Impact of Facebook on the Egyptian Revolution
Impact Facebook Egyptian revolution
Many people around the world remember that day when hundreds of Egyptians were gathered on the Tahrir square in Cairo, trying to improve the future of Egypt. This scenario was not only noticeable in Egypt, but citizens from many Arab countries came together and demonstrated in order to improve the policy in their countries. It is argued that in for mation and communication technologies, such as the internet, social media and mobile phones have played an important role during the demonstrations in the Middle East and North Africa (Comninos, 2011; Haddadi, 2011, as cited in Mansour, 2012). Information and communication technologies helped achieve many goals that the participants of the demonstrations during the Arab Spring were trying to achieve. The authorities that tried to control the demonstrations in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt by withholding social media, didn’t achieve any success whatsoever by trying to do so (Niekerk et al., 2011, as cited in Mansour, 2012). This essay is going to focus on Egypt and will hereby investigate the impact that Facebook had on the establishment and development of the Egyptian revolution, that began on 25 January 2011. To investigate whether Facebook had an impact on the Egypt revolutions, it is important to be aware of Internet penetration and particularly Facebook penetration in Egypt. Table I shows the extent of the usage of different forms of ICTs in Arabic countries. The Table is based on statistics retrieved from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), United Nations the Arab Media Outlook and the Arab Social Media Report (Mansour, 2012).
As can be seen in the table above, the Facebook penetration per 100 habitants is not very high, but it is also not very low. This means that many people in Egypt do use Facebook, but not to a large extent. Due to the fact that Facebook provided an Arabic language service in March 2009, early political
Many people around the world remember that day when hundreds of Egyptians were gathered on the Tahrir square in Cairo, trying to improve the future of Egypt. This scenario was not only noticeable in Egypt, but citizens from many Arab countries came together and demonstrated in order to improve the policy in their countries. It is argued that in for mation and communication technologies, such as the internet, social media and mobile phones have played an important role during the demonstrations in the Middle East and North Africa (Comninos, 2011; Haddadi, 2011, as cited in Mansour, 2012). Information and communication technologies helped achieve many goals that the participants of the demonstrations during the Arab Spring were trying to achieve. The authorities that tried to control the demonstrations in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt by withholding social media, didn’t achieve any success whatsoever by trying to do so (Niekerk et al., 2011, as cited in Mansour, 2012). This essay is going to focus on Egypt and will hereby investigate the impact that Facebook had on the establishment and development of the Egyptian revolution, that began on 25 January 2011. To investigate whether Facebook had an impact on the Egypt revolutions, it is important to be aware of Internet penetration and particularly Facebook penetration in Egypt. Table I shows the extent of the usage of different forms of ICTs in Arabic countries. The Table is based on statistics retrieved from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), United Nations the Arab Media Outlook and the Arab Social Media Report (Mansour, 2012).
As can be seen in the table above, the Facebook penetration per 100 habitants is not very high, but it is also not very low. This means that many people in Egypt do use Facebook, but not to a large extent. Due to the fact that Facebook provided an Arabic language service in March 2009, early political