NETWORKED ACTIVISM AND THE ARAB UPRISINGS

LESSONS LEARNT AND FUTURE EXPECTATIONS

“It was the revolution down through the wires: time was collapsed and geography shrunk by the use of social networking.” (McCann, 2011)

KEY QUESTIONS: WHAT IS NETWORKED ACTIVISM? WHAT HAS BEEN THE ROLE OF NEW SOCIAL MEDIA DURING THE ARAB UPRISINGS?

WAS THERE SUCH A THING AS A TWITTER AND FACEBOOK REVOLUTION?

IS NETWORKED TECHNOLOGY INHERENTLY USEFUL?

WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF NETWORKED ACTIVISM IN THE WANA?

Networked Activism - ALTERNATIVELY, INTERNET OR CYBER OR DIGITAL ACTIVISM

DEFINITION BY VEGH - ‘a politically motivated movement relying on the internet’ using strategies that are either internet-enhanced or internet-based.

STRATEGIES –

(i) awareness and advocacy, or participatory journalism – which refers to the use of the internet as an alternative news source;

(ii) organization and mobilization – also known as ‘mediated mobilization’ that have been used for multiple purposes like coordinating calls for ‘offline’ action, such as demonstrations;

(iii) action/reaction activism, or ‘Hacktivism’ – popularly used to describe malicious attacks by activists to bring down or paralyze websites (Lievrouw, 2011)

"Structurally, the Internet has inverted the few-to-many architecture of the broadcast age, in which a small number of people were able to influence and shape the perceptions and beliefs of entire nations. In the many-to-many environment of the Net, every desktop is a printing press, a broadcasting station, and a place of assembly" (Rheingold 2004: 272).

ROLE OF NEW SOCIAL MEDIA

COMMUNICATIVE POWER The rapid growth of the Internet and smart phone penetration over the 2000’s added a new dimension onto the Arab public sphere that had already been steadily evolving since the advent of satellite television.

One of the reasons why the uprisings stood out was the achievement of digital activism to ensure that the civic and socio-economic frustrations that underlined public interaction with state authorities could be documented and shared in real-time to an international as well as regional and local audience.

By filtering and curating raw content, bloggers helped produce what media studies and social movements’ literatures refer to as a frame: a shared interpretation that attempted to make sense of complex issues. “The people want to topple the regime” provided one such example of a collective diagnosis.

CONNECTIVE POWER When social movements mobilize people around specific issues and campaigns, as during the uprisings, the production of a shared frame is even more crucial to making actors from multiple backgrounds come together. Within this framework, technology takes centre stage as it enables “connective action” or the mobilization of individuals and loose networks without the material resources that traditional organizations provide.

Cyberspace overcomes social and spatial restrictions such as gender segregation, class barriers and geographical differences, providing groups of people who would otherwise never meet and converse, the opportunity to connect and recognize what they share in common.

CONNECTIVE POWER New social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have impacted local systems of political communication in complex ways. Instrumentally, transnational links between individuals and groups have become forged into network ties between international and local social movements as compelling stories, told in short text messages or long video documentaries, amass circulation.

In the course of the uprisings, social media also mobilized the expatriate and exiled communities who acted as key links between the rest of the Arab sphere and international community.

All of this allowed the production and consumption of political content, independent of entrenched elites, so that a public sense of shared grievances could instigate further potential for change.

CONNECTIVE POWER Effectively speaking, this is how online coverage and its public manifestation was able to secure a fracture in the entrenched political order that had managed to overcome multi-decadal challenges including the introduction of Al-Jazeera and Arab satellite television, a global trend towards democratization and demands for democracy from within, a youth bulge and a crisis of employment, transnational Islamist activism and globalization.

INFORMATIONAL CONDUIT

Networked technologies empower “local activists who would otherwise find it harder to reach others with similar concerns in remote locations. It enables both lateral sharing of information and better access to information” (Calhoun 2004: 243).

INSTRUMENTAL POWER The instrumental use of social media, especially Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, and text messaging by protesters achieved a number of pragmatic goals, such as group networking, on-the-ground organizing and offering practical advice on how to confront police brutality or how to avoid arrest.

Illustrating this during the anti- Mubarak protests, one Egyptian activist succinctly tweeted: “we use Facebook to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world” (Global Voice Advocacy 2010 cited in Khondker 2011).

