Media and Uprsisings in Egypt and Tunisia

Egypt and Tunisia have both undergone uprisings and revolutions in the past several years, leading to significant changes in the way people use, produce, and think about media. Both mass media and social media have changed significantly in Egypt and Tunisia since the beginning of these uprisings.

Egypt

In Egypt, before the revolution and the ousting of President Mubarak in 2011, most newspapers and television stations were state-owned and there were censors located at each individual broadcast station and newspaper office. It was incredibly difficult to own one’s own newspaper due to financial and licensing policies. Although the vast majority of mass media was closely controlled by the government, Egyptians had fairly good access to international media and could rely on these sources for their news, rather than the state-owned Egyptian papers and television stations.

The state-run press in Egypt whole-heartedly supported Mubarak’s regime before and at the beginning of the uprising until it became clear that he may actually be ousted. Media continued to support the regime and provided minimal coverage of demonstrations and protests until it was impossible to ignore. By the day Mubarak stepped down, state television was fully behind the people, praising the revolution.

Until the uprising, people were not reliant on social media for their news because they had access to various international media outlets. Starting in 2008 with the labor strikes in Mahalla, social media was used extensively to discuss issues and to organize demonstrations. In 2010, the We Are All Khaled Said Facebook page was created in response to the death of a demonstrator at the hands of the police. This page subsequently became a place for Egyptians to congregate and discuss political issues and to organize demonstrations that ultimately led to the ousting of Mubarak in 2011.

After the uprising, there is more freedom of the press in Egypt, however it is a much more dangerous place to be a journalist now that the police state has fallen into a more chaotic one. There are many more privately owned newspapers and broadcast stations than ever before, and these freely discuss political issues. There is limited official censorship, however journalists are still jailed on erroneous charges and certain media companies such as Al Jazeera are subject to great discrimination.

Tunisia

Before the uprising in Tunisia, there were no international media outlets allowed in the country with the exception of one French news agency, and people regarded most mass media as a waste of time because it was so adulterated with propaganda and censorship. Instead of relying on mass media for news, a great many people turned to social media as their primary source of news because the news they found there was not a direct product of propaganda factories or state censors. There was a much greater breadth of news online than in conventional state-owned media, however the quality of the information found on these sources varies a great deal, which is a problem because people tend to be less cautious about the information they are receiving when it is not coming from a state source.

Virtually all media was state owned before the uprising, and the media outlets not officially owned by the state were run by people very close to the regime, such as Ben Ali’s family and close friends, who could be trusted to only broadcast or print things favorable to the regime and to maintain the status quo. In 2003 the regime began to cautiously issue licenses for television stations and newspapers, which appeared to be privatization but was actually just crony capitalism.

In the years leading up to the uprising, the regime figured out what social media was and how it could be used by the people and it tightened its grip on internet censorship significantly. Only China had a more sophisticated internet filtering system than Tunisia. During the uprising, however, Ben Ali lifted internet censorship entirely in an effort to appease the people and to quell the uprising. This move backfired, however, and was seen as a sign of weakness by the people, and the uprising continued.

After the uprising, Tunisia has a constitution that is quite liberal and progressive, even by international standards. There are many diverse and private broadcast stations and newspapers in Tunisia, with light regulation, however many people still prefer social media as their primary source of news. This may be a result of years of habit of distrust in conventional media and total reliance on social media for news.

USAID Created Cuban Twitter Clone

In 2009, the US government launched its own version of Twitter in Cuba, called ZunZuneo, slang for a hummingbird’s tweet. The project was executed through USAID, which channelled funds for the project through the Cayman Islands and Spain such that the paper trail would not lead back to the US. The details are murky concerning whether or not the project was actually legal under United States law, “which requires written authorization of covert action by the president and congressional notification. Officials at USAID would not say who had approved the program or whether the White House was aware of it.” (source)

The project was born in 2009 when affiliates of the U.S. Agency for International Development covertly gained half a million Cuban cell-phone numbers purportedly through a contact at Cuba’s state-run service provider. USAID began to build a subscriber base through these phone numbers, introducing non-controversial topics to the network such as sports, music, and weather. The plan was to gain a large subscriber base, up to several hundred thousand users, and to introduce political trending topics to the network once ZunZuneo reached critical mass. The subscriber base never reached the height that its designers had hoped it would– there were just 40,000 subscribers at its height.

The ultimate objective of the project was to give Cubans access to a functional social network not controlled by the authoritarian Cuban government, and to provide a mechanism for people to organize political demonstrations at a moment’s notice, and to "renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society." In addition to providing this network for social and political action, USAID stored and analyzed information about subscribers such as age, gender, political tendencies, and receptiveness.

There are several reasons for creating such a network rather than allowing Cubans to simply use Twitter as millions of other people across the world do. First, internet penetration in Cuba was just 15% as of 2012, and the government saw the internet as a dangerous thing that needed to be closely controlled. Also, those people who did have access to Twitter had to pay for it. Twitter in and of itself is a free service, there is no charge to anyone just for using the service. There are other costs incurred by Cubans trying to post tweets, however, because the sparse internet access requires Cubans to use other means of posting to Twitter. The way that many people would post tweets, until recently, was to send an SMS message to a number outside of Cuba, which would then be posted to their Twitter account. The messaging rates associated with these messages were significant– “[every] text message sent costs 1 CUC, something impractical for a country in which the median salary is 17 CUC per month.” (source)

The project ended up being a failure; the network disappeared in 2012 when the grant money ran out, and the subscriber base never reached the numbers that USAID had initially anticipated. This attempt by USAID, whether or not officially authorized by the federal government, is an interesting example of using–or attempting to use–social networks for political transitions. Countries across the Middle East have seen revolutions and transitions toward democracy when people utilize services such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to organize and execute protests and demonstrations to effect change. Although the Middle East is often in the media spotlight as the region most in need of transition to democracy, it is far from being the only region in the world facing similar issues and using similar mechanisms to achieve its goals.