users acted as an alternative press, providing their own narrative of what is happening . Social media acted as a conduit for the provision of news around unfolding events not covered by, or outside the reach of the conventional media( Comninos 2011). Thereby, the social networkers challenged the official narrative presented by Egypt's state-run media and were publishing firsthand accounts of the happenings .

The new cyberspace as a new public sphere

The way that social media was employed in the political mobilization, which finally led to the uprising in Egypt, has received much attention and raised many debates. In addition to their role in the organization and coordination during the protests, this section of the case analysis
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argues that the new cyberspace created through social media can be best conceptualized as a new alternative public sphere. To formulate this argument the online discourse and internet practices was compared to a normative conception of the public sphere developed from the work of Jrgen Habermas . Generally, in recent years the democratic quality of online communication and the role of social media has extended an existing public sphere. Many scholars have claimed that this is the advantage of the new mass technologies. For instance, Kellner argued that the Internet has produced new public spheres and spaces for information, debate, and participation that contain the potential to invigorate democracy and to increase the dissemination of critical and progressive ideas (Kellner 1998 :13). However, the question raised in this paper is how social media may have served as a public sphere, specifically, in the Egyptian revolution experience. The more promising way to think about social media is as long-term tools that can strengthen civil society and the public sphere(Shirky 2011:5). As a long-term strategy social media platforms like Facebook ,YouTube ,Twitter and internet fora involved in the creation of cyberspace ,however , Facebook was the platform that played a major role in providing such a virtual space . Many pages in Facebook were created, whose members exceeded the hundreds of thousands of Egyptians. For example, the "We are all Khalid Said" which was created a year before the uprising was the biggest Egyptian community on Facebook, has 804.000 members up to February 14, 2011 (Khalifa 2011). Other pages such as "6th April 2008 Youth Movement" which was created three years before the uprising has 93.000 members and "Elbradei President of Egypt 2011" page has 244.000 members (Khalifa 2011). The large number of Egyptian citizens participating in these Facebook pages, indicated how wide a virtual space provided by Facebook for the Egyptian activists. This platform was used heavily to conduct political conversations by a key demographic group in the revolution , young, urban, relatively well educated individuals.( Howard 2011:2). While the new emerging public sphere through social media is a virtual space, and that of Habermas public sphere is a physical one, nonetheless the conceptual basis of Habermass concept is still an applicable paradigm. Habermas argues that public sphere is a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed (Habermas 1974:50). The main preconditions for the constitution of a public sphere according to Habermas is its autonomy from state , corporate power and its capability to facilitate and shape a public opinion. While such spaces provided by Facebook can be argued for their lack of being fully autonomous from the state or their infrastructure , however ,it can be argued that the gathering of hundreds of thousand members in Facebook pages through the virtual meetings to share common interest have stimulated public deliberation and facilitated the circulation of a sense of shared grievance . The sharing of public affairs and interests by the activists indicated that they were relatively free from the influence of state and corporate interests.
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Furthermore ,the privately oriented individuals for personal interest in the Facebook have been transformed to publicly-oriented citizens sharing their own problems and aspirations as noted by ODonnell that political discussion in blogs presaged the turn of popular opinion in both Tunisia and Egypt(ODonnell 2011) . Due to the long-term discussions and debates in these platforms , there was a new discourse through which true public opinion emerged and when the activists came to set a date for the uprising in 25 of January, by which time people were already empowered and had taken the decision to overthrow the regime. According to Habermas, rational and critical discourse is facilitated through a public sphere where citizens behave as a public body, and they provide a guarantee of freedom of assembly and association and freedom to express and publish their opinions (Habermas 1974:53). Many scholars have argued that the concept of the bourgeois public sphere, which emerged during the eighteen century, as presented by Habermas was idealized, and that in fact it may be that the public sphere never existed at all(Dietel&McLaughlin2009). Freedom of access and equality are norms to evaluate the democratic possibilities of the newly emerging virtual space . Although internet penetration in the Egyptian society is relatively low ,however, due to a relatively speedy and cheap access to the internet , hundreds of thousands were capable of joining Facebook pages and internet fora . Over several years those activist have found their political voice online and have held their meetings virtually (khamis 2011) ,and the Social media opened a new communications territory, both in terms of accessing other peoples' ideas and in terms of individual expression(Natali 2011 ). Thousands of activists participated daily in an alternative public sphere provided by social networks . For instance in the days leading up to the protests, more than 90,000 people signed up on a Facebook page to attend the Day of Revolution (Fahim& Naggar 2011) . Although it is unknown how many of those who signed up had actually attended the initial protests, however, it can be argued that the number can indicates the online engagement and how the cyberspace was providing sites of rational-critical discourse and shaping public opinion for social change . In a suffocated physical public sphere , such virtual meetings was possible only in a separate alternative space provided in cyberspace , where state power becomes more porous and there is less control'(Giroux, 2009). A major advantage of virtual sphere over physical one is its potential to bring people from diverse backgrounds together. A normative measure for the Habermasian public sphere is that it should be a space where free and equal citizens come together to share information, to debate, to discuss, or to deliberate on common concerns( Habermas 2009: 55). In this regard, this research argues that the model of public sphere, which was proposed by Habermas was in fact best actualized through the social media platforms used in the Egyptian uprising . This is to say that while the bourgeois public sphere was not accessible or affordable to all citizens and genders, the emerging public sphere through social media was , in principle , available to every
