Social media played a crucial role in the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 by enabling 'first-mover mobilization'. This study explores how Facebook and Twitter helped organize the January 25th protest, which acted as a tipping point for hesitant revolutionaries.
The research analyzes three key mechanisms:
• Social media recruited protesters from across Egypt
• Platforms coordinated logistics through live updates
• Digital communication signaled collective action potential to sympathizers
These findings demonstrate how technology can catalyze social movements by reducing uncertainty and facilitating rapid mobilization. The article offers an empirically grounded analysis of digital activism during the Arab Spring, moving beyond broad causal claims.
| Launching Revolution: Social Media and the Egyptian Uprising's First Movers was authored by Killian Clarke and Korhan Kocak. It was published by Cambridge in BJPS in 2020. |
