The protests that led to the Egyptian revolution last year were organized in part by an anonymous Facebook page administrator. When the police found out who he was, they arrested and interrogated him. After his release, Wael Ghonim became the public face of the Egyptian revolution.
In Revolution 2.0, Ghonim traces the planning that took place in the days before Jan. 25, 2011, when thousands of Egyptians gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in preparation for the uprising.
Ghonim gives an insider’s account of what he experienced during the protests — when Egyptian security authorities locked him in a basement jail cell — and then what it was like after the departure of President Hosni Mubarak.
Ghonim launched his Facebook group, called Kullena Khaled Said (“We Are All Khaled Said”), after graphic pictures of a 28-year-old man who had been killed by Egyptian security officials began to emerge on the Internet.
Ghonim has been hailed for his energizing use of social media while planning the pro-democracy demonstrations in Egypt. He says sites like Facebook are tools that can help connect people and disseminate information to the masses, but cannot create social changes on their own.
Terry Gross talked with Ghonim yesterday on Fresh Air.
The phenomena, called Arab Spring by many in the West, used the internet to communicate, sparking revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt; a civil war in Libya, civil uprisings in Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen; major protests in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Oman; and minor protests and clashes elsewhere, not to mention the Occupy Movement in the United States.
Iran ‘celebrates’ its 1979 revolution anniversary by blocking encrypted websites, says VentureBeat. Iran’s leaders are trying to get control over what is uploaded, posted and discussed, reports the Washington Post. Authorities are becoming more and more successful, Iranian Internet users say.
Twitter SMS is now available on satphones from Iridium and Thuraya
