Social media, cellphone video fuel Arab protests

Micah Sifry, co-founder of politics and technology blog techPresident noted in a recent blog post that mobile phone coverage in the Middle East is far higher than Internet penetration.

“The biggest factor in the unfolding events, to me, appears to be the emergent power of young people, compounded by how urbanized they are and how connected they are by mobile phones,” Sifry said.

“Could it be that what we’re witnessing is the political coming of age of Generation TXT?”

The extent to which social media contributed to the toppling of the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia – and protests of varying size and intensity in Algeria, Bahrain, Iran, Jordan, Libya, Morocco and Yemen – is a matter of debate.

But Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Libya’s Moamer Kadhafi took the threats posed by the Internet seriously enough, apparently, when they took the extraordinary step of attempting to cut their own people off the Web.

Wael Ghonim, the Google executive and cyber activist who emerged as a leader of the anti-government protests in Egypt, said social media played a crucial role in the events that led to Mubarak’s ouster after three decades of iron-fisted rule.

“Without Facebook, without Twitter, without Google, without You Tube, this would have never happened,” Ghonim told CBS television’s “60 Minutes.”

“If there was no social networks it would have never been sparked,” said Ghonim, who started the Facebook page “We Are All Khaled Said” credited with helping mobilize the demonstrators in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

Alec Ross, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s senior adviser for innovation, said social media played an “important role” in the events in Egypt and Tunisia but “technology did not create the dissent movements there.”