Social Media Catalyst in Tunisian Revolution

As unemployment and anger continued to proliferate in Tunisia, the country became fertile ground for an internet-enabled uprising. Despite a well educated population (with a median age of 24), the country had not created enough jobs for the vast number of young people obtaining secondary and college degrees, particularly in the interior and western parts of the country. Tunisia’s 10 million residents and two million expatriate citizens are avid users of technology, however: 85% of the population has cell phones (5% smart phones), and roughly two million of them are on Facebook. At the time of the Revolution, Twitter had a far smaller footprint, with perhaps 500 active users within the country’s borders, and other sites such as YouTube were government-censored entirely, making facebook even more critical in the coming revolution. 

Facebook ultimately played a huge role in the removal of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, a leader blamed for the country's struggles and someone synonymous with abusing power and running the country's economy into the ground. As tensions rose,  it was then that the movement became almost a viral phenomenon, and as it drew more and more people, the center of online action moved to Facebook. A much more popular medium in Tunisia than Twitter, it was also a more visual one — photos and videos posted on Facebook made the protesters’ case in a visceral way. Facebook began to transcend it's intended use at this point, becoming a showcase of horrors and atrocities and a much more impactful medium on a global scale than Mr. Zuckerberg could have ever intended. The social media site became a connecting force, one that expedited communication while also contextualizing the struggles of an entire nation. Online videos of police brutality and violent response to protesters went viral through Facebook, and provoked real, fiery responses from Tunisians, such as from Asmaa Mahfouz's viral vlog that calls for action and further bemoans the violence and turmoil her nation is in.  These disturbing videos triggered emotional responses that would lead to them spreading throughout social circles. The outcry from these videos not only helped many Tunisians wake up and acknowledge a bigger problem, but also inspired them to use social media in the first place in a truly productive and revolutionary way.

Finally, as the government pushed back via mass media, the internet provided a way for protesters to poke holes in stories promulgated through official channels. When video of a counter-protest in favor of President Ben Ali was shown on television, for instance, activists could post their own footage of the same event that showed that very few people had actually attended — the television cameras had been carefully placed to give the illusion of a large crowd (a tactic common at political rallies in the U.S., too).

In another example, activists were able to show that cars parading in the streets in support of the government were actually rentals, not exactly a sign of a spontaneous event. More tragically, they posted videos of people killed by police only minutes after the president declared that the government would no longer respond with violence, including one of a young woman shot in the head as she came back from the market with a carton of milk — she had wrongly trusted that it was safe to go out.

Throughout the last days of the street protests, social channels also helped people come to consensus quickly as the situation changed from hour to hour. When bloggers, activists and musicians were rounded up and taken into custody, protesters could switch their emphasis to arguing for their release. Every time the president spoke, people would write in mass numbers and reach an agreement that demonstrations need to continue. And when the country’s Prime Minister attempted to invoke the country’s constitution on January 14, lawyers and others were able to show that he was citing the wrong part of the document and hence was trying to act illegally, a move that backfired. Social media emboldened and empowered people in a way previously not thought possible, and helped inspire a sense of digital democracy in the midst of a dictatorship. 

Facebook integral to revoultion

“We Are All Khaled Said", the page

that one could argue marked the beginning of social media's outsized impact on the Egyptian Revolution,  was made by Wael Ghonim, a 29-year-old Google marketing executive. When analyzing how social media, particularly facebook, became so important in mobilizing a digital revolution, it's important to not lose sight of the detail that makes the medium so influential in the first place. Ghonim seemed to have perfectly mastered the ability to reach a community hell bent on change and used facebook in a way that was previously not believed to be possible.

In his “We Are All Khaled Said" page dedicated to the symbol of police brutality in egypt, the arguments he makes are highly substantive, listing detailed grievances which focus heavily on poverty and police torture, and to a lesser degree on the disingenuousness of Egyptian state media. Many of the his complaints are extremely detailed; he objects, for example, to the high cost of supplementary education lessons for which Egyptian parents feel the need to pay. Postings on the page include actual statistics on the rates of poverty, depression, suicide, unemployment, newborn deaths, anemia, Hepatitis C, cancer due to water pollution, and income disparity among Egyptian citizens, as well as the country’s ranking on the Corruption Perceptions Index and ratio of ambulance cars to citizens.

Furthermore, the page diagnoses causal factors—arguing, for example, that police corruption has been caused by poverty—and prescribes broad remedies, such as the need for collective solutions to individual problems and for a focus on commonalities in order to eliminate classism and religious hatred. Ghohim advances solutions which are likewise thoughtful and specific, with proposals such as increasing education budgets and revising pedagogy in schools.

The postings are not only substantive but also coherent. In fact, Ghonim develops a political platform, listing four demands for the Mubarak regime—addressing poverty, ending emergency law, firing the country’s Interior Minister, and instituting term limits on the presidency—and offers eight guidelines for protesting, in order to ensure safety and promote efficacy. In other words, the page resembles the communications of a full-fledged political organization or movement, yet lacks an offline structure or membership. Prior to the creation of the Facebook page, it did not exist.

Ghonim showed how social media postings can actually be remarkably sophisticated. In reality, it is unlikely that an ordinary citizen participating in protests—not just in Egypt but in any nation—is likely to seek information beyond the level of depth offered by statistics such as the ratio of ambulances to citizens. The page owner’s postings successfully present evidence in support of a coherent ideology and set of demands remarkable for their thoughtfulness and consistency.