Arab Spring Egyptian Revolution: A Crisis Event

Arab Spring Egyptian Revolution: A Crisis Event

Introduction

It is already the one-year anniversary of the ongoing Egyptian revolution. After Hosni Mubarak, one of the most hateful dictators of modern times, was forced to step down on Feb. 11, 2011, the Egyptian Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) took control over the largest, and historically most influential, Arab country (bloomingtonalternative.com). According to experts on Middle East media however, the debate largely failed to take into consideration the specifics of the situation in Egypt. For starters, those familiar with Egypt say that Gladwell's argument about online activism being low-risk does not ring as true in Egypt as it might in the United States. Ask how low risk digital activism is, ask the people who end up in jail being beaten and tortured because they are digital activists, said Lawrence Pintak, the former director of the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research at American University in Cairo and an expert on Middle East media. It's not very low risk to them. It may be to people sitting in New York pontificating.

Courtney Radsch, an Arab media expert, agreed. For a U.S. based person clicking like on something is pretty much as low of a threshold as you need for activism, she said. It is a higher threshold in repressive environments where authorities are surveilling these groups. When the Egyptian government targeted online activists it was usually organizers, not just someone who joined a group, but the risk and the fear were still there. If you live in a place like Egypt...you have to be careful, Radsch said (www.bloomingtonalternative.com).

On the other end of the spectrum, experts also said that those quick to assign credit for the revolution almost exclusively to Facebook and Twitter were oversimplifying the situation. Even worse, they were ignoring a host of other factors that brought about the revolution. To label the Egyptian revolution as the Facebook revolution or a Twitter Revolution is reductionist, Radsch said. Just because [organizers] used a certain technology does not mean that that technology caused the outcome that resulted. Experts also cautioned against giving too much credit to the way at the expense of the will. It was through the action of people coming together...that it became monumental, said Radsch (www.bloomingtonalternative.com). Yes, those tools are very helpful for organizing and mobilizing, but let's face it for five days there was very little Internet or mobile phone access from Egypt and yet the protests only got bigger.

Discussion

The short-lived Arab Spring in the Middle East, lasting from roughly 2004 through the end of 2006, was a period of great hope for change in the region. During this time, there were encouraging signs that democratization was taking hold throughout the Arab world. A series of reforms began to take place in the region, including elections in Algeria, a new constitution in Qatar with direct election of a Consultative Assembly, a call for multi-party presidential elections in Egypt, and the Cedar ...