The Role of Social Media in the Egyptian Revolution: The Initiation Phase (2010-2011)

Abstract

Social media tools are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Enabled by ubiquitously accessible and scalable communication techniques, social media substantially change the way of communication between organizations, communities, as well as individuals. Facebook, Twitter, Second Life, and blogs are all examples of popular social media tools. One of the reasons why Social media play a very important role nowadays is because of the increase of internet penetration all over the world.
In this paper, we investigate the role social media played in the Egyptian revolution that erupted January 25th, 2011. It has been argued that the Egyptian revolution is a “Social Media Revolution.” No other revolution was conducted using these tools before. The number of people who participated in the revolution grew rapidly because of the number of people using these tools and the amount of information sent instantly. Facebook was used extensively during the revolution to plan and organize protests (Crovitz, L. Gordon. 2011). Even before the revolution began, it was used to spread messages and to bring people together.