Abstract
Two years on from the Arab Spring, we are beginning to see the publication of first in-depth scholarly studies that investigate the precise causes and consequences of the events and seek to move beyond the inevitably simplified narratives initially provided by the media. David Faris seeks to do that by examining the ‘pre-history’ of the revolution in Egypt, focusing on the development of online media activism and drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted in the country well before the escalation of social unrest in 2011. In contrast to accounts that emphasise the importance of international factors and especially the impact of events in Tunisia, Faris argues for the centrality of local conditions in setting the stage for the digitally mediated confrontation with the Egyptian regime. He is particularly interested in the mobilisational potential of social media networks, and argues that these networks ‘can trigger informational cascades through the effects of their interaction with independent media outlets and on-the-ground organizers’ (p. 22). These informational cascades, in turn, ‘can make it difficult for regimes to maintain their control of information hegemony’ and can stimulate collective action ‘by lowering the “evolutionary thresholds” of individuals embedded in social networks’ (p. 22).
The book draws on open-ended interviews with prominent journalists, activists and bloggers as well as on the examination of Egyptian print media coverage. The analysis focuses on the period between 2005 and 2011, that is, roughly from the introduction of multi-candidate presidential elections. After a general discussion of the nature of social media networks and their involvement in the diffusion of information and social mobilisation, the key arguments are demonstrated through four chapters that focus on different aspects and case studies of digitally driven social mobilisation in the country. This is followed by a concluding chapter that tests the validity of the proposed model by applying it to other examples of recent social revolutions characterised by the involvement of the Internet: the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the 2009 Twitter revolution in Moldova, the 2007–2008 election crisis in Kenya and the 2009–2010 Green Revolution in Iran. Faris concludes that the same general arguments about social media networks and informational cascades are applicable, but that the different revolutions, nevertheless, resulted in different outcomes due to different local and international aspects of institutionalised politics.
Faris’ book provides a carefully documented and informative history of Egyptian digital activists and their political confrontations with Hosni Mubarak’s government in the years preceding the uprisings. As such, it is bound to constitute essential reading for anyone interested in developing a more comprehensive understanding of the Arab revolutions, the role of the media in the events and the relative impact of different domestic and international factors. His attempt to situate the Egyptian case vis-a-vis other recent examples of extensively mediated revolutions involving new communication technologies makes his study particularly relevant to a broader audience of media scholars interested in the relationship between the media and social change.