You could say that Egyptian Revolution (Jan-2011) has changed everything, especially when talking about social media’s role in Egyptian politics, indeed, that has been wildly changed. Recently, a political war has risen between the Egyptian Presidency and the US Embassy in Cairo!
Some sort of “Online Virtual Skirmishes” on Twitter has taken a place on Tuesday, 2 April, between the new player, Egyptian Presidency “@EgyPresidency” versus the same gamer each time, The United States, via their Cairo’s Embassy Twitter handle “@USEmbassyCairo“. Political war This time rises when US embassy in Cairo tweeted a link about ” Stewart’s monologue ” on his Comedy Central show, while it was trending on Twitter and local Egypt’s TV talk shows, at that time.
In the video, Stewart was trying to send a message to Muhammad Morsi “The Egyptian President”, with Stewart’s famous sense of humor, regarding Egypt Top Prosecutor ordered arrest of political satirist Bassem Youssef, who has criticized the president on his popular TV show “Elbernamg“.
Morsi’s office official account on Twitter responded to the embassy’s tweet, saying:
"It's inappropriate for a diplomatic mission to engage in such negative political propaganda."
The answer from the Embassy came on Wednesday “the next day”, from deleting its entire Twitter account to bring it back after deleting the tweets that caused the issue!
Egyptian Leaders using the Power of Social Networks:
People who use social media also tend to be more politically engaged than the average Egyptian, Political Leaders in Egypt are now aware enough about this indeed, that’s why they are targeting audience who are using social networks.
Yesterday, Egyptian Presidency also was trying to be on the social media trend to tweet about new press release that they have posted on their Facebook to justify their sides on Questioning Bassem Yousef case, by calling it the ” Press Release on the Questioning of The Comedian”!
Although, Egyptian Presidency still can’t acclimate with the online communities, as they don’t use any of their communication tools to engage with the people, especially youth, who had built a great online communities and gained a lot of experience developing their social skills, starting from calling for and managing protests and activities via Facebook events, blogging and tweeting about the issues which face the revolution, also participating in workshops, street and social media campaigns for different purposes. One of those campaigns which called “Kazeboon - means liars”, has published an announcement from the Egyptian Presidency which said that they didn’t respond to the US Embassy tweet! Although it’s a public tweet which anyone can see, while the Egyptian Presidency Twitter handle is verified! “@EgyPresidency“.
Egypt and most of the Arab spring’s countries are going through what we should call “Social Media Guerrilla”, as youth had been using social media and internet as useful technics like mobilizing , campaigning, training, communicating .. and so other many ideas that helped and will help their countries. On the other hand, the ruling regimes using slimier tools for serving their goals..from this point, you could get the meaning of ”Social Media Guerrilla” and “Virtual Online War”, and that directly points to another type of online clashes which is called “Electronic Committees”, but that could be in another topic.
What do you think about using Social Media in Political issues, and could that be considered like a natural development of internet revolution? Share your ideas .. you could be a part of the war, somewhere, someday!
