Was it indeed a Revolution 2.0?
Possibilities and limits of the new technologies
in the political perturbations
through the Arab world and Spain
in the first half of 2011
Dubrovnik, June 1st, 2011
Inoslav Bešker
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Facebook baby
A young Egyptian man has named
his firstborn Facebook Jamal Ibrahim
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Puerta del Sol
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Ghonim’s book Revolution 2.0
• American publisher
Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt anounced
Ghonim’s book
Revolution 2.0 for
January 25th, 2012
• Was it a revolution?
• Was it a 2.0?
Wael Ghonim
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What’s going on in 2011?
• Tunis: President Ben Ali ousted, and government
overthrown.
• Egypt: President Hosni Mubarak ousted, and government
overthrown.
• Libya: divided by civil war, experiencing a NATO
intervention.
• Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain: Civil uprisings against the
governments, despite government changes.
• Jordan, Kuwait, and Oman: implementing government
changes in response to protests.
• Algeria, Iraq, Western Sahara etc.: ongoing protests.
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Rebellions and riots 2011
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Causes of the riots
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demographic structural factors,
unemployment and poverty,
lack of perspective for youngsters
human rights violations,
government corruption,
dictatorship,
inflation,
etc.
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Youth presence
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A match which set
the Arab world on fire
• The self-immolation of a street
vendor Mohammed Bouazizi
(26) in the town of Sidi Bouzid in protest of the confiscation of
his wares and the humiliation
that was inflicted on him by a
municipal official - led to the
downfall of the Tunisian
President Zine al-Abedine Ben
Ali.
• #SidiBouzid
• Self-immolations in Algeria,
Jordan, Mauritania, Saudi
Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Iraq
Mohammed Bouazizi, suicide
by immolation in Sidi Bouzid,
Tunisia, on December 18, 2010
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Jasmine revolution
• My name is freedom. Born in Tunisia, raised
in Egypt, studied in Yemen, fought in Libya
and I'll grow up in the Arab world. @AliTweel,
Twitter
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Egypt #Jan25
• Young Egyptian Khaled Said was beaten to
death by police in June 2010.
• Facebook page „We are all Khaled Said” in
Arabic was ran by Google executive Wael
Ghonim, who runs #Jan25 too
• Facebook page „We are all Khaled Said” in
English
(http://www.facebook.com/elshaheeed.co.uk)
has 119,744 „likes” as for May 31.
• Its main topics now are Syria and Egypt
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Bahrain #Feb14
• As in Egypt, many of those
with the latest mobile
phones used live web
streaming devices to
broadcast images directly
from the protests.
• Sites such as Ustream,
Livestream and Bambuser
have enabled young
protesters to take to the
internet and filming live,
while simultaneously taking
part in the protests.
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Lybia #Feb17
• On 17 February 2006 security forces killed at
least a dozen protesters in Tripoli, while the
following year 14 activists were detained for
calling for action on the same day.
• The Libyan movement took a symbolic name
#Feb17
• Its main Facebook page
(http://www.facebook.com/17022011libya)
attracted 140,823 members as for May 31.
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„Who’s afraid of Twitter?”
• “We use Facebook to
schedule the protests,
Twitter to coordinate, and
YouTube to tell the world”
(A Cairo activist, according
to: Howard, Philip N. (201102-23). „The Cascading
Effects of the Arab Spring”.
Miller-McCune.com. Santa
Barbara)
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Social media according to Wiki
• Social media are media for
social interaction, using
highly accessible and
scalable communication
techniques.
• Distinct from industrial or
traditional media, print or
electronic ones.
• Social media is the use of
web-based and mobile
technologies to turn
communication into
interactive dialogue.
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Nothing to lose but their chains
• Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define
social media as „a group of Internet-based
applications that build on the ideological and
technological foundations of Web 2.0, which
allows the creation and exchange of usergenerated content.” (Kaplan, Andreas M.;
Michael Haenlein (2010). "Users of the world,
unite! The challenges and opportunities of
Social Media". Business Horizons 53 (1): 59–
68.)
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Revolution + Web 2.0
• Lenin: Socialism = Soviets + Electrification
– (pattern: organization + new technology)
• Revolution 2.0 = Revolution + Social Media (as coined
for Iran 2009 by some witty journalist)?
• Is that a revolution (which one: social? political?
cultural? every?) through the social media?
• Or is enough to consider a social media „integral to a
revolution”? (Kirkpatrick, David D. (2011-02-09).
"Wired and Shrewd, Young Egyptians Guide Revolt".
The New York Times.)
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Internet in the Arab world
• Internet access ranges from only 5%
(Libya) to 34% (Tunisia).
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Egypt and Internet
• Egypt: Only 20% of
population have ever
used Internet.
• “Tunisia, Egypt and
Yemen have a combined
total of 14,642 Twitter
users”
• PC ownership remains
almost exclusively
available to the upper
and upper middle
classes.
Photo: Essam Sharaf
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Synergy with the industrial media
• 24-hour news channel Al Jazeera reaches 40 million viewers in
the Arab world.
