2011-02-09 13:04:06
9 February 2011 Last updated at 06:00 GMT
By Anne Alexander University of Cambridge
Protesters use their mobile phones to photograph a burning police vehicle
during clashes in Cairo on 28 January 2011 Footage of protests filmed on mobile
phones has been aired back to the world by satellite channels
A few days after the fall of Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, a
Jordanian newspaper printed a joke apparently doing the rounds in Egypt: "Why
do the Tunisian youth 'demonstrate' in the streets, don't they have Facebook?"
Only six days later, protests across Egypt co-ordinated by a loose coalition of
opposition groups - many of which are very largely organised through Facebook -
seemed to prove this cynicism wrong.
Certainly, the Egyptian government reacted quickly: blocking social media sites
and mobile phone networks before pulling the plug on Egypt's access to the
internet.
This act of censorship was spectacularly unsuccessful.
Friday 28 January saw literally millions take control of the streets in an epic
"Day of Rage". Nor did the blackout cut off news of the demonstrations and stop
protesters communicating with each other.
Protest leaders had already agreed to call for demonstrations starting from key
mosques, and marchers rallied at Friday prayers before heading for the city
centres and key government buildings.
Satellite channels - particularly al-Jazeera - broadcast live coverage all day,
constantly updated by telephone reports filed from landlines by its network of
correspondents across Egypt.
Broad spectrum
The events of 28 January are particularly important, because they contain
crucial clues to understanding the broader relationship between the media -
both "new" and "old" - and the mass movement for change which has developed in
Egypt over the past few weeks.
Firstly, the fact that an internet and mobile phone blockade failed shows
clearly that this movement is not based on the web. In fact, the movement which
erupted on 25 January has brought together many groups who have taken to the
streets over the past 10 years.
A shop in Tahrir Square is spray painted with the word Twitter after the
government shut off internet access on 4 February Protesters have been using a
range of different media - including Twitter - for communication
They are varied socially and politically, ranging from workers to bloggers and
democracy campaigners, to senior judges, to members of the Muslim Brotherhood
and Coptic Christians.
This is the first time they have all demonstrated together, and the first time
they have been joined by millions of their fellow citizens. But it is important
to understand that this movement builds on a legacy of protest by many
different activist networks, most of which are not primarily organised online.
Secondly, it is clear that the protesters use a range of different media to
communicate with each other and to get their message across.
I was in Tahrir Square on Sunday: everywhere you look there are mobile phones,
hand-written placards, messages picked out in stones and plastic tea cups,
graffiti, newspapers and leaflets, not to mention al-Jazeera's TV cameras which
broadcast hours of live footage from the square everyday. When one channel of
communication is blocked, people try another.
Every mass movement needs spaces where political alternatives can be debated
and organisation can take place.
In the 1940s, the last time that Egypt saw mass protests on a similar scale,
radical bookshops, underground newspapers and illegal trade union meetings
played this role.
For the current generation some of these spaces have been online.
I asked Ahmed, a socialist activist in Tahrir Square, what role he thought the
internet was playing in mobilising protest.
"Online organising is very important because activists have been able to
discuss and take decisions without having to organise a meeting which could be
broken up by the police," he said.
'Offline' political action
Online networks are only relatively "safer" from repression: Khaled Said was
dragged out of an internet cafe and beaten to death by policemen last summer.
Wael Ghonim, a Google executive, hugs the mother of Khaled Said, a young
businessman who died last June at the hands of undercover police, at Cairo's
Tahrir Square. Photo: 8 February 2011 Google's Wael Ghonim (left) is credited
with setting up a Facebook page to organise protesters
The Egyptian security forces reportedly recently set up a special unit to
monitor internet activists.
But in Egypt today, there are vast numbers of people online, making it far more
difficult for the state to track them all.
Even in poor urban and rural areas people can access the internet through
shared connections.
The Facebook group set up to protest at Khaled Said's death is "liked" by
nearly 600,000 people and was a key organising centre for the current protests.
Mobile phone use has grown exponentially in the past few years, reaching around
80% of the population according to recent figures.
Now footage of protests and police repression filmed on mobile phone cameras is
being broadcast back to millions of Egyptians by the satellite channels.
Online organising does not automatically bring people onto the streets. In
2008, a Facebook group calling for a general strike attracted tens of thousands
of members but only relatively small street protests took place in Cairo,
largely on the university campuses.
Ahmed believes that Egyptian activists have developed sophisticated ways of
knowing when online protest will generate offline political action.
"People learn quickly. They look at who is calling for a protest, and if it is
someone they know and trust they are much more likely to take part."
They also learn by example. The fall of Ben Ali showed people across the Arab
world, and not just political activists, that popular protests could bring down
a dictator.
It is that hope, and not the internet, which is driving this movement forward.
Anne Alexander is a Buckley Fellow at the Centre for Research in the Arts,
Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Cambridge