Marlon Jackson's List: Digital Citizenship

• Twitter, Facebook, and eventually all Internet access were cut off; text messaging became impossible, and then millions of mobile phones went silent across the country. But the protests and riots continued, as they had for most of the week, with thousands of young Egyptians trying to take down the regime of octogenarian President Hosni Mubarak.
• The Obama administration looked on as if caught between the police lines and the protesters, unsure which side to join. "My main hope right now is that violence is not the answer in solving these problems in Egypt," President Barack Obama said in a YouTube interview Thursday. "The government has to be careful about not resorting to violence.
• Late that night, Mubarak went on national television to tell his people he was listening and would change his cabinet, but with no hint that he might step down himself.
• Obama phoned Mubarak, then read his own statement at the White House, calling on Egypt to lift restrictions on the Internet and take more meaningful steps toward political reform
• crowdsourcing, a kind of collective leadership, elusive and resilient, the likes of which Egypt has never experienced. Its manifestoes -- even the chants shouted in the faces of the cops -- have been polished by dozens of anonymous editors on a Google document. "We are Egypt's youth on the Internet," they proclaimed on the eve of last Friday's protests. Mubarak cannot keep Egypt unplugged forever, and they know it.
• April 6 Movement, which started as a Facebook page in 2008.
• When he cofounded the April 6 Facebook page three years ago, 70,000 people signed up to support strikers in the city of Mahalla, or at least to "like" them
• ow a key organizer of the protests remains anonymous. On a Facebook page dedicated to Khaled Said, a blogger allegedly beaten to death by corrupt policemen in Alexandria last year, a mysterious figure calling himself "ElShaheed" has taken the initiative -- but he's careful to say he's not really in charge. "At the end of the day I am a virtual leader," ElShaheed told NEWSWEEK in an exchange on Gmail Chat. "Once everyone is on the ground each one is his own leader."
• Much the same thing is now being done in Egypt by the Khaled Said site, the April 6 Movement, and other groups that move from the conceptual to the concrete, showing people not only how to click a mouse, but also how to use Coca-Cola to wash away the sting of tear gas.

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• • Social networks have become like independent media sources.
• • There were no protections for those writing against the Mubarak regime.

• In both cases of political unrest, the internet and mainly social media were considered an important influence that helped spark and organize the protests.
• the hype created on the internet's relation to facilitating these events has hindered a deeper understanding of some more crucial ways, as well as the potential extent that digital communications can influence contemporary political insurgencies.

• An authoritarian government takes steps to cut off political dissidents from using social networks and text messaging to rally followers.
• Hosni Mubarak's government contacted telecoms and Internet service providers, who operate under a federal license, and ordered them to shut down public access. The digital blockade immediately slowed Web traffic into and out of Egypt to a trickle
• protest groups have continued to mobilize. A few are getting on the Internet by making toll calls to dial-up services in France. But primary communication is being done via couriers scooting on foot, motorbikes and other vehicles to homes of neighborhood leaders in charge of coordinating protests
• In this digital age, not having access to the Internet has effectively isolated Egypt from all parts of the world -- which is detrimental to the financial stability of Egypt and companies operating within Egypt

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