• The roots of the uprising that filled Egypt’s streets this week arguably stretch back to before the Tunisian revolt, which many protesters cited as the catalyst. Almost three years ago, on April 6, 2008, the Egyptian government crushed a strike by a group of textile workers in the industrial city of Mahalla, and in response a group of young activists who connected through Facebook and other social networking Web sites formed the April 6th Youth Movement in solidarity with the strikers.
• Their early efforts to call a general strike were a bust. But over time their leaderless online network and others that sprang up around it — like the networks that helped propel the Tunisian revolution — were uniquely difficult for the Egyptian security police to pinpoint or wipe out. It was an online rallying cry for a show of opposition to tyranny, corruption and torture that brought so many to the streets on Tuesday and Wednesday, unexpectedly vaulting the online youth movement to the forefront as the most effective independent political force in Egypt.

• Did Facebook bring down Mubarak?

• As we watch, transfixed by the sights and sounds of jubilation in the streets of Egypt, the question on many people's minds is: How did this happen? But a far better way to ask that question is: Who organized this, and how?

  Movements for social change don't just "happen." Too often, the media reports on them the way we talk about the weather or chemistry: Protest is said to "flare up," "gather steam" and "boil." Other times movements are said to take a country "by storm" or "peter out."

• The internet has made a big difference in Egypt. For years, the country's secret police and state-controlled media have very effectively suppressed most dissident activities. Without the relatively free arena of online social networking sites and tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, young Egyptians like Ghonim could not have built the resilient and creative force that finally toppled Hosni Mubarak.

  As he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Friday, "We would post a video on Facebook and it would be shared by 50,000 people on their walls in hours." Alternative media channels are absolutely vital for freedom movements.
• Along the way, they devised some ingenious hacks around the police state, like using mobile phones and Twitter to share information about imprisoned activists and using international phone lines for sending text messages. They learned how to make more effective online videos with the help of Peter Gabriel's human rights group Witness, and how to use open source mapping tools with the help of the Kenyan nongovernmental group Ushahidi.

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• The truth about Twitter, Facebook and the uprisings in the Arab world

     

  Recent events in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt have been called 'Twitter revolutions' – but can social networking overthrow a government? Our correspondent reports from the Middle East on how activists are really using the web

  • SOCIAL MEDIA UPRISINGS IN THE ARAB WORLD
• Instead, that defining image is this: a young woman or a young man with a smartphone. She's in the Medina in Tunis with a BlackBerry held aloft, taking a picture of a demonstration outside the prime minister's house. He is an angry Egyptian doctor in an aid station stooping to capture the image of a man with a head injury from missiles thrown by Mubarak's supporters. Or it is a Libyan in Benghazi running with his phone switched to a jerky video mode, surprised when the youth in front of him is shot through the head.

• All of them are images that have found their way on to the internet through social media sites. And it's not just images. In Tahrir Square I sat one morning next to a 60-year-old surgeon cheerfully tweeting his involvement in the protest. The barricades today do not bristle with bayonets and rifles, but with phones.

  As commentators have tried to imagine the nature of the uprisings, they have attempted to cast them as many things: as an Arab version of the eastern European revolutions of 1989 or something akin to the Iranian revolution that toppled the Shah in 1979. Most often, though, they have tried to conceive them through the media that informed them – as the result of WikiLeaks, as "Twitter revolutions" or inspired by Facebook.

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• Involvement in the Egyptian Revolution of 2011

  • Wael Ghonim - Head of Marketing at Google Middle East/North Africa Internet Activist. Founded "We Are All Khaled Said" Facebook page.

• In 2010, Wael Ghonim founded a Facebook page titled, "We Are All Khaled Said," supporting Khaled Said, a young Egyptian who was tortured to death by police in Alexandria. Wael Ghonim used this page in moving and integrating the anti-government protests of the 25th of Jan revolution. He first made an announcement on the page on 14 January, asking members if they were going to plan on taking to the streets on 25 January and do what Tunisia did? In less than 2 hours he published an event entitled: 25 يناير على التعذيب والفساد والظلم والبطالة [January 25: Revolution against Torture, Corruption, Unemployment and Injustice]. This was the first invitation and many others followed. He anonymously collaborated with activists on the ground to announce the locations for the protest.

