Analyzing the Role of Youth in the Political Changes in Egypt in 2011

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Egyptians of all classes and ages took part in the protests, united in demands and ambitions such as improved wages, improved conditions of working, and political freedom. However, it was the surprising figures of young individuals who took part in the demonstrations that provided drive to the revolt. The young individuals were also key to maintaining the uprising given that numerous meet in Tahrir (Liberation) Square in Cairo as well as other cities across the nation. Egyptian youth are actually the faces behind this leaderless uprising; the revolution was generally impelled by their skill in utilizing social media to gain attention (Roudi-Fahimi, El Feki & Tsai, 2011). The new youth backed, and at times, instigated by women is now an aware global citizen, refusing to bear the inability of its rulers to be with the times and provide means of development and rapidly changing economic and social paradigms.

Apart from redefining the Egyptian society, the new media and public engagement have placed people at the centres of their own stories in the most profound ways and in ways that integrate the production, supply, as well as consumption of mass media. The Egyptians have therefore declined the long prevailing official mediated tales that have long kept them contained, while new tales of protests and response to the severe economic condition have become quite popular and fulfilling to numerous youth in differing parts and sectors of Egypt. In as much they appeal to the youth as an expression of their new-found liberal views. Even though Mubarak's deposition took a mere eighteen days, the oppositional movement which took him down was actually a product of a much longer procedure of planning and build-up, a product of decades of oppression and disenfranchisement which stimulated political mobilization.

The tales regarding women and uprisings have always intertwined, and the 2011 revolution gave the Egyptian women fresh avenues and opportunities for involvement in political and social reform. Right from the beginning women had been at the forefront of civil resistance that assumed real and virtual forms. The right for democracy and a secular society cropped up from the political and social oppression that women had encountered in years. The major role played by women in the uprising might have shaken the structure of the social power and deconstructed master tales regarding the Arab woman (Al-Natour, 2012).

Analysing any feature of the Egyptian uprising without taking into account this historical background would result to a myopic conclusion, and when evaluating the function of the new phenomenon like social media, could result to technological determinism (Saleh, 2013). This research aims to delve deeply into the role the young people played in Egypt leading to the 2011 revolution.

'Convergence Culture' and Youth Activism in Egypt

In most parts of the world, media and information literacy has presented a strong platform for young individuals to contribute to economic, political, and social development, offer expressions to religious and cultural pluralism, get to know about the issues in other surroundings that differ from their own, and support the democratic process. Egypt is no different and could not keep itself sans these particular grand goals. The new media environment has offered new openings of changing societies, through the civil society and social movements motivation which enlightens the process of decision-making with data, therefore empowering people to assume control of their futures (Saleh, 2013).

Half a decade ago, the Egyptian youth captured worldwide attention, and for a short period of time, became the focus of the world. However, the revolution caused nothing but a regime change, and they had every cause to feel belittled. Most elite Egyptian youth utilize their smart phones for checking Twitter and Facebook, checking email, and sending text messages. The actual profound cultural change encourages new activists on the block to link with friends for a much greater cause, in this particular case overthrowing the government. There have been around 3,000 employee-led protests in Egypt in the past decade, an outcome of the suppressed resentment of Mubarak's regime. Egypt is plagued with a youth-bulge society, not capable of providing jobs and benefits for its disproportionally huge young population. In Egypt, unemployment rates are greatest amidst university graduates. At the same time, the repressive regimes are not in touch with the needs of Egyptian citizens. Social, political, and economic issues run quite deep in Egypt. As a nation such a combination accentuates its susceptibility as a failing state, that led to the inadequate experience with democratic governance, weak academic systems, and broken social contract.

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Moreover, lack of natural resources, corruption, and incompetent bureaucracies crippled economic production, making the future dim (Saleh, 2013). Such difficulty has caused the infuriated public, particularly the youth that have nothing to look forward to. The Egyptian youth is now more aware that waiting for transformation does not just happen on its own, and that the new media could help in making this transformation. Those disenfranchised groups started mobilization of the society into a state of rebellion against the state. illiteracy, illness, and poverty have worn out the previous nostalgic thoughts of romantic idealism of the magnificent past into a resentful present (Salanova, 2012). In 2004, the initiation of the Egyptian Movement for Change, also called Kefaya Movement, acted as a starting point for the gathering together of activists against the Mubarak regime. The movement was started by scholars demanding political transformation and had limited success in mobilizing critical group of protestors, and found it particularly hard to reach the common man. On the 6th of April, organizing tool met political reality to develop aspects that were strong enough to form storm clouds on the horizon of the regime. The outcome was the creation of a new movement: The April 6 Youth Movement that has ever since played an important organizational role in the 2011 protests (Storck, 2011).

The trajectory of the Egyptian political protests points to the need of keeping track of the 'new' media environment in mapping the function of communication in anti-authoritarian movements. These particular social networks inform, gather, entertain, open chances, increase transparency, and seeks to hold governments responsible. The new virtual options presented a new space and re-described traditional spaces that in turn gave a new sense of belonging, a type of connection and unity, internally and with others in the region and far beyond. There exist cultural and social impacts of new media in the development of values and knowledge together with dynamics implanted in more lasting historical developments that encourage a greater position for the person vis-a-vis recognized powers (Hofheinz, 2011). The fact however, remains that the Egyptian revolution and its subsequent political events (either bad or good) were about to take place anyway, in spite of the presence of technology or internet. The link between society and technology is vital to this discussion: technology is society, and the society cannot be represented or comprehended without its technological tools (Saleh, 2013).

Once again, The Revolution establishes that women play an important role in revolutionary occurrences. Egyptian women actively took part in the uprising, in a similar fashion that they played an active role in the strike movement in the last few years, compelling the men to join the strikes on numerous occasions. Though women comprised of approximately only 10% of the protesters in the early protests in Egypt; on Tahrir Square, they formed around 40 to 50% of the protestors in the days leading to the fall of Mubarak. Egyptian women, both with and without veils, took part in the defense of the square, put up barriers, chaired debates, yelled slogans, and put their lives at risk together with the men (Frederiksen, 2011). Similar to their men, women in Egypt adopted the call to 'hope.' Here, they explain Tahrir's spirit and hope that the democracy model developed there will be continued as the Egyptians mold a new social and political landscape (Naib, 2011).

Conceptual Framework

Wide, interpenetrating, and overlapping ways media systems as well as communication networks intricately conditioned and facilitated political transformations by offering an alternative understanding of the function of technology and information in the occurrences and by obtaining several significant models and theories. Therefore, it is important to utilize social construction of technology and domestication theories, while disputing that social networking did not necessarily substitute traditional means of mobilization, but instead amplified them. Here, the theory is that both new innovative way and traditional mobilization tools of communication enforced mobilization activities. Given that social network connections are non-hierarchical and that exchange of information is somewhat open, 'April 6' and 'Kefaya' were capable of stipulating the development of a structure and maintaining it to withstand government repression by altering their strategies in coping with conditions on the ground (Saleh, 2013).

Setting the Scene for New Youth Activism in Egypt

To begin with, the three main elements of a potential communication model of the Egyptian regime transformation are: the communication culture, media ecologies, and the temporal-spatial unfolding of occurrences. Several researches have.....

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