E.E HERMANO PEDRO Y RESID ESCOLAR

This chapter looks at the findings from bloggers’ interviews as well as the quantitative content analysis of their respective blogs to compare prominent bloggers to less prominent ones as well as the nature and frequency of their blogs’ content before and after January 25th. It mainly serves to see who the most prominent bloggers are and compare their profiles to other bloggers studied as well as see the effects of prominence and their post-January 25th status on their blogs’ content.

6.1. Blogger profiles in blog statistics, background and education 6.1.1. Prominent: Esraa Abdel Fattah

Twitter Followers: 456,000 Number of Tweets: 67,100 Joined Twitter in: July 2009 Started blogging in: N/A

Times mentioned in the media: 11 (4 by Al-Masry Al-Youm, 2 by Al-Ahram, 3 by DNE and 2 by TenPM)

Followers/Likes on Facebook: 18,527

First Facebook note showing: Notes not showing Blog mentioned on Facebook: None

Blog mentioned on Twitter: None

Description on Twitter: Journalist and digital marketing specialist at Youm7 Description on Facebook: “Civil society consultant, a columnist and social media specialist at Youm7 and political activist.” On her personal page, the description is “digital and social media consultant at Youm7.”

Framed as: Activist: 6 Blogger: 2

Revolutionary Youth Representative: 4 Political Analyst: 3

Hero: 6 Familiar: 1

Personal Representative: 1

The interview with Esraa was held at her regular restaurant in Mohandessin, a relatively smart area of Cairo. She was dressed formally in readiness for

the interview was conducted in Arabic, she often used English terms and expressions showing an average command of English although with an accent. She had with her an iPhone, a Samsung smart phone and an iPad.

Abdel Fattah is a journalist and describes herself as digital and social media consultant at Youm7 newspaper. She was born on July 10th, 1978 and moved to Oman with her father, a mechanical engineer, and mother, a teacher, before returning to Egypt and graduating from the Faculty of Languages in Ain Shams University (one of the two main public universities in Cairo) in 2000.

Five years after graduation, Abdel Fattah started getting politically involved when Ayman Nour was arrested during the presidential elections in 2005, after which she became active in Nour’s Al-Ghad Party. Three years later, she founded a Facebook group in 2008 to support textile workers and call for the April 6th _{strike. The group attracted 74,000 followers and was the first} Facebook group calling for a general strike and the group and Abdel Fattah subsequently gained a lot of media and state attention. She was then dubbed Facebook Girl, becoming the first Egyptian woman to gain media popularity as a social media activist.

She was soon after arrested and detained in prison for more than two weeks before getting released and maintaining a low-profile for subsequent months. She worked with multinational companies in the field of human resources and says she was harassed into quitting after her arrest in 2008. She was not able to find a job in the same field afterwards due to the publicity surrounding her arrest and made a career shift into civil society. A few months later, she became active again with Mohamed El Baradei’s presidential

campaign before founding the Egyptian Democratic Academy in 2009 and becoming active in several other NGOs and initiatives.

During the 2011 uprising she became active in covering and Tweeting the events as well as speaking to the mainstream media. She publicized the January 25th protests on Facebook through an Al-Jazeera forum and other social media tools and then fundraised for the logistics of the event. After the uprising, she won the New Generation Democratic Activist Award from Freedom House, was named one of the Arabian Business Magazine’s 100 most powerful Arab women and was rumored by the media to have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

She remained the deputy chairman of the Democratic Academy she founded until she left in June 2014 to join Youm7 newspaper. She was a regular columnist for Al-Masry Al-Youm after the uprising but was stopped from writing at the newspaper under the new management in 2012. She was then approached by Youm7 in March 2013 to become a consultant and was asked back in by Al-Masry Al-Youm but refused the latter. Following the uprising, she had pitched a television program idea to Egyptian business tycoon and media owner Naguib Sawiris, whom she refers to by his first name. Sawiris’s channel, OTV, called her later and she presented the program for a short span. At the time of the interview, she was planning to run in the parliamentary elections that were to take place by the end of 2014.

Abdel-Fattah describes herself as upper-middle class. She says she was financially independent since being a university student, had her own computer since 2004 and never had a problem accessing computers, smart phones or the

internet. She had a smartphone during the 2011 uprising and used it to cover the events.

6.1.2. Prominent: Loai Nagati Twitter Followers: 107K Number of Tweets: 47.3K Joined Twitter in: May 2008 Started blogging in: 2008 Last blog post: January 2011

Times mentioned in the media: 4 (all by DNE) Followers/Likes on Facebook: 4,281

First Facebook note showing: April 2010 Number of Facebook notes: 8

Blog mentioned on Twitter: None (in August 2014 it mentioned two satirical websites/blogs he ran)

Blog mentioned on Facebook: None (in August 2014 it mentioned two satirical websites/blogs he ran)

Description on Twitter: “Freelance web developer” (used to mention two satirical websites he ran)

Description on Facebook: “Freelance web designer and developer” Framed as: N/A

The interview was held at Nagati’s office in Maadi. He used a lot of technical and professional English terms with a good accent. Born in 1990, Nagati lived with his family in Minya, Upper Egypt, before moving to Cairo to study computer science at the private Shorouk Academy. His father is a doctor. He has owned a private business, Abajora (Lampshade) Productions, in the field of media and web development and design since October 2013. He also founded and managed Abolhol (Sphinx) News, an online satirical news website, in December 2013.

He blogged in the technical fields as well as political and social fields, forming several blogs, the first of which was in 2008.