On 26 January 2011, Nisrin, 1 a young Egyptian activist, and her friend were sitting in a restaurant called Mezzaluna in Zamalek, Cairo. The previous day, they had witnessed something that their generation had never seen before. Thousands of Egyptians of all ages had flooded into Cairoās Tahrir Square. The organising group had already planned to protest against police repression on 25 January, but the waves of protests coming from Tunisia brought them further hope. They raised their demands and, online and offline, started calling for an end to Mubarakās rule. Filled with the emotions of the last few days, Nisrin met with her friend to talk about how they could join the protests that would take place on Friday 28. The waitresses within the restaurant who eavesdropped on Nisrin and her friend stopped by their table and joined the conversation. Nisrin was surprised to see the attention paid to āKullena Khaled Saidā (āWe are all Khaled Saidā) Facebook page, the most popular online platform during the Egyptian revolution of early 2011. The waitresses were not on Facebook at the time, yet they all knew about the protest call on the Facebook page and wanted to hear more about it. When the waitresses finished their shifts, no one left the table. They all debated and discussed what would happen on Friday 28. Amazed by the attention, Nisrin and her friend strongly encouraged the waitresses to join them during the protests.
On 27 January, Nisrin slept at her friendās place on Gezira Street so that they could walk to Tahrir Square, where the protesters would gather the next day. Two years later, in a cafĆ© in London, Nisrin describes the scene to me with the same excitement she felt on that day.
Gezira is close to Tahrir. On the streets, there were people who were looking like me, like American University of Cairo students. They really didnāt have the courage to face the violence alone. So, we marched together. But we were subject to so many gas bombs. Everyone was tired and we decided to sit on the sidewalks. It was horrible, we were extremely exhausted. Then, all of a sudden, we saw a big group composed of young men all wearing tank tops coming and at the front of the group, there were the two waitresses from Mezzaluna. They were leading the whole group!
Nisrinās memories of 28 January reflect the enthusiasm and desire of both poor and middle-class young Egyptians for political change. The unification of the different groups on 28 January was the result of a communication strategy carefully planned by the Egyptian activists. By using both online and offline communication tactics, which constitute the topic of this book, the activists reached different segments of society and mobilised them. The day marked a turning point in Egyptian history. Coming out from Friday prayers, tens of thousands of Egyptians all over the country engaged in confrontations with police to demand the end of President Hosni Mubarakās rule (Abaza and Youssef 2011). Learning from their past experience, the organising group was not expecting a revolution similar to that in Tunisia. 2 However, the thousands of protestors on the small streets of Cairo battled the police, making demands for an end to hunger, poverty, unemployment, inflation, rising rents and the looting of public wealth (Cole 2014: 148). Attacked by the protesters, the police stations under fire signalled the beginning of the end of Mubarakās three decades of rule. Only 15 days later, Mubarak stepped down as president, handing power to the army. The wave of protests which started in Tunisia brought hope to the Egyptians and encouraged the public to pour out onto the streets. This hope then spread to Libya, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain. The protests have been described by scholars as cascading popular democracy movements (Howard and Hussein 2013: 3). The online posts, about revolution and liberty, went viral and were widely forwarded to larger circles of people until they reached saturation point (Cole 2014: 12ā13).
However, by the end of 2012, the emotions of hope and joy that had once accompanied the word ārevolutionā in the Middle East had vanished. In the two countries upon which this book focuses, democratic rule has never taken root. Instead, Egypt has embarked on another era of military rule, while Syria has become one of the most desolate places on Earth (Alaoui 2016). Due to the authoritarian backlash, the voices of protesters were utterly drowned out in both countries, and publication of books on the mobilisation attempts of activists has dwindled. The crackdown on activists created a pressing need for those involved to voice their opinions and bring attention to the atrocities they experienced during the protests.
In this book, I aim to present a deep investigation of the protest organisation and mobilisation tactics of young activists in the digital age, and seek patterns as to which tactics worked well and which created the high risks associated with involvement in digitally supported movements. For this aim, I focus on the uprisings that took place in Egypt and Syria during 2011. Unsurprisingly, with the proliferation of digitally supported movements in 2011, many scholars have already addressed the historical origins of the Arab uprisings and the mobilisation attempts of the activists. Particularly, the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in protests became a popular topic in the communications field (Gerbaudo 2012: 3). This book builds on this research and analyses how activists used ICTs during the 2011 protests in Syria and Egypt. It also develops the research by offering rich and unique data on the different mobilisation techniques and protest experiences of key Egyptian and Syrian activists.
Moreover, the majority of communication studies on the Arab uprisings focus on Tunisia and Egypt, where ICTs played a crucial role (Lim 2012). The development of digital activism in Egypt, which led to the formation of ElBaradeiās Facebook page and contributed to the removal from power of Hosni Mubarakās regime, was studied in detail by scholars (Faris 2013: 4). They often drew a connection between technology diffusion, the use of social media and political change (Castells 2012; Howard and Parks 2012: 360). Some also drew attention to the fact that individual members of the public are not inclined to join formal organisations for protest organisation. The Internet is used as an organisation tool, and the rapid flow of messages from one originator to potentially millions of people has replaced the role of social movement organisations, leaders and their internal and external resources in the mobilisation process behind these uprisings (Castells 2012: 15; Bennett and Segerberg 2013: 1). However, does the Internet always have a positive impact on the mobilisation process of protests in similar regimes? If not, what were the structural factors that affect the use of ICTs? I started this research with these questions in mind. To respond to them, besides countries such as Egypt where protesters successfully adopted ICTs, research must focus on countries where ICTs could not become the main organisational hub of the protesters. So far, studies on countries where protesters struggled to mobilise via digital media channels have been somewhat anecdotal. The Syrian uprising was a great example of this problem. Despite the ongoing armed conflict in Syria, few studies have explored in detail the organisation and mobilisation attempts of the peaceful activists who engaged in demonstrations in early 2011 in Syria. The different mobilisation tactics undertaken by Syrian and Egyptian activists during the 2011 protests and the reasons behind these choices offer the perfect opportunity to study the organisation and mobilisation of digitally supported movements in different contexts.
Method
For a rigorous and accurate assessment of the role of ICTs in the protests, this book adopts a comparative approach. I argue that the comparative method is the best approach for shedding light on the diverse and shared experiences of Arab countries with ICTs. It also enables in-depth insight into different cases and captures the complexity of these (Rihoux 2006). Drawing on semi-structured interviews with activists, this book compares actorsā use of different communication methods for the organisation, mobilisation, co-ordination and sustainment of the peaceful components of the protests in Syria and Egypt.
As the book investigates the differing roles of ICTs in similar regimes, it implies the most similar system design used in similar cases with different outcomes (Rihoux 2006: 685). In the most similar sys...