The series of protests in 2011 that overturned governments in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya have ushered in activism and

new debate in the Arab world. Analyzing the reasons behind the surge of discontent requires an understanding of each nations history, regional relationships, demographics and governance failures. Achieving representative government and social justice is not a matter of simple replication from country to country. Ellen Lust, Yale political scientist, and Jakob Wichmann of JMW Consulting, dispel three myths rising from the Arab Spring that belie the regions complexity: Support for the uprisings was not limited to technologically savvy youth; calls for dignity, freedom and social justice were priorities alongside ending unemployment, inequality and corruption; and quick tallies of winners or losers in some cases overstate the extent of regime change or do not reflect the many ongoing transformations, huge and subtle alike. Lust and Wichmann conclude that the uprisings are far from over, that Domestic, regional and international factors will continue shaping and reshaping contestation within Arab states. YaleGlobal Three Myths About the Arab Uprisings As Arab turmoil continues, analysts cant afford to exaggerate the root causes Ellen Lust, Jakob Wichmann NEW HAVEN: The uprisings that began with pushing Tunisian autocrat Ben Ali from power in January 2011 have fostered dizzying levels of activism and a deluge of analyses. The changing times are exciting, though scary; the information intriguing, though often misleading. Indeed, much of the current analysis revolves around three myths that fail to hold up under closer scrutiny. Revisiting these myths sheds light on recent changes in the Arab world and on where the region may be heading. Youth + Technology = Uprisings: Arabs and outsiders alike have heralded technologically savvy youth for engineering the uprisings. They argue that young Arabs used Facebook and Twitter to mobilize people as never before. Certainly, youth-led social media played a role in the uprisings, but viewing the uprisings too narrowly in these terms overlooks the breadth and depth of the popular mobilization. Many more beside youths poured into the streets expressing longstanding grievances. In June 2012 the Danish-Egyptian Dialogue Institute, DEDI, and the AlAhram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, ACPSS, conducted a survey of 1200 Egyptian respondents, above 18 years of age, across 21 governorates excluding border governorates. It found that while youth under the age of 30 were particularly mobilized, they only made up slightly less than half of protesters over age 18. Moreover, Egyptians 40 to 50 years old were highly mobilized during the revolution. Only about 12 percent of this age group claimed they participated in

demonstrations before the revolution, while about 20 percent joined the 2011 uprisings. Similarly, a single-minded focus on social networking technology overstates its role. The DEDI-ACPSS survey finds that just 8 percent of the general population claims they use Facebook, although 26 percent of protesters are Facebook users. Only about one third of the protesters on Facebook say they use the network a lot for political purposes. Similarly, just over one-quarter of Egyptians that participated in the demonstrations during the revolution read blogs, as compared with 8 percent in the general population. Social media played a role. But Facebook and other internet tools did not necessarily drive change. Indeed, most of the countries that witnessed the greatest mobilization in 2011 are among those with poor internet coverage: Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen are six of the lowest ranking Arab states in terms of internet usage, according to the International Telecommunication Union. Viewing the uprisings as the outcome of suddenly mobilized, internet-savvy youth overemphasizes the role of the internet and overlooks the role of older Arabs whose participation was critical. As Egyptian political scientist and activist Rabab El Mahdi notes and others examining activism across the Arab world echo in a forthcoming edited volume tentatively titled Taking to the Streets, this view ignores a decade of contentious politics and mobilization in Egypt, which paved the way for the January 25th uprising. Its the Economy, Stupid: Analysts have also argued that economic problems are at the root of the crisis. According to many, neoliberal reforms exacerbated longstanding economic problems by stripping citizens of safety nets and shifting profits to an ever-narrower circle of elites close to the regime. These trends combined with high youth unemployment and a frustrating inability to marry and start households to spur the uprisings, analysts argued. Unemployment rates were and remain high, and inequality was palpable. Egyptians consistently list economic concerns in DEDI-ACPSS surveys. Similarly, Arab Barometer polls have found that Arabs support for democracy is often founded on economic considerations more than political liberties. Amaney Jamal and Mark Tessler in Journal of Democracy, January 2008, argue that economic issues are central to the way that many Arab citizens think about governance. Yet, issues of dignity and identity also spurred the uprisings. Nearly half of Egyptian respondents claiming to have participated in the revolution did so for reasons related to freedom and social justice; a similarly large percentage did so to end corruption a goal which combines issues of fairness and economic inequality. And 7 percent said they did so for the purely economic goal of ending unemployment. Calls for karama and hurriya dignity and freedom were as important as bread-and-butter issues.

Debates over identity and freedom thus played a major role in the Egyptian presidential elections. The DEDI-ACPSS survey found that voters were largely unable to distinguish presidential candidates positions on the role of the state in the economy, while they had better understandings of each candidates position on the relationship between Islam and the state. The survey identified three distinct, views in the population: preferences for no relationship, a moderate relationship and a strong relationship between Islam and the state. Some Regimes Survived, Others Didnt: Enthusiasm over the Arab Spring quickly gave way to gloomy talk of an Arab Winter. Observers discuss the region in terms of a tally sheet with countries where regimes fell on one side and those that survived on another. Syria, engaged in a protracted struggle, the outcome of which is still uncertain, remains in the center. Such tallies overstate the extent to which old regimes have been swept away. To date, theres a great deal of variation in change from Tunisia and Libya, where the old regime was largely removed, to Egypt, where the struggle remains intense, and finally to Yemen, where one can question how much has ultimately changed with the unopposed election of Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Moreover, in each of these cases, and elsewhere, long and tortuous transition processes continue. There is reason to caution against prematurely declaring the end of regime change and certainly against claiming success or failure of democratization. There is also reason to refrain from proclaiming the long-term survival of regimes which have thus far been spared. The uprisings alter perceptions of what is possible and desirable. The fall of Ben Ali erased the widespread perception that political change was impossible, while the difficult transitions and bloody, protracted conflict in Syria prompt some to question the wisdom of pushing for change. The experiences of neighboring countries, along with the many regional and international pressures, influence citizens on the sidelines and affect the possibilities of change. Lebanese and Jordanians, for instance, are divided in their views on conflict in neighboring Syria, and on the potential for change at home. Political rupture remains a possibility in these countries, and elsewhere. The 2011 uprisings were of unprecedented size and impact, but the discontent was not entirely new nor solely the product of technologically savvy youth. Moreover, the uprisings were mobilized around governance failures that were felt far beyond economic conditions, including issues of national identity and dignity. These issues will play a critical role in the transitions ahead. Finally, and most importantly, uprisings are far from over. Domestic, regional and international factors will continue shaping and reshaping contestation within Arab states destabilizing some regimes, strengthening others and contributing to a fluid regional reformation. Its too early to tell exactly where such changes will lead, but not too soon to know theyll continue.

