The Social Reckoning, Aaron Sorkin’s sequel to The Social Network, asks how we got here. It is not about Twitter or The Odyssey, of course. It’s about Facebook and how it fueled the January 6th insurrection that attempted to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.
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The Legacy of the “Facebook Revolution”: How did the Arab Spring shape citizen use of social media?
By Joud Walid, Researcher, Media and Journalism Policy Centre
#BlackLivesMatter; #AllEyesOnRafah; #MeToo. While the relationship between social media and activism may seem obvious and inextricable today, the use of digital platforms to organise and mobilise on a mass scale is a recent phenomenon, one that only solidified itself in the early 2010s, following the Arab Spring. But how did these digital platforms, once considered nothing but engaging social diversions, evolve into such powerful tools for mobilisation, especially in times of political upheaval? Furthermore, if social media was truly so central to the Arab Spring, to what extent has its legacy shaped our use of social media today?
The Arab Spring: A Case Study of Mobilisation
Often dubbed the “Facebook Revolution”, the Arab Spring is credited as the first instance where social media platforms were employed on a mass scale for the mobilisation and rallying of people across the Arab World. Widespread dissatisfaction, anger and frustration over the state of political repression, corruption, and economic hardship saw a series of pro-democracy uprisings and protests erupt in countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria, as Arab populations took to the streets to voice their grievances.
The call for liberty quickly seeped into the digital world. Erupting at a time where social media was beginning to play a more ubiquitous role in everyday life, protestors filmed themselves chanting at demonstrations, voicing their demands and capturing unfiltered footage of the injustices they were experiencing, all the while broadcasting it to the world on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. This citizen journalism, delivering real-time content on the ground, unedited and uncensored, transformed regular citizens from observers of activism to activists themselves, with a greater stake as leaders of unfolding events (Alterman, 2011).
The trend in citizen documentation was also monumental in invigorating protest. Notably, the fate of Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouzizi- who self-immolated in protest of the violence and corruption of Tunisian government officials and law enforcement- was initially suppressed and censored by state television.
However, the harrowing images were captured by citizen journalists and shared widely on social platforms, triggering the very first protests of the Arab Spring in Tunisia (Lageman, 2020). Similarly in Syria, the brutal death of thirteen-year-old Hamza Al-Khatib, who was tortured and killed at the hands of the Syrian regime, sparked massive outrage that galvanised the Syrian protest movement in May of 2011- but only after pictures of his disfigured corpse began circulating on social media (Macleod and Flamand, 2011).
In facilitating this circumvention of state censorship, online platforms allowed the world to see the horrors of authoritarianism in the Arab world. Indeed, though these images were poor in quality, they were strong in content, and social media successfully disseminated them to audiences worldwide.
Another key role that social media played in the Arab Spring was the facilitation of mobilisation and organisation. In Egypt and Tunisia in particular, the ‘when’, ‘where’, and ‘how’ of mobilisation was planned on Facebook prior to major demonstrations. The instantaneous communication allowed for the sharing of critical, time-sensitive updates and for rapid mass coordination, which citizens had found extremely difficult, if not impossible, to do in the past (Smidi and Shahin, 2017, 204).
For this same reason, social media campaigns such as the Facebook group ‘We Are All Khaled Said’ and ‘#Jan25’ were able to become viral, helping raise awareness of stories of injustice- such as the death of 25 year old Egyptian Khaled Said due to police brutality. This rapid spread of stories helped internationalise the conflict on an unprecedented scale, forming international solidarity ties and global activist networks.
A protester holds a placard in Tahrir Square, Cairo, highlighting the role of Facebook during the 2011 Egyptian revolution (Source: Wikimedia Commons / Essam Sharaf)
Retired, living in the Scottish Borders after living most of my life in cities in England. I can now indulge my interest in all aspects of living close to nature in a wild landscape. I live on what was once the Iapetus Ocean which took millions of years to travel from the Southern Hemisphere to here in the Northern Hemisphere. That set me thinking and questioning and seeking answers.
In 1998 I co-wrote Millennium Countdown (US)/ A Business Guide to the Year 2000 (UK) see https://www.abebooks.co.uk/products/isbn/9780749427917
