This festive season, the Interhaktives at City University have decided to follow the trend set by both traditional and alternative media institutes and practitioners by devising our own news round-ups. Blogging about social media on this platform, we’ve chosen to reminisce on the big news stories that month in and month out have emerged on social media first and have then been reported widely. Thus, without further a due, as we appreciate the hustle and bustle the holidays bring upon us all, we’ll start off with January 2011, undoubtedly the month when the Arab Spring ball started rolling.
#Jan25
The landmark Egyptian protest on January 25 was not only broke but also organised on social media. Inspired by the Tunisian revolution and fuelled by the four Egyptians who died in front of their Parliament at the start of the year, many took to facebook, Twitter and Youtube to voice their concerns. The protest organised on the National Police Day, on 25 January 2011, gathered over 70,000 attendees on facebook, according to the New York Times. #Egypt and #Jan25 are both in Twitter’s top 10 hot hashtags of 2011 and Wael Ghonim, a proeminent activist on the Twitterverse (@Ghonim) and one of the users behind the prolific “We are all Khaled Said” page on facebook, who also wrote on Jan 26: “I said one year ago that the Internet will change the political scene in Egypt and some friends made fun of me,” has been branded the ‘symbol’ for #Jan25 by Twitter. Asmaa Mahfouz, also known as ‘the girl who organised Egypt’s demonstrations,’ posted an inspirational video on Youtube on 18 January calling all Egyptians to bring 5 or 10 people to Tahrir Square and pledging to go there herself.
As protests keep taking place in Egypt, #Jan25 is still in use. Also, the abovementioned facebook page, ‘that was secretly run by a Google marketing executive and other young human rights activists,’ continues to survive albeit with far fewer members than the 1.8 million mentioned by the New York Times. Just minutes ago it toped up 168,823 likes and over four thousand active users. “We are all Khaled Said” was initially set up as a memorial to the young man beaten to death by police, but is now ‘promoting and supporting Egypt’.
The video below is a tribute to #Jan25.