Facebook & the Revolution
Natalie Copty
ID: 900070566
JRMC – 460
Dr. Kim Fox
(Start w/natsnd of TV news anchors covering the Egyptian revolution)
(Music w/natsnd)
LEAD IN: The very famous Facebook was the secret recipe to start a whole
revolution that stayed for a couple of weeks and ended up with a big success that lead
to the resignation of ex. President Hosni Mubarak.
(natnd of people protesting in Tahrir Square.)
(Music w/natsnd)
Roqayah Tbeileh, a journalism and political science student at AUC, and a
Palestinian activist who was very involved in the Egyptian Revolution; she in fact got
shot 13 times with rubber bullets while participating in the protests that took place in
Tahrir Square. Roqayah discusses how the revolution started through Facebook:
Tbeileh: "The thing I first heard as a comment on that was like "revolution doesn’t
start on Facebook" and I don’t know, I had mixed feeling about it and I couldn’t make
up my mind about it. And after 25th came actually we saw thousands of people in
Tahrir standing over there demanding the removal of the regime or the system and the
president and actually I thought that it was an efficient way to start a
revolution."(0:28)
It wasn’t very easy for people to believe the idea of Facebook starting a
revolution, Tarek Amr, another AUC student and an Egyptian activist talks about how
he couldn’t really trust the whole Facebook idea of starting a revolution:
Amr: " So I was checking out Facebook one day, and then I found like a lot of groups,
five six groups , people saying about there is going to be a revolution on a certain day
and that was like two, three days before and I didn’t really think it would happen. I
did not make an effort to join any of those groups because I thought it was useless and
I seriously thought I would go to prison if I join these groups. And then when it
actually happened and all this appeared in news I didn’t realize that Facebook is
actually the one that set these groups are actually how the revolutions started." (0:40)
(ntsnd of people protesting in Tahrir Square)
Nour Kamel, one of the admins and the creators of the Revolution Groups on
Facebook talks about her experience and says how the Egyptian government
interfered.
Kamel: "To be very honest, we didn’t expect all that response to our Facebook group,
at first we just wanted to start a protest against emergency law, and then when we
thought about it we made our mission a bit broader and more impossible which is to
remove Hosni Mubarak as a president. But who knew it would actually succeed.
Clearly as we can see Facebook was the first push and it definitely gathered huge
amounts of people but Facebook didn't keep the revolution going. It's the people in the
streets that kept the high momentum and increased the crowds. There was a huge
sense of unity of power and of optimism." (0:41)
But what is the connection between this revolution and older ones, or maybe
we can say older protests when technology wasn’t even used or available to that
amount of people and before creating Facebook?!
Tbeileh: " I thought about it for a second I was like weren't the people who first
created flyers also used them for revolutions back then? Yeah they did, and some
people said 'No revolutions do not start with flyers on trees'". (0:19)
Amr: "The whole internet and Facebook like they say "this is a Facebook revolution
it's not an internet revolution" because it's just easier to reach a significant amount of
people in such a short time. In two or three days the groups reached over millions and
that’s in a very very short time and when you compare this to the revolutions that
came before like the revolutions in the 50's I don’t think they could’ve reached that
many people with flyers or just words of mouth so I think that Facebook facilitated
the whole thing" (0:40)
Kamel: " I don't feel such a strong connection between this revolution and past ones
except clearly the reason behind them: like the discontent of the ruling regimes. I'd
say the major difference in this one was on one hand the technological input like the
internet and Facebook, media coverage or mobile phones, and the people in the sense
where people from ALL social and economical classes participated and united
towards the same goal, but in the past the elites and the high class people would never
ever join such protests, but in this one It really felt like we were all a big family
fighting for the same cause, and that really was really unbelievable." (0:43)
The government shutdown some certain profiles on Facebook and then the
Facebook page stopped working and after a while the whole internet was shut down,
Roqayah Tbeileh discusses that saying:
Roqayah: "on Friday the 28th I remember they cut off Facebook and the internet
connection and the network wasn’t working at all, people couldn't reach us or call us.
