The Social Construction of Revolution: Frames, Understandings, and the Internet in the 2011 Egyptian Revolution

• In Event: 463 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 07. Ideology and Challenges to the State

Abstract

On January 25, 2011, spurred on by the actions of online activists, tens of thousands of Egyptians turned out in the streets to protest Egypt’s police state. On February 11, Egypt’s president resigned. Uniquely among the Arab Spring movements, the Egyptian Revolution was conceptualized and organized primarily online before moving to the streets. This paper examines the role of social media in the Egyptian revolution through a content analysis of Facebook pages heavily involved in promoting the revolution, supplemented by an analysis of traditional media coverage. Social media provided a relatively safe space for politically active Egyptians to gather and discuss Egypt’s problems. Many of these Facebook pages, originally focused around “martyrs” killed by the police, began to draw from other movements and escalated their grievances, from police brutality to Mubarak’s regime itself. These pages provided powerful stories that encouraged massive mobilization against Mubarak’s regime and in the name of justice for the martyred of Egypt. However, the strategies that these pages used to mobilize people also made it difficult for the Facebook youth who drove the revolution forward to take charge of the situation after Mubarak stepped down, and the framing employed failed to challenge the underlying logics of the Egyptian state system. As a result, the revolution brought only limited changes to Egypt. However, due to a large degree of international engagement, the Egyptian Revolution managed to have a substantial impact abroad through the inspiration and support of movements like Occupy.

Author

• Zachary Wilmot, Brown University