Facebook Use in the 2011 and 2013 Revolts in Egypt: The New Media Environment
Date
2022-06
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Abstract
This dissertation examines the role of Facebook in the political mobilization of young people who participated in the two revolts of 2011 and 2013 in Egypt. The study focuses on the evolving media environment and the transformation of the Egyptian public sphere immediately before and during the two events. It examines the ways in which social and mainstream media clashed and intersected to create new opportunities for Egyptian youth to engage politically online and offline. The research adopts a qualitative approach using in-depth interviews with two categories of research subjects: ordinary young Egyptian citizens who used Facebook for social networking before 2011 and subsequently appropriated it as a tool for political engagement and participation and a small set of prominent Egyptian media professionals working in mainstream organizations. The dissertation covers the period from early 2010 to 2013 to demonstrate how young Egyptian users discovered the political affordances of Facebook and redefined it as a platform for forging activist identities and communities. Special attention is given to the tensions between personal and political relationships and commitments unfolding on participants’ profile pages and in their immediate family and friendship circles. The growing importance of Facebook as a source of political news and a space for counter-public deliberation competing with and overshadowing mainstream media is discussed with a view to the effects it had on the overall restructuring of the Egyptian public sphere. The study draws on three distinctive works of literature: social shaping of technology, Habermas’ theory of the public sphere, and research on social media and social movements. The dissertation illuminates the process through which young people in an authoritarian society using Facebook overcame their doubts and fears and became motivated to engage in online political participation that later transformed into offline political protest. The study is innovative as it follows the changing political uses of Facebook in forming counter-public spheres and collective identities, building social capital, and organizing offline protest in both the 2011 and 2013 Egyptian revolts which differed in their driving forces and demands. Another original feature of this work is the parallel it draws between the perspective of audience members and that of professional journalists and producers on the evolving cross-media environment in which social and mainstream media interact and compete.
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Egypt, revolts, social media, Facebook, youth, women, activism, political participation, public sphere, mainstream media, citizen journalism, authoritarianism, democracy
Citation
Elsayed Mohamed, H. (2022). Facebook use in the 2011 and 2013 revolts in Egypt: the new media environment (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.