Liberation Through The Internet: The Case Of The Arab Spring
What Happened in the Arab Spring?
It could be argued that when the Chinese authorities started focusing on the prevention of any political mobilization through the internet and shut down the Jasmine Revolution, they learned from the Arab Spring because this was a prime example of an instance where the internet was a key factor in an uprising against an authoritarian government.
Political unrest and protests had preceded the escalation of events during the Arab Spring. Protests had taken place in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, especially in relation to unemployment, political conditions and rise in food costs that had struck populations already living on the edge of poverty. These events alone, however, were not enough to trigger a larger uprising, on one hand because the governments responded with policies which improved the situation of the population somewhat, though not up to their demands, and on the other hand because, particularly in Morocco, the government still enjoyed legitimacy from their citizenship.
This changed in Tunisia with the self-sacrifice of Mohamed Bouazizi. Bouazizi was a produce vendor on the streets of one of Tunisia’s poorest areas, a town called Sidi Bouzid, and was supporting much of his family through this profession, when a local police officer revoked his license to sell on the street. After unsuccessful appeals to the police, local officials and the regional governor, and supposedly being further humiliated by being slapped or spat at (accounts differ), he resorted to setting himself on fire in front of the governor’s office, from which he died weeks later in the hospital.
The spectacular nature of this suicide may not have been the only factor of the act that sparked the uprising. Bouazizi’s case perfectly embodied what was wrong in Tunisia and other Arabic states at the time. From his living conditions and the seemingly indiscriminate destruction of his source of income, which were the result of a corrupt regime and their organized theft, to the humiliation at the hands of an official, showcasing the impunity with which they were able to act with regards to civilians, he became a symbol of both the injustice done against the people, in particular the educated yet unemployed younger generation who were systematically cut out from political representation and economic improvement, and the resistance that should follow.
When Bouazizi immolated himself, protests broke out within hours. First within Sidi Bouzid, then across the south of the country, then nationally. More importantly, word travelled this fast without any of the state-run media running stories on the event. Communication and organization took place through the people, and the international revolution of the Arab Spring was set in motion, resulting in the toppling of several authoritarian and corrupt presidents, namely Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, and other leaders reforming their constitutions and promising large monetary contributions in favor of their citizens. The Arab Spring constituted the first time that a bottom-up revolution ousted an unpopular leader in the Arab world.
The Role of the Internet in the Arab Spring
By the time of the revolution, the internet had become widely used in the countries involved. In Egypt for example, from the number of internet users increased from 450’000 in December of 2000 to more than 17 million in February 2010, among them four million Facebook users and 160’000 bloggers, making up the second largest number of internet users in the region behind Iran. Most of the internet user base were educated youth, the same demographic that would later on make up the bulk of the protesters.
The internet was a central factor in the development of the Arab Spring because on one hand, it allowed the people to organize so quickly and efficiently and on the other hand, because of a lack of reporting by state-controlled news outlets on these events, it served to spread information about the protests. Even before these events unfolded, the internet was the only platform in Tunisia where investigative journalism took place and accusations against the regime were common. The initial protests in Sidi Bouzid were filmed with mobile phones and shared across social media along with Mohamed Bouazizi’s moving story. With so many people able to identify with his grievances, the news and images of his story spread at such a pace that it became impossible for the Tunisian government to halt it. Regular people started giving periodical updates on the situation through Facebook and other social media sites. In a desperate attempt at controlling the situation, the Tunisian government attempted to steal the entire country’s worth of Facebook passwords by having internet service providers run a code that would record login data of its users, a security infringement at a scale which was unprecedented for Facebook. Although the attempt was foiled by Facebook employees, the Tunisian authorities still banned social media and video sharing websites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. This did not stop the protesters though, as they simply reverted to using SMS networks to organize. On January 14th, less than a month after Bouazizi set himself aflame, Ben Ali fled into exile in Saudi Arabia.
It is important to note that social media was not the only factor making the Arab Spring successful. Once the revolution had gained enough momentum and caught the attention of the global media beyond the control of the individual, they picked the story up and in turn generated additional crucial support from the outside. Once the news had spread far enough, activists from across the globe started using the internet to help the protesters out. Hacker communities like Anonymous built software that would help circumvent government firewalls and sabotaged the government itself with denial-of-service attacks. Thus, the internet first played a crucial role in bridging the gap of information diffusion between the people and the global media deliberately left out by the state-controlled national media, and was then used further in the fight against these regimes.
The importance of the internet for this revolution is further evidenced by the fact that a few months before Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation, something similar happened in another Tunisian town, Monastir. But with no one present to film the instance, it never reached the wider public. Similarly, Tunisian protests in 2008 were crushed without major repercussions for the government. Back then, social media penetration was low, at only 28’000 Facebook users in the country. In contrast, by late 2010, at the time of Bouazizi’s self-sacrifice, two million users were active in Tunisia. Tunisia’s government was caught off-guard by the pace at which the revolution advanced through social media, but they were not completely unaware of the internet’s potential before these events were set in motion. In August of 2008, Tunisia’s regime had already blocked Facebook in response to the circulation of protests against violence employed by the military against civilians. However, only a few months later, the Facebook block was reversed thanks to international pressure.
The Arab Spring protests soon swapped over to Egypt where people had their own story of martyrdom paralleling that of Mohamed Bouazizi. In June 2010, a young blogger named Khaled Said who had exposed police corruption, was forcefully taken out of an internet café in Alexandria and brutally beaten to death. Shocking images of his shattered face started circulating the internet, much like those of Bouazizi in the hospital, and a Facebook group called “We are All Khaled Said” was created by Wael Ghonim which had accumulated 350’000 members by mid-January of 2011. This group, beyond being a tribute, developed a sense of community and became a wider communication tool, as Ghonim connected with the global community by keeping people informed in English from within Egypt. Mubarak, feeling increasingly threatened, resorted to similar tactics as Ben Ali, by attempting to shut down the internet. But not only were the protesters prepared for such a move, and had already prepared countermeasures to circumvent it, internet service providers only temporarily shut down their service and internet access was reinstated within days. The longer the demonstrations went on, the more creative became the ways protesters were using the internet in their favor. Tip sheets for how to organize successful protests, how to stay anonymous on the internet and how to circumvent government blocks started circulating. Only a few weeks after Mubarak’s attempted internet shut-down, he announced his resignation and the success of the protests inspired further liberation movements across the Arabic world.
What made these “internet powered” protests so efficient was their decentralized nature. Without a clear picture of who exactly was leading the protests, the regimes were unable to stop them by simply arresting someone. Furthermore, the internet is very versatile, offering many ways to circumvent government shut-downs or monitoring attempts, although this succeeded partly thanks to sloppy work by the regimes who failed to cover such loopholes. Some even argued that the military in Egypt did not act with more force because all the protests were constantly being filmed by a multitude of cameras and immediately put online. All of this is testament to the fact that the Arab Spring would never have seen such success without the internet.