   

  The page also organized interesting activities such as the Silent Stands and the Police Communication Campaign.

  • Wael Ghonim

• The protests that led to the Egyptian revolution last year were organized in part by an anonymous Facebook page administrator. When the police found out who he was, they arrested and interrogated him. After his release, Wael Ghonim became the public face of the Egyptian revolution.

  In Revolution 2.0, Ghonim traces the planning that took place in the days before Jan. 25, 2011, when thousands of Egyptians gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square in preparation for the uprising. He also gives an insider's account of what he experienced during the protests — when Egyptian security authorities locked him in a basement jail cell — and then what it was like after the departure of President Hosni Mubarak.

  • Wael Ghonim starts a Facebook page called "We Are All Khaled Said" in memory of the brutal death the 28 year old suffered at the hands of the Egyptian police. This was the catalyst for the Egyptian Revolution of 2011.
• Ghonim's Facebook page anonymously called for accountability for Khaled's death and an end to corruption within the Egyptian government.
• The page engaged users, solicited ideas from Egyptians, and also proposed a Jan. 25 mass protest date. The Facebook group was set up through a proxy program in order to keep Ghonim's identity a secret.

• Meanwhile, news began to circulate on the Internet about his disappearance. Activists on Twitter and Facebook began to coordinate efforts to find Ghonim. As he languished — unaware of the protests or what his fate would be — Google, his employer, started working behind the scenes to publicize his disappearance. His release on Feb. 8 was seen as a key moment in the revolution.

  Since then, Ghonim has been hailed for his energizing use of social media while planning the pro-democracy demonstrations in Egypt. He says sites like Facebook are tools that can help connect people and disseminate information to the masses, but cannot create social changes on their own.
• "We used all the available tools in order to communicate with each other, collaborate and agree on a date, a time and a location for the start of the revolution," he says. "Yet, starting Jan. 28, the revolution was on the streets. It was not on Facebook, it was not on Twitter. Those were tools to relay information, to tell people the truth about what's happening on the ground."

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• The roots of the uprising that filled Egypt’s streets this week arguably stretch back to before the Tunisian revolt, which many protesters cited as the catalyst. Almost three years ago, on April 6, 2008, the Egyptian government crushed a strike by a group of textile workers in the industrial city of Mahalla, and in response a group of young activists who connected through Facebook and other social networking Web sites formed the April 6th Youth Movement in solidarity with the strikers.

   Their early efforts to call a general strike were a bust. But over time their leaderless online network and others that sprang up around it — like the networks that helped propel the Tunisian revolution — were uniquely difficult for the Egyptian security police to pinpoint or wipe out. It was an online rallying cry for a show of opposition to tyranny, corruption and torture that brought so many to the streets on Tuesday and Wednesday, unexpectedly vaulting the online youth movement to the forefront as the most effective independent political force in Egypt.

  • New York Times report on the crumbling of Mubarak's government through social media.

• “It would be criminal for any political party to claim credit for the mini-Intifada we had yesterday,” said Hossam el-Hamalawy, a blogger and activist.

   Mr. Mubarak’s government, though, is so far sticking to a familiar script. Against all evidence, his interior minister immediately laid blame for Wednesday’s unrest at the foot of the government’s age-old foe, the Muslim Brotherhood.

• Social networks credited with role in toppling Egypt's Mubarak

• As Egypt's embattled President Hosni Mubarak gave up his presidency Friday, analysts and some of the Egyptian protestors said he'd still be in charge if not for the power of social networking.

    

  After 18 days of tumultuous protests and stubborn refusals to leave a position he's held for 30 years, Mubarakgave up power today, handing over authority to the nation's military leaders. During a time of unrest that saw Mubarak's regime disconnect Egypt from the Internet for several days, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter served as critical tools for the people seeking to topple the long-time ruler.

  • ComputerWorld.com reports the fall of President Mubarak due to protestors use of social media.

