The Egyptian youth, born into Mubarak's rule and deeply unsatisfied with his 29 year reign, is the driving force behind this movement--something new for a demographic that traditionally isn't very active in national politics. As 28-year-old protester Ahmed Maher told the LA Times:
"There is a generational gap in Egypt," Maher said, watching waiters and the twentysomething men and women likely to join him in the protests. "The opposition is looking to preserve themselves and their parties. They've become too hesitant. But young activists are fired up, and they have no allegiances to anything but change."Groups like April 6 and the Muslim Brotherhood are uniting their active members, many under 30, to mobilize in the streets calling for the end of Mubarak's regime. And its obvious that the Egyptian government knows the importance of what columnist Sawsan Al-Abtah called the "youthful spirit" of the protest movement; this explains why, in the first days of the protest, they shut down the Holy Trinity of youth communication: text messaging, Facebook, and Twitter.
As an addict of all three of those technologies, it seems so bizarre that they can be used for anything but socializing. My social networking experience has been one of bumper stickers, funny profile pictures, and complaining about the lack of a 'dislike' feature, and not one of activism. Facebook as a platform for political and social change is an entirely foreign concept. I can't imagine that, say, during the next Presidential election I'd join a Facebook group in support of my preferred candidate and use that as a way to be keyed into the political race; honestly, I'm sure that I would just leave the group after a while, annoyed with the constant event invitations and mass messages that inevitably flood my inbox with that kind of group. Yet the Egyptian youth has used Facebook in a way that transcends its original purpose, turning it in to something so much more than a Facemash of college students or, as proposed in The Social Network, a way to get back at an ex-girlfriend. It's a mobilization tool that can unite people across a country in support of a common cause as well as draw in the younger population out of user convenience and cool-factor. That's not to say that any of the protesters are on the streets of Cairo risking their lives because all their Facebook friends are, too. However, the popularity as well as the strategy of the movement certainly owes something to social networking. And this isn't the first time Facebook or Twitter has been a part of cries for revolution in the Middle East; let's not forget the green "Where is their vote?" profile picture that swept the social networking scene during the 2009 Iranian presidential elections.
So we've seen that Facebook can be so much more than just a way to stalk your friends and call it normal; will it ever really serve that purpose in the US? Can we use Facebook to get our generation excited and informed about politics, as has been done in Egypt? I don't mean to be a downer, but honestly I doubt it. Social networking fuels a fire when it's already there; the reason it has worked so well for the Cairo youth is that they already had a mission and a message but needed a way to link up and organize. Facebook can't cure political apathy, which is what we're dealing with here; when it's not election season, most of us would never go out and risk our lives or even our time for government reform, and I don't see a Facebook group changing that attitude. First we have to understand the importance of what happens in Washington to our day-to-day lives and have a desire to change it.
Then maybe we can start the Facebook group.
No comments:
Post a Comment