| The government makes an appearance on social networks By Lamia Hassan |
| After you sign onto Facebook, the first page that appears is the ‘News Feed,’ a running aggregation of activity on the popular social networking site. This is where you find out about your friends’ newest photos and links, their thoughts of the moment, their progress in online community games, their event invitations and official communiqués as head of Egypt’s provisional government.A week after former President Hosni Mubarak stepped down and handed power to the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), the SCAF joined Facebook with a government organization page. By the end of February, the prime minister’s office had followed suit with its own Facebook page. In the wake of the Tahrir protests, the government and many others have started to take social networking sites seriously as a platform for communication. “When I first saw the [SCAF] page on my news feed, I thought someone decided to make a fan page for the army,” says Mohamed Hossam, 23-year-old mass communication graduate and a Facebook user. “But when I read in one of the statements that they would be announcing it officially on the news in a few hours, I started believing that this was a new service launched by the armed forces.” Prior to and during the January 25 Revolution, Facebook was one of the online tools used to organize protests and spread videos, photos and news of events as they unfolded. The Mubarak government’s response was to try to shut it down, cutting off internet and mobile phone services during parts of the revolution. The provisional government, on the other hand, seems to have embraced the power of social networking. On February 17, as a way of communicating with people, SCAF launched their page on the very website that some credit with triggering the revolution. “I would not go as far as saying that this was a ‘Facebook revolution’,” says Hossam, “but this is definitely a very effective way to communicate with a sector of the society, especially youth, and keep them posted on the situation in Egypt.” When the SCAF page first appeared, people were confused about whether this was actually an official page approved and maintained by the council or a random page created by users. The SCAF made it official with a welcome message, dedicating the page to the Egyptians who started the January 25 Revolution and to its martyrs. The statement also said that “communication and cooperation would guide Egypt in this critical period.” Being the first of its kind for the nation, the provisional government’s Facebook page was initially met with skepticism, as there had been almost no communication between the people and the government prior to the revolution. But the 16,413 comments and 20,021 ‘likes’ on the SCAF’s first official statement indicates that the Armed Forces’ messages are attracting notice. On February 27, the government launched an official Facebook page for the prime minister, uploading videos and statements from then-Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik. On March 3, when the SCAF appointed Essam Sharaf as prime minister, replacing Shafik, who had been appointed by Mubarak in his last weeks as president, the SCAF communique making that announcement was posted on both the SCAF’s and the prime minister’s Facebook pages. Under Sharaf, the prime minister’s office has also branched out with an account on the microblogging website Twitter. “Most of the people using the social networks in Egypt are young and many of them are not interested in reading newspapers, so [the government] is actually widening their audience this way by reaching out to young people,” says Aliaa Dawoud, a mass communication professor at the American University in Cairo. “These young people called for the revolution. I think that the government suddenly realized that these people are actually quite powerful [and that] they have to appeal to them.” The SCAF’s page only publishes images of the council’s official statements and allows the users to comment on them. The prime minister’s page is more interactive, announcing news and inviting people to share their feedback about certain decisions and laws in more than 1,000 discussion forums. “This initiative was highly welcomed by people because they finally found someone to communicate with them,” says Sohier Abaza, an online community supervisor for social media at the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm. “When I get a status [update] from the government asking me to share my opinion about what should be the next step for the Cabinet in the meantime, or what my stance is on the performance of the Cabinet so far, this is in a way a kind of transparency, which was non-existent prior to the revolution.” In addition to communicating with people via Facebook and Twitter, the provisional government also posts its news on the official Cabinet of Ministers website (www.egyptiancabinet.gov.eg), with an email address for direct communication with Sharaf. SHIFTING MEDIA The revolution has not only managed to push the government into the world of social media, it has changed many people’s perception of social media and the internet in general. After the revolution, many people and businesses realized how this type of media is playing a vital role during the uprisings in the Arab world. “When I turned on our local channel and heard the presenter revealing information based on the Armed Forces’ Facebook page, it actually meant that people were realizing how effective social media was as a tool,” says 21-year-old student Salma Osman, who has both Facebook and Twitter accounts. “Before the revolution, the older generation thought that these networks were a waste of time. Now my parents, aunts and uncles are setting up accounts.” A study released in March by Techno Wireless Company, an Egyptian company specialized in e-marketing and mobile phone networks, shows a significant increase in the number of internet and social network users in Egypt after the revolution. According to a March 18 Reuters report, the study looked at the three most popular social networks sites during the revolution: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Before January 25, there were about 4.2 million Facebook users in Egypt; in early March that number had jumped to 5.2 million users. Twitter users nearly doubled from 26,800 before the revolution to 44,200 after it. And despite the five-day internet outage, internet users in Egypt managed to view 8.7 million pages on the video-sharing site YouTube in the first week of the revolution. A little more than 21 percent of the population — about 16.6 million Egyptians — use the internet, according to 2009 estimates by The International Telecommunications Union. The study also indicated that the Egyptian users adapted quickly to attempts at restricting their internet access. Proxy servers, for example, became quite popular when social network websites were blocked. When the internet was shut down for five days, Twitter announced a voice service which people from Egypt could contact and leave their messages to share information. Also, a free international dial-up number, username and password were circulated for people to connect to the Internet via their land lines. You cannot add the SCAF or the prime minister as Facebook friends, but you can receive updates from their pages by pressing the ‘like’ button on the page. As of press time, there were more than 869,000 Facebook users who ‘liked’ the SCAF’s Facebook page. The provisional government had nearly 270,000 Facebook ‘likes’ and 9,194 Twitter followers in less than one month. In comparison, the official Facebook page for the White House, seat of the US presidency, has slightly over 932,000 ‘likes.’ “As a start, this is definitely a good step,” says Abaza. “But on the long run we need transparency and better communication between the government and the people in the process of building a new and better Egypt.” While communication is important, AUC’s Dawoud says that the government’s presence on Facebook or Twitter is an outreach tool, nothing more. “Whether or not there is a gap between the people and the government, the issue of transparency depends on the government’s performance in the first place and not on the media that they use.” |
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