Social Media: The New Frontier in Revolutionary Activism

Whether it be the American Revolution or the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution or the Cuban Revolution, the term holds a universal definition - the deposition of an oppressive regime in exchange for a more desired government. Rebellions have pioneered many new techniques for distributing information and rallying support, such as Paine’s invigorating pamphlets or Lenin’s provocative speeches. More recently in the twentieth and twenty-first century, however, the pamphlets and commentaries of the past have subsided, and new forms of media have grown in effectiveness. Informing and assembling swifter than ever, social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube have unlocked limitless opportunities for the average citizen to become

The Tunisian Revolution, for example, resulted in the successful ousting of Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and his oppressive regime, which then galvanized many Egyptians to seek independence from their own authoritarian government with deplorable characteristics of its own (Zayed par. 12). Seeing that many of the Tunisian complaints were identical to their own, residents of Suez, Egypt, grew increasingly critical of their government’s faults, such as the 10.4% unemployment rate, widespread governmental corruption, and excessive use of police torture, and refused to remain compliant to state demands (Dziadosz par. 5). This developing sense of defiance towards the government spread throughout the entire country, as many young Egyptians began affiliating themselves with one prominent Tunisian protest group in the Tunisian Revolution - April 6 Youth Movement - in hopes of commencing their own revolution. And, with the help of the group on January 25, 2011, Egyptians around their country gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square for what would be the revolution’s largest protest (Kirkpatrick 2). While many internal issues ignited the nation’s sense of revolution, the Tunisian Revolution influenced many of its neighbor’s citizens to seek the same goal of achieving true democracy and