MOBILIZATIONAL VALUE Culminating in the Arab uprisings, the last decade and a half has seen online activism achieve a manifold effect – disseminating information, encouraging the collusion of those whose interests coalesce and enabling faster and more universal political action in tightly controlled public spaces.

In circumnavigating repressive structures, social media activists seek to convince those in the online world that they are not alone and propel action in the offline world. This is crucial, for a revolution will always be won and lost on the streets.

This mobilizational value renders social media invaluable to the organizing groups of protesters, both to ensure relative safety in numbers and, impact upon the State with their presence.

The plural nature of social media also enables a flat leadership model that is difficult for autocratic regimes to combat as they are not dependent on a strong hierarchical structure to coordinate their activities.

INFORMATIONAL CASCADE The literature on unexpected revolutions developed by Suzanne Lohmann, Timur Kuran and others suggests that one of the major obstacles to mass protest is ubiquitous preference falsification: individuals who detest the regime refrain from making their views public out of fear of either social or official sanction. On this view, the increased public incidence of oppositional views online helps to encourage others who privately hold such views to express them in public.

The Tunisian tidal waves hinted at “cascade” dynamics as participants spoke of “breaking the wall of fear”… cries of which could be echoed in other theatres across the region in Libya, Bahrain, Syria etc.

In Egypt’s own case, the Kefaya movement had already achieved success in alerting the wider public sphere to mass discontent over Mubarak and Gamal’s proposed succession. The Egyptian upsurge thus took flight from the immediacy of Ben Ali’s exit, which enthused non-activists into joining the early protests thereby achieving widespread societal consensus. This in turn had a massive spillover effect on the rest of the region.

THE TECHNO-OPTIMIST NARRATIVE

MEDIATIZED NARRATIVES Media analysts have been quick to contextualize the Arab digital protests within the wider networks of discontent against the global neoliberal capitalist order in Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the Occupy movement assemblage across the world.

According to media analysts, younger generations communicate and interact differently and have different expectations of the public sphere as compared to older generations.

The 2000’s witnessed massive mobilization across the Arab world as a generation of Arab bloggers began to use the Internet as a vehicle for personal expression and communication with the rest of the world. Waves of protests over Israel’s reoccupation of the West Bank in 2002, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Israel’s confrontations with Gaza and domestic dissent demanding political reform across much of the region made their appearance on myriad online forums. However, it was Iran’s 2009 “Green Revolution” that first captured international imagination over the potential of social media in the region that eventually climaxed during the Arab uprisings.

This international and cyber-enabled fascination was rooted in the idealism that ideas shared in cyberspace could spur into real-life action on the ground.

CLASSIC CYBERACTIVIST STRATEGY -

The process of online activism begins when a person or group creates a page on Facebook that is seen by various users, who then comment on it and begin interacting with each other. Once the group is solidified, users begin uploading pictures, audio and video footage, with links to YouTube, Vine and similar sites. As this happens, news and comments also begin appearing on Twitter, which can contain messages, images and further links to websites. This cumulatively expands the network of people who are linked in to the debates about these events and images. Since the network is not limited geographically, the scope can quickly become global.

IDEA OF A VIRTUAL CIVIL SOCIETY Cyberspace seems to have offered an alternative, albeit virtual location, for a public sphere to develop – i.e. allowing people to assemble and discuss, vent grievances and seek options to redress complaints.

Arab cyberactivists have created virtual forums for citizen journalism through enabling ordinary citizens to question regime legitimacy, document instances of governmental brutality, limitations on freedom of expression, flaws in the political system, cases of official corruption and violations of human rights - to international exposure. This has allowed for the continued exchange of civic discourse, deliberation and articulation.

The use of the Internet has moved beyond its instrumental capabilities, in order to enhance the region’s social capital – which can defined as “connections among individuals-social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them.” Putnam (2000: 19)

CRITIQUING THE ‘TWITTER/FACEBOOK REVOLUTIONS’ The communicative power of social networking sites during the Arab uprisings enjoyed pre-eminent coverage in the international media. Facebook and Twitter became prefixed to the word ‘revolution’ as media analysts and the corporations behind them glorified a new age of cyber-enabled change in the Arab world.