Can social media promote lasting political change, perhaps even a revolution? If so, to what extent? And which Internet-related policies can help foster democracy in countries with repressive regimes? These questions are at the forefront of recent media, scholarly and policy debates. As vehicles for organizing and expressing dissent, the Internet and social media such as Twitter and Facebook have already proven significant tools in myriad protests, causes, uprisings and conflicts. But they also open up the possibility that governments can monitor networks, exposing activists to surveillance and punishment. Most regions of the world, developed and developing alike, are seeing the rapid rise of social networking site use and smartphone technologies. Much depends on context; research on the Arab Spring may provide different insights than, for example, analysis of dissident responses to Chinas Great Firewall. Argument over these dynamics and the proper policies to support online democracy continues, with prominent writers and analysts such as Clay Shirky, Malcolm Gladwell, Rebecca MacKinnon and Evgeny Morozov articulating often divergent viewpoints. Thinkers in this area point out several useful analytical distinctions: First, some digital tools simply allow for the free flow of information, while others are better at building actual social organization; Second, online mobs or more spontaneous groups can be distinguished from longer-term social movements or established civil society groups. Collective action by protesters in the face of repression may, in principle, be more easily enabled by the shelter of anonymity provided by online communication. But with this comes a paradox: Anonymity is in tension with the very factors that typically bring about successful organizing, namely, leadership and displays of unity and commitment, as Internet scholars John Palfrey, Bruce Etling and Rob Farris have written. The relative strength or weakness of online ties and the corresponding potential for trust and tangible action is a key variable in any analysis. Below are some reports and studies that can inform coverage and research in this growing field of debate: Clicks, Cabs, and Coffee Houses: Social Media and Oppositional Movements in Egypt, 2004-2011 Findings: Social media provided space and tools for the formation and the expansion of networks that the authoritarian government could not easily control. It did so by sustaining both longstanding networks of labor opposition, by facilitating new connections among middle-class youth opposed to the regime, and by supporting the circulation of stories about regime repression and police brutality. Social media functioned to broker connections between previously disconnected groups, to spread shared grievances beyond the small community of activist

leaders, and to globalize the reach and appeal of the domestic movement for democratic change. In achieving these goals, the activities had to overcome limitations of particular technologies, identifying right issues, and crafting the shared repertoires of contention. They also had to frame the issues by transforming abstract, complex concerns into a simpler, more tangible narrative that resonated with everyday experience Social media helped a popular movement for political change to expand the sphere of participation, especially by reaching the countrys unemployed and disaffected urban youth.

New Media and Conflict After the Arab Spring Aday, S. et al. United States Institute of Peace, July 2012. Findings: There is ample evidence of new media being used to organize and sustain protests during the Arab uprisings, though it is more difficult to demonstrate a unique causal role. [These media] do not fully explain why the protests happened when they did and why many ordinary citizens were willing to join in. Twitter links studied were mostly clicked by people outside the country of origin, not inside it; social media operated less as an organizing tool and more as a megaphone for broadcasting information. This could be significant if it led to a boomerang effect that brought international pressure to bear on autocratic regimes or helped reduce a regimes tendency to crack down violently on protests, the authors write. But even where international pressure fails, the increased and transformed attention has reshaped how the world views these cases. In Egypt, the majority of participants joined the protest after the government had shut down access to the Internet, and only 13% of Tahrir Square protesters relied on Twitter, far less than television (92%) and word of mouth (93%). The hundreds of thousands of people who made the Egyptian revolution by coming into the streets on January 25, 2011, did not learn about it through Twitter or Facebook. They saw it on Al-Jazeera, or out their windows.

Digital Media and the Personalization of Collective Action Bennett, W.L., et al. Information, Communication & Society, June 2011. Abstract: Changes related to globalization have resulted in the growing separation of individuals in late modern societies from traditional bases of social solidarity such as parties, churches, and other mass organizations. One sign of this growing individualization is the organization of individual action in terms of meanings assigned to lifestyle elements resulting in the personalization of issues such as climate change, labour standards, and the quality of food supplies. Such developments bring individuals own narratives to the fore in the mobilization process, often requiring organizations to be more flexible in their definitions of issues. This personalization of political action presents organizations with a set of

fundamental challenges involving potential trade-offs between flexibility and effectiveness. This paper analyses how different protest networks used digital media to engage individuals in mobilizations targeting the 2009 G20 London Summit during the global financial crisis. The authors examine how these different communication processes affected the political capacity of the respective organizations and networked coalitions. In particular, the authors explore whether the coalition offering looser affiliation options for individuals displays any notable loss of public engagement, policy focus (including mass media impact), or solidarity network coherence. This paper also examines whether the coalition offering more rigid collective action framing and fewer personalized social media affordances displays any evident gain in the same dimensions of mobilization capacity. In this case, the evidence suggests that the more personalized collective action process maintains high levels of engagement, agenda focus, and network strength.

The Evolving Landscape of Internet Control: A Summary of Our Recent Research and Recommendations Roberts, H.; Zuckerman, E. et al. Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University, August, 2011. Abstract: Overall, our work suggests that the increasing complexity of Internet control regimes should force us to rethink our approaches toward empowering Internet users in less open societies. In this paper, we will describe in more detail the studies we have mentioned above and how they fit into this larger story about the diversity of tactics used by autocratic countries to control the Internet. We will conclude by offering some high level recommendations for supporting the work of activists battling these forms of Internet control.

Exploring Russian Cyberspace: Digitally Mediated Collective Action and the Networked Public Sphere Alexanyan, K. et al. Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University, 2012. Findings: In contrast with Russias heavily monitored print and broadcast media, the countrys Internet is relatively free. Based on tests run through the OpenNet Initiative, we continue to find no evidence of significant technical filtering of the Russian Internet. Pro-government forces have not been able to gain much of a foothold in the blogosphere. The majority of Russias most popular blogs are either not supportive of the government or are actively critical. We do not find a distinct cluster of pro-government bloggers among the nearly 11,000 most-linked-to bloggers in Russia. The government and its supporters are more prominent on Twitter but not much more popular often relying on automatic bots to push

their message. Hashtags that are popular with pro-government users are not widely adopted outside of their own cluster, the authors write.

