My cousin is a cameraman for the Dutch national news. During his first days shooting the revolution in Egypt, he met Mona. A 24 year old internet activist. Somewhere in an old apartment building in Cairo, Mona built a social media centre. From this place they collect and spread out a non-stop flow of information about the protests on the streets in the whole country. In a country as Egypt where 60% of the people lives beyond the poverty line, Twitter and Facebook are only accessible for the higher educated students. But by organizing this small group all together on the 25th of January, the national media attention spreaded out their voices over the rest of Egypt. The mass got the message and a revolution was born. Egyptian Google manager Wael Ghonim got kept responsible for this first major protest and got arrested. Besides starting the revolution through social media, by all this tweets and posts activists are also able to keep the momentum of revolt. As Mona told my cousin: “I saw people beaten up with batons, rubber bullets and teargas. They separate as a group, but reorganize in a couple of minutes and keep on going with their protest”. That quick reorganization, the keeping of the momentum of revolt, is made possible by the posts and tweets on Twitter and Facebook.
Besides keeping the momentum, the social media are also very useful for support. Because of the social media, people all over the world can support the activists by posting messages and Tweets. The activists got moral support out of all these worldwide posts. And from the other hand, we all got informed very quickly and very well because of all the international journalists who were in Egypt and sent messages, pictures and video’s back home. Mubarak recognized this online threat and shut down the Egyptian internet. Mona kept going on Twitter. She had a Blackberry Twitter application. Something Mubarak couldn’t reach. Such as he couldn’t reach the international journalists. They keep on filming, taking pictures and sending Tweets. They became a target of violence by the pro-Mubarak people. My cousin got threaded, beaten and literally runned for his life. They left all their equipment, because that was the only chance to leave the country safe…
Today is Saturday, February 12th. We all know that Mubarak left his office yesterday. Fortunately the people in Egypt ended a very bad period of thirty years and they can start building a new future. Wael Ghonim got out of jail. I am happy for the people in Egypt. I admirer Mona’s and Ghonim’s work, courage and effort. I am glad that my cousin got home safe.
Keep in mind that we were witnesses of the first Twitter Revolution in the world.
See you next time,
thijs
My cousin shooting a revolution in Egypt:
I like your subject, politics and new media. It's a very trending topic these days in newspapers and (american) polics. But i think you are too optimistic about Twitter and his potential to force revolutions. These applications are useful to organize events, but not the main reason dictatorships will collapse. The protesting and fighting people in the tahrir-area are the reason, not Twitter or Facebook. The medium was simply not the message.
BeantwoordenVerwijderenTake a look at the current protests in Libya, the protests are maintaining without any twitter or facebook help.
http://www.vn.nl/Archief/Media/Artikel-Media/Sociale-media-als-de-bevrijder.htm
I agree with your opinion that social media can not be the main reason a dictatorship will collapse. That's not what I try to say.
BeantwoordenVerwijderenIn my opinion Social Media don't say the truth all the time. Journalist do. They are always looking for the truth. But social media has a big reach and is very useful to organize people. My optimism is more about people like Mona, are bringing all the twitter posts closer to the truth.
But again, it's a medium to support organizing revolt. Not a weapon to fight with.
Talk to you later,
Thijs
Nice to believe that journalists are always looking for the truth. A few days ago a dutch GDP journalist 'tweated' about the death of Hosni Mubarak. It was completely nonsense and based on a unreliable source. Who cuts the crap in a world of fast-news and 24/7 updates? Who is sending the tweets, dictator-officials or citizens. What's the true value of twitter-news. Can we trust it?
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