Egypt’s Facebook-based opposition: a preview of the power of social networks for organizing
Written by Noah Flower on Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009
Filed under Networks in action, News
The tragic conflict in Gaza has at least a small silver lining: it’s provided a vibrant example of social networks being used for organizing. Egyptian youth poured their hearts out on Facebook as the conflict unfolded, expressing every variety of rage, and the story of what happened was written up in the New York Times under the headline “Revolution, Facebook Style.” There is enough insightful material in the story that I’ve included a string of key quotes below.
Before we dive into the details, what makes this example particularly relevant is how it illustrates the pitfalls and opportunities that social media presents to established organizations. What we see here is a case where the the political opposition had a party, with a staffed organization, but that the organization’s desire to continue its existence forced it to compromise in ways that were frustrating to its base. The availability of Facebook offered a way to express views and take action without risking the livelihood of any organization, using “groups” that could be created and destroyed at the click of a button. This is not at all unlike the situation of many nonprofits that exist to pursue social change, and the lesson is clear: if you aren’t moving as fast as your base, your base now has the tools to sprint ahead on its own. What’s the appropriate response? Perhaps to take a cue from the role that the U.S. State Department has played, which is to use your resources and stature to become a convener. The State Department created meta-groups online for Facebook groups’ organizers to share best practices with one another and also held real-world conferences to help these people establish strong personal ties. In so doing, they’ve given themselves a seat at the table and the opportunity to set the tone of the conversation, which in their case is an emphasis on promoting democracy.
KEY QUOTES:
Facebook has become quite popular in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world in spite of minimal Internet access:
In most countries in the Arab world, Facebook is now one of the 10 most-visited Web sites, and in Egypt it ranks third, after Google and Yahoo. About one in nine Egyptians has Internet access, and around 9 percent of that group are on Facebook — a total of almost 800,000 members.
Facebook is particularly popular in Egypt for discussing serious political issues because the government’s repressive tactics have left most youth disaffected with the traditional forms of political expression:
Freedom of speech and the right to assemble are limited in Egypt… for young people in Egypt, Facebook, which allows users to speak freely to one another and encourages them to form groups, is irresistible as a platform not only for social interaction but also for dissent… A 2004 study by the Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies found that 67 percent of young people weren’t registered to vote, and 84 percent had never participated in a public demonstration.
Facebook’s site could easily be blocked by government censors but is so popular for apolitical socializing that cutting off access is (to date) not worth the political cost of infuriating the general Facebook-using population:
Web sites or proxy servers created specifically for activists are easy for a government to shut down, Zuckerman says, but around the world, dissidents thrive on sites, like Facebook, that are used primarily for more mundane purposes (like exchanging pictures of cute cats). Authoritarian regimes can’t block political Facebook groups without blocking all the “American Idol” fans and cat lovers as well. “The government can’t simply shut down Facebook, because doing so would alert a large group of people who they can’t afford to radicalize,” Zuckerman explained.
Facebook offered a way to organize without compromise to youth who were frustrated with the traditional hierarchy of the opposition party. It is a textbook case of Web 2.0 tools surprising an established organization by providing its base with an alternative path to achieving its goals:
During the 2005 election campaign, Esraa Rashid started volunteering at the headquarters of El Ghad, a liberal democratic party that was founded in 2004 by Ayman Nour, a wealthy lawyer and member of Parliament. Nour came in second in the election, behind Mubarak, with 7 percent of the vote; he is currently in jail for forgery charges that his supporters insist are bogus. Rashid told me that she loved working at the Ghad office, but she and some of her friends in the youth wing grew impatient with the party bureaucracy. Like most political parties in Egypt, El Ghad has a strict hierarchy, and before deciding to stage an event, the leaders would carefully weigh a number of factors, including internal office politics and their current standing with the Mubarak regime. Members of the youth wing, Rashid told me, didn’t have much say in that process, or much interest in the endless deliberations. So she and some friends turned to Facebook as a quicker, easier way to plan their own events and protests.
Giving the base a direct avenue for expression resulted in a more complete picture of popular will than was represented by the traditional opposition:
“Facebook revealed a liberal undercurrent in Egyptian society,” Nawara said. “In general, there’s this kind of apathy, a sense that there is nothing we can do to change the situation. But with Facebook you realize there are others who think alike and share the same ideals. You can find Islamists there, but it is really dominated by liberal voices.”
Groups on social networking sites are expressionistic:
…there are countless political Facebook groups in Egypt, many of which flare up and fall into disuse in a matter of days… Some sought to coordinate humanitarian aid to Gaza, some criticized the Egyptian government, some criticized other Arab countries for blaming Egypt for the conflict and still others railed against Hamas. When I sat down in the middle of January with an Arabic-language translator to look through Facebook, we found one new group with almost 2,000 members called “I’m sure I can find 1,000,000 members who hate Israel!!!” and another called “With all due respect, Gaza, I don’t support you,” which blamed Palestinian suffering on Hamas and lamented the recent shooting of two Egyptian border guards, which had been attributed to Hamas fire. Another group implored God to “destroy and burn the hearts of the Zionists.” Some Egyptian Facebook users had joined all three groups.
Even the most organized of the Facebook groups was not the result of a carefully architected campaign–the pair that started it were shocked at how popular it became:
…almost as soon as [Rashid] set up the group, there were 16 members; when she refreshed the page a few minutes later, there were more than 60. The next day, more than 1,000. Rashid watched with fear and excitement as thousands of people, then tens of thousands, started joining and posting to the group. Eventually, the number reached 76,000.
The State Department considers these groups loosely aligned with their efforts to promote democracy and have decided to become involved. Their methods are instructive: rather than attempting to attract a crowd with their own groups, they’ve acted as a facilitator:
State Department officials told me they believe that social-networking software like Facebook’s has the potential to become a powerful pro-democracy tool. They pointed to recent developments in Saudi Arabia, where in November a Facebook group helped organize a national hunger strike against the kingdom’s imprisonment of political opponents, and in Colombia, where activists last February used Facebook to organize one of the largest protests ever held in that country, a nationwide series of demonstrations against the FARC insurgency. Not long ago, the State Department created its own group on Facebook called “Alliance of Youth Movements,” a coalition of groups from a dozen countries who use Facebook for political organizing. Last month, they brought an international collection of young online political activists, including one from the April 6 group, as well as Facebook executives and representatives from Google and MTV, to New York for a three-day conference.
As is typically the case with online organizing, it was most effective when used as an extension of real-world activism on the part of a close-knit group:
The April 6 strike was a success partly because it had its roots offline, among a cohesive, organized group of laborers; their protest was then vastly amplified by the Facebook activists.