Dispatches From an Unfinished Uprising: The Role of Technology in the 2009 Iranian Protest Movement Fathi, Nazila. Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, Discussion Paper Series, August 2012. Excerpt: The lessons drawn from the Iranian uprising can be summarized as follows: 1) People used images captured on their cell phones and then broadcast to millions on satellite TV to change public opinion in profound ways. Ayatollah Khamenei called the media worse than atomic bombs in a speech at the height of the uprising; 2) Even though the role of Twitter inside the country was exaggerated, it played a major role telling the western audience what was happening inside the country. It laid bare the depth and scale of dissent in the country and became a source of embarrassment for the regime; 3) A breach opened in Iranian society. Since the uprising and despite the repression that followed, a series of issues have become legitimate areas of inquiry. The absolute power of Ayatollah Khamenei, for example, has become a topic that even his supporters question now.

Using Social Media to Gauge Iranian Public Opinion and Mood After the 2009 Election (PDF) Elson, S.B. et al. RAND Corporation, 2012, Technical Report. Abstract: In the months after the contested Iranian presidential election in June 2009, Iranians used Twitter a social media service that allows users to send short text messages, called tweets, with relative anonymity to speak out about the election and the protests and other events that followed it. The authors of this report used an automated content analysis program called Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count 2007 (LIWC) to analyze more than 2.5 million tweets discussing the Iran election that were sent in the nine months following it. The authors (1) identify patterns in word usage over the nine-month period and (2) examine whether these patterns coincided with political events, to gain insight into how people may have felt before, during, and after those events. For example, they compare how the frequencies with which negative sentiments were directed toward President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, his election opponents, and President Barack Obama changed over time, and they track the way in which the use of swear words sharply increased in the days leading up to specific protests. Particularly in countries where freedom of expression is limited, automated analysis of social media appears to hold promise for such policy uses as assessing public opinion or outreach efforts and forecasting events such as large-scale protests.

How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression (PDF) King, Gary, et al. Harvard University, Institute for Quantitative Social Science, October 2012. Abstract: We offer the first large scale, multiple source analysis of the outcome of what may be the most extensive effort to selectively censor human expression ever implemented. To do this, we have devised a system to locate, download, and analyze the content of millions of social media posts originating from nearly 1,400 different social media services all over China before the Chinese government is able to find, evaluate, and censor (i.e., remove from the Internet) the large subset they deem objectionable. Using modern computer-assisted text analytic methods that we adapt to and validate in the Chinese language, we compare the substantive content of posts censored to those not censored over time in each of 85 topic areas. Contrary to previous understandings, posts with negative, even vitriolic, criticism of the state, its leaders, and its policies are not more likely to be censored. Instead, we show that the censorship program is aimed at curtailing collective action by silencing comments that represent, reinforce, or spur social mobilization, regardless of content. Censorship is oriented toward attempting to forestall collective activities that are occurring now or may occur in the future and, as such, seem to clearly expose government intent.

Political Consequences of the Rise of the Internet: Political Beliefs and Practices of Chinese Netizens Le, Y. Political Communication, 2011. Findings: Nearly 12% of those surveyed categorized themselves as netizens, 72% as traditional media users, and 17% as not using any form of media. The educational levels among netizens were significantly higher, on average, than that of the other two categories. Of netizens, 44% had a college degree or higher, compared to 3% of traditional media users and 0% of non-media users. On a series of questions to track political knowledge and opinions, netizens had 27% fewer dont know responses than traditional media users and non-media users An estimated 33.1% of the sample were politically apathetic, 42% were conformists, and only 24% were politically opinionated. Being a netizen was strongly correlated with being politically opinionated: 60% of netizens were politically opinionated, compared to 8% which were apathetic. And netizens are much more likely than traditional media users and non-media users to participate in collective action by 66.7% and 211.2%, respectively.

Safety Valve or Pressure Cooker? Blogs in Chinese Political Life Hassid, Jonathan. Journal of Communication, 2012. Abstract: Despite censorship, Chinese bloggers routinely uncover corruption, help solve social problems and even pressure state officials to change policy. The power of online opinion is undisputed in individual cases, but the overall effect of blog discourse on Chinese political life is unclear. Do blogs relieve pressure for political change by allowing troublemakers to vent frustrations in a marginal medium, or are they integrated with the larger system of political communication in China, inspiring political activism and building communities of like-minded activists? Using largescale content analysis and specific case studies, I argue that blogs serve as a safety valve on issues where the mainstream media set the agenda, and a pressure cooker on issues where bloggers get ahead of journalists.

The Social Media Basis of Youth Protest Behavior: The Case of Chile Valenzuela S. et al. Journal of Communication, April 2012. Findings: Our analysis of Facebook use and protest behavior among 18-29 year olds in Chile demonstrated that having a Facebook account and using it frequently were positively and significantly related to participation in protests, even after taking into account other known sources of this type of political action. Controlling for grievances, values, resources, and news media use, the strength of this relationship was comparable to the influence of political distrust and leftist ideology on triggering elite-challenging political behavior. Using Facebook for news and socializing with peers was associated with increased participation in protests, but using it for self-expression was not. Both as a technology and as a space where people mediate their political interests, Facebook is a resource for creating a collective agency. Furthermore, by illustrating how Facebook serves multiple functions, including surveillance, social integration, and deliberative practice, our findings counter simple notions of technological determinism. Online tools such as Facebook are not so much creating new forms of protest as amplifying traditional forms of protest, such as street demonstrations. In other words, activism does not confine itself to separate online and offline spheres, but instead online interactions can aid offline forms of citizen participation.

Networked Authoritarianism and Social Media in Azerbaijan Pearce, K.E.; Kendzior, S. Journal of Communication, April 2012. Findings: Unlike many of the countries in North Africa and the Middle East that experienced an Arab Spring, where the documentation of state crimes on social media mobilized the population, the arrest of Azerbaijani bloggers only demoralized frequent Internet users. We believe this can be explained by the governments

embrace of networked authoritarianism as a political strategy. Young Azerbaijanis, having grown up in a chaotic post-Soviet environment, value stability and are averse to political risks. The government capitalizes on this by making any political action online even ones that are merely an expression of criticism seem risky. The governments demonization of social media, in which they used mainstream media platforms to dissuade citizens from using Facebook and other social media platforms, was aimed at prohibiting an elite group of frequent Internet users from reaching the broader Azerbaijani public. This tactic seems to have failed, as more Azerbaijanis have joined Facebook since the campaign began. However, increased, albeit slow, Internet use means an increased likelihood that citizens will find the stories of how activists are punished for online activity.

