The Egyptian revolution that started on January 25 engaged many people who theretofore had not been considered political actors. Among them were the Ultras, a particular group of football fans who are widely credited to have played a part in the more physical aspects of the uprising. In this article the Ultras are studied by means of an analysis of their own written material, their internet presence, and fieldwork conducted in Cairo. It is argued that the Ultras have quite naturally developed into a revolutionary social movement.
Recent research on contentious politics in the Middle East emphasizes the importance of repression and its effect on social movements, often manifested in demobilization and so-called ‘nonmovements’. This case study of West Bank Palestinian activism seeks to go beyond such outcomes. The current, youthful nonviolent Palestinian grassroots activism in the West Bank is persistent, despite repeated violent repression. Focusing on the interplay between context, practices, and networks, this article shows how an increasingly vocal and visible popular resistance movement has asserted itself despite facing double repression – from the occupying Israeli state and the Palestinian National Authority. In a highly repressive context characterized by widespread demobilization, especially among young people, the impetus for mobilization is not perceived opportunity, but rather existential threats. The analysis focuses on how long-term repression from the external occupier and the internal elite contributes to forming specific kinds of contentious practices and networks among young Palestinian grassroots activists. By deploying new and creative contentious tactics they partly succeed in challenging the Israeli occupation without risking sanctions from the internal Palestinian elite. They are also able to criticize this elite implicitly, bringing popular pressure to bear on it. However, while the strategic use of nonviolence has provided these activist environments with a degree of resilience in the face of repression, they are unable to mobilize on a wide scale as long as the Palestinian political elite does not support them.
Social media, in a number of diverse forms, figures prominently in both routine and crisis situations to initiate and amplify political action. Events beginning with the Green Revolution in Iran (2009), anti-government protests in North Africa (2011), and violent protests in Syria (2012) have employed varying methods of social media mobilization. Political mass movements are relying on social media networks for late-breaking events, civil disobedience, network activism, and a host of similar functions. These technological potentialities are proving to be effective methods for keeping protest movements active, recruiting both leaders and followers, and in countering state-controlled media. Governments have been slow to recognize the power of social media to organise and direct opposition and protest movements. Yet the experiences of 2011, especially during the Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, have raised the profile of social media in the purview of state and society alike. Governments unsympathetic to organised, unmanaged political opposition are planning and implementing specific technical and political and other measures to control the access and use of social media networks for political action. This paper will utilize a model that takes these experiences and events as inputs through which to profile the interactions between political opposition and civil society groups, and steps taken by governments to inhibit or suppress social media-based mobilization. The model generates four dimensions of social media use: (1) Access; (2) Anonymity; (3) Awareness; and (4) Advocacy. Each dimension represents a scale of conditions that enables and enhances the power of social media in the context of political protest or, conversely, inhibits the utility of social media to place demands on government. I will examine three cases (Iran, 2009, Tunisia, 2010-2011, and Egypt 2011) to: (1) illuminate the initial conditions in each country for the employment of social media as a catalyst for political opposition and protest; (2) chart the course of various social media techniques and parallel human organization during active periods of public protest; (3) identify initial attempts by governments to control or inhibit the use of these social media and their underlying communications infrastructure; and (4) reveal subsequent plans and actions by successor governments to encourage, discourage, block, or otherwise control, future use of these technologies.
Commentators covering recent social movements, such as the Arab Spring, have claimed that cell phones and social media enable collective action. We develop a theoretical model to illustrate why, focusing on two mechanisms: first, by enabling communication among would-be protesters, cell phones lower the costs of coordination; second, these technologies broadcast information about whether a protest is repressed. Knowing that a large audience will now witness, and may be enraged by repression, governments refrain from squashing demonstrators, lowering the cost of protesting. We evaluate the model’s predictions using high-resolution global data on the expansion of cell phone coverage and the incidence of protest from 2007-2014. Our difference-in-differences estimates indicate that cell phone coverage increases the probability of protest by two times the mean. Consistent with our second mechanism, we also find that the expansion of coverage reduces the probability of repression.
Social movements are activities in which groups of individuals or organizations try to implement or reverse social or political change or reform. The creation of a community of people who share a movement’s objectives is central to its success. It requires a means of communication through which the movement’s proponents can discuss and refine their objectives, share stories of personal grievances, build organizations, and design and implement strategy and tactics. Media are traditionally among the most important means of communication for building such communities. Social media are a relatively new form media whose power to foster social movements first became obvious during the Arab Spring of 2011. The purpose of this research is to address how social media can best be used to advance the goals of social movement proponents. Eight recent social movements that have used social media to various degrees are analyzed resulting in a model that attempts to answer this question.
It has been 15 years since the last wave of democratization. In the “third wave” between 1989 and 1995, many remnants of the Soviet Union and failed authoritarian regimes in other parts of the world turned themselves into variously functional electoral democracies. Around the world, roughly three in every five states held a democratic form by 2010. But as a region, North Africa and the Middle East were noticeably devoid of popular democracy movements — until the early months of 2011. Between January and April 2011 public demand for political and economic reform cascaded from Tunis to Cairo, Sanaa, Amman and Manama. Democratization movements had existed long before technologies like mobile phones and the Internet came to these countries. But with these technologies, people sharing an interest in democracy built extensive networks and activated collective action movements for political change. What might have made regimes more susceptible than others to popular uprisings, and what might explain the relative successes of some movements more than others? What role does information technology have in the modern recipe for democratization? Weighing multiple political, economic, and cultural conditions, we find that information infrastructure — especially mobile phone use — consistently appears as one of the key ingredients in parsimonious models for the conjoined combinations of causes behind social movement success during the Arab Spring. Internet use is relevant in some solution sets, but by causal logic it is actually low levels of internet use and internet censorship that results in regime durability. In other words, a relative small population of internet users and low levels of digital censorship makes for a less fragile regime, while relatively high levels of mobile phone use was a causal contributor to social movement success.