Modelo Funcional u Orgánico Funcional

As just discussed a media war exists between the liberals and Islamists, but this war is unbalanced because the liberals control over 70% of the Egyptian media outlets and they have shifted the balance of power to serve their interests. In Figure 4.2 shows Rassd new network and Tahrir TV channel were the only platforms recognised as being a pro-Morsi media portals.

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Figure 4.2: This figure shows that liberal media channels are the most followed on the social media platform of Twitter. Source: Social bakers 2013

The liberal’s media portals have been used successfully to call for mass political

mobilisations for example to pre-announce ‘June 30’ as a day of protest, a protest which led to the toppling of the democratically elected president Mohammed Morsi. Local and

international media outlets claimed that this was the biggest mass mobilisation of people in human history and reported that over 20 million people joined the protests (e.g. BBC 2013, al-Arabiya 2013, Huffington Post 2013). On the 3rd of July 2013, in response to the public outrage, the military, led by General el-Sisi, ousted Morsi and imprisoned him. The media played a key role in unseating Morsi. As Iskandar (2013) notes:

what was once the Brotherhood and military's greatest asset, secrecy, has now become a liability in Egypt's changing media landscape. For decades, the Brotherhood has been vilified by the press, which led the organization into near-absolute media insularity. Just like the military establishment, the

Brotherhood wore camouflage over the past 60 years. The armed forces did so to conceal their privilege role in power and the Brotherhood to obfuscate their adversarial position to power. In the end, both have been burnt by the media spotlight, a predicament not so unfavourable for a revolutionary Egypt and a promising sign of the awakening of Egypt's fourth estate.

In the aftermath of Morsi’s overthrow the military conducted massive crackdown operations targeting Ikhwan and their media outlets. As Shareef Mansour, from (CPJ) observed:

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Over the following weeks, several steps were taken to extend censorship of pro-Morsi media. Al-Ahram, the government printing house, refused to print the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice daily, and Egypt's Nilesat satellite operator jammed three pan-Arab satellite television stations, the Hamas-affiliated stations Al-Quds and Al-Aqsa, and the Jordanian Al-

Yarmouk, when they tried to broadcast pro-Morsi demonstrations. (2013: 12) Morsi’s overthrow, however, has created a polarised media landscape that has divided Egyptian society. The society has been divided into two ‘camps’ and these two camps have come to dominate much of the Egyptian media landscape fuelling antagonism and hatred between the two groups. This has led to physical confrontations where blood has been spilled with many thousands of Morsi’s supporters being killed by the military and their supporters. Further, anti-Ikhwan media networks have catalysed publics to fight pro-Morsi demonstrators and have portrayed Ikhwan and their supporters as terrorists. This is akin to the US ‘war on terror’. As Iskandar (2013) notes:

Their demonization of Islamists, dismissal of the pro-Morsi rallies, and growing dehumanization of other Egyptians is becoming characteristic. Many such media came out squarely on the side of the military when fifty pro-Morsi protesters were killed in front of the Presidential Guards by the armed forces. Failing to acknowledge wrongdoing on the part of the military, some have gone as far as drumming up xenophobia against non-Egyptians, Palestinians, and Syrians for their alleged support of Morsi.

In return pro-Morsi supporters have also harnessed the power of social media networks to catalyse publics to condemn the military coup, to highlight military brutality and to call for democratisation. As a result of this retaliation a third wave of social unrest erupted. The conflict which erupted resulted in the introduction of pro-el-Sisi supporters who attacked and criticised the conflict. Generally information warfare was waged alongside activities of intimidation, physical harassment, media crackdowns and the arrest of Ikhwan members and their supporters. Amnesty international (2013) called the media crackdowns a, ‘blow to freedom of expression’. At the time of writing this thesis (February 2014), the events of the third wave of social unrest are yet to come to an end and antagonism and hate continue to dominate the Egyptian media landscape. Although Facebook and Aljazeera were the only

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tools of the new revolutionaries the Ikhwan has been unable to achieve their political change. In regards to this, Clint Watts (2013) argues:

for those that lauded the wonders of social media activism, the coup showed the weaknesses of Facebook revolutions for achieving lasting political change. Social media may have prompted Egyptians to storm the streets in January 2011, but it did not result in Western style democracy. Instead of the more Western and secular elements in Egypt leading change, the Muslim

Brotherhood’s democratically elected leaders triumphed at the ballot boxes and further divided the country more than they unified it. Two years later, the failure of Egypt’s ‘Facebook Revolution’ with a return to authoritarian military rule may in fact set democracy in the Middle East back more than it ever progressed it. This brings us to Malcolm Gladwell.

Gladwell is a cyber-utopian critic who downplayed the potential of Facebook and Twitter to achieve political change. In his two controversial articles in The New Yorker, ‘Does Egypt Need Twitter’ (2011) and ‘Small Change’ (2010), Gladwell argued, ‘people protested and brought down governments before Facebook was invented’. In East Germany and during the French revolutions revolutionaries achieved their political goals without internet access or the use of mobile phones. He calls social media activism ‘high risk’ because he believes ‘social activism requires deep roots and strong ties’. Despite Gladwell’s arguments the military coup did occur and Facebook and Twitter did play a role. It is still a legitimate question, therefore, to consider whether the revolutions would have occurred without them. In the next section I will highlight the importance of the Web 2.0 platforms of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and consider how they contributed to the events of the social uprisings in Egypt between 2011 and 2013.