Digital Freedom of Expression in Uzbekistan Kendzior, Sarah. New America Foundation report, July 2012. Excerpt: The 2011 uprisings in the Middle East have prompted speculation about whether digital technology can and will be used to foment similar uprisings in former Soviet authoritarian states. This paper examines the relationship between political activism and internet freedom in Uzbekistan. It argues that while the internet is a critical tool for political expression, its utility as a tool for activism is challenged both by threats from the government and by fear and apathy among Uzbek internet users. It further discusses how the Uzbek government has responded to these technologies and the problems Uzbeks face when using them for political purposes.

Mobile Phones, Popular Media, and Everyday African Democracy: Transmissions and Transgressions Wasserman, H. Popular Communication, 2011. Abstract: The effectiveness of new media technologies, including mobile phones, to facilitate political participation and create social change has long been contested. Recent events in countries such as Mozambique, Iran, Tunisia, and Egypt have again raised questions about the role new media technologies can play to create alternative public spheres and mobilize for social action. In the African context, where access to new media technologies is marked by big divides, the widespread uptake of mobile phones has led to renewed optimism about the potential they hold for stimulating political participation and widening democratic debate. This article examines various approaches to the relation between mobile phones and participatory democracy, and argues that mobile phones do not only transmit political information needed for rational deliberation in the public sphere, but also transgress cultural and social borders and hierarchies in the way they refashion identities and create informal economies and communicative networks.

Promoting Global Internet Freedom: Policy and Technology (PDF) Figliola, P.M. Congressional Research Service report, August 2012. Excerpt: Governments everywhere need the Internet for economic growth and technological development. Some also seek to restrict the Internet in order to maintain social, political, or economic control. Such regimes often require the assistance of foreign Internet companies operating in their countries. These global technology companies find themselves in a dilemma. They must either follow the laws and requests of the host country, or refuse to do so and risk the loss of business licenses or the ability to sell services in that country.

Internet Use and Democratic Demands: A Multinational, Multilevel Model of Internet Use and Citizen Attitudes about Democracy Nisbet., E., et al. Journal of Communication, April 2012, Vol. 62, Issue 2, 249-265. Findings: Citizens who use the Internet were more likely to demand democratic governance. Internet use was also found to be more strongly associated with citizen demand in countries where the communicative potential of the Internet, in terms of number of users and broadband width, is greatest. However, overall rates of national Internet penetration did not correlate with more demand for democracy from citizens. States that have a moderate to high level of Internet penetration, in which the population on average expresses a high demand for democracy, and enjoy at least a partly democratic political regime are contexts where increasing Internet use is more likely to promote democratic change. Kenya, Senegal, Singapore, and Zambia may be good examples of such a process. Increased Internet adoption holds the promise of fostering greater democracy in countries with certain preconditions; however, those that remain highly authoritarian, or not free, such as Vietnam or Zimbabwe, are likely to limit the democratic potential of the Internet regardless of the degree of Internet penetration or level of demand. Despite this caveat, the study supports the basic premise that the Internet may foster political change by socializing citizens into the political beliefs required for the democratic citizenship, and in turn promote successful and sustainable democracies.

News World news Arab and Middle East unrest

The truth about Twitter, Facebook and the uprisings in the Arab world

Recent events in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt have been called 'Twitter revolutions' but can social networking overthrow a government? Our correspondent reports from the Middle East on how activists are really using the web

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Peter Beaumont The Guardian, Friday 25 February 2011 Jump to comments (22)

Facebook graffiti in Tahrir Square, Cairo. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images Europe Think of the defining image of the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa the idea that unites Egypt with Tunisia, Bahrain and Libya. It has not been, in itself, the celebrations of Hosni Mubarak's fall nor the battles in Tahrir Square in Cairo. Nor

even the fact of Mohammed Bouazizi's self-immolation in the central Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, which acted as a trigger for all the events that have unfolded. Instead, that defining image is this: a young woman or a young man with a smartphone. She's in the Medina in Tunis with a BlackBerry held aloft, taking a picture of a demonstration outside the prime minister's house. He is an angry Egyptian doctor in an aid station stooping to capture the image of a man with a head injury from missiles thrown by Mubarak's supporters. Or it is a Libyan in Benghazi running with his phone switched to a jerky video mode, surprised when the youth in front of him is shot through the head. All of them are images that have found their way on to the internet through social media sites. And it's not just images. In Tahrir Square I sat one morning next to a 60-year-old surgeon cheerfully tweeting his involvement in the protest. The barricades today do not bristle with bayonets and rifles, but with phones. As commentators have tried to imagine the nature of the uprisings, they have attempted to cast them as many things: as an Arab version of the eastern European revolutions of 1989 or something akin to the Iranian revolution that toppled the Shah in 1979. Most often, though, they have tried to conceive them through the media that informed them as the result of WikiLeaks, as "Twitter revolutions" or inspired by Facebook. All of which, as American media commentator Jay Rosen has written, has generated an equally controversialist class of article in reply, most often written far from the revolutions. These stories are not simply sceptical about the contribution of social media, but determined to deny it has played any part. Those at the vanguard of this argument include Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker (Does Egypt Need Twitter?), the New Statesman's Laurie Penny (Revolts Don't Have to be Tweeted) and even David Kravets of Wired.co.uk (What's Fuelling Mideast protests? It's More Than Twitter). All have argued one way or another that since there were revolutions before social media, and it is people who make revolutions, how could it be important? Except social media has played a role. For those of us who have covered these events, it has been unavoidable. Precisely how we communicate in these moments of historic crisis and transformation is important. The medium that carries the message shapes and defines as well as the message itself. The instantaneous nature of how social media communicate self-broadcast ideas, unlimited by publication deadlines and broadcast news slots, explains in part the speed at which these revolutions have unravelled, their almost viral spread across a region. It explains, too, the often loose and non-hierarchical organisation of the protest movements unconsciously modelled on the networks of the web.