And me myself I live alone in Egypt and my parents live in Jordan they couldn’t reach
me they contacted the embassy they contacted the foreign ministry in Jordan and they
tried to contact anyone in Egypt but they couldn’t. And then I knew that because they
cut off Facebook I knew that they had a major role in this revolution" (0:39)
Tarek Amr also noticed that many of his friends profiles on Facebook got shut
down because they were extremely active on the groups that started the revolution.
Amr: Basically almost all the people that I know that are AUCians they all
participated in the revolution since it began just because of Facebook and most of
them were like extremely Facebook active, but the people who were in general active
they took the whole revolution groups up to a whole new level. And they started
putting statuses every single minute and updating people about everything and
actually some of those people that I know were very active like more than usual, their
Facebook got shutdown. And they tried getting back their Facebook for more than a
month and then till like a month later they started appearing again." (0:45)
Since Nour Kamel is one of the people who created those Facebook groups
that started the revolution, her Facebook profile got shut down a couple of times and it
wasn’t easy getting it back.
Kamel: "I believe shutting down the internet was both a sign of weakness of the
government and a sign of the extent of corruption within the country. I really disagree
with it completely. But it was a good tactic to limit people connecting with each other
especially that most of us were in touch through Facebook, and my Facebook was
shut for a week after the internet came back. I wasn't on Facebook anymore I couldn't
retrace it anywhere it reappeared a week and a half later and i had to go through some
weird identity checks before i was able to access it again. (0:32)
Since the youth created those Facebook groups that started the revolution, then
is AUC and AUC students related to the revolution?
(Music)
When Roqayah saw the AUC old campus in Tahrir she felt home, but she had
doubts about those feelings.
Tbeileh: "So I went on Friday and I was with a group of AUCians actually, a group of
friends they were activists and they were always into politics and political activities,
once we reached Tahrir after a series of battles, I call them battles it was a war zone I
was amazed to find the old AUC campus being attacked but also people were
attacking us from the campus, as I said I had mixed feelings like I wanted to protect
that place I told everyone that this is my building this is my institution and at the same
time I was attacked from it so I don’t know what happened I couldn’t understand what
happened. Then I saw the reaction and people were attacking the administration for
letting that happen." (0:52)
(natsnd of ambulance and people shouting)
But Tarek Amr's experience was a bit different.
Amr: " I think that this whole revolution thing is completely related to students and
students started the whole thing mostly and students are the ones that fueled the whole
revolution and people from different universities came together and I saw that the
perfect example is in Tahrir were AUCians stood by each other they were all
preaching to a certain crowd and you find people from GUC doing the same thing and
on another corner people from Gamet El Kahira, and the same thing you see on
Facebook all the people that know each other and come from the same group since
they' re all students its related to your university. So people felt obliged or like they
felt the sense of responsibility that they wanted to present their own university. So
while saying who am I and my identity, the fact that I am an AUC student I think it
came as part of my identity in this whole thing." (1:22)
Since Nour Kamel is an AUC graduate she feels that AUC's name was
affected by the revolution and the revolution was affected by AUC.
Kamel: " AUC's name was mentioned a couple of times on the news, since AUC old
campus is located in Tahrir square the main place where people were revolting and
protesting, But unfortunately many of the protestors said things like "AUC is an
American institute that is totally with Mubarak and stuff" and they started throwing
rocks and things on the building to destroy it, but there were also people saying that
AUC students were filling Tahrir and were participating almost every day in the
revolution Since they are Egyptians and love Egypt just as much we all do." (0:34)
(Music w/natsnd of people chanting)
Kamel: "People got hurt, wounded, passed out all in front of my eyes! and at some
point we all started running because the army officers started attacking and driving
forward towards us spraying chlorine water and shooting rubber bullets at us. then
later they killed someone as it wasn't shot in the air but on people… like directly
towards the people." (0:23)
Roqayah Tbeileh, Tarek Amr, and Nour Kamel strongly believe that Facebook
was the starting point of the revolution , but nevertheless they also believe that it is
the people who continued in protesting everyday when there was no way of
communication whether on Facebook or any other tool, since the government shut
down Facebook.
But no one can deny the significant effect of media , and how people for the first time
in Egypt were organized in a big event , coming all at the same time and the same
place, thanks to Facebook.
This is Natalie Copty, AUC
(Song Ya Bladi)