• Around 20 million people in Egypt, or about one-quarter of the country’s population, are on the Internet. Early in the political unrest, the Egyptian government attempted to block Facebook and Twitter, then took the unprecedented step of shutting down Internet access in the country altogether. The cyberspace blackout lasted a week but could not thwart the revolution. President Hosni Mubarak stepped down a week later.

• Social media’s role in Egypt’s revolutions

  By Matthew Kredell

  October 26, 2011

  The Egyptian revolution began on Facebook with a call to protest in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Protesters used Twitter to maneuver around police and reach the area. People arrived at the location expecting to see a few hundred like-minded individuals. Instead, they found a few hundred-thousand.

  • The Power of the Internet

• Social media’s role in Egypt’s revolutions

  • Social Media's Role in the Egyptian Revolution
    
    USE THIS
• The Egyptian revolution began on Facebook with a call to protest in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Protesters used Twitter to maneuver around police and reach the area. People arrived at the location expecting to see a few hundred like-minded individuals. Instead, they found a few hundred-thousand.
• Around 20 million people in Egypt, or about one-quarter of the country’s population, are on the Internet. Early in the political unrest, the Egyptian government attempted to block Facebook and Twitter, then took the unprecedented step of shutting down Internet access in the country altogether. The cyberspace blackout lasted a week but could not thwart the revolution. President Hosni Mubarak stepped down a week later.

  • "The Revolution Will Be Televised"
    The Fall of Hosni Mubarak

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• Social Media Plays Pivotal Role in Egypt's Revolution

  • The Digital Revolt

• LAS VEGAS - The pictures out of Egypt last week stunned the world. For 18 days, thousands of young, educated and frustrated Egyptians called for their president's resignation.

   

  Before they descended on Tahrir Square, they rallied on Facebook.

   

  "These weren't necessarily people with political goals," said Shel Holtz of Holtz Communication and Technology. "They just wanted to see change."

   

  "One of the girls who started the whole movement put up a video on YouTube," said Egyptian-American UNLV student Sarah Trabia. "That was watched by over 500,000 people, and she spent the entire three minutes just talking about how they need to get out there and speak to the people who need help."

   

  More than a third of the Arab world uses social media. An anti-Hosni Mubarak Facebook page, started by a Google engineer, incited rage among Egypt's youth which led to the protests.

• Social media has caused regimes to fall, aided the overthrowing of conventions and changed the way people live their lives, arguably for good and bad, for the foreseeable future. So, let's take a look at the ways it has changed the world and how it may continue to do so in the future.
  The Arab Spring
  From Tunisia, to Egypt, to Syria - sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have facilitated the change of long established regimes in a handful of countries across the North of Africa and the Middle East.
  To place things in perspective, social media and the Internet were seen as such pivotal tools of influence, Egypt shut down its Internet for long periods during the removal of Hosni Mubarak.

• Facebook and Twitter key to Arab Spring uprisings: report

• Nearly 9 in 10 Egyptians and Tunisians surveyed in March said they were using Facebook to organise protests or spread awareness about them.

  All but one of the protests called for on Facebook ended up coming to life on the streets.
• These and other findings from the newly released second edition of the Arab Social Media Report by the Dubai School of Government give empirical heft to the conventional wisdom that Facebook and Twitter abetted if not enabled the historic region-wide uprisings of early 2011.

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    What's Going On In Egypt? 

• After days of protest, Egypt's civil unrest came to a head today, with protestors defying curfews as the nation's military entered the streets. If you're new to the story, here's what's going on.

    

  Protests started on Tuesday, January 25, when -- inspired by the successful revolution in Tunisia -- thousands of people began taking to the streets to protest poverty, rampant unemployment, government corruption and autocratic governance of President Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled the country for thirty years. These were the first protests on such a large scale to be seen in Egypt since the 1970s. The government responded by blocking Twitter, which was being used by organizers to coordinate protests.

  • Egyptian government tries to block Twitter and Facebook because they want to keep all of the unrest internal.
• Blocking Twitter not only enraged Egyptian citizens; it also brought increased national attention to the uprising. Over the course of the next two days, Egypt proceeded to block Facebook while the much-hated riot police took to the streets, arresting and injuring hundreds with batons, tear gas water cannons. Protests occurred not only in Cairo, the capital, but also in Alexandria and Suez, two other major cities.

