By the start of the second decade of the 2000’s, Egyptians were tiring of dictator Hosni Mubarak’s rule. Unemployment was high, police brutality was on the rise, and elections were rigged. As access to the Internet and social media in Egypt grew, citizens gained a newfound ability to voice their grievances, and the discontent that had been brewing in Egypt for decades finally came to a head.

The story of Wael Ghonim is particularly telling. A 29-year-old marketing executive at Google, Ghonim was a member of Egypt’s upper class and prior to 2010 had little interest in politics. In June of 2010, though, the story of Khaled Said, a 28-year-old who had been beaten to death by the police, finally inspired him to action. Capitalizing on the groundswell of emotion over this incident across the country, he created a Facebook page entitled “We Are All Khaled Said.” Within two minutes, the page had 300 likes, and within three months, it had 250,000. Egypt’s online revolution was underway. Ghonim’s fluency with online marketing had helped him realize that a Facebook page would spread far more quickly than a Facebook group. Furthermore, he recognized that to maintain credibility with the page’s followers, he should use the pronoun “I” rather than “we” in posts so as to avoid appearing like yet another organization or political party. This was a revolution about personal freedom and liberation from the oppressive institutions and parties of old.

Ghonim skillfully channeled the emotions of an unsettled populace through social media, but he also understood that social media would not be sufficient if lasting change was to be made. To organize physical protests of significant scale, he knew that the vast population of Egyptians without Internet access would need to be reached. He canvassed his page’s followers for ideas on how to best spread the word. They suggested flyers and text messaging, which turned out to be very effective. These interactions suggest a comparison to the classic principles of political organizing. In well-funded political campaigns, like those for higher office in the United States, a large staff of paid organizers can be hired, and these organizers can then recruit further volunteer staff and go door-to-door, send texts, or otherwise interact with constituents. The difference in many social movements is that there is no money, so this initial bootstrapping process with paid staffers cannot occur. So instead a core of educated, motivated activists must form through social media, just as was the case in Egypt. Through online discussions, this core can devise strategies for reaching large offline populations, and these strategies will be very similar to their counterparts in traditional political organizing, except carried out entirely by volunteer activists rather than paid staffers. The end result is the same: a large group of citizens galvanized around a common set of issues.

Needless to say, Ghonim’s efforts were largely successful. Leveraging his existing base of followers and using the Twitter hashtag “#jan25” and a Facebook page that was inclusive of a large number of interest groups, Ghonim helped organize a huge anti-Mubarak protest in Tahrir Square on January 25, 2011. Around two and a half weeks and a few protests later, President Mubarak resigned and the floodgates of democracy were opened. Social media had unleashed the incredible power of the Egyptian people.

Primary source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/books/review/how-an-egyptian-revolution-began-on-facebook.html?_r=0