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individual. In other words, there were no preconditions to becoming a member of such a public sphere. The Egyptian members of the online discourse were comprised of a diverse group of individuals representing many socio-economic and religious backgrounds (Keif 2011:13). Women whom were not represented in the bourgeois public sphere , were participating in the Egyptian virtual public sphere and the uprising . About 36 percent of Egypts Facebook population is female. Women participate actively in political conversations over Twitter, and were notably present in street gatherings in both Tunisia and Egypt(Howard 2011:17). In regards of equal access to the virtual space in a country such as Egypt with relatively low internet penetration , a question of approximation of the virtual space as a real public sphere may be raised and consequently affect the long-term strategy role of the social media in the Egyptian uprising . In fact, inclusion to the internet can be limited by inequalities from the outside of the online discourse , however , once a person starts to be a member of such virtual sphere social inequalities of all types (based on money, skills, status, etc) do not impact upon participation (Dahlberg 2011. The concern of equality was not affecting the quality of the produced discourse due to its network-like and non-hierarchical structure, the internet was considered as the ideal means of communication for social movements and subaltern groups challenging established power structures ( de Donk 2004 ). About the equality among the participants, it can be conclude that social hierarchies and power relations are leveled out by the 'blindness' of cyberspace to bodily identity, thus allowing people to interact as if they were equals((Dahlberg 2011). Social media slowly resulted in the diminishing of the power of media ownership. Ordinary citizens, from being only consumers to whom information was flowing in a vertical line, transformed to the age of user-generated content, were information flows freely . People use social media not just to receive information but to send it and to connect with one another (Seib 2003: 617). Online public spaces were the place to discuss ideas, establish a shared perspective, and connect with like-minded individuals social media can compensate for the disadvantages of undisciplined groups by reducing the costs of coordination(Shirk 2011). For example , gathering of about a million in We are All Khalid said page to commemorate the death of one youth who was brutally killed by police ,was a way of sharing their own problems , interests and building a discourse of resistance. Disenfranchised people of Egypt who were previously disconnected, and did not have developed political identities, had taken the lead and transformed from content readers to publishers by posting their stories and unfiltered content in the user-generated content (as in the case of posting of Khalid Said brutal killing events in the page ). The broadcasting mechanism had Shifted in the favor of the ordinary citizens from one- to -many to many- to- many era. 'People throughout the region were drawn into an extended conversation about social uprising'. (Howard2011:17). Gradually, many civic virtual societies and communities emerged, and websites quickly came to be used to generate awareness campaigns of many types, by individuals, organizations, movements (Natalia 2011).
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People who shared interest in democracy built extensive social networks and organized political action. Social media became a critical part of the toolkit for grea ter freedom.(Howard 2011) This led to the emergence of numerous Egyptian Facebook pages where the members met virtually and discussed current affairs freely in an unprecedented way. Conversations about liberty, democracy, and revolution on blogs and on Twitter often immediately preceded mass protests (Howard 2011:22). Indeed as the revolution gained momentum, the Egyptian government turned off the internet, thinking that once access was denied the protesters would lose their online coordination mechanisms and the revolution will cease. Zuckerman argues that "The communications channels opened online tend to be compromised quickly, used for disinformation and for monitoring activists. And when protestors get out of hand, governments of closed societies dont hesitate to pull the plug on networks (Zuckerman 2011). Zuckermans argument of the compromisablity of the communication tool could have been the case in Egypt when the government turned off the internet during the revolution. However, despite these restrictions the revolution which began virtually continued physically, this despite the lack of social media platforms during a week of the uprising period . Here I would argue that this was because social media were already functional as a public sphere. For example, the We are all Khalid Said Facebook page was created about 6 months before the uprising and for that entire time the members were engaged in this virtual public sphere to discuss and decide the political actions and the desired social change the protest or activity becomes self-reinforcing, and increases without further direct organization or action by the leadership.(DOnnell 2011) Thus, perhaps in this context an alternative argument by Zuckerm is more relevant to explain how social media served as a public sphere. Zuckerm argues that communication tools may not lead to revolution immediately, but they provide a new rhetorical space where a new generation of leaders can think and speak freely. In the long run, this ability to create a new public sphere, parallel to the one controlled by the state, will empower a new generation of social actors, though perhaps not for many years (Zuckerm2011). Thus, I would conclude that the role of social media in the Egyptian revolution was not only a coordinating or up-to- minute communication tool, but it was also a platform for a long-term strategy used to prepare for and support the revolution. This long-term platform is what I argue enabled ordinary citizens to not only communicate freely, but also to feel empowered to affect physical changes in their society
.