Such hysterical notions aside, the internet served a set of tools whose efforts could only fruition with the corresponding people power on the streets, their courage and human sacrifice. As seen in the instance of Egypt on 28 January 2011, techno-optimist narratives had to acknowledge that while digital platforms assisted in organizing movements and disseminating critical information, it was the public outpouring onto the streets - after the government shut down internet and telephone services - that eventually toppled Mubarak.

Turmoil and unrest had been brewing in various parts of the Arab world, predating the memorialized Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia. Both civil protest and government crackdowns continued in the decades prior to the uprisings in almost all the states in the West Asian and North African region. Eg: The Kefaya movement (against the succession of Gamal that began in 2004 and achieved greater profile with the constitutional referendum of 2005 and presidential elections)…

Digital storytelling supersedes the political communiqué and expressive protest-politics prevent systemic restructuring.

The Faltering Premise of Change We Can Tweet

Hyperbole meets fatigue …We are all

Khaled Said

“It's never as bad as it seems on Twitter”

Tahrir Bubble

Constant mobilization against the status quo has resulted in activist networks remaining outside of political institutions, having been unable to project pragmatic agendas such as the necessary creation of political organisations to ensure alternatives to the system.

The persisting protest model hyper-emphasised narrative over real outcomes. Revolution is a process but the mileage and spotlight incurred by the hyperbolic focus on crisis, criticism and opposition problematised the reformative potential of cyberactivism.

Economy of Reputation …

HITS

CLICKS

SHARES

The public reach of network technologies inevitably impacts the behaviour of cyber activists. Bloggers and activists across social media channels aspire to greater online traffic on their particular sites and posts.

The political scientist Chris Anderson has theorized on this long-tail structure of the Internet where users can become free content generators but only a limited few gain visibility and its concomitant benefits. This in-turn perpetuates a new inequality in the production, circulation and consumption of information.

Endless data flows … The media theorist Jodi Dean has emphasized how blogging can become reduced to a mere act of signalling; not producing knowledge but simply contributing to endless data flows, which she further labels as “communicative capitalism” or “the ideological formation wherein capitalism and democracy converge in networked communication technologies.”

Using this logic, US corporations such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter are turned into tools of freedom in the hands of the disempowered users and now re-empowered ones, so that the union between technology and democracy can be finally achieved.

At the end of the day, what becomes important is the endless flow of data, followed by a process of nonstop self-disclosure of the user’s identity with the user’s complicity (as per legal requirement), thereby producing a standardized and commoditised self.

Vulnerabilities … While tools of networked activism may be promising in terms of their reach, rate of connectivity and provocateur role, the internet also carries the inherent danger of being used to perpetuate sectarianism, tribalism, regionalism, racism, sexism, and discrimination through the proliferation of extremist or exclusionary content. Thus, the revolutionary promise of its idealism can easily become subversive.

An example – Following Egyptian activists on Twitter or on Facebook, one could see how every story that reflected badly upon the Muslim Brotherhood was rapidly and uncritically shared, exaggerated and disseminated and in turn, the Islamists did the same to their rivals.

Tension between the mobilizational role and organizational potential of cyberactors - while leaderless, network structures can mobilize and even unite a disparate coalition of protestors around a single, simple demand such as “The people want the fall of the regime”, they are typically far less effective at articulating specific, nuanced demands in the subsequent negotiation processes.

The bulk of online activists have been sidelined in regions where regimes have undergone change (change of figurehead or institutional) as they had remained individual collectives.

Vulnerabilities … Moreover, in the WANA region, the Internet has strengthened some of the core competencies of authoritarian states even as it undermined others. The internet provides the same tools for deeper surveillance, manipulation and repression as much as it contributes to openness.

Authorities in Egypt, Algeria, Bahrain, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Syria consistently try to stifle digital conversation about domestic political change and, given their mutual interests, trade on each other’s ‘best practices’ on surveillance and repression. Supporting this are negotiated deals with technological companies for further assistance. Saudi Arabia demanded that Research in Motion, Ltd., the proprietors of the Blackberry smartphone, allow its messenger service to be screened by state security officials.

Outlier effect …The new information environment is in a constant state of flux as opportunities may arise at any time that could shift the balance of power and shape the extent of political openings.

Here again the Arab uprisings provided rich illustration.

For instance, in Libya, before his public execution, protesters of the Gaddafi dictatorship took to Muslim online dating sites in order to hide the arrangements for meetings and protest rallies.

