The Jasmine Revolution and the January 25 Revolution are not Twitter revolutions…sorry, but sometimes you just need to beat a dead horse.
Only 131,204 Egyptians used Twitter as hundreds of thousands massed in Cairo earlier this year. Just 35,746 Tunisians tweeted along Avenue Habib Bourguiba and Le Kef during the days of rage and tear gas. Barely two percent of Egyptians and five percent of Tunisians log onto Facebook (nine million together), no doubt socializing with the Arab world’s other 18.3 million users. But90 percent of the Twittersphere is non-Arab, Turkish or Persian. It was European, East Asian, South and North American and South African global audiences who benefited as consumers during the revolts.
How else could we wish Bashar al-Assad a #bloodybirthday or watch his purges?
Our digital lens is warped by viewer values projecting the footage of Tahrir and Tunis. Even University of Arizona journalism professor and war journalist par excellence Mort Rosenblum got it wrong, hyping social media as Tunisia’s integral revolutionary tool. Does anyone feel déjà vu? What happened to the Twitter Revolution of 2009 or 2010? The myth of technology’s enabling role in Iran’s crushed Green Revolution andMoldova’s doomed Grape Revolution was debunkedalmost as quickly as the claim was forgotten.
It seems that digital evangelism and its Internet Freedom Gospel, which praises the Net’s disruptive effects on access limitations, has captivated the congregation. From Napster to Wikileaks, Hallelujah, let freedom stream. But don’t drink this Kool-Aid: both Mark Zuckerberg and Malcolm Gladwell challenge the sermon of social media being the tipping point in Egypt or Tunisia (or The Net Delusion).
That we assume Western technology defined the revolts is patronizing, just like the nouveau-Orientalist label “Arab Spring.” Were the Tunisians and Egyptians just waiting to receive Western digital enlightenment to rise up and demand democracy? The answer is an emphatic “no.”
It was a young, active citizenry in Tunis, Cairo, Alexandria, Gafsa, Suez and Sidi Bouzid laying down their lives, refusing the yoke of tyranny, and organizing incessant collective actions that forced Ben Ali and Mubarak into retirement – not satellite networks and the hashtags of elites.
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This was originally published as part of the Southwest Initiative for the Study of Middle East Conflicts weekly bulletin.