Speaking recently to the Huffington Post, Rosen argued that those taking positions at either extreme of the debate were being lazy and inaccurate. "Wildly overdrawn claims about social media, often made with weaselly question marks (like: 'Tunisia's Twitter revolution?') and the derisive debunking that follows from those claims ('It's not that simple!') only appear to be opposite perspectives. In fact, they are two modes in which the same weightless discourse is conducted. "Revolutionary hype is social change analysis on the cheap. Debunking is technorealism on the cheap. Neither one tells us much about our world."

A protester in front of the Egyptian Embassy in Beirut. Photograph: Sharif Karim/REUTERS Rosen is right. And when I began researching this subject I too started out as a sceptic. But what I witnessed on the ground in Tunisia and Egypt challenged my preconceptions, as did the evidence that has emerged from both Libya and Bahrain. For neither the notion of the "Twitter Revolutions" or their un-Twitterness, accurately reflects the reality. Often, the contribution of social networks to the Arab uprisings has been as important as it also has been complex, contradictory and misunderstood. Instead, the importance and impact of social media on each of the rebellions we have seen this year has been defined by specific local factors (not least how people live their lives online in individual countries and what state limits were in place). Its role has been shaped too by how well organised the groups using social media have been. When Tarak Mekki, an exiled Tunisian businessman, politician and internet activist returned to Tunisia from Canada in the days after the Jasmine Revolution he was greeted by a crowd of hundreds. Most of them know Mekki for One Thousand and One Nights, the Monday-night video he used to post on YouTube ridiculing the regime of the fled President Zine Alabidine Ben Ali.

"It's amazing that we participated via the internet in ousting him," he said on his arrival. "Via uploading videos. What we did on the internet had credibility and that's why it was successful." Tunisia was vulnerable under the Ben Ali regime to the kind of external and internal dissent represented by One Thousand and One Nights. In a state where the media were tightly controlled and the opposition ruthlessly discouraged, Tunisia not only exercised a tight monopoly on internet provision but blocked access to most social networking sites except Facebook. "They wanted to close Facebook down in the first quarter of 2009," says Khaled Koubaa, president of the Internet Society in Tunisia, "but it was very difficult. So many people were using it that it appears that the regime backed off because they thought banning it might actually cause more problems [than leaving it]." Indeed, when the Tunisian government did shut it down briefly, for 16 days in August 2008, it was confronted with a threat by cyber activists to close their internet accounts. The regime was forced to back down. Instead, says Koubaa, the Tunisian authorities attempted to harass those posting on Facebook. "If they became aware of you on Facebook they would try to divert your account to a fake login page to steal your password." And despite the claims of Tunisia being a Twitter revolution or inspired by WikiLeaks neither played much of a part. In Tunisia, pre-revolution, only around 200 active tweeters existed out of around 2,000 with registered accounts. The WikiLeaks pages on Tunisian corruption, says Koubaa, who with his friends attempted to set up sites where his countrymen could view them, were blocked as soon as they appeared and anyway, the information was hardly news to Tunisians. However, "Facebook was huge," he says. Koubaa argues that social media during Ben Ali's dictatorship existed on two levels. A few thousand "geeks" like him communicated via Twitter, while perhaps two million talked on Facebook. The activism of the first group informed that of the latter. All of which left a peculiar loophole that persisted until December, when the regime finally launched a full-scale attack against Facebook. This in in a country that already tortured and imprisoned bloggers, and where the country's internet censors at the Ministry of the Interior were nicknamed "Amar 404" after the 404 error message that appeared when a page was blocked. "Social media was absolutely crucial," says Koubaa. "Three months before Mohammed Bouazizi burned himself in Sidi Bouzid we had a similar case in Monastir. But no one knew about it because it was not filmed. What made a difference this time is that the images of Bouazizi were put on Facebook and everybody saw it."

And with state censorship rife in many of these countries, Facebook has functioned in the way the media should as a source of information. Around a week after Ben Ali's fall, I run into Nouridine Bhourri, a 24-year-old call-centre worker, at a demonstration in Tunis against the presence in the government of former members of the old regime. "We still don't believe the news and television," he says, a not surprising fact when many of the orginal journalists are still working. "I research what's happening on Facebook and the internet." Like many, Bhourri has become a foot soldier in the internet campaign against the old Tunisian regime. "I put up amateur video on Facebook. For instance, a friend got some footage of a sniper on Avenue de Carthage. It's what I've been doing, even during the crisis. You share video and pictures. It was if you wrote something or made it yourself that there was a real problem."

A Bahraini protester displays a picture of a wounded man on her phone. Photograph: Hassan Ammar/AP If Twitter had negligible influence on events in Tunisia, the same could not be said for Egypt. A far more mature and extensive social media environment played a crucial role in organising the uprising against Mubarak, whose government responded by ordering mobile service providers to send text messages rallying his supporters a trick that has been replicated in the past week by Muammar Gaddafi. In Egypt, details of demonstrations were circulated by both Facebook and Twitter and the activists' 12-page guide to confronting the regime was distributed by email. Then, the Mubarak regime like Ben Ali's before it pulled the plug on the country's internet services and 3G network. What social media was replaced by then oddly enough was the analogue equivalent of Twitter: handheld signs held aloft at demonstrations saying where and when people should gather the next day.

