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The Role of Information Communication Technologies in
the “Arab Spring”
I
MPLICATIONS
B
EYOND THE
R
EGION
PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo No. 159
May 2011
Ekaterina Stepanova
Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO),
Russian Academy of Sciences
The tide of mass protests that swept through the Middle East in early 2011 highlighted
the distinct role of modern information-communication technologies (ICT) and digital
social media tools and networks. The impact of these technologies was felt globally,
affecting both developed and developing nations, if not in the same way. While the
“Arab Spring” may point to a phenomenon of new mass forms of sociopolitical protest
facilitated by social media networks, particularly in regard to their organizational and
communication aspects, it should also produce some major reservations about the
applicability of any ”direct lessons” to other regional and sociopolitical contexts.
The Middle Eastern Context
In the 2011 “Arab Spring” protests, social media networks played an important role in
the rapid disintegration of at least two regimes, Tunisia and Egypt, while also
contributing to sociopolitical mobilization in Bahrain and Syria. ICT and social media
had little to do with the underlying sociopolitical and socioeconomic factors behind the
protest movement. In Egypt, the sociopolitical gap between
the small ruling elite and
the bulk of the population had long reached critical levels, prompting most experts on
the region to expect a major upheaval at some point. However, the fact that the crisis
occurred sooner rather than later, in direct follow-up to protests in Tunisia, was largely
due to the initial mobilizing effects of ICT and social media networks. The protests were
kickstarted by a Facebook campaign run by the opposition “April 6 Youth Movement,”
which generated tens of thousands of positive responses to the call to rally against
government policies.Over the past decade, fast scalable
real-time Internet-based
information and communication tools have become relatively accessible in Egypt (with
broadband access starting at
$
8/month). According to the Egyptian Ministry of
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Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), the country has over 17 million
Internet users (as of February 2010), a stark 3,691 percent increase from 450,000 users in
December 2000, and 4 million Facebook users. This total includes over 160,000 bloggers,
with 30 percent of blogs focusing on politics.
The profile of the most active users—young, urban, and relatively educated—
fully correspond to the core of the first anti-government protesters in January that later
led to a larger and more mass-based campaign. Overall, the input of the social media
networks was critical in performing two overlapping functions: (
a
) organizing the
protests and (
b
) disseminating information about them, including publicizing
protesters’ demands internationally (Facebook reportedly outmatched Al Jazeera in at
least the speed of news dissemination).
As for government reactions, the counter-use of social media for tracking ,
repressive, and propaganda purposes has been minimal throughout the ”Arab Spring,”
compared to Iran in 2009 and 2010. In contrast, however, attempts to limit or block
Internet access have far exceeded Iran’s move to slow down Internet connectivity
during its 2009 protests. While the Tunisian government
blocked certain routes and
singled out specific sites that coordinated protest actions, the response from Egypt’s
government was qualitatively harsher, even unprecedented in Internet history. Having
first blocked Twitter and Facebook, the Egyptian authorities moved directly to ordering
all major telecommunications providers to block Internet access; Telecom Egypt,
Vodafone/Raya, Link Egypt, Etisalat Misr, and Internet Egypt all complied. As a result,
93 percent of Egypt’s Internet addresses and networks were shut down. However, even
this unprecedented Internet blackout was not total: both European-Asian fiber-optic
routes through Egypt and the Noor Group/Telecom Italia routes used, among others,
by the Egyptian stock exchange were left undisturbed, perhaps
in the hope of re-
opening the stock exchange as the protests were quelled. Nonetheless, the Internet
shutdown and cell-phone service disruptions were major hindrances to Egypt's
economy and debt rating.
Thus, on the one hand, Internet-crackdown campaigns in the Maghreb in early
2011 proved that it is possible for a determined regime to temporarily stop Internet
access countrywide. On the other hand, they also showed that this strategy does not
ultimately work in today's world of abundant ICT networks. Moreover, the economic
and reputational costs of the crackdown far exceeded
the perceived benefits of
regaining information control. The crackdowns also spurred new technology solutions,
such as utilizing router/path diversity methods,
IP proxy servers, and Google’s voice-
to-Twitter applications.