Transnational public sphere A principal feature of the virtual space created through social media platforms is its possibility to transcend the borders and extend further the reach to a broader participation . Online communication transcends geographical borders permitting the formation of transnational
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communities based on shared language, culture, or interests (van de Donk 2004 :47). Social media through creating a transnational virtual space was allowing accessibility to participate from abroad. Many Arab dissenters and youth who were under threat from the government and lived in exile managed to participate and engage effectively with the people inside the country. Wael Ghonim for example was residing outside the country when he created his most influential Facebook page(Khamis 2011). Another advantage of this virtual public sphere in the context of the Arab Spring was its capability of being a transnational public sphere. This is to say, that through online communication Arab youth from different countries were able to exchange ideas and experiences(Natali 2011), in addition to encouragement and support. When the Tunisian revolution took place before the Egyptian revolution and succeeded to overthrow the Tunisian regime, the online communities from the two countries were in communication and the Tunisian youth were encouraging and inspiring the Egyptian youth(Fahim& Naggar 2011). This kind of transnational public sphere could have been impossible in the absence of the virtual public sphere, which was created through the social media platforms. The efficiency of a virtual public sphere
One might argue that Habermass public sphere was formed in a physical space and that its active members were real people, while this new public sphere is a virtual one, and the members or dissenters unreal or anonymous, and that this in turn might render virtual public spheres less efficient in facilitating democracy. This argument may seem plausible on a theoretical level ; however , I argue that the virtual or real nature of a public sphere is not the determinant factor to gain credibility and rationality. Instead, this should be measured by the outcomes and actions resulting from the medium, regardless of whether they originated in a physical or virtual space. Evidence that can be drawn from the Egyptian uprising demonstrates that this new virtual public sphere was effective. Wael Goneim, the creator of the well- known Facebook page We are all Khalid Said, stated in a 60 Minutes CBS interview on 13 February 2011, that our revolution is like Wikipedia, okay? Everyone is contributing content, but you dont know the names of the people contributing the content. This is exactly what happened. Revolution2.0 in Egypt was exactly the same. Everyone contributing small pieces, bits and pieces. We drew this whole picture of a revolution. And no one is the hero in that picture.

