Bridges Between Cultural and Digital Worlds in Revolutionary Egypt

 Holding a Ph.D. in Design Studies from Harvard, a Masters of Science in Media Arts and Science from MIT, and a Bachelors of Science in Industrial Engineering from Stanford, Ramesh Srinivasan is a very-decorated academic. He is currently an associate professor at the University of California – Los Angeles working in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.

After a trip to Kyrgyzstan in 2007, Ramesh realized that the use of technology by activists was based on the imagination of social networks that spanned local and global audiences. From his observations in 2007, Ramesh decided to return to Egypt in June of 2011 with hopes of speaking to and observing all walks of life to see how various users imagine and interact with the networks that influence them. In his article Bridges Between Cultural and Digital Worlds in Revolutionary Egypt, Srinivasan states (2012), “while networks of social media users may be limited, circumscribed, and actually not directly connected to street action, they still may communicate, or bridge, with other networks that reach and stir peoples across social classes and geographies” (p. 57). Social media activists are able to impact ground efforts by creating a sense of “shared grievance” across a large geographic space. Not only did these networks fabricate a sense of unity, but they also provided anonymity and speed when exchanging information about the revolution. Through these various mechanisms of communication many activists spoke of “leaderless” movements; propagating their ideas to other revolutionaries helped satisfy their political agenda.  With only 5 percent of Egyptians being Facebook users, 135,000 Twitter users, and an even smaller division of these users being politically active, Srinivasan’s informants declared (2012), “Egyptian mobilization was deeply influenced by how born-digital content was re-mediated into forms that the masses could access” (p. 56). With this influx of social media coverage it comes at a cost of unintentional distortion of information. In his example of Twitter, a barrage of reports in conjunction with re-Tweeting from the other side of the globe is a recipe for echo chambers and distorted perception. It is easy to mindlessly reverberate something we heard or saw. Having access to social media is a power that many of us take for granted; Speaking of this power and informant for Srinivasan said (2012), “People at any single point can be a leader on social media…. Anyone at any point can make a Facebook page without any investment” (p. 56).

This article was published in 2012 after nearly two years of investigation in Egypt. Ramesh took the time to speak with university students and faculty, taxi drivers, hotel laborers, corner store workers, factory laborers, engineers, journalists, political aspirants, and labor union organizers. Comprising the accounts of all of these individuals, Ramesh told the stories of what these people deal with daily in order to see change in their society. This article, being that it was published in The Information Society, was probably intended more for academic use but could also be useful to the public. After this publication Ramesh was invited to speak on TED Talks and his article has been cited in numerous journals discussing similar topics.

Initially I felt that this was going to be a difficult read with all of the quotes and cites to sift through but after I latched onto the material it was very interesting and enjoyable. I feel that even though this was an account of something that happened thousands of miles away, it is relevant here and now. The situations Ramesh wrote of are things that happen every day on our campus: political activism on social media, public campaigns, and even “underground” networks. With everything in our daily lives being intricately connected by various imagined networks, does social media through active involvement provide of a platform for social justice and democratic movements?

Work Cited:

Srinivasan, R. (n.d.). Bridges Between Cultural and Digital Worlds in Revolutionary Egypt.The Information Society, 49-60.

Other Articles:

Wolfsfeld, G. (2013). Social Media and the Arab Spring: Politics Comes First. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 18(2), 115–137.

Hirzalla, F. (2010). Internet Use and Political Participation: Reflections on the Mobilization/Normalization Controversy. The Information Society, 27(1), 1–15.