Sultan Al Qassemi, a columnist based in the United Arab Emirates who has tweeted non-stop on the uprisings, passing on information and English translations of key speeches, believes that some claims about the impact of social media need to be taken with a pinch of salt. "Social media has certainly played a part in the Arab Spring Revolutions but its impact is often exaggerated on the inside. Egypt was disconnected from the outside world for days and yet the movement never stopped. I have missed work, I have missed sleep, I have forgotten to eat, I have strained my eyes, fingers and hands, I am not Tunisian, Egyptian or Libyan, but it's all been worth it. "Today Libya is facing an even more severe internet disruption, yet we continue to see the movement picking up pace. Where social media had a major impact was conveying the news to the outside world, bloggers and Twitter users were able to transmit news bites that would otherwise never make it to mainstream news media. "This information has been instrumental in garnering the attention of the citizens of the world who expressed solidarity with those suppressed individuals and may even put pressure on their own governments to react. Other uses for social media were to transmit information on medical requirements, essential telephone numbers and the satellite frequencies of Al Jazeera which is continuously being disrupted." Indeed, this is what has been most obvious about social media's impact in Bahrain and Libya in the past week. Social networking sites have supplied the most graphic images of the crackdowns on protesters, but also broadcast messages from hospitals looking for blood, rallied demonstrators and provided international dial-up numbers for those whose internet has been blocked. Libyan activists also asked Egyptians to send their sim cards across the border so they could communicate without being bugged. But above all it has been about the ability to communicate. Egyptian-born blogger Mona Eltahawy says that social media has given the most marginalised groups in the region a voice. To say "'Enough' and 'This is how I feel.'" In many respects, what people were doing on Facebook and Twitter was just what dissident bloggers had been doing in the runup to the uprisings often at great risk. And in Tunisia under its old regime as elsewhere the consequences for blogging against the government's abuses could be extremely harsh. Zuhair Yahyaoui, the founder of Tunezine, an opposition website, was imprisoned, not least for publishing a letter written by his uncle, a judge, demanding an independent judiciary. Tortured and abused in prison, he died two years after his release, aged 37. "It was a heart attack," his uncle Mokhtar told the Guardian, "and it was made worse by prison."

One day in Tunisia I meet Lina Ben Mhenni, who blogs under the name A Tunisian Girl. The 27-year-old teacher of linguistics at Tunis University was one of the most high-profile bloggers following Mohammed Bouazizi's self-immolation, travelling to his home town of Sidi Bouzid to chronicle events both for her blog and Facebook. "It was through Facebook that the first support groups following what happened in Sidi Bouzid were set up and the first demonstrations organised," she says. "Social media was critical at a time when everything else was censored." Which is not to say that everything broadcast over social media sites has been either accurate or reliable. The unedited and unmediated nature of the stories that have been told have led to inaccuracies, which have sometimes proven beneficial to those opposing the regime. One of these narratives created right at the beginning was the story of Bouazizi himself. The story of a university graduate forced to sell fruit who killed himself when he could not even do that proved to be incendiary. Except one of the key facts wasn't true. Bouazizi not only hadn't been to university, he had not even completed his school baccalaureate. And while it is unclear how the story came to be so widely believed, what is certain is that some people have planted material they believe is helpful, even if it is not true. Video of a demonstration claimed to be a recent gathering in Iran and placed on social media sites was actually a protest that occurred in 2009. The footage was unmasked as a fraud by Twitter users, ironically enough. But there has been another critical factor at work that has ensured that social media has maintained a high profile in these revolutions. That is the strong reliance that mainstream media such as the Doha-based television network Al Jazeera has had to place on material smuggled out via Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. This arrangement means that videos have often been broadcast back in to the country of origin when Al Jazeera has managed to avoid having its signal blocked. For me it is a phenomena best summed up by an encounter I had with a group of young Tunisians I met during a demonstration on the day after my arrival in Tunis. I asked them what they were photographing with their phones. "Ourselves. Our revolution. We put it on Facebook," one replied laughing, as if it were a stupid question. "It's how we tell the world what's happening."

The Arab uprisings

George Lawson 23 April 2012 Subjects:

International politics Economics Democracy and government Conflict Civil society Tunisia Egypt Arab Awakening Revolution Security in Middle East and North Africa Security Sector Reform Security sector reform - a global challenge

It is a long road from an initial uprising to something that can be called a successful revolution. So far in the Arab region, only Tunisia has met even the minimum criteria of revolutionary success. And although there is increasing talk of a Turkish or Indonesian model combining a pious society with a democratic state, the region as a whole is stuck in a phase of fragile pacts and illiberal renewal Recent years have seen a surge in radical protest, from Occupy Wall Street to Indian Naxalites, from North African youth to Chilean teachers, and from Muslims in Xinjiang to indigenous peoples in the Pacific. The uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa during 2011 provide the most potent articulation of these multiple sites of protest. In carrying out an assessment of the Arab uprisings, it is worth recalling that very few such movements lead to successful revolutions. Crucial to revolutionary success are three factors: first, levels of state effectiveness (in particular, the resilience of intermediary institutions which can channel grievances between state and society); second, the degree of elite fracture (particularly its hold over the coercive apparatus); and third, the commitment of the opposition (both in terms of its ideological unity and its organisational capacity). Although the first two of these factors have remained consistent features of revolutionary movements over time, the third has changed markedly. In particular, there appears to be little adhesive within contemporary revolutionary ideologies that can act as the binding agent of a new social order. This means that, for all the amendable conditions for revolution today, and for all the willing capacity of many movements to demand radical change, there is little sense of what an alternative order would look like once such processes have taken place. This too is the case with the 2011 uprisings.

On the one hand, therefore, there is considerable scope in the contemporary world for revolutionary challenges to occur. On the other hand, many of the movements that promote radical change lack a sense of how social relations could and should be re-ordered. These issues form the background to any assessment of how the 2011 Arab uprisings emerged, how they are developing, and what their outcomes are likely to be.

Negotiated revolutions 2.0 ?

The Arab uprisings sit downwind from the negotiated revolutions that accompanied the end of the Cold War in 1989. Negotiated revolutions shifted the meaning and character of revolution in two main ways: first, because negotiated revolutions were rooted in movements for political justice rather than driven by programmes of economic and social transformation, they sought to limit rather than extend state power; second, because both sides of the struggle sought recourse via negotiation rather than armed conflict, non-violence became their dominant trope. The result of these dynamics was that negotiated revolutions strengthened rather than challenged liberal international order. In the aftermath of the Cold War, it was easy to see the appeal of negotiated revolutions. Uprisings in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, and elsewhere chimed with the spread of liberal international order. It was, therefore, little surprise that the 2011 Arab uprisings shared considerable overlaps with negotiated revolutions, including the promotion of non-violent protest, an ethos of democratisation, and a transformation rooted in negotiation rather than military victory. However, the Arab uprisings also led to discussions over whether a further amendment to revolutionary anatomies was being constructed, particularly when it came to the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Do the Arab uprisings represent a shift in the anatomies of revolution, perhaps marking the advent of negotiated revolutions 2.0? Revolutionary situations Before examining the role played by ICTs in the Arab uprisings, it is worth exploring the basic causes of the uprisings themselves. Although the uprisings were surprising, they were not out of keeping with the revolutionary pathways associated with negotiated revolutions. First, there was a weakening of state effectiveness. For example, in Egypt, the strong links between the elite, the United States and Israel were deeply unpopular amongst the general public. In the years leading up to the Arab uprisings, Egypt was the second largest recipient of US aid (worth around $1 billion dollars each year in military aid alone), one of the main sites for the torture and rendition of suspected al-Qaida suspects, and a supporter of Israeli policies in the region, including the blockade of Gaza. Such policies generated a sense of distance between the regime and the people. Most important, however, in the weakening of state effectiveness was the legacy and evolution of the revolutions from above which these states experienced during the 1950s and 1960s. During the revolutions from above, an independent force of high ranking military officials and civilian bureaucrats seized power, using the state as a means by which to carry out projects