Structural transformation of the virtual public sphere There are several points of difference between Habermas sphere and that of the Egyptian revolution. Habermas, in his examination of the structural transformation and development of the public sphere during the eighteenth century, argues that the economic and capitalist modes of production were the main factors in its evolution. He also argues that the liberal democratic environment during that time supported the emergence of the bourgeois public sphere which was realized through newspapers and public discussion forums. On the other hand, the
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structural transformation of the virtual public sphere differs in its evolution process from that of the bourgeois public sphere. The development and creation of this new public sphere in Egypt was enabled through social media platforms and not physical ones. Moreover, the modern Egyptian state or democratic environment didnt play a major role as in the case of the
bourgeois public sphere. Furthermore, economic ideologies such as capitalism were not the main facilitator for this new kind of public sphere, but in fact the driving force was access to new mass media technologies. In other words, the drivers of the new virtual public sphere were external factors rather than the internal dynamics of the Egyptian society on a physical level.

Another aspect of comparison between the transformation and emergence of these two kinds of public spheres is that structurally in the bourgeois public sphere the state or the representative of the public was the king or lord, as was the dictator in the case of Egypt before the revolution. This is to say people were only spectators in both cases. Moreover, during the emergence of the bourgeois public sphere, according to Habermas, civil society organizations participated and contributed towards its evolution, while in the case of the virtual sphere in Egypt civil society organizations have been curtailed, while opposition political parties were almost banned or had limited activities. The main players in the new public sphere were the ordinary people. Another perspective to situate these two public spheres within the private and public domains is that the bourgeois public sphere has emerged from the private sphere of the individual. Habermas argues that this public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public (Habermas 1974:63). In the case of the new virtual public sphere, the space was not totally a private one, but rather a free and open space available for contestation by private, public and all community organizations. By creating a virtual public sphere social media played a major role in accelerating and facilitating the Egyptian popular uprising. For the first time in the countrys recent history the new virtual space allowed the previously marginalized citizens to voice their opinions, and enabled people to organize collective actions. The emergence of social media was a historical moment that effectively ended the age of state-controlled media. This paper argues that this can be best conceptualised as an alternative public sphere that was possibly even more effective than Habermas bourgeois public sphere. As a result of this new emerging public sphere, and the free space it has provided, user-to-user interaction, user-generated contents and horizontal participation have increased and consequently the dormant public consciousness has been revived to reclaim public power.

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Conclusion
This study has assessed the role of social media in the Egyptian uprisings of January and February 2011, using content analysis of primary sources of social media materials as well as examining a cross-section of secondary source, from the mainstream media, scholarly Journals and academic articles. Though there is a wide range of studies confirming that social media has played a role in the Egyptian uprising, there is still disagreement among media experts about the exact role of the social media in mobilizing the Egyptian uprising. This paper, not only argues that social media has played a significant role in the political mobilization, but also presents a temporal analysis distinguishing three different phases during which social media supported. First as pre-revolution phase, social media served as long- term strategy platform, this was enabled by the cyberspace created through social media platforms. In this regard, what makes this paper distinguishable from lots of researches in the same area , is the introduction of Habermass concept of public sphere to approximate the virtual space. The second phase was during the uprising when social media was used as a coordination and organizational tool. Social media as a tool in the hands of the activists, was employed in shaping peoples the narrative. Shaping the narrative was effective during all phases of the uprising . Other findings from the discussion and analysis of the role of social media include consideration of the importance of the context in analysis of society and technology relation. The paper stated that the people behind the social media were the driving forces of the uprising whereas social media were the tool. One of the main advantage of this paper is its capability of being a cornerstone in the study of the role of social media in light of Habermas concept of public sphere .

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