• Its willingness to broadcast both original citizen journalism and
diverse views allowed Arab citizens without computers to see
the digital content.
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Flip the Media hypothesis
• The question is not if but how could digital and social
media possibly become the conduit for tens of
thousands of protesters?
• Social media alone did not facilitate the Arab
Revolution, but was a successful catalyst when
combined with myriad methods of digital and
traditional media.
• Technological advances like cell phones, video
cameras, blog posts and Facebook, in conjunction
with more traditional media outlets like Al Jazeera,
created the circumstances for such effective
information dissemination.
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Osman Suleiman’s strategy
• Egyptian blocking tried to enhance a new strategy:
• not more blocking the communication of the own
country towards the abroad, isolating foreign media,
filtering their correspondence, but blocking the
communications in the own country:
• ordered service providers to shut down all
international connections to the Internet
• blocked Al Jazeera on cable TV
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In 13 minutes
• January 27, 2011, 00.34: Every Egyptian
provider, every business, bank, Internet cafe,
website, school, embassy, and government
office that relied on the big four Egyptian ISPs
- Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt,
Etisalat Misr - for their Internet connectivity
were cut off from the rest of the world, and all
their customers and partners were, for several
days, off the air.
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Egypt’s „innovation”
• It was a completely different situation from
the modest Internet manipulation that took
place
• in Tunisia, where specific routes were blocked,
• or Iran, where the Internet stayed up in a ratelimited form designed to make Internet
connectivity painfully slow.
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Wiped from the global map
• The Egyptian government's actions from January 27th
to February 2nd have essentially wiped their country
from the global map.
• So it is possible. But it has a price.
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The result of blackout
• During the Internet blackout Mubarak was forced to
resign, and Suleiman failed to take the power.
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Just a signal
• Libya stopped its Internet
providers only for seven hours
on February 19th. Business is
business, and the politics is a
business too.
• In the same period the Al
Jazeera’s TV signal was blocked.
• On the same day Bahrain
Internet service started to slow.
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Similis simili gaudet
• China immediately blocked
any coverage of ‘Jasmine
Revolution’ protests in
Tunisia, as reported by the
Bloombergs Business Week
(2011/02/20).
• Even a jasmine flowers are
banned from China’s shops,
as reported by la
Repubblica.
• A jasmine tea persists.
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#spanishrevolution
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„Democracia Real Ya”
• Indignados
• Ni-ni: nor violents,
neither blind
citizens
• Occupation of the
public space
(Puerta del Sol)
• Horizontal
organization
• Wireless cooperation
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A different poverty
• 200 attorneys linked at #acampadadesol
• 15 phisicians
• 7 solar cells, 15 computers…
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Hashtags
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#nonosvamos,
#yeswecamp,
#democraciarealya,
#notenemosmiedo,
#tomalaplaza,
#pijamabloc.
#acampadabcn,
#acampadavalencia…
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Fast spreading throgh the world
• 2009: Iran’s
protest
reached
Philippines
in two days
• 2011:
#spanishrevo
lution
reached 40
Spanish and
24 European
towns in four
days
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Progress
• Instruments of the new
technologies are the result
of the technological
progress, they participate in
the progress of the social
communications, but there
is no a strict correlation
between them and a social
progressivity of the political
content transmitted by
those instruments.
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Modern conservatives
• The new technologies have
been used sometimes for a
propagation of very
conservative or even
reactionary positions:
– Khomeini’s audiocassettes
– Osama’s video messages
– Vatican’s multimedia etc.).
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„Against every unjust”
• So is the Facebook, or Tweeter, the miraculous
receipt?
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Protest and communication
• No single Tweet or Facebook group compelled
the thousands of people to march, neither in
Egypt, nor in Spain.
• Digital and social media facilitated
communication between and within
protesters.
• Protesters need to spread the word in every
possible way.
• Every new communication technology offers a
new possible way.
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A journalist’s view
• „Tunisia's revolution
isn't a product of
Twitter or WikiLeaks.
But they do help.”
(Timothy Garton
Ash, Guardian, 201101-19)
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Limits of a “Revolution 2.0”
• Needs, frustrations, and
ideas kindle the fire of
revolution, not the Internet
alone.
• Social media can:
– spread ideas,
– spread information,
– ease recruitment and
coordination,
– attract industrial media
attention
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Literature
• Cowie, James (2011-01-27), „Egypt Leaves the Internet”. Renesys.
• Kaplan, Andreas M.; Michael Haenlein (2010). "Users of the world, unite!
The challenges and opportunities of Social Media". Business Horizons 53
(1): 59–68.)
• Kirkpatrick, David D. (2011-02-09). "Wired and Shrewd, Young Egyptians
Guide Revolt". The New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/world/middleeast/10youth.html?_
r=1.
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…AND NOW LET’S DISCUSS IT
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Inoslav Bešker
MIREES
inoslav@besker.com
Inoslav.besker@unibo.it
www.unibo.it
ANY QUESTION?
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