The fall of Mubarak and the ‘Twitter-revolution’.

Eighteen days of protests by over a million people have forced the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to resign. This message was followed by massive celebrations in Egypt and popped up all over the world on televisions, radios and newspapers. However, other types of media played a key role in making this revolution happen.

The media I’m addressing to are social media like Twitter and Facebook. By using these social media, individuals were able to see that they were not the only rebels protesting against Mubarak’s strict regime. It‘s important to note that these individuals using social media were mostly young and educated people. Because of their access to these media they could communicate and share information all day long; they were able to encourage all those people in the streets of Cairo in order to keep the momentum going.

Anyway, despite the role of social media, I don’t think this evolution should be called a Twitter-revolution. In order to call it that way, a Twitter-revolution should be defined as a revolution supported by Twitter, NOT a revolution that is evoked by Twitter (which the word Twitter-revolution implies). The role of social media in this revolution is evident, but in my opinion it merely refers to a new element in revolutions worldwide: a new way to connect demonstrators within a country as well as their compatriots abroad, that reinforces the opposition and which is harder to censor. I guess if you consider it this way, you could call it a Twitter-revolution after all…