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• How the Internet brought down a dictator
• How the Internet brought down a dictator
• How the Internet brought down a dictator
• On Jan. 27, just before the Egyptian government turned off the Internet for all Egyptians, Facebook saw six times more traffic than Google inside the country. Then came the outage. Then came the protests. Two weeks later, and with relatively little bloodshed, the 30-year government of Hosni Mubarak ended. It's indisputable that the Internet and social media played a pivotal role. In fact, the revolution may not have happened without them.

  • You Can't Stop The Net

• Egyptian activists, perhaps prodded by the success of the Tunisian revolt, used Facebook to organize a demonstration that started on Jan. 25. The Khaled Said page and the page run by the April 6 Youth Movement, itself with tens of thousands of followers, both advertised the protests, news of which also blew through Twitter and over mobile phones via SMS.

  According to Philip N. Howard, director of the Project on Information Technology and Political Islam at the University of Washington, the turn-off-the-Internet strategy was not employed to block opposing factions from organizing. The government did it specifically because it feared the amplification of true grass roots outrage.

  "The real threat to the regime is people will take pictures of the police beating their brothers and sisters, and the regime can't respond well to Facebook images of the police shooting rubber bullets into a crowd," Howard told msnbc.com on Jan. 28. "There is no regime response for those images that go out over trusted networks."

• Shut down
  "It's like the entire Internet forgot where Egypt was," explained Jim Cowie, CTO of Renesys, an Internet monitoring firm. "The packets we were sending asking for Egyptian Web pages just didn't have a destination." Egypt holds the dubious honor of being the first country to shut off its Internet, cutting off about 20 million people, a quarter of the nation's population.

  Cowie says that the outage came as a surprise — unplugging every tentacle of the massive Leviathan that is the Internet is supposed to be a trickier task. Egypt achieved the task by ordering the country's Internet service providers to, in effect, disconnect from the rest of the world. No outside Internet traffic — or even through traffic — was affected, but communications to and from Egypt were silenced. One lonely ISP called Noor chugged along, providing limited access to essential services for Egypt's government and major businesses, but even that powered down a few days later.

  Though it was likely achieved through a combination of system shutdowns and data re-routing or blocking, it was remarkably clean. Cell phone and landline voice service continued, but SMS text messaging was also disabled.

• You can't stop the Internet
  On Monday, Feb. 1, a service called SpeakToTweet, launched by Google and Twitter, brought voices of Net-deprived Egyptians to the global forum of Twitter by way of a phone number. Just like regular voicemail, people could call and leave a message.

  The system was heralded as a wondrous workaround, and a symbol of Internet ingenuity triumphing over real world adversity. But it had problems. If you didn't speak Arabic, you probably couldn't understand a word of the messages, which came through to Twitter anonymous and almost completely unmarked. But thanks to another dose of Internet ingenuity, another group, Small World News, created a site called Alive In Egypt that posted the translations of the tweets, along with the original audio.

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• Mubarak was ousted after 18 days of demonstrations during the 2011 Egyptian revolution^[5] when, on 11 February 2011, Vice President Omar Suleiman announced that Mubarak had resigned as president and transferred authority to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.^[6][7] On 13 April, a prosecutor ordered Mubarak and both his sons to be detained for 15 days of questioning about allegations of corruption and abuse of power.^[8] He was then ordered to stand trial on charges of negligence for not giving orders to stop the killing of peaceful protestors during the revolution.^[9] These trials officially began on 3 August 2011.^[10] Egypt’s military prosecutors then also proclaimed that they were investigating Mubarak's role in the assassination of his predecessor Anwar Sadat.^[11][12]

   

  On 2 June 2012, Mubarak was sentenced to life imprisonment by an Egyptian court. After sentencing, he was reported to have suffered a series of health crises. As of 20 June 2012 (2012-06-20)^[update], multiple sources reported that he was very ill, with some reporting that he was in a coma, others stating that he had had a stroke or had been on life support.^[13]

• CAIRO — An 18-day-old revolt led by the young people of Egypt ousted President Hosni Mubarak on Friday, shattering three decades of political stasis here and overturning the established order of the Arab world.