Social Media-Based Revolutions: Where Open Networks and Political Change Converge

With the recent protests in Egypt and current political unrest in Libya, social media – particularly Facebook and Twitter – have once again come to the forefront as powerful tools for organizing people and disseminating information quickly worldwide.  While it would be unfair to characterize social media itself as causing, creating, or “winning” these revolutions, they do share certain characteristics; the use of social media platforms to organize and disseminate information, the source of breaking news for major and independent news outlets, and often times the government’s attempts to block such sites due to the threat they cause.

Here’s a short (and certainly non-exhaustive) overview of a few key “digital revolutions:”

• The Orange Revolution November 2004-January 2005, Ukraine Elections Protest: Before Facebook was open and Twitter existed, this was hailed as the first revolution to have succeeded due largely to the role of the internet and text messages. Throughout the demonstrations, the Ukraine’s internet usage grew 300% with the development of an independent online media outlet as well as website discussion boards created to share information and detailed reports of election fraud.

• Moldova's "Twitter Revolution" April 2009, Elections Protest: Often characterized as a youth-generated protest, information was quickly shared among protesters and to mainstream news agencies through a twitter hashtag created by the protestors #pman representing Piata Marii Adunari Nationale, the capital Chisinau’s central square. The protests began peacefully as a flashmob, with a group of primarily young people holding lit candles in the capital’s square but quickly grew to more than 10,000 through the use of the Twitter hashtag, with an estimated 50,000 demonstrators involved nationwide. Internet service was quickly shut down to stop the spread of info, but protesters continued to update their twitter account and spread the news via SMS.

• Iranian Elections June 2009: Networking sites like Twitter played such an important role that the US State Department asked them to delay scheduled site maintenance so as to not disturb the sharing of information. From Facebook statuses reporting that users’ friends and family were being held against their will, to videos and pictures of police violence against protesters posted on Flickr and Youtube – the network of users who then took that information and shared it made what would have been a small cry less than a decade ago, a loud roar.

• Tunisia (Jasmine) Revolution December 2010-January 2011: Social and political unrest were driven by high unemployment, food inflation, corruption, lack of freedom of speech and poor living conditions and was ignited when a young man set himself on fire after police confiscated his unlicensed fruit and vegetable cart. 28 days later president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the country after 23 years in power. Once again protests came together largely through informal online networks, specifically Facebook and Twitter, to circulate videos of each demonstration and issue calls for the next one. In fact the threats of such online networks were so serious, that the Tunisian government took great strides to not only block internet access but gather user information about activists through their Facebook profiles and pages.

• 2011 Egyptian Revolution January 2011: Largely inspired by the events in Tunisia, a series of demonstrations, marches, acts of civil disobedience, labor strikes, and violent clashes between protestors and security services and supporters. Many organizers and journalists were beaten and jailed, so activists took to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to spread the word.

What these examples show is that social media networks can trigger news and information to spread within and beyond national boundaries quicker than we’ve ever seen before, through the interaction of independent media outlets and on-the-ground organizers. 

So what does a Social Media-based Revolution look like?

FACEBOOK - It’s no surprise that Africa and Asia are the fastest growing continents on Facebook, according to a recent report from Facebook analytic experts sociabakers.com.

Perhaps the most talked about Facebook page in Egypt is “We Are All Khaled Said” named in honor of the 27-year-old Egyptian blogger beaten to death by police in June. The page became a rallying point for the anti-government protest that began January 25^th. Previously the page was administered by an anonymous user by the name "El Shaheed" (the martyr), but once the protests began it was quickly revealed that Wael Ghonim, a manager at Google Inc. MENA, was one of the main administrators behind the page. He went missing just two days later on January 27^th, on that day he tweeted:

"Pray for #Egypt. Very worried as it seems that government is planning a war crime tomorrow against people. We are all ready to die #Jan25."

His friends, family and colleagues had no idea where he was until they found out days later that he was detained by the authorities. He was released after 12 days and “We Are All Khaled Said,” with currently 97,140 fans, continues to actively report on the status in Egypt as well as spreading photos, videos and news reports coming from Libya’s current unrest.

TWITTER – With a relatively small base of Twitter users in the Czech Republic, I often hear people say “I heard of Twitter but I have no clue how it works!” That being said, the description I most often give is that Twitter and Tweets are named in such a way because it’s like the sound of birds communicating with each other from distant locations. With Twitter you join conversations, and the hashtags create searchable terms so that people who don’t know each other and aren’t connected, can share their thoughts on the same subject.

Perhaps a visual will help you to imagine. The following video was created by André Panisson to show "through the eyes of a Dynamic Network Analyst," the explosion of tweets directly reacting to Mubarak’s speech on February 11, 2011. Each small circle represents a tweet with the hashtag #jan25 and every time someone “retweeted” (passes on a tweet from one user to the rest of their users) that tweet, a line was drawn between them. This shows how a small bunch of 140 character tweets, by mostly unrelated users, became a full on network IN JUST ONE HOUR!

Last week I met with a successful Czech Facebook expert who quite confidently told me he had no reason to believe that the Czech Republic would ever start using Twitter. Considering Twitter is currently estimated to have between 800,000 and 1.2 million users worldwide, I find it hard to believe that it won’t eventually become a source of news and information exchange for those of us living in the Czech Republic. Maybe all it takes is the moment when we really need it.