Samantha M. Shapiro has a wonderful piece in today's New York Times Magazine titled "Revolution, Facebook-Style," asking the question "Can Social Networking Turn Disaffected Young Egyptians into a Force for Democratic Change?" I think it's a great read for anyone wanting a brief over-view of what is going on in Egypt today. The article is quite comprehensive and touches on a wide variety of important issues in the current Egyptian political and social landscape such as the wage riots, the Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian political movements like Kefaya, political oppression, and Egyptian outrage over Gaza. The article focuses, however, on the bloggers of the April 6 Youth Movement, which boasts a Facebook group of over 70,000 members, and who have harnessed one of the most popular social networking sites (ranked top-3rd most visited website in Egypt, according to the article) as an outlet for free political, social, and economic expression in a country where repression – and oppression – of these ideas have become institutionalized. The article chronicles the formation of this group and its attempts to impact the Egyptian political scene despite arrests, foiled protests, and infighting. Cyberspace has provided a fresh, new outlet for political expression in Egypt, but as the article highlights, forces for real change in Egypt still have a ways to go
By organizing online, the April 6 movement avoids some of the pitfalls of party politics in Egypt ‚ censorship, bureaucracy, compromise with the regime. But whenever the movement's members try to migrate offline, they find they are still playing by Egypt's rules. They almost never meet in real life, certainly not in large groups, and when they do, the police often show up. Online, members of the movement are casting votes on the Web site's walls, publishing notes with their views on the political situation and creating groups to draft a constitution for their movement. But what does it mean to have a vibrant civil society on your computer screen and a police state in the street? When I spoke to Nora Younis, she described the April 6 strike as a practice session for the new generation. "It's a rehearsal for a bigger thing," she said. "Right now, we are just testing the power of each other."