In Syria, the Assad regime had blocked Facebook and Twitter intermittently since 2007 but reopened access as a way of entrapping activists at the inevitable cost of spread of information. Having lived in a repressive environment all or most of their lives, activists were equally strategic in their responses. When Syrian state officials began spreading misinformation over Twitter, activists used Google Maps to self-monitor and verify trusted sources.

In Tahrir Square, both the crowds and the soldiers maneuvering the tanks that were sent to watch them took pictures of one another for instant circulation amidst their respective social networks. Arrestees took pictures of themselves in custody.

In countries like Bahrain and Syria where the armed forces acted with aggression, the resulting carnage was still documented.

USEFUL but USER DEPENDENT While activism clearly predates the Internet age, technology has created new platforms whose use can have global as well as widespread local implications. Not every user is competing for more coverage and new social media is structurally able to penetrate and highlight subjects beyond the scope of traditional media.

Refuting the value of these media is thus limiting; in an age of consumerism and commodification, the Internet represents a vast market of ideas and information and consumers will be subject to the same precarity of choice, judgment of authenticity and need.

Syria and Libya thus tested the techno-optimist narrative as serious questions of credibility and verification dogged activist networks due to little disclosure or scrutiny. These states had a comparatively low online presence and agendas of activists could not be legitimated through past posturing, engendering either mistrust or resulting in miscalculated reaction.

Cyberactors – Activist but Depoliticised?

In order to participate in the system they had mobilized to reform, they needed political actors if not party organisations that would be available for repression or co-optation in the process of institution building, constitutional development or even elections leading to government formation.

This lack of politicisation eventually lowered the impact of their activism as the business of state-making superseded protest demonstrations.

End results … Old political actors have thus returned and acclimatized themselves to the changed socio-political landscape by resurrecting and reaffirming established institutions and power-brokers such as the military, judiciary or the Islamists.

Additionally, traditional political subjects and parties together with state institutions are increasingly investing in social media strategies in order to gain representation online to compliment their broad representation offline.

Transformative and disruptive.

CONCLUSION -

Final analysis … This paper’s preliminary analysis of the character and structure of online communications during the uprisings indicates an emphasis on informational power and the virtual assemblage of concerned citizens and activists.

Nevertheless, the rise of such a citizenry and a transformed public sphere has had ambiguous and contradictory effects. Authoritarian regimes have an elastic ability to adapt and absorb challenges; particularly as political change is a long-term process.

Additionally, the uneven distribution of technical and digitalist competencies could result in a virtual divide; the ‘virtual’ gap widening the real gap between cosmopolitan, wired urban elites and the mass populace lacking such skills in the cyberworld.

Digitally based social networks seem to be ill-equipped to engage in traditional political processes such as party-building and campaigning that require sustained and on-the-ground interaction and compromise.

FIFTH ARAB SOCIAL MEDIA REPORT (2013)* Facebook penetration * Twitter penetration

DIGITAL PENETRATION IN THE WANA

Facebook penetration 2013

Facebook – 15-29 years

Facebook – 30 years and above

Twitter penetration

Number of active users on Twitter

QUICK STATS - The total number of Facebook users in the Arab world as of beginning of May 2014 is 81,302,064 up from 54,552,875 in May 2013 and about 21 million in 2011.

By May 2014 the country average for Facebook penetration in the Arab region was over 21.5% up from 15% in May 2013

The percentage of female users has dipped slightly (from 33.4% in May 2013, to 31.75% in May 2014), after having fluctuated slightly between 33.4% and 34% in the past two years. This is still significantly lower than the global average of roughly 50%

As of May 2014 the percentage of users between 15 and 29 years old was 67%. Egypt continues to constitute about a quarter of all Facebook users in the region (24%) and has gained the highest number of new Facebook users since January 2014, with an increase of over 2.6 million users in that time period.

The total number of active Twitter users in the Arab world reached 5,797,500 users as of March 2014. The estimated number of tweets produced by Twitter users in the Arab world in March 2014 was 533,165,900 tweets, an average of 17,198,900 tweets per day.

Saudi Arabia, alone, produced 40% of all tweets in the Arab world, while Egypt produced 17% and Kuwait produced 10%.

The percentage of female Twitter users in the Arab region – published for the first time in the Arab Social Media Report series - is 36.6%, slightly higher than that of female Facebook users in the region.