From Cairo to Damascus: the new social network

Protesters at the Omayyed mosque in Damascus call for an end to the al-Assad regime, using social media and their phones to organize the rallies. (Photo Credit: Ahmad Al Zoughbi)

Mobile phones and social connectivity sites are offering marginalized groups a new voice, and have become the primary medium behind waves of democratic revolution surging throughout the Middle East.

“Social media played an essential role to mobilize youths, and they were the engine of this revolution,” Nihad Abu El-Komsan, head of the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights told MediaGlobal, “They took their freedom from the internet to the street; community now is freedom for the whole nation.”

Amateur photographers have used their mobile phones to record protests and their aftermath, with streams of graphic images depicting the wounded and dead posted to YouTube and Twitter. The Facebook group, The Syrian Revolution 2011, called for a “Week of the Martyrs,” a country-wide protest, to honor the recently slain and oppose the al-Assad government.

Organizers are planning protests far from the capital, and will include the boycotting of mobile phone service providers Syriatel and MTN, who are rewarding pro-regime customers with free service. Unlike other Middle Eastern governments, the al-Assad regime, is attempting to use state-run media to counteract groups like The Syrian Revolution rather than simply blocking the sites and services.

“The power of thousands and millions of people now submitting updates right from the palm of their hands is absolutely amazing,” Dominic Mentor, Fulbright Scholar at the Teachers College at Columbia University, told MediaGlobal. “People who are generally marginalized in societies, women for example, now have various means of letting their voices be heard through their mobile phones, and through a host of social media services”

Meanwhile, police forces within Syria, Iran, Libya, and Yemen have targeted cell phone users who capture, and later post, visual evidence that contradicts state-run media outlets.

Muhammad Bakr Radwan, an Egyptian-American, was arrested for using his cell phone to film the Syrian riots in Damascus. He has been held without charges; Syrian news sources claim he was selling government secrets to Israel.

Syria also jailed a 19 year-old girl for blogging and sentenced her to five years in prison, accusing her of similar espionage charges that reflect Bashar al-Assad’s claims of international conspiracy.

While the self-immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi in Tunisia was the catalyst of these revolutions, movements had been fomenting unrest since 2008. One such movement, the April 6th Youth Movement, supported striking industrial workers in the city of El-Mahalla El-Kubra on Egypt’s Nile Delta.

The movement, and later the Tahrir Square protests were largely propelled by young women. Israa Abdel Fattah became known as Facebook Girl when the 27 year old human resources worker was arrested for gaining 70,000 followers in support of the April 6th strike in 2008.

“The power of social media literally lies in people’s hands,” said Mentor, “A single voice can become a collective, resounding echo of dissatisfaction.”

Emboldened by the success of the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, another April 6th founder, Asmaa Mahfouz, took her Facebook video blog and posted it on YouTube.

The video showed the small, scarfed Mahfouz in a non-descript room making passionate calls to fellow Egyptians to fight for their rights.

“Whoever says it is not worth it because there will only be a handful of people, I want to tell him you are the reason behind this,” said Mahfouz. “You are a traitor, just like the president or any security cop who beats us in the street; your presence with us will make a difference, a big difference.”

The entry quickly went viral, calling on Egyptians to protest Hosni Mubarak’s regime on the 25th of January in Tahrir Square.

Her call for protest followed four self-immolations at Cairo’s Parliament building, where victims imitated Tunisia’s Bouazizi in an attempt to jumpstart protest in Egypt. Security forces called these men “psychopaths.”

The murder of Khaled Said by Mubarak’s security forces in June 2010 had enraged Egyptians, and the page “We are all Khaled Said” fueled this outrage as postmortem pictures of the beaten youth circulated the internet.