Technologies increase the “cost of repression”

I have been thinking a lot about the true role of technologies in the recent political movements in Northern Africa. I feel right now it is wise to wait a bit while the facts are gathered.

I am panicked when I see pretty serious magazines making simplifications like “the Facebook group « We are all Khaled Saïd » has 500 000 members, 10 % of Egypt’s internet users“.

How do you know these 500’000 members are all from Egypt? A recent research on Twitter users active during the revolution showed only 0.027% of users were identifying their location as Egypt, Yemen or Tunisia. Smart users from those countries “likely do not provide their location information to protect their identities”, but it still hints that the massive amount of traction social media gave to these phenomena was very likely coming from outside of these countries.

As I said, let’s wait before hurrying up to conclusions as NOBODY knows right now if the protesters gathered because of Facebook, Al Jazeera, SMS, word to mouth, or something else. We will probably never know for sure.

Trying to find a relevant and neutral point of view, I came across this article from Marc Saint-Upéry on the Russian International News Agency, making a key point: new communication raise considerably the cost of repression.

The new electronic media do not miraculously abolish the laws of the political universe. They create new synergies, but they do not invent or recombine at will the arsenal of social protest. The young Egyptian cyberactivists knew that. [...] They also knew that “something was in the air,” as blogger Hossama Halawy, a consummate interpreter of Egyptian street life, had already written back in October. “No one knows when the explosion is going to happen, but it seems everyone I meet or bump into today feels it’s inevitable,” reads one of his posts. [...]

Since 2004, there was a growing number of social protests. Blue-collar workers, doctors, lawyers, judges, slum residents and even real estate tax collectors would stage a sit-in in front of their workplace or any significant institution and call the desks of private newspapers such as Al Masri al Youm, Al Shuruk or Al Dustur. Photographs and reporters would be sent and, the day after, the protesters were often invited to a talk-show seen by millions of Egyptians.

That’s also how police brutality could become part of the show. New communication technologies don’t build social movements out of thin air, but they do raise considerably the cost of repression by enhancing its visibility.

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