Revolutions at the push of a button

Your next tweet could start a revolution. If 2010 is remembered for the way Julian Assange and his Wikileaks seriously embarrassed Washington — and several other capitals — by releasing classified diplomatic cables online, 2011 will be remembered for the Arab Spring, which has overthrown three regimes so far, and rattled many more.

The ‘Arab Spring’ was actually sparked off in the winter of 2010 in Sidi Bouzeid, Tunisia, after street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself ablaze to protest against government harassment and apathy. He died on January 4. An unprecedented wave of nationwide protests forced President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who had been in power for 23 years, to flee to Saudi Arabia and send in his resignation.

This surprising and sudden victory inspired copycat immolations and massive protests in nearby Egypt, that led to the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, who had been in power for nearly 30 years. Similar protests in Libya, this time endorsed and supported by the West, led to a civil war in the country, which is sandwiched between Egypt and Tunisia. A defiant Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who ruled that nation for 42 years, was finally captured, tortured and killed by rebels on October 20. Major public protests were also reported from Syria, Bahrain, Yemen, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Jordan, Kuwait, Iran and the tiny gulf Sultanate of Oman.

Social media, in the form of Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, among others, played a crucial role in this revolution that is still sweeping across many parts of Northern Africa and the Middle East. Yet barely 20% of the Tunisian population had access to the Internet, which in turn was heavily censored. A similar situation prevails in most of the other nations on that list.

How does one reconcile this apparent contradiction? Simple. While social media helped people organise themselves rapidly and effectively, like in the protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, cell phones and television played the role of a powerful and critical force multiplier. In fact, attempts to shut down the internet in some of these nations probably led many people, who would otherwise have been content to stay behind their computer screens, to actually join the protests in real time. In Tunisia, for example, a lot of the protesters came out on the streets only after the government tried to block access to Facebook, Youtube and Twitter.

The Internet, particularly social media, has always been a powerful political tool. Today, it has become a game changer, feared by repressive regimes not just in the Arab lands, but places like China, Africa and even some democratic nations in the ‘Free World’. Attempts to curtail access, as in the case of Tunisia and Egypt, only made things worse.

“By blocking all communication networks in Egypt on the night of January 27, including internet and mobile phones access, the Egyptian regime committed his biggest mistake,” says Wael Ghonim, former Google marketing head for the region and an activist who became the poster boy for the Egyptian revolution.
 “He (the regime/Mubarak) forced thousands of pro-democracy activists who were following what is happening behind their monitors till that moment to go downtown to Tahrir square to see what is really happening; they helped us unwillingly to increase our numbers.”

Angered over the brutal torture and murder of Khaled Said — a young Egyptian who had put up a video on Youtube showing a senior Egyptian police officer selling drugs from a police station — Ghonim put up a Facebook page titled ‘We are all Khaled Said’. The page became an instant hit, and was used to organise the first protests in Tahrir Square.
“This ‘Arab Spring’ is not about traditional political actors like unions, political parties or radical fundamentalists,” says Professor Philip N Howard, Director of Project on Information Technology and Political Islam at  the University of Washington. “It has drawn networks of people, many of whom have not been political before: young entrepreneurs, government workers, the urban middle class.”

“Civil society networks, through Twitter, Facebook and mobile phones, connect social networks across North Africa and the Middle East. These are the networks that are passing a cascading message of fatigue with authoritarian rule across the region. These are the networks that have pulled out such large numbers into Tahrir Square,” argues Dr Howard.

Events like the Arab Spring, he concludes, are “early signs of the next big wave of democratisation. But this time, it will be wrestled into life in the digital living room of the global community”.
The author is the Editor-in-Chief of India.com