Broad outline of Arab Spring dynamics and discourses, and how social media has played a role in mobilization.

1. New Media and the Arab
Spring
Alexander Hanna
Department of Sociology
October 4, 2011

2. Agenda
Narrative of the Arab Spring
Focusing on Egypt
New Media
What's next?

3. Narrative of the Arab Spring

4. The Spark
 Tunisia
 Mohamed Bouazizi
 Sidi Bouzid
 Ben Ali
 #sidibouzid

5. The Fuel
 Egypt
 Khaled Said
 Police Day

6. The Blaze...
 Libya  Bahrain
 Syria  … (Morocco, Algeria?)
 Yemen

7. Focusing on Egypt
 January 25
 http://www.youtube.com/w
 January 28 and internet
blackout
 Sustained occupation
of Tahrir and other
squares

8. New Media in Arab Spring
 Starting from Tunisia, mass attention paid in
Twitterverse
 Not only from US and abroad, but also from other
Arab countries
 Different roles of the medium (will get to in a
second...)
 Includes Arab­centric media ecology
 Al­Jazeera, Al­Arabiyya

9. Social Graph of @ifirka (Sami ben Gharbia)
[source: giladlotan.com]

10. A Big Ado About Social
Media
 Malcolm Gladwell –
'Small Change'
 Jay Rosen – the generic
'Twitter Cannot
Topple Dictators'
article
 Is the ado about...
nothing?

11. Not 'if' but 'how'
 Zeynep Tufekci: 'There has been a false debate.
Was it social media or the people? Was it social
media or the labor movements? Was it social
media or anti­imperialist movement? Was it
social media or youth? These questions are
wrong and the answer is yes. The correct
question is how.'

12. But 'how' exactly?
 Citizen journalism
 Internal and External
 Consensus Mobilization
 Action Mobilization

13. Citizen Journalism
 Internal
 Egypt's restrictive
media ecology
 External
 International
solidarity
 Forcing IR
community to pay
attention

14. Citizen Journalism
 'In a dictatorship, independent journalism by
default becomes a form of activism, and the
spread of information is essentially an act of
agitation.'

15. Consensus Mobilization
 Described by Bert Klandermans
 Attempts to actively mobilize consensus in a
population
 Ideological work
 'Frame alignment' (Snow et al. 1986)
 Priming for action

16. Action Mobilization
 Other side of consensus – getting people to act
 Coordination and solving of traditional collective
action problems

17. What happened in Egypt?
 Initial sense based on interview fieldwork this
summer
 Coordination on January 25
 Mutual assurance of protesting
 Post­Jan 25: citizen journalism
 Less consensus mobilization
 Don't have to convince people that Mubarak is
terrible

18. Bottom line on social media
 Like everything,
depends on context
 Media ecology
 Access
 Politics
 Contributes to specific
processes

19. What's Next?
 Regime­building
 Still fighting in Syria, Yemen, et al.
 Social media's role in the future of Egypt?
 Differing opinions: mobilization different from
building institutions

20. Thanks!
 ahanna@ssc.wisc.edu
 http://alex­hanna.com
 http://twitter.com/alexhanna