of social transformation. For many years, these regimes appeared stable, so much so that much academic debate revolved around the resilience of authoritarianism in the Middle East. However, Middle Eastern states proved as vulnerable to revolution from below as the regimes they replaced were vulnerable to revolution from above. The lack of intermediate associations between state and society meant that there were few effective channels by which to meet grievances and institutionalise contestation. This served to hollow out state-society relations, making regimes vulnerable to surges of discontent. States in the region could subjugate their people, but they lacked the institutional depth to regulate society efficiently. It was just these weaknesses which enabled revolutionary pressures to emerge during 2011. Egypt serves as a useful illustration of these dynamics. Before the 2011 revolution, the legitimacy of the Egyptian state rested on three main pillars: the 1952 revolution; the role of the military in freeing Egypt from western hegemony (the nationalisation and subsequent conflict over Suez being the most pertinent example); and the socialist development policies pursued by Nasser, during which the state took over the planning, coordination, investment, and management of production. As Toby Dodge points out in his Introduction to After the Arab Spring: Power Shift in the Middle East? (LSE Ideas, May 2012), these policies had the effect of demobilising social forces, including private landholders and the bourgeoisie, by using land reform and industrialisation as tools for exerting state authority over economic activities. They also led to reasonable levels of state-led growth, fortified by price subsidies which made basic commodities affordable to the majority of the population. State income was further generated through petrodollars and aid, particularly from the US, which paid handsomely in exchange for Egypts recognition of Israel following the 1978 Camp David Accords, its opposition to Iran, the suppression of Islamists (including the execution of Sayyid Qutb the Islamist Lenin), and the regular passage of US warships through the Suez Canal. The Egyptian state was, therefore, secured through an amalgam of state-led development and redistributive mechanisms. However, under Sadat and Mubarak, this legitimacy was eroded as the state came to be characterised more by repression than by popular mandate. Both Sadat (in 1977) and Mubarak (in 1986) deployed the army against domestic protestors. And after the assassination of Sadat by members of al-Jihad in 1981, emergency laws made the state an everyday presence in peoples lives. A vast security establishment was constructed on the back of two million informants, who underpinned an extensive system of policing, state security, and state-sponsored gangs (baltagiya). Even as Mubarak increased the despotic power of the state, he reduced its infrastructural reach through a range of neoliberal reforms. During the 1980s and 1990s, Egypt reduced tariffs, abandoned interest rate controls, and removed import quotas. This served to intensify state dependence on oil rents and foreign aid, making the Egyptian economy more susceptible to external dynamics. A dip in oil prices during the mid-1990s forced the state to further leverage its debt and reduce public expenditure. The subsequent austerity measures prompted a decline in living standards for many people, even as a network of privilege (many of whom were associated with Gamal Mubarak, the Presidents son), used personal connections with state

brokers in order to secure lucrative contracts. Increasingly, this elite came to be seen as a minority caste operating outside, or on top of, civil society. Concurrent with these dynamics, demographic changes (particularly population growth) placed additional burdens on the state. By 2011, over one-third of the Egyptian population was aged 1529. This exerted considerable pressures on job markets, just as the state was becoming more neoliberal, more personalistic, and more repressive. In 2009, unemployment in the region reached nearly 25%, twice the global average. It was much higher than this amongst young people and disproportionately felt within the middle class college graduates in Egypt were ten times more likely to have no job than those with a primary school education. Short-term triggers added to the sense of state failure. Between 2008 and 2010, food prices increased by over a third. The removal of food subsidies by the state (the bread subsidy alone cost $3 billion per year to maintain) fuelled resentment against the regime. Despite the decline in its economic sovereignty after two decades or more of neoliberal reforms, the legitimacy of the Egyptian state was tightly bound up with its capacity to deliver a basic standard of living. It was, therefore, particularly susceptible to such a crisis, particularly when it seemed to many Egyptians that the state had abandoned the poor for the sake of the rich. Despite this vulnerability, the Egyptian regime was slow to respond to the threat posed by the December 2010 protests in Tunisia. Already under pressure following allegations of vote-rigging in the November 2010 parliamentary elections, Mubarak did not react to the escalation of protests in the early part of 2011, even after Tunisian President Ben Ali resigned in mid-January. As protests intensified, Mubaraks hold on power weakened. The President promised to resign at the end of his term of office, while simultaneously ordering an escalation of violence against protestors. This combination of carrot and stick backfired, sapping Mubaraks support within the police, his party, and the military. Large numbers of police failed to show up for work, took off their badges, or went over to the protestors. On February 5, the executive committee of the National Democratic Party resigned en masse. And as the protests escalated, the military, which had previously been cautiously neutral, first moved in to protect the protestors from statesponsored violence and then, on February 10, publicly endorsed the peoples legitimate demands. Mubarak resigned the next day. The events leading up to the formation of a revolutionary situation in Egypt sit well within existing understandings of revolution:

First, state effectiveness was weakened both through long-term dynamics (the closeness of elite ties to the United States and Israel, deepening inequalities between rich and poor, and the everyday brutality of the security apparatus) and short-term pressures (the spike in food prices, the 2010 rigged elections, and the protests in Tunisia). Second, Mubaraks position was damaged by elite fracture, particularly within the coercive apparatus. The most important source of defection was the military without their support, Mubaraks position was untenable. Third, the state was undermined by the resourcefulness of the opposition. The coalition that formed against Mubarak was made up of disparate forces:

labour groups, urban youths, mosques, professionals, and the Muslim Brotherhood. At the same time, revolutionary entrepreneurs connected opposition networks into a coherent coalition. These wired cosmopolitans, mostly young, well-travelled, technologically-savvy professionals, translated local events for foreign media, establishing media centres which spread the revolutionary message through cell phones, YouTube, and Twitter. They also used ICTs to establish safety committees and other such bodies. Did the use of such technologies denote a shift in how revolutions unfold?

