A People’s Revolution: why “facebook revolution” is a misnomer for what went down in Egypt in January and February of 2011

The Egyptian Revolution that managed to achieve its main demand—that of Hosni Mubarak’s resignation—on February 11, 2011, has been referred to as facebook and twitter revolution fairly often since January 25th. Facebook and/or twitter Revolution is at best a misnomer. Consciously or unconsciously, those who use these terms are in effect doing a disservice to not only those who carried out the Revolution, but also those who are trying to understand it from outside. The main harm is the significant diminution of human agency suggested by such terms. There is no doubt that social networking tools played and will continue playing significant role in social movements. But let us give credit where it is due but do not misrepresent a whole socio-political reality by bad naming.

As Linda Herrera rightly said in a piece published on February 12, “Facebook, like cell phones, the internet, and twitter, do not have agency, a moral universe, and are not predisposed to any particular ideological or political orientation. They are what people make of them.” Human agency has been the core of any and every revolution throughout the entire history of social movements. The French, Russian, Cuban and Iranian revolutions alike used different tools to achieve their goals, but what remained constant in all these contexts was human agency.

From the point of view of an outsider to the Egyptian revolution, it might be tempting to simplify the whole event into a familiar term: facebook or twitter revolution! Even Jasmine revolution (what the Tunisian uprising came to be known as) can be a little confusing to outsiders as we have no idea why they called it Jasmine and not Daffodil. So why not!?

What happened in Egypt is so glorious and brings with it so much pride and sense of achievement that everyone understandably wants to have a share in it. We, the outsiders, are also trying to claim a part in it to be able to pride ourselves with what happened in Egypt. In this case, internet, facebook and twitter, are being used to give us that good feeling. But it is not about us. It is about Egyptians and their history, politics, economy, and future.

Using the name of a tool that helps a people bring a revolution to fruition (or any achievement that requires human effort) only diminishes the importance of the human aspect of the movement. Doing so is just like calling the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the Bulldozer Revolution, just because in the absence of tanks, Che Guevara used a Bulldozer in the battle of Santa Clara. Such a title subliminally eliminates human agency.

Facebook and twitter were undoubtedly used by unhappy Egyptians as means of communication. However, this revolution neither started nor succeeded by only the small portion of the population who had and used facebook and/or twitter. The very fact that internet shutdown that took place at the height (from 28 February to 2 January) of the 18 day struggle did not impede the growth of the protests testifies to the fact that twitter and facebook were only one among many tools used. We probably will never know about many of those different means of communication that were used, but what happened suggest that there were many. So facebook and twitter can at best be described as supporting tools that facilitated the Egyptian revolution.
So what to call it?

While we wait for the Egyptians to coin a name for "their" revolution, we can keep calling it “the Egyptian Revolution,” just like we call many other revolutions by the name of the people who did it.