Analyzing the Role of Youth in the Political Changes in Egypt in 2011

Egyptians of all classes and ages took part in the protests, united in demands and ambitions such as improved wages, improved conditions of working, and political freedom. However, it was the surprising figures of young individuals who took part in the demonstrations that provided drive to the revolt. The young individuals were also key to maintaining the uprising given that numerous meet in Tahrir (Liberation) Square in Cairo as well as other cities across the nation. Egyptian youth are actually the faces behind this leaderless uprising; the revolution was generally impelled by their skill in utilizing social media to gain attention (Roudi-Fahimi, El Feki & Tsai, 2011). The new youth backed, and at times, instigated by women is now an aware global citizen, refusing to bear the inability of its rulers to be with the times and provide means of development and rapidly changing economic and social paradigms.

Apart from redefining the Egyptian society, the new media and public engagement have placed people at the centres of their own stories in the most profound ways and in ways that integrate the production, supply, as well as consumption of mass media. The Egyptians have therefore declined the long prevailing official mediated tales that have long kept them contained, while new tales of protests and response to the severe economic condition have become quite popular and fulfilling to numerous youth in differing parts and sectors of Egypt. In as much they appeal to the youth as an expression of their new-found liberal views. Even though Mubarak's deposition took a mere eighteen days, the oppositional movement which took him down was actually a product of a much longer procedure of planning and build-up, a product of decades of oppression and disenfranchisement which stimulated political mobilization.

The tales regarding women and uprisings have always intertwined, and the 2011 revolution gave the Egyptian women fresh avenues and opportunities for involvement in political and social reform. Right from the beginning women had been at the forefront of civil resistance that assumed real and virtual forms. The right for democracy and a secular society cropped up from the political and social oppression that women had encountered in years. The major role played by women in the uprising might have shaken the structure of the social power and deconstructed master tales regarding the Arab woman (Al-Natour, 2012).

Analysing any feature of the Egyptian uprising without taking into account this historical background would result to a myopic conclusion, and when evaluating the function of the new phenomenon like social media, could result to technological determinism (Saleh, 2013). This research aims to delve deeply into the role the young people played in Egypt leading to the 2011 revolution.

'Convergence Culture' and Youth Activism in Egypt

In most parts of the world, media and information literacy has presented a strong platform for young individuals to contribute to economic, political, and social development, offer expressions to religious and cultural pluralism, get to know about the issues in other surroundings that differ from their own, and support the democratic process. Egypt is no different and could not keep itself sans these particular grand goals. The new media environment has offered new openings of changing societies, through the civil society and social movements motivation which enlightens the process of decision-making with data, therefore empowering people to assume control of their futures (Saleh, 2013).

Half a decade ago, the Egyptian youth captured worldwide attention, and for a short period of time, became the focus of the world. However, the revolution caused nothing but a regime change, and they had every cause to feel belittled. Most elite Egyptian youth utilize their smart phones for checking Twitter and Facebook, checking email, and sending text messages. The actual profound cultural change encourages new activists on the block to link with friends for a much greater cause, in this particular case overthrowing the government. There have been around 3,000 employee-led protests in Egypt in the past decade, an outcome of the suppressed resentment of Mubarak's regime. Egypt is plagued with a youth-bulge society, not capable of providing jobs and benefits for its disproportionally huge young population. In Egypt, unemployment rates are greatest amidst university graduates. At the same time, the repressive regimes are not in touch with the needs of Egyptian citizens. Social, political, and economic issues run quite deep in Egypt. As a nation such a combination accentuates its susceptibility as a failing state, that led to the inadequate experience with democratic governance, weak academic systems, and broken social contract. Moreover, lack of natural resources, corruption, and incompetent bureaucracies crippled economic production, making the future dim (Saleh, 2013). Such difficulty has caused the infuriated public, particularly the youth that have nothing to look forward to. The Egyptian youth is now more aware that waiting for transformation does not just happen on its own, and that the new media could help in making this transformation. Those disenfranchised groups started mobilization of the society into a state of rebellion against the state. illiteracy, illness, and poverty have worn out the previous nostalgic thoughts of romantic idealism of the magnificent past into a resentful present (Salanova, 2012). In 2004, the initiation of the Egyptian Movement for Change, also called Kefaya Movement, acted as a starting point for the gathering together of activists against the Mubarak regime. The movement was started by scholars demanding political transformation and had limited success in mobilizing critical group of protestors, and found it particularly hard to reach the common man. On the 6th of April, organizing tool met political reality to develop aspects that were strong enough to form storm clouds on the horizon of the regime. The outcome was the creation of a new movement: The April 6 Youth Movement that has ever since played an important organizational role in the 2011 protests (Storck, 2011).

The trajectory of the Egyptian political protests points to the need of keeping track of the 'new' media environment in mapping the function of communication in anti-authoritarian movements. These particular social networks inform, gather, entertain, open chances, increase transparency, and seeks to hold governments responsible. The new virtual options presented a new space and re-described traditional spaces that in turn gave a new sense of belonging, a type of connection and unity, internally and with others in the region and far beyond. There exist cultural and social impacts of new media in the development of values and knowledge together with dynamics implanted in more lasting historical developments that encourage a greater position for the person vis-a-vis recognized powers (Hofheinz, 2011). The fact however, remains that the Egyptian revolution and its subsequent political events (either bad or good) were about to take place anyway, in spite of the presence of technology or internet. The link between society and technology is vital to this discussion: technology is society, and the society cannot be represented or comprehended without its technological tools (Saleh, 2013).