Revolutionary trajectories One of the central features of revolutions is the formation of a close-knit oppositional identity centred on shared stories which unite disparate groups behind a common cause. Eric Selbin describes the function of these stories as tools of connection between everyday life and collective protest. During the Arab Spring, it is argued, ICTs served as these tools of connection, providing a means by which protest was organised and resistance was mobilised. Because ICT networks are meritocratic, informal, horizontal, and transparent, they are, it is argued, necessarily anti-authoritarian. And by sharing information both immediately and without official sanction, ICTs are said to foster a new type of politics, one which was indispensable to the Arab uprisings. When and how do ICTs influence revolutions? Once again, it is worth examining the case of Egypt. There is little doubt that Facebook played some role in organising protests in Egypt. The Facebook group (We Are All Khaled Said), established in commemoration of a blogger who was murdered by Egyptian police in 2010, gathered hundreds of thousands of members, many of whom took part in anti-regime demonstrations. This group also acted as a connecting node between domestic and transnational networks, helping to ratchet up pressure on elites around the world to do something. Such dynamics worried Arab states. At the end of January, the Egyptian government required the countrys four main Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to disable their networks. All four ISPs, with the exception of Noor, the provider for the Egyptian Stock Exchange, complied. After five days, however, the government lifted its blockade, as it came to regard the ban as igniting rather than suppressing dissent. In other words, more people came onto the streets once the Internet had been disabled. This is a puzzling outcome given claims about the necessity of ICTs in mobilising protest. Protestors are supposed to have required ICTs in order to connect disparate networks and coordinate activities. Yet protests in Egypt intensified during the period in which the Internet was disabled. Perhaps, though, this is not such a puzzle. As even the most enthusiastic cyber-utopians accept, digital data leaves an audit trail, one which can be used for surveillance and censorship as well as for decentralisation and transparency. Social media is a tool which has been appropriated by authoritarian governments in order to trace protestors, spread propaganda, and monitor the activities of protest groups. Indeed, this is something which many activists themselves appear to recognise. For example, in January 2011, a pamphlet, entitled How to Protest Intelligently, was circulated widely amongst protest groups in Egypt. The pamphlet explicitly asked protestors not

to use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or other websites because, they are all monitored by the Ministry of the Interior. Examples elsewhere bolster this point. After the 2009 uprising, the Iranian government formed a cybercrime unit charged with countering the American led cyber-war and arresting those guilty of spreading insults and lies about the regime through the Internet. The Chinese government regularly interferes with the working of the Internet and email accounts, and has become adept at initiating online blockades, particularly around the unrest in Xinjiang. At the same time, the Internet has proved to be a valuable source of authoritarian propaganda. Vladimir Putins United Russia party, for example, enjoys an extensive online presence, while Hugo Chavez is an accomplished user of Twitter, sending out regular missives to his two million plus followers. In short, authoritarian regimes are skilled practitioners when it comes to adopting networked techniques of surveillance and control. On the one hand, then, ICTs can help to coordinate revolutionary protests. On the other, they can equally well be used to disrupt these protests. In short, ICTs have no independent agency they are tools which operate within broader circuits of power. As Malcolm Gladwell has pointed out, ICTs are good at generating weak ties networks of acquaintances which like or share the same tastes. But they are poor at fostering strong ties the deep connections of solidarity and commitment which undergird collective protest. This latter form of connection, best rooted in personal ties of family and friendship, or in the midst of struggle, is not easily forged. To the contrary, it costs. And it is not something that ICTs do well. Revolutionary outcomes What, then, are the likely outcomes of the Arab uprisings? In many ways, it is too early to tell. If the minimum condition of revolutionary outcomes is the period in which a revolutionary regime takes control of the principal means of production, means of violence, and means of information in a society, only one state has reached this point. Tunisia has overthrown its former regime, held free and fair elections, and handed power over to a new civilian authority. However, Tunisias revolution is by no means complete. Nonetheless, Tunisia is an island of relative tranquillity in an otherwise turbulent sea. In Egypt, the SCAF remains in charge, albeit in uneasy truce with Islamist forces. Bahrains uprising was crushed by a combination of monarchical obduracy and Saudi force. The Saudis themselves only mollified domestic unrest through a reform package worth over $150 billion. This strategy, on a lesser scale, was also initiated in Kuwait, Morocco, and Jordan, with similar results: the decompression of protest. In other states, instability remains the main consequence of the uprisings varying degrees of civil strife besets Syria, Libya, and Yemen. Overall, therefore, none of the states in the region bar Tunisia meet even the minimum criteria of revolutionary success, let alone their maximum condition the institutionalisation of a new political, economic, and symbolic order. Although there is increasing talk of a Turkish or Indonesian model which combines a pious society within a democratic state, the region as a whole is stuck between fragile pacts, illiberal renewal, and unmet grievances.

Back to the future of revolution

As noted above, the lack of systemic transformation wrought by the Arab uprisings is something common to many contemporary revolutions. This is because the meaning and character of revolution itself has changed, becoming increasingly oriented around political representation rather than the reordering of society. As such, revolutions have become deliberately self-limiting, seeking to restrain revolutionary excess within constitutional limits. This shift away from revolutions as processes of social transformation is not wholly new. It speaks to a genealogy which runs through America in 1776, the Springtime of Nations in 1848, and the negotiated revolutions in 1989. These self-limiting revolutions centre on individual rather than collective emancipation, seeing the latter as a cloak for revolutionary despotism. The 2011 Arab uprisings sit within this alternative tradition of revolution. Mike Davis makes an arresting comparison in this regard, examining parallels between the protagonists in 2011 and 1848: Egypt and France as the revolutionary vanguards; Saudi Arabia and Russia as the counter-revolutionary powers; Turkey and England as the models of success; Palestine and Poland as the romantic lost causes; and Serbia and Shia groups as the angry outsiders. As Davis, following Marx, also notes, no revolution in Europe, whether liberal or socialist, could succeed until Russia was either defeated or revolutionised. The same may be true of Saudi Arabia in its region. It is also worth noting that, although the revolutions of 1848 were defeated in the short-term, their main rationale of political liberalisation was successful in the long run. That too may be the case with the 2011 Arab uprisings.