Once again, The Revolution establishes that women play an important role in revolutionary occurrences. Egyptian women actively took part in the uprising, in a similar fashion that they played an active role in the strike movement in the last few years, compelling the men to join the strikes on numerous occasions. Though women comprised of approximately only 10% of the protesters in the early protests in Egypt; on Tahrir Square, they formed around 40 to 50% of the protestors in the days leading to the fall of Mubarak. Egyptian women, both with and without veils, took part in the defense of the square, put up barriers, chaired debates, yelled slogans, and put their lives at risk together with the men (Frederiksen, 2011). Similar to their men, women in Egypt adopted the call to 'hope.' Here, they explain Tahrir's spirit and hope that the democracy model developed there will be continued as the Egyptians mold a new social and political landscape (Naib, 2011).

Conceptual Framework

Wide, interpenetrating, and overlapping ways media systems as well as communication networks intricately conditioned and facilitated political transformations by offering an alternative understanding of the function of technology and information in the occurrences and by obtaining several significant models and theories. Therefore, it is important to utilize social construction of technology and domestication theories, while disputing that social networking did not necessarily substitute traditional means of mobilization, but instead amplified them. Here, the theory is that both new innovative way and traditional mobilization tools of communication enforced mobilization activities. Given that social network connections are non-hierarchical and that exchange of information is somewhat open, 'April 6' and 'Kefaya' were capable of stipulating the development of a structure and maintaining it to withstand government repression by altering their strategies in coping with conditions on the ground (Saleh, 2013).

Setting the Scene for New Youth Activism in Egypt

To begin with, the three main elements of a potential communication model of the Egyptian regime transformation are: the communication culture, media ecologies, and the temporal-spatial unfolding of occurrences. Several researches have suggested that the benefits of communication technologies rely mostly on who is utilizing them and for what reason. Social movements via 'April 6' and 'Kefaya' arranged a chain of strikes protecting against the increase in the costs of basic services, the dropping wages, and the fact that even as inflation was turning into an obvious issue, the Egyptian government carried on with its program of neoliberal privatization. For instance, 'Kefaya', the Egyptian Movement for Change, was initiated in 2004, and acted as a starting point for a new type of Egyptian youth activism. The population of the group increased to more than 70,000 members, amounting to 10% of Egypt's active Facebook user demographic in that period. Egypt has a fascinating mix of use of so-called new and old media: out of its 83,000,000 inhabitants Egypt has 6,500,000 Facebook users, which appears like very low penetration in numerous ways; however, it stays as one of the greatest social media penetrations of any North African or Middle Eastern region (Saleh, 2013).

In the course of the revolution in 2011 and later on, Egyptian authorities have continually tried to take strong steps to manage the exchanges in social media by restricting access to the internet, announcing statements of support for the regime, subterfuge by pronouncing that protests had been called off and attempting to get information regarding protestors (Preston, et al., 2011). Facebook offered a new space and a new virtual organizational structure for discourse for prospective protestors to network with each other and talk of their shared complaints. The thought of spinning protests garnered a lot of fame and protests are now self-reinforcing and capable of expanding without additional direct organization or in spite of action by the management. The function of 'orality' was quite clear in the course of the revolution. Given that most of the Egyptians stayed as offline communities; the need for priests was verbally spread by taxi drivers, well-known in the Egyptian community for their talkative nature (Saleh, 2013).

In June 2010, Facebook broadcasted information regarding the death of Khalid Said, a young blogger, who was mercilessly beaten and killed after supposedly posting an incriminating video involving police officers. In response to his death, the Middle East marketing director of Google, Wael Ghonim, came up with the Facebook page "We Are All Khaled Said" and disseminated grisly photos of Said's dead body. Pictures of the disfigured Said's corpse taken by his own brother on his mobile phone quickly spread in the online social networks, exposing the dreadful incidence to millions of Egyptians and turning the death of Said into a nationwide scandal. The Facebook page, "We are all Khaled Said," was established with the initial aim of bringing the murderers to court to pay for their transgression. It, however, rapidly turned into something much greater, resulting in a movement that would campaign against torture and abuse of rights in the country. The group ultimately called for a Day of Anger against "Torture, Corruption, Poverty and Unemployment" on the 25th of January, 2011. Google executive, Wael Ghonim, fueled the huge mobilization, and activists of the April 6 Youth Movement were also involved in the group (Ghonim 2012). The Facebook page "We are all Khaled Said" turned into a rallying point for the educated Egyptian youth (Saleh, 2013).

The Facebook page, "We are all Khaled Said," rapidly attracted 500,000 members and within no time turned into a platform for online discussion and discourse regarding shared grievances in opposition to the Mubarak rule. In accordance to Arab Social Media Report, as of April 2011in the Arab world, Facebook penetration stood at 27,711,504, with Egypt leading the movement with its 6,586,260 active Facebook users. This penetration significantly increased between January 5th and April 5th when nearly two million Egyptians became Facebook members that marks the greatest growth in Facebook users in the Arab region. The Facebook users were restricted to younger generations between the 24 and 18 years of age (Saleh, 2013). approximately 131,000 Twitter users in Egypt between January 1st and March 30th 2011, produced an average of 24,000 tweets daily in that period. A certain user in Cairo produced 60,000 words during the 18-day revolution, making up 1,500 tweets (